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    proxy war

    An American soldier passes an Afghan child

    Ukraine: Look to Afghanistan for Lessons About US Proxy Wars

    "Ukraine needs to learn from the horrible experience of Afghanistan to avoid becoming a long-term disaster."

    Jeffrey D. Sachs
    Feb 18, 2023

    The greatest enemy of economic development is war. If the world slips further into global conflict, our economic hopes and our very survival could go up in flames. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock to a mere 90 seconds to midnight.

    The world’s biggest economic loser in 2022 was Ukraine, where the economy collapsed by 35% according to the International Monetary Fund. The war in Ukraine could end soon, and economic recovery could begin, but this depends on Ukraine understanding its predicament as victim of a U.S.-Russia proxy war that broke out in 2014.

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    Opinion
    ukraine war
    PEACE

    Whatever Happened to Peace? Arms, Oil and War by Proxy

    We're living in a new era of proxy warfare, where multiple powers fund local proxies with disastrous consequences. We need to break the cycle.

    Jonas Ecke
    May 21, 2017

    The end of the Cold War was one of the few historical moments in which people around the world looked forward to a future that promised to be more just and peaceful for everyone. The Berlin Wall was finally torn down, following years of tireless civil society activism in one of the world's few peaceful revolutions. Liberal democratic systems seemed to be spreading everywhere, compelling Francis Fukuyama to craft the (nowadays often-scorned) argument that "The End of History" - and consequently the cessation of constant conflict - had finally arrived with the falling of the Iron Curtain.

    The promising world 'peace dividend', a term initially coined by US president George H.W. Bush and UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, was on everyone's lips. Hope was in the air. The Soviet Union and United States vowed to work together to further cut down on a nuclear arsenal that could have blown up the world many times over. And they also seemed to be hard at work getting rid of another major - and often underestimated - impediment to peace: proxy wars, the type of war waged in the developing world for most of the Cold War, from Latin America to Central Asia to the Horn of Africa. These were wars in which the Soviet Union and US did not directly fight, but paid and favored local fighters, often through highly classified operations and byzantine financial networks that have inspired generations of spy novelists. Before the Cold War, colonial regimes paid local proxies to advance their agendas and "divide and conquer".

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    Opinion
    proxy war
    House destroyed by aerial bombing in Yemen.

    The Saudi Slaughter in Yemen

    Why does the United States continue to support the Saudi intervention in Yemen?

    Adil E. Shamoo
    Feb 19, 2016

    Although the Saudis have promised a high-level committee to investigate civilian deaths from their airstrikes in Yemen, they continue to strike civilian targets with countless deaths and destructions.

    For instance, among those recently killed in an airstrike on an abandoned cement factory were "people in parked cars, a grocery store owner, a pharmacist, and shoppers." The nationalist insurgents, the Houthis, have also unfortunately contributed to the increased casualties as they try to repel the invaders and defeat the local groups opposed to them.

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    Opinion
    yemen

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