Jeffrey W. Hornung
Doubts over sustained U.S. support for Ukraine long predated Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, and they have raised concerns over Kyiv’s ability to sustain its defense against Moscow’s war. These concerns have overshadowed another important dynamic in an already complicated conflict: the increasing involvement of East Asian powers in a European war. Besides the recent arrival of at least 10,000 North Korean soldiers on the Russian side, the evolving roles of China, Japan, and South Korea raise the question of whether a widening proxy war is being fought in Ukraine. By all indications, the answer is yes: The war is setting a new precedent for Indo-Pacific nations to compete for their interests on the global stage.
A proxy war is when two countries fight each other indirectly—by supporting warring participants in a third country. Classic examples from the Cold War era include the Congo crisis in the 1960s and the Angola crisis in the 1970s, when the Soviet Union and United States each backed warring factions in a civil war with money, weapons, and sometimes troops from yet other countries but never got directly involved in combat themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment