Book excerpt: This Handbook is the first volume to comprehensively examine the challenges, intricacies, and dynamics of proxy wars, in their various facets. The volume aims to capture the significantly growing interest in the topic at a critical juncture when wars of many guises are becoming multifaceted proxy wars. Most often, proxy wars have wide-ranging implications for international security and are, therefore, a critically important subject of inquiry. The Handbook seeks to understand and explain proxy wars conceptually, theoretically, and empirically, with a focus on the numerous policy challenges and dilemmas they pose. To do so, it presents a multi- and inter-disciplinary assessment of proxy wars focused on the causes, dynamics, and processes underpinning the phenomenon, across geostrategic contexts and a multitude of actors throughout human history. The Handbook is divided into six thematic sections, as follows: Part I: Approaches to the Study of Proxy Wars Part II: Historical Perspectives on Proxy Wars Part III: Actors in Proxy Wars Part IV: Dynamics of Proxy Wars Part V: Case Studies of Proxy Wars Part VI: The Future of Proxy Wars By bringing together many leading scholars in a synthesis of expertise, this Handbook provides a unique and rigorous account of research into proxy war, which so far has been largely missing from the debate. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, security studies, foreign policy, political violence and International Relations.