In the Green Bone Saga, the No Peak clan becomes embroiled in a “Slow War,” an allegorical representation of the Cold War—a period of intense geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union from roughly 1947 to 1991. Instead of direct large-scale conflict, these rival superpowers competed for global influence by financing, arming, and advising opposing local factions rather than fighting each other directly. For example, the American War in Vietnam acted as a proxy for the Cold War conflict. After the Geneva Convention, North Vietnam remained communist, and its military was armed and resourced by its allies—China and the Soviet Union—while South Vietnam established a democratic republic and received financial support, military weapons, equipment, and training from the United States. 

In Jade Legacy, Espenia and Ygutan treat the contested Oortoko region and its local factions as regional proxies, vying for strategic influence without engaging in direct military conflict. Because these two global powers are locked in a Slow War, both governments turn their attention to Kekon, looking to arm their soldiers with magical jade through the use of the SN1 drug to strengthen their militaries. At the meeting of the Kekon Jade Alliance, General Ronu argues that “Oortoko was only the first of the proxy conflicts between the Espenosphere and the Ygut coalition. Kekon [who controls the mining and distribution of jade] cannot escape being caught up in the Slow War" (51). In this way, the conflict in Oortoko, where Espenia and Ygutan supported opposing sides to further their own political agendas, directly parallels these Cold War proxies. 

The book also showcases brinkmanship, a foreign policy strategy where one nation pushes a dangerous conflict to the edge of war to force an opponent to back down. The concept was popularized in Life Magazine’s 1956 interview with former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who defined brinkmanship as “[t]he ability to get to the verge without getting into […]. If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war—if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost" (Geyelin, Philip. “Going to the Brink--But Not Beyond.” The Washington Post, 6 May 1982). In Lee’s novel, she positions an incident in which a “Ygutanian spy plane [is] shot down by Espenian fighter craft over Euman Island” as a clear example of this tactic (41), echoing the high-stakes tension of events like the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, in which President John F. Kennedy responded to intelligence that the USSR had secretly placed nuclear weapons in Cuba by ordering a US naval blockade rather than ordering a direct military strike, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Jade Legacy’s Slow War provides a complex international backdrop for the clan war, forcing No Peak and the Mountain to navigate foreign alliances and proxy conflicts that escalate their own feud from a local dispute into a global battle for supremacy.

Kekon’s history of foreign domination under the Shotarian Empire is a parallel to the experiences of several East Asian nations during Japan’s colonial expansion from the late 19th century through World War II. The novel’s reference to “decades of Shotarian occupation” and the subsequent fight for independence mirrors real-world conflicts in the early 20th century (50). For example, Japan annexed Korea in 1910 and ruled until 1945, imposing policies of cultural assimilation and economic exploitation. According to Korean history scholar Dr. Hwa-Soon Choi Meyer, “The annexation process involved coercive tactics [and] marked the end of the Chosŏn Dynasty, which had ruled Korea for over five centuries. Japan's rule was characterized by efforts to assimilate Korean culture and suppress national identity, leading to significant resistance among the Korean populace” (Meyer, Hwa Soon Choi. “Japanese Annexation of Korea.” EBSCO Research Starters, 2021). In Jade Legacy, the older generation of Green Bones, including Kaul Hilo’s grandfather Kaul Seningtun and the Mountain’s former Pillar Ayt Yugontin, were once united as resistance fighters in the “One Mountain Society” (304), a movement analogous to real-world anti-colonial resistance groups, such as the March 1 Independence Movement of 1919, a nationwide protest for Korean independence from Japanese colonial rule.