There is a long and storied history of the US and Russia / the Soviet Union providing, uh, "advisors" and equipment to enemies of their enemies. Soviet pilots

There is a long and storied history of the US and Russia / the Soviet Union providing, uh, "advisors" and equipment to enemies of their enemies. Soviet pilots fought in Korea and Vietnam (to a much lesser degree). There are stories of Soviet special forces, infantry instructors, etc. participating in Vietnam as well. Vietnam received tons of anti-air missiles and systems, not to speak of the fighter jets, tanks, guns, and more. The US trained and armed fighters in Afghanistan. It wouldn't surprise me to learn US special forces popped in from time to time. Those are more well known--especially the Korean War and Afghan war shenanigans--but there are many others that are more obscure. The US, UK, etc. funded and trained a number of independence and / or revolutionary movements in the Eastern Bloc and China. The Baltic states, for example, had some level of guerilla war for a bit until the Soviets cracked down. The Soviets, of course, funded all sorts of, shall we say, interesting characters in the West. More recently, Iranian forces fought against American forces in Iraq. Syria has seen the US and Russia square off in a few incidents. The question in my mind is: what level of support is too much support? How do we reason about that? What level of support deters additional territorial conquest? Does territorial conquest in and of itself increase the risk of Armageddon? This is the sort of thing I'd expect to see in some Cold War era RAND Corporation white paper. I worry we have lost some of our Cold War worries in the public consciousness. Being the top dog for so long has made us feel invincible. But I also think we've forgotten that the Cold War was cold, not frozen, and there are valuable game theoretic discussions to be had or revisited