Puppet state

A puppet state, puppet régime, puppet government or dummy government is a state that is de jure independent but de facto completely dependent upon an outside power and subject to its orders. Puppet states have nominal sovereignty, except that a foreign power effectively exercises control through economic or military support. By leaving a local government in existence the outside power evades all responsibility, while at the same time successfully paralysing the local government they tolerate.
Puppet states differ from allies, who choose their actions of their own initiative or in accordance with treaties they have voluntarily entered. Puppet states are forced into legally endorsing actions already taken by a foreign power.
Puppet states are "endowed with the outward symbols of authority", such as a name, flag, anthem, constitution, law codes, motto, and government, but in reality, are appendages of another state which creates, sponsors or otherwise controls the puppet government. International law does not recognise occupied puppet states as legitimate.
Puppet states can cease to be puppets through:
The term is a metaphor which compares a state or government to a puppet controlled by a puppeteer with strings. The first recorded use of the term "puppet government" was in 1884, in reference to the Khedivate of Egypt.
In the Middle Ages, vassal states existed based on delegation of the rule of a country by a king to noble men of lower rank. Since the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, the concept of a nation came into existence where sovereignty was connected more to the people who inhabited the land than to the nobility who owned the land.
An earlier similar concept is suzerainty, the control of the external affairs of one state by another.
The Batavian Republic was established in the Netherlands under French revolutionary protection.
In Italy, the French First Republic encouraged a proliferation of small republics in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, known as sister republics.
In Eastern Europe, Napoleon's First French Empire established the Polish client state of the Duchy of Warsaw.
In 1896, Britain established a 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), the Imperial Japanese government established a number of dependent states.
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 states fall into several categories.
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 UK and the Soviet Union. Pro-Axis governments in both Iraq and Iran were removed and replaced with Allied-dominated governments.
As Soviet forces prevailed over the German Army on the Eastern Front during World War II, the Soviet Union supported the creation of communist governments throughout Eastern Europe. Specifically, the People's Republics in Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Albania were dominated by the Soviet Union. While all of these People's Republics did not "officially" take power until after WWII ended, they all have roots in pro-communist wartime governments.
Yugoslavia was a communist state closely linked to the Soviet Union, but Yugoslavia retained autonomy within its own borders. After the Tito–Stalin split in 1948, the relationship between the two countries deteriorated significantly. Yugoslavia was expelled from the international organisations of the Eastern Bloc. After Stalin's death and a period of de-Stalinization by Nikita Khrushchev, peace was restored, but the relationship between the two countries was never completely mended. Yugoslavia continued to pursue independent policies and became the founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement.
The Soviet Union continued to exert some influence over the People's Republic of China before the Sino-Soviet split in 1961. Some other countries which once were Soviet puppet governments included Mongolia, North Korea, North Vietnam, the reunified Vietnam and Cuba, all of which had substantial dependence on the Soviet economy, military, science, and technology. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, most of its former satellites moved towards democratisation. Only China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam remain one-party communist states.
In some cases, the process of decolonisation has been managed by the decolonising 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.
The Netherlands formed several puppet states in the former Dutch East Indies as part of its effort to quell the Indonesian National Revolution.
Following the Belgian Congo's independence as Congo-Leopoldville in 1960, Belgian interests supported the short-lived breakaway State of Katanga (1960–1963).
Indonesia established a Provisional Government of East Timor following its invasion of East Timor in December 1975.
During the 1970s and 1980s, four ethnic Bantustans - some of which were extremely fragmented - called "homelands" by the government of the time, were carved out of South Africa and given nominal sovereignty. Mostly Xhosa people resided in the Ciskei and Transkei, Tswana people in Bophuthatswana, and Venda people in the Venda.
The principal purpose of these states was to remove South African citizenship from the Xhosa, Tswana, and Venda peoples, and so provide grounds for denying them their democratic rights. All four Bantustans were reincorporated into a democratic South Africa on 27 April 1994, under a new constitution.
The South African authorities established ten Bantustans in South West Africa (present-day Namibia), then illegally occupied by South Africa, in the late 1960s and early 1970s in accordance with the Odendaal Commission. Three of them were granted self-rule. These Bantustans were replaced with separate ethnicity-based governments in 1980.
The Republic of Kuwait was a short-lived pro-Iraqi state in the Persian Gulf that only existed three weeks before it was annexed by Iraq in 1990.
The Republic of Serbian Krajina was a self-proclaimed territory ethnically cleansed by Serbian forces during the Croatian War (1991–95). It was completely dependent on the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milošević, and was not recognised internationally.