From Gurwinder Bhogal’s excellent “The Hate Factory“:
The Cold War was really a Warm War, in that there was a source of heat but it was usually far away from the main actors. The hot aspect of the war was conducted mainly by proxy forces.
I think we forgot that; the Cold War was a series of proxy wars and there was no peace. I believe we are now in the Second Cold War (though that was not the main topic of Bhogal’s three-part series).
Henning's blog 