No More Proxy Wars and What the US Should Do Instead

The first proxy war the US engaged in was in the Russian civil war of 1917 to 1921. The US-supported side lost, and the communists established the USSR. Later, the US supported the nationalist faction in the Chinese civil war, which also ended in defeat for the US side in 1949. Likewise, the US-sponsored intervention in Cuba ended in defeat during the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. There was another defeat in Vietnam in 1975 even after a decade of direct US intervention. More recently, the US-supported government fell to the Taliban in 2021 after 20 years of American military and other foreign aid. The only civil war in the 20th century where the US-supported side won was in Greece in 1949. The war in Ukraine continues, but the prognosis is not good for the US-supported Ukrainian government. 

The US military is good at gaining air superiority and winning conventional wars, such as in Desert Storm in 1991. It has also had success with humanitarian and peace-keeping operations. The Berlin Airlift was a great example of American prowess in a humanitarian operation. It is not good at defeating insurgencies, as the wars Vietnam and Afghanistan illustrate. While it has won wars against vastly inferior opponents like Panama and Grenada, it has also lost wars to significantly weaker forces like militias in Somalia and Lebanon. 

One thing events of the past few years has shown is that the US military needs to improve its ability to evacuate Americans and foreign partners from trouble spots. A few months ago, about 16,000 US citizens became trapped in Sudan because of a civil war there. Before that in August of 2021, a number of Americans and thousands of Afghan partners were abandoned in Afghanistan. A few days ago, hundreds of Americans were stranded in Israel and Gaza when US airlines stopped flights to Israel. 

Clearly, the US military needs more practice at these operations. Furthermore, the US government has an obligation to us the military to rescue Americans who are in danger overseas. At a minimum, US military and civilian leaders need to have a plan in place for evacuating Americans from any country. That plan should include a contingency for setting up airstrips in case there are no safe airports available. Convoys of trucks and buses could also be used in some cases to evacuate people to another country before flying them back to the US.