Background information: This passage comes from the President Ford Museum and Library and talks about the role of proxy wars dur
ing the Cold War. In the age of atomic destruction, what was to be gained by the superpowers fighting one another as nearly happened in 1962 when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over missiles in Cuba? Better to trigger civil wars in developing nations and support anti-communist "freedom fighters" as the U.S. did in Guatemala in the 1950s or communist movements as the Soviet Union did in Angola in the 1970s. Letting stand-ins fight was, ironically, the safest way to wage hot wars during the period of the Cold War.
What is the main idea of this passage?
“Freedom fighters” are generally anticommunism.
Civil wars posed little threat to the United States or to the USSR.
Proxy wars were safer for the world than any “hot war” fought by the United States and USSR.
Nuclear war was safer than the war waged by the USSR in Angola.
