62 Sentences With "buffer states" | Random Sentence Generator

Indeed, Russia hemorrhaged allied buffer states following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia's need of spheres of influence and buffer states is in direct conflict with globalization.

What Russian leadership doesn't understand is that the chess game of realpolitik, of pawns in the name of buffer states protecting the queen, is no longer necessary.

They cannot, for example, simply impose themselves on buffer states, where leaders hold competing agendas and need to persuasively promise their constituents that they are defending national sovereignty.

These actions raise the stakes for further Russian aggression, but additional defensive measures may be necessary to prevent Putin's pursuit of his overriding goal of restoring Russian control over the buffer states that adjoin Russia.

But with his dual obsession on the importance of buffer states such as Ukraine and the disruption of the West, Putin ignores what should be his greatest concern, which is the mirror held up to it by China.

The Romans reached an accommodation with Brythonic tribes such as the Votadini as effective buffer states.

In the meantime, the zone of buffer states along the kingdom's southern frontiers collapsed with the occupation of Serbia and Bosnia by the Ottomans.Engel 2001, pp. 300-301. As an immediate consequence, a great number of Serbian refugees settled in the kingdom.Fine 1994, p. 576.

A Forward Policy is a set of foreign policy doctrines applicable to territorial ambitions and disputes in which emphasis is placed on securing control of targeted territories by invasion and annexation or by the political creation of compliant buffer states.: "They [amateur strategists in Britain] argued that the only way to halt the Russian advance was by 'forward' policies. This meant getting there first, either by invasion, or by creating compliant 'buffer' states, or satellites, astride the likely invasion routes. Also of the forward school were the ambitious young officers of the Indian Army and political department engaged in this exciting new sport in the deserts and passes of High Asia".

Insulator states sometimes isolate regions, such as Afghanistan's location between the Middle East and South Asia. Insulators mark boundaries of indifference, where security dynamics stand back to back. They contrast with the traditional idea of 'buffer states' which are located at points where security dynamics are intense (e.g. Belgium between Germany and France).

This would change Britain's perception of the world, and its response was The Great Game. Britain had no intention of getting involved in the Middle East, but it did envision a series of buffer states between the British and Russian Empires that included Turkey, Persia, plus the Khanate of Khiva and the Khanate of Bukhara that would grow from future trade. Behind these buffer states would be their protected states stretching from the Persian Gulf to India and up into the Emirate of Afghanistan, with British sea-power protecting trade sea-lanes. Access to Afghanistan was to be through developing trade routes along the Indus and Sutlej rivers using steam-powered boats, and therefore access through the Sind and Punjab regions would be required.

Georgia and the Caucasus after the establishment of the Emirate. Around 730, two factors led to a change in Umayyad policy towards Georgia. First, in that year, the Khazars managed to invade Northwestern Iran and went all the way to Mosul before being defeated. The tributary buffer states of the Caucasus had not been able to prevent that invasion.

The Eastern Himalayas has been home to three independent kingdoms since the 17thcentury, including the Kingdom of Bhutan, the Kingdom of Sikkim, and the Kingdom of Nepal. The Himalayan kingdoms served as buffer states between Imperial China and India. In the 19thcentury, Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan became protectorates of British India. The Anglo-Nepal Treaty of 1923 recognized Nepal's sovereignty.

A group of Afghan and Soviet people in Moscow, c. 1991. A 1969 Soviet postage stamp in honor of 50 years of USSR-Afghanistan relations The Cold War lasted from 1945 to 1992. The conflict shaped Russian foreign policy towards developing countries, emphasizing the creation of puppet, proxy, and buffer states. Afghanistan's foreign policy after 1919 was one of non-alignment.

Catalan Constitutions (1702). During the first centuries of the Reconquista, the Franks drove the Muslims south of the Pyrenees. To prevent future incursions, Charlemagne created the Marca Hispanica in 790 CE, which consisted of a series of petty kingdoms serving as buffer states between the Frankish kingdom and Al-Andalus. Between 878 and 988 CE, the area became a hotbed of Frankish-Muslim conflict.

The Second World Congress in April 1948 was attended by delegates from 22 sections. It debated a range of resolutions on the Jewish Question, Stalinism, the colonial countries and the specific situations facing sections in certain countries.2nd Congress of the Fourth International By this point the FI was united around the view that the Eastern European "buffer states" were still capitalist countries."The USSR and Stalinism", Fourth International, June 1948.

Some British had supported the Karen; East Pakistan (and then Bangladesh) backed the Muslim Rohingyas on their border with Middle Eastern backing. The Indians were said to be involved with the Kachin and the Karen. The Chinese assisted the CPB (later the Wa), the Naga and Kachin armed groups. The United States supported the Kuomintang, and the Thai a wide variety of rebel groups, essentially creating buffer states or zones.

The Captain muses that the Australopithecus species (and some 15 other similar project races across the galaxy) are to the Heechee as the Heechee are to the mystery race who will reshape the entire Universe. He hopes that one day these project races will develop intelligence and travel the stars, not for any intellectual or cultural pleasure, but rather to act as buffer states between the Heechee and those mysterious others.

Instead, the Germans tried to control the area by means of promoting conflicts between local nationalities as it became clear that the German plan for creation of Mitteleuropa, a net of satellite buffer states, failed. Finally, on 1 January 1919, the German garrison withdrew and passed the authority over the city to a local Polish committee, against the pleas of the Lithuanian administration. A Polish administration started to be formed.Michał Gałędek.

This forced the Obliskomzap to evacuate to Smolensk. The Smolensk guberniya was passed to the Western Oblast. Faced with the German demands, the Bolsheviks accepted their terms at the final Treaty of Brest-Litoŭsk, which was signed on 3 March 1918. For the German Empire, Operation Faustschlag achieved one of their strategic plans for World War I, to create a German-centered hegemony of buffer states, called Mitteleuropa.

British map of Europe in the immediate aftermath of World War I and the overthrow of tsarist empire in Russia (green). Among the changes were the establishment of independent states of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia (right of centre) Border states, or European buffer states, were the European nations that won their independence from the Russian Empire after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Treaty of Brest- Litovsk and ultimately the defeat of the German Empire and Austria-Hungary in World War I. During the interwar period, the nations of Western Europe implemented a border states policy, which aimed at uniting them in protection against the Soviet Union and communist expansionism. The border states were interchangeably Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and, until their annexation into the Soviet Union, short-lived Belarus and Ukraine. The policy tended to see the border states as a cordon sanitaire, or buffer states, separating Western Europe from the newly formed Soviet Union.

Both empires therefore allied themselves with small, semi-independent Arab principalities, which served as buffer states and protected Byzantium and Persia from Bedouin attacks. The Byzantine clients were the Ghassanids; the Persian clients were the Lakhmids. The Ghassanids and Lakhmids feuded constantly, which kept them occupied, but that did not greatly affect the Byzantines or the Persians. In the 6th and 7th centuries, various factors destroyed the balance of power that had held for so many centuries.

The antecedents of the Regnenses, the Atrebates, had (in their Gallic and British forms) been client kingdoms of Rome since Caesar's first invasion in 55 BC. In the north of Britain, ongoing border struggles across the defensive walls led to the establishment of buffer states, including the Votadini in Northumberland.. Client kings would adopt Romanised names and titles, although the influence of Roman culture meant that these traits were exhibited to some degree by non-client kings also.

Roman Empire under Augustus Caesar (31 BC – 6 AD). Yellow: 31 BC. Dark Green 31–19 BC, Light Green 19–9 BC, Pale Green 9–6 BC. Mauve: Client states The Roman Republic's policy regarding expansion and overseas territory was frequently conflicted. There were those who were satisfied with diplomacy, creating allies on its borders that acted as buffer states against more distant threats. On the other hand, there were those who saw opportunities for glory and riches.

In this period, the Ottoman Empire conquered Serbia and Bosnia, terminating the zone of buffer states along the southern frontiers of the Kingdom of Hungary. Matthias signed a peace treaty with Frederick III in 1463, acknowledging the Emperor's right to style himself King of Hungary. The Emperor returned the Holy Crown of Hungary with which Matthias was crowned on 29 April 1464. In this year, Matthias invaded the territories that had recently been occupied by the Ottomans and seized fortresses in Bosnia.

Mackinder argued that whoever controlled the Heartland would have control of the world. He used these ideas to politically influence events such as the Treaty of Versailles, where buffer states were created between the USSR and Germany, to prevent either of them controlling the Heartland. At the same time, Ratzel was creating a theory of states based around the concepts of Lebensraum and Social Darwinism. He argued that states were analogous to 'organisms' that needed sufficient room in which to live.

Some of the most significant Earls (Welsh: ieirll, singular iarll) in Welsh history were those from the West of England. As Wales remained independent of any Norman jurisdiction, the more powerful Earls in England were encouraged to invade and establish effective "buffer states" to be run as autonomous lordships. These Marcher Lords included the earls of Chester, Gloucester, Hereford, Pembroke and Shrewsbury (see also English Earls of March). The first Earldoms created within Wales were the Lordship of Glamorgan (a comital title) and the Earldom of Pembroke.

After signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Bolshevik Russia lost the European lands it annexed in the 18th and 19th centuries. Most of today's Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic States were granted to the government of Germany, which in turn decided to grant these states limited independence as buffer states. However, the German defeat on the Western Front and the internal dissolution of Austria-Hungary made the plans for creation of Mitteleuropa obsolete. In November and December the German army started a retreat westwards.

In the beginning, Flamenpolitik consisted only of an effort to translate the laws of Germany into the languages of Belgium. However, in 1916, a new plan was developed with the idea that Belgium should never again be an obstacle to German advancement and that Germany should be surrounded by weak buffer states open to German influence. This plan required a separate Flemish state not subject to Walloon influence, and thus necessitated much more radical measures than had yet been taken.F.L. Carsten, The Rise of Fascism (London: Methuen & Co, 1974), pp.

The Majlis was rendered ineffective because the central government was weak and did not have enough influence to rein in the changes that it had proposed. Ahmad Shah (center) as a child, pictured with Haj Seyed Gholamhossein Majd Mojabi (above) and guards in 1901. In 1917, Britain used Persia as the springboard for an attack into Russia in an unsuccessful attempt to reverse the Russian Revolution of 1917. The newly born Soviet Union responded by annexing portions of northern Persia as buffer states much like its Tsarist predecessor.

The Lord of Caboet or Lord Arnau de Caboet was a Catalan nobleman. He played an influential role in the creation of Andorra, which was established by Charlemagne as one of the buffer states that kept the Moors from invading France. In 11th century, an account cited how the lord protected the Bishop of Urgel from military action conducted by neighboring lords through a defensive agreement. The title was fought over by the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix, who became the heir of Lord Caboet through marriage.

Sometimes portions of a single country can fall into two distinct spheres of influence. In the colonial era the buffer states of Iran and Thailand, lying between the empires of Britain/Russia and Britain/France respectively, were divided between the spheres of influence of the imperial powers. Likewise, after World War II, Germany was divided into four occupation zones, which later consolidated into West Germany and East Germany, the former a member of NATO and the latter a member of the Warsaw Pact. The term is also used to describe non-political situations, e.g.

This belief was consistent with longstanding Russian foreign policy that emphasized security through expansionism and the establishment of physical barriers in the form of buffer states. The second reason for invasion was the possibility of interrupting Chinese and American efforts to establish greater political influence in Afghanistan before Soviet intervention would entail direct confrontation of those two rival powers. The third reason was to enforce the dominance of Marxist–Leninist revolutionary ideals, above the emergent Nationalist Islamic ideology in Afghanistan. Lastly, the Soviets were aware of the imperial advantages of direct intervention and occupation.

All three hosts needed to be removed to vacate space for the colonisation of New Russia, and with the increasing weakness of the Ottoman Empire as well as the formation of independent buffer states in the Balkans, the need for further Cossack defensive presence in New Russia had ended. They migrated to the Kuban in 1860 and merged with the Caucasus Line Cossack Host, which consisted of migrated Don Cossack elements. Finally, in 1864, the Black Sea Cossacks and the Azov Cossacks were united into the Kuban Cossack Host, ninety years after the destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich.

Fyodor Shcherbatskoy, under whom the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs proposed to send a "scientific expedition" to Tibet. The Kalmyk Project was the name given to Soviet plans to launch a surprise attack on the North-West Frontier Province of British India via Tibet and other Himalayan buffer states in 1919-1920. It was a part of Soviet plans to destabilise the British Empire and other Western European imperial powers by unrest in South Asia. British Indian intelligence sent agents, such as F. M. Bailey, to Central Asia to trace the early Bolshevik designs on India.

Some of these states served as buffer states between the Ottomans and Christianity in Europe or Shia Islam in Asia. Their number varied over time but notable were the Khanate of Crimea, Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania and the Principality of Serbia from 1815 until its full independence half a century later. Other states such as Bulgaria, the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom, the Serbian Despotate and the Kingdom of Bosnia were vassals before being absorbed entirely or partially into the Empire. Still others had commercial value such as Imeretia, Mingrelia, Chios, the Duchy of Naxos, and the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik).

Similarly, across the eastern Pyrenees the Marca Hispánica was established next to the Marca Gothica, a Frankish attempt at creating buffer states between the Carolingian empire and the Emirate of Córdoba. The Franks under Charlemagne extended their influence and control southward, occupying several regions of the north and east of the Iberian Peninsula. It is unclear how solidly the Franks exercised control over Pamplona. In 778, Charlemagne was invited by rebellious Muslim lords on the Upper March of Al-Andalus to lead an expedition south with the intention of taking the city of Zaragoza from the Emirate of Córdoba.

In 1594 the territory belonged to the provostship of Saint-Dié and the bailiwick of Nancy. Between the end of the Duchy of Burgundy in 1477 and the final incorporation of Lorraine into France that followed the death of the Last Duke in 1766, there were several French invasions and periods of occupation affecting Lorraine and other de facto buffer states between France and the Holy Roman Empire, but relatively untroubled in their mountain seclusion the administrative arrangements of the hamlets of Le Pair, Grandrupt and Vanifosse remained unchanged except that in 1710 the bailiwick was switched to Saint-Dié.

As the principalities were wedged in between the ever-expanding Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the west and the nascent Grand Duchy of Muscovy to the north, their rulers were constricted to continually fluctuate between these two major powers as buffer states. By the end of the 14th century, they were obliged to pay annual tribute to Lithuania. The strengthening alliance of Lithuanian rulers with Roman Catholic Poland caused shifts in the balance of power in the region. Most Orthodox rulers of the Upper Principalities, therefore, started to look to Moscow for protection against Lithuanian expansionism.

After the Russian revolution, Pratap opened negotiations with the Soviet Union, visiting Trotsky in Red Petrograd in 1918, and Lenin in Moscow in 1919 and he visited the Kaiser in Berlin in 1918. He pressed for a joint Soviet- German offensive through Afghanistan into India. This was considered by the Soviets for some time after the 1919 coup in Afghanistan in which Amanullah Khan was instated as the Emir and the third Anglo-Afghan war began. Pratap may also have influenced the "Kalmyk Project", a Soviet plan to invade India through Tibet and the Himalayan buffer states.

Bravin proposed to Amanullah a military alliance against British India and a military campaign, with Soviet Turkestan bearing the costs. These negotiations failed to reach a concrete conclusion before the Soviet advances were detected by British Indian intelligence. Other options were explored, including the Kalmyk Project, a Soviet plan to launch a surprise attack on the north-west frontier of India via Tibet and other Himalayan buffer states such as Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, Thailand, and Burma through the Buddhist Kalmyk people. The intention was to use these places as a staging ground for revolution in India, as they offered the shortest route to the revolutionary heartland of Bengal.

People's Republic of China and the Republic of India over Arunachal Pradesh/South Tibet reflects actual control, without dotted line showing claims.) China and India are separated by the Himalayas. China and India today share a border with Nepal and Bhutan acting as buffer states. Parts of the disputed Kashmir and Ladakh region claimed by India are claimed and administered by either Pakistan (Azad Kashmir and Gilgit and Baltistan) or by the PRC (Aksai Chin). The Government of Pakistan on its maps shows the Aksai Chin area as mostly within China and labels the boundary "Frontier Undefined" while India holds that Aksai Chin is illegally occupied by the PRC.

Both the Bolsheviks and Germans refused to recognize it and interfered in its activity. However, the Germans saw an independent Belarus as part of the implementation of their plan for buffer states within Mitteleuropa. The Bolsheviks had negotiations with the Belarusian Democratic Republic regarding an eventual recognition, but later decided instead to establish a pro-Soviet government of Belarus - the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus. Parallel with negotiations that started between the Germans and Bolsheviks, the Belarusian Council started actively demanding recognition of autonomous status for Belarus, with continuing internal discussions on whether it should become an autonomous region within Russia or declare national independence.

72 In August 1941, Hitler proposed to the Turkish Ambassador in Berlin Hüsrev Gerede that Turkey should annex the Turkic areas of the Soviet Union. In mid-1942, Franz von Papen, the German Ambassador in Ankara, was challenged further by Prime Minister Şükrü Saracoğlu and Foreign Minister Numan Menemencioğlu on the future of the USSR's Turkic minorities. Turkish plans featured the establishment of a series of buffer states along the future Turkish-German border and a sphere of influence extending over these states. Hitler was, however, not ready to make territorial concessions to the country before it fully committed itself to the Axis camp.

Andorra claims it is the last independent survivor of the Marca Hispanica, the buffer states created by Charlemagne to keep the Islamic Moors from advancing into Christian France. Tradition holds that Charlemagne granted a charter to the Andorran people in return for their fighting the Moors. In the 9th century, Charlemagne's grandson, Charles the Bald, named the Count of Urgell as overlord of Andorra. A descendant of the count later gave the lands to the Diocese of Urgell. In the 11th century, fearing military action by neighboring lords, the Bishop of Urgell placed himself under the protection of the Lord of Caboet, a Catalan nobleman.

The Roman–Persian Wars, also known as the Roman–Iranian Wars, were a series of conflicts between states of the Greco-Roman world and two successive Iranian empires: the Parthian and the Sasanian. Battles between the Parthian Empire and the Roman Republic began in 54 BC; wars began under the late Republic, and continued through the Roman (later Byzantine) and Sasanian empires. Various vassal kingdoms and allied nomadic nations in the form of buffer states and proxies also played a role. The wars were ended by the Arab Muslim Conquests, which led to the fall of the Sasanian Empire and huge territorial losses for the Byzantine Empire, shortly after the end of the last war between them.

His dealings in this matter were adversely criticised in The Guet-à-Pens Diplomacy, or Lord Ponsonby at Brussels, … London, 1831, but the Prime Minister, Lord Grey eulogised him in the House of Lords on 25 June 1831. Thus, as a diplomat, he was sent twice by the British Empire to promote the instauration of buffer states to protect its interests, Uruguay and Belgium, both of which survive to this very day, still deeply similar to their bigger neighbours. In addition to this, Ponsonby served as envoy to Naples from 8 June to 9 November 1832, as ambassador at Constantinople from 27 November 1832 to 1841, and as ambassador at Vienna from 10 August 1846 to 31 May 1850.

The Napoleonic era ended the Holy Roman Empire and created new German-speaking states that would eventually form modern Germany. Napoleon I of France reorganized many of the smaller German-speaking states into the Confederation of the Rhine following the battle of Austerlitz in 1805.Robert P. Goetz, 1805: Austerlitz: Napoleon And The Destruction Of The Third Coalition (2005) Essentially this enlarged the more powerful states of the region by absorbing the smaller ones, creating a set of buffer states for France and a source of army conscripts. Neither of the two largest German- speaking states were part of this confederation: the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire remained outside it.

Late 19th century As the years went by, the Black Sea Cossacks continued its systematic penetrations into the mountainous regions of the Northern Caucasus. Taking an active part in the finale of the Russian conquest of the Northern Caucasus, they settled the regions each time these were conquered. To aid them, a total of 70 thousand additional ex-Zaporozhians from the Bug, Yekaterinoslav, and finally the Azov Cossack Host migrated there in the mid 19th century. All three of the former were necessary to be removed to vacate space for the colonisation of New Russia, and with the increasing weakness of the Ottoman Empire as well as the formation of independent buffer states in the Balkans, the need for further Cossack presence had ended.

The rivalry after the death of Malik-Shah I had split the Sultanate, effectively creating buffer states on all sides of Ray. Nevertheless, when the Jewish traveller Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela visited the region around 1169 CE, he was told that some 15 years earlier an Oghuz tribe called the Khofar-al-Turak had allied themselves with some of the lost tribes of Israel, who lived among the mountains near Nishapur, to invade the heartland of Iran, capturing and looting the city of Ray. This would refer to the Oghuz incursions of 548 H (1153–4 CE) from their settlements east of Khorasan, which led to their defeat of Sultan Ahmed Sanjar, although other records of these events do not specifically mention Ray.Benjamin of Tudela (ed.

This theory involved concepts diametrically opposed to the ideas of Alfred Thayer Mahan about the significance of sea power in world conflict. The heartland theory hypothesized the possibility of a huge empire being created which didn't need to use coastal or transoceanic transport to supply its military–industrial complex, and that this empire could not be defeated by the rest of the world allied against it. This perspective proved influential throughout the period of the Cold War, underpinning military thinking about the creation of buffer states between East and West in central Europe. The heartland theory depicted a world divided into a Heartland (Eastern Europe/Western Russia); World Island (Eurasia and Africa); Peripheral Islands (British Isles, Japan, Indonesia and Australia) and New World (The Americas).

Following the Marco Polo Bridge incident and Japan's descent into war with China, Japanese plans for their (hoped) victory in the Second Sino-Japanese War were prepared and began to be acted upon. Among these plans, particularly early on in the war, involved the administration of China by means of dividing it into many smaller buffer states, all under the Japanese sphere of influence. By 1938, multiple smaller Japanese-aligned governments existed throughout China aside from the more- major puppet states of Manchukuo and Mengjiang. Some of these then-newly created administratively autonomous Japanese puppet states included the East Hebei Autonomous Government, the Shanghai Great Way Government, the South Chahar Autonomous Government, and of course, the North Shanxi Autonomous Government.

It was a troubled period for Lorraine, characterised by wars and the disappearances - presumably following violent assaults - of settled communities. However, the construction on the hill a little to the east of the present day village, of Spitzemberg Castle around 900 indicates an attempt to achieve greater permanence amid the ruins of the Gallo-Roman civilisation. During the Hungarian invasions castles such as this provided a refuge for threatened villagers. The Lordship of Spitzemberg fell within the Duchy of Lorraine, created in 959 by the German Emperor, Otto I. Lorraine remained subject to the German emperors until the early fifteenth century which ushered in several uncomfortable centuries during which Lorraine would find itself one of several buffer states lodged between the conflicting territorial ambitions of The Empire and of France.

Egypt was under the rule of a Mamluk Sultanate led by Circassians and Kipchak Turks, and who also ruled Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. After Mehmed II (the Conqueror) united most of Anatolia under Ottoman rule, the two empires became neighbours of each other where two Mamluk vassals of Turkmen origin were the buffer states between the two. During the Ottoman- Safavid Persia war, Mamluks (or their vassals) supported Persia. Selim I (the Grim) of the Ottoman Empire used this claim as a pretext to wage a war on Mamluks. During Selim’s long campaign to Egypt in 1516-18, Mamluks were defeated three times; in the battles Marj Dabiq and Yaunis Khan on the way to Egypt and in the Battle of Ridanieh in Egypt (The first and the third personally commanded by Selim and the second by Hadim Sinan Pasha).

Britain made it a high priority to protect all the approaches to India, and the "great game" is primarily how the British did this. Historians with access to the archives have concluded that Russia had no plans involving India, as the Russians repeatedly stated.Barbara Jelavich, St. Petersburg and Moscow: Tsarist and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1814–1974 (1974) p 200 The Great Game began on 12 January 1830 when Lord Ellenborough, the President of the Board of Control for India, tasked Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General, to establish a new trade route to the Emirate of Bukhara. Britain intended to gain control over the Emirate of Afghanistan and make it a protectorate, and to use the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire, the Khanate of Khiva, and the Emirate of Bukhara as buffer states between both empires.

These encompassed Edirne (Adrianople) and an expansion of Turkish frontiers at the expense of Greece, the creation of buffer states in the Caucasus under Turkish influence, a revision of the Turkish-Syrian frontier (the Baghdad Railway and the State of Aleppo) and the Turkish-Iraqi frontier (the Mosul region), as well as a settlement of "the Aegean question" to provide Turkey with suitable protection against encroachments from Italy. The Black Sea (which Hitler derided as "a mere frog-pond")Hitler (2000), p. 208. was also to be conceded to Turkey as part of its sphere of influence, for this would negate the need of stationing a German navy in the region to replace the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. Crimea (tentatively dubbed Gotenland by the Nazis) was nevertheless to be fortified to ensure permanent German possession of the peninsula, and the Black Sea exploited as an "unlimited" resource of seafood.

His next major work, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction, appeared in 1919.H.J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality , Washington, DC: National Defence University Press, 1996 It followed the 1904 book titled The Geographic Pivot of the History, and presented his theory of the Heartland and made a case for fully taking into account geopolitical factors at the Paris Peace conference and contrasted (geographical) reality with Woodrow Wilson's idealism. The book's most famous quote was: "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World." This message was composed to convince the world statesmen at the Paris Peace conference of the crucial importance of Eastern Europe as the strategic route to the Heartland was interpreted as requiring a strip of buffer states to separate Germany and Russia.

Other routes to India that were explored included plans to foment unrest in Tibet and the Himalayan buffer states of Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, Thailand and Burma through the Buddhist Kalmyks and to use the places as a staging ground for revolution in India and the shortest route to Bengal, which was the centre of the revolutionary movement in India. That was to proceed under the cover of a scientific expedition under the Indologist Fyodor Shcherbatskoy, and it would arm the indigenous people in the North-East Frontier with modern weaponry before a regular supply could be arranged. lThe Kalmyk project may have been the brainchild of Raja Mahendra Pratap, who had led the Niedermayer-Hentig Expedition into Afghanistan in 1915 and later established the nationalist Provisional Government of India at Kabul in December that year. Pratap liaised with the Nascent Bolshevik Government and the Kaiser after 1917 to explore the scopes of a joint Soviet-German invasion of India through Afghanistan.

In several of the Italian states that bordered on France, Switzerland, and Austria, they created the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics, which included most of Genoa and much of the Savoyan territories. In December 1798, the King of Sardinia, was forced to abdicate and the Piedmont was occupied and "republicanized;" Sardinia had already been forced into a treaty with France that gave the French army free passage through the Piedmont. In 1798, Switzerland was restructured into the Helvetic Republic, modeled on revolutionary France; the traditional mode of self- governing cantons was deemed as feudal by modern revolutionary ideals. These newly formed republics served multiple purposes: they were a nursery for soldiers to learn the craft of warfare; they functioned as a proving ground for military leadership, a continuation of what Ramsey Weston Phipps has called "The School for Marshals";Ramsey Weston Phipps, and, finally, they gave France a formidable strategic position with friendly buffer states that stretched from the Adriatic to the North Sea.

Col. Francis Younghusband The causes of the conflict are obscure; historian Charles Allen considered the official reasons for the invasion "almost entirely bogus".Duel in the Snows, Charles Allen, p.1 It seems to have been provoked primarily by rumours circulating amongst the Calcutta-based British administration that the Chinese government (which nominally ruled Tibet) was intending to give the province to the Russians, thus providing Russia with a direct route to British India, breaking the chain of quasi-autonomous buffer- states which separated the Raj from the Russian Empire to the north. These rumours were supported by the Russian exploration of Tibet; Russian explorer Gombojab Tsybikov was the first photographer of Lhasa, residing there during 1900–1901 with the aid of the Thubten Gyatso's Russian courtier Agvan Dorjiyev. The Dalai Lama declined to have dealings with the British government in India, and sent Dorjiyev as emissary to the court of Czar Nicholas II with an appeal for Russian protection in 1900.

Others postulate that Poland and the Baltic countries played the important role of buffer states between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and that the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a precondition not only for Germany's invasion of Western Europe, but also for the Third Reich's invasion of the Soviet Union. The military aspect of moving from established fortified positions on the Stalin Line into undefended Polish territory could also be seen as one of the causes of rapid disintegration of Soviet armed forces in the border area during the German 1941 campaign, as the newly constructed Molotov Line was unfinished and unable to provide Soviet troops with the necessary defense capabilities. Historians have debated whether Stalin was planning an invasion of German territory in the summer of 1941. Most historians agreed that the geopolitical differences between the Soviet Union and the Axis made war inevitable, and that Stalin had made extensive preparations for war and exploited the military conflict in Europe to his advantage.

The Leaders of the Russian Civil War listed below comprise the important political and military figures of the Russian Civil War. The conflict, fought largely from 7 November 1917 to 25 October 1922, though with some conflicts in the Far East lasting until late 1923 and in Central Asia until 1934, was fought between numerous factions, the two largest being the Bolsheviks (The "Reds") and the White Movement (The "Whites"). While the Bolsheviks were centralized under the administration of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), led by Vladimir Lenin, along with their various satellite and buffer states, the White Movement was more decentralized, functioning as a loose confederation of anti-Bolshevik forces united only in opposition to their common enemy, though from September 1918 to April 1920, the White Armies were nominally united under the administration of the Russian State, during which, for nearly two years, Admiral Alexander Kolchak served as the overall head of the White Movement and as the internationally recognized Head of State of Russia. In addition to the two primary factions, the war also involved a number of third parties, including the anarchists of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, and the non-ideological Green Armies.