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A puppet state (also known as puppet government or marionette government) is a nominal sovereign of a state who is de facto controlled by a foreign power.[1] The term refers to a government controlled by the government of another country like a puppeteer controls the strings of a marionette.[2] A puppet state has also been described as an entity which in fact lacks independence, preserves all the external paraphernalia of independence, but in reality is only an organ of another state who has set it up and whose satellite it is.[3]
During the Seven Years' War, Britain effectively gained its first foothold of substantial area on the Indian subcontinent by supporting Mir Jafar's claim to the title of Nawab of Bengal at the expense of Siraj ud-Daulah. However, the British demands of tribute proved to be excessive and, after Dutch intervention on Mir Jafar's behalf, the East India Company replaced him with Mir Qasim. When Qasim attempted to stand up to British policies, hostilities led to the Battle of Buxar and British rule expanded to include most of eastern India. An even earlier example of a puppet state in a sense includes Wallachia, as when it was partially de facto ruled by the Ottoman Empire in 1462 with Radu the Handsome on the throne, who was placed in this position after his older brother Vlad the Impaler had been banished from Wallachia and interned by Hungary.
The first puppet state in modern European history, in the sense of a state which claimed popular legitimacy but which was significantly dependent on an external power, was the Batavian Republic, established in the Netherlands under French revolutionary protection.
The first puppet states, in the sense of new states whose creation was made possible by the intervention of a foreign power, were the Italian republics created in the late 18th and early 19th centuries with the assistance and encouragement of Napoleonic France. See French client republics.
In 1895, Japan detached Korea from its tributary relationship with China, giving it formal independence which was in reality only a prelude to Japanese annexation.
In 1896 Britain established a puppet state in Zanzibar.
During Japan's imperial period, and particularly during the Pacific War (parts of which are considered the Pacific theatre of World War II), Japan established a number of states that historians have come to consider puppet régimes.
Japan had plans for other puppet states.
The Republic of the Far East was a Japanese puppet régime that never got beyond the planning stages. In addition to the Japanese, the Germans supported the formation of this state. In 1943, the plans for a White Russian state died for good after the Battle for Stalingrad.
In 1945, as the Second World War drew to a close, Japan planned to grant puppet independence to the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia). These plans ended when the Japanese surrendered on 15 August 1945.
Several European governments under the domination of Germany and Italy during World War II have been described as puppet régimes. The formal means of control in occupied Europe varied greatly. These régimes fall into several categories.
The Soviet Union and Russian SFSR had several puppet states in the 1920s.
As Soviet forces prevailed over the German Army on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, the Soviet Union supported the creation of communist governments in Eastern Europe. Specifically, the People's Republics in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland were dominated by the Soviet Union. While all of these People's Republics did not "officially" take power until after World War II ended, they all have roots in pro-Communist war-time governments. For example, Bulgaria's pro-Communist Fatherland Front seized power in Bulgaria on September 9, 1944. The Fatherland Front government was Soviet dominated and the direct predecessor of the People's Republic of Bulgaria (1946–1990). On the other hand, keeping with the Bulgarian example, it could be argued that the People's Republic of Bulgaria under Prime Minister Georgi Dimitrov (1946–1949) was far from being a Soviet puppet. On yet another hand, an argument for co-belligerence status could also be made for these states.
The Axis demand for oil and the concern of the Allies that Germany would look to the oil-rich Middle East for a solution, caused the invasion of Iraq by the United Kingdom and the invasion of Iran by the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. Pro-Axis governments in both Iraq and Iran were removed and replaced with Allied-dominated governments.
After World War II, the states of Eastern Europe liberated and then occupied by the Soviet army became communist states aligned with the Soviet Union. This extended so far as to lead to the division of Germany, in which the Soviet occupation sector became East Germany while the American, British and French occupation sectors became West Germany.
Eastern European members of the Warsaw Pact, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany, were Soviet satellite states. While Soviet leaders claimed that the Warsaw Pact nations were equals entering into a mutual alliance, the reality was different, and decisions were often enforced by Soviet Union with threats of and use of force. For example, when Polish communist leaders tried to elect Władysław Gomułka as First Secretary they were issued an ultimatum by the Soviet military—which occupied Poland—ordering them to withdraw election of Gomulka for the First Secretary or be crushed by Soviet tanks.[12]
Prague Spring in 1968 led to an invasion of Czechoslovakia by the other Warsaw Pact states. As a rationale for this action, the Soviet Union expressed the Brezhnev Doctrine, which stated that it was the duty of all socialist states to protect any socialist state from falling to capitalism. The Western bloc interpreted the Brezhnev Doctrine as an expression of Moscow's authority over other communist states.
Gorbachev ultimately renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine, jokingly calling his policy the "Sinatra Doctrine" after the song "My Way" because of its explicit allowance of Eastern European countries to decide their own internal affairs. Within only a couple years of Gorbachev's abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine, Eastern Europe's communist regimes all fell and their states sought better relations and integration with the West, abandoning ties to Soviet Union.
During the 1950–1953 Korean War, South Korea and the United States alleged that North Korea was a Soviet puppet state. At the same time, South Korea was accused of being an American puppet state by North Korea and its allies. In 1955, the Vietnamese Catholic leader Ngo Dinh Diem, encouraged by the United States, declared the creation of South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) in the southern part of Vietnam. The northern part of the country was then largely under control of the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). However North Vietnam was largely independent from Soviet Union and China, in 1979 Vietnam fought against China in a brief war.
The Paris Peace Accords were preceded by months of intensive negotiations over whether the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam (Viet Cong) should be treated as an independent party or as a puppet of North Vietnam.
In 1951 Dean Rusk, the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, branded the People's Republic of China a "Slavic Manchukuo", implying that it was a puppet state of the Soviet Union just as Manchukuo had been a puppet state of the Empire of Japan. This position was commonly taken by American propaganda of the 1950s, despite the fact that the Chinese communist movement had developed largely independently of the Soviet Union.
In some cases, the process of decolonization has been managed by the decolonizing power to create a neo-colony, that is a nominally independent state whose economy and politics permits continued foreign domination. Neo-colonies are not normally considered puppet states.
During the 1970s and 1980s, four ethnic bantustans, some of which were extremely fragmented, were carved out of South Africa and given nominal sovereignty. Two (Ciskei and Transkei) were for the Xhosa people; and one each for the Tswana people (Bophuthatswana) and for the Venda people (Venda Republic).
The principal purpose of these states was to remove the Xhosa, Tswana and Venda peoples from South African citizenship (and so to provide grounds for denying them democratic rights). All four were reincorporated into South Africa in 1994.
In more recent times, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq have led to largely U.S.-led regime change efforts in these two nations, fostering accusations among critics of the administration that the governments established under U.S. occupation are American puppet states. Nationalist and Muslim insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan condemn the respective governments as collaborationist puppet regimes. In a January 2008 interview, Afghan President Hamid Karzai assented to being labelled America's "puppet" in return for U.S. assistance, stating, "if I am called a puppet because we are grateful to America, then let that be my nickname."
South Ossetia has declared independence but its ability to maintain independence is solely based on Russian troops deployed on Georgian territory. The President of South Ossetia Eduard Kokoity claimed he would like South Ossetia eventually to become a part of the Russian Federation through reunification with his fellow Ossetian countrymen in North Ossetia.[13]. It is unclear whether this is true puppetry on the part of South Ossetia, or a recognition by Kokoity and the Russians that their desires are compatible and that each party can help the other achieve its goals.
Abkhazia has declared independence but its ability to maintain independence is solely based on Russian troops deployed on Georgian territory and Russian aid. Abkhazia however, unlike South Ossetia, is not landlocked as it borders the Black Sea and does not wish to become a part of the Russian Federation through reunification.