Pretty sure that's almost exactly how Russia-Ukraine kicked off, so... not confident you're right there.
True, it's exactly the same situation when you ignore all the ways in which it isn't.
Going through local proxies also gives you an easy out. You simply stop funding them and your spooks withdraw.
Vietnam is more similar because it actually did start out with the US going exclusively through proxies for years. The lesson there should have been that if the local proxies are losing, the solution is not to send in your own young men en-masse to drag out the conflict (although Vietnam is misunderstood and we did not lose as badly as common narrative would have you believe. Chinese military production was ALL going to Vietnam, to the point where Chinese units were using hand-me-downs with no supplies so the NVA/VC could get all their new equipment and supplies needed to survive. The scale of material support that was received by NVA/VC is not widely acknowledged. Hm, actually sort of like Ukraine)
If you're implying Iraq is analogous to the Novo-Russian region known as Ukraine (pronouns was/were) you could possibly be retarded and might want to get that checked out (for the smooth variety).
Iraq was fully conquered day 0 of the
occupation (like US soldiers were taking evening jogs in PT gear next to the Euphrates in downtown Baghdad), by a real superpower btw
against the shittiest export vintage T72s the Soviets ever produced lmao. Although US troop numbers were under-strength for an occupation, much of the Saddam era civil and military apparatus could have been salvaged. Things slowly cooked in Iraq from 2003 to 2005 and exploded in 2006/7, through sheer incompetence. US soldiers also make for bad police officers in a foreign land, something where an existing police force that was properly managed could have made a big difference. (also all the baathist and ex-military that were banned from future government jobs took their weapons and used them against the occupation). I cannot understate how botched the Iraqi occupation was. That's not even touching on the dynamic between the 3 major ethnic groups that was mismanaged and on and on and on.
Russia funded separatists in the eastern Ukrainian provinces to try and gain leverage on Ukraine and bring them back to their sphere of influence. They made a conscious choice to escalate into a full blown war, no matter the consequences, when it appeared that Ukraine was going to join NATO.
I guess if India, Pakistan, and China had intervened on the side of the Taliban in Afghanistan against the US then that would have been exactly like the Ukraine war.
You've got me there.
