Buff er States as a Tool for Ensuring a Strategic Presence in the East Asian Region: The Soviet and Japanese Experience

Abstract

This article analyzes Soviet and Japanese ideas of the phenomenon of buff er statehood. Russia (and later the USSR) and Japan were the main players in the international arena of northeast Asia in the fi rst half of the 20th century, and it is these countries which built up a chain of buff er states that were designed, on the one hand, to ensure their presence in the region and, on the other hand, to protect them from potential military threats. For Soviet Russia, the Far Eastern Republic, which existed in 1920–1922 with capitals in Verkhneudinsk (currently Ulan-Ude) and Chita, acted as an eff ective tool that successfully served these ends in the majority of the territory of the modern Far Eastern Federal District. For Japan, attempts to form a buff er state in the territory of Siberia remained at the planning level, while the policy for the occupied regions of northeast China proved to be more successful. The occupation of Manchuria and the creation of the “ideal state” of Manchukuo, the formation of buff er autonomies in 1935–1937 on the territory of northern and eastern China, and consolidation of the buff er states n 1940 into the alternative “Republic of China” allowed the Japanese to work out in practice a model of military and economic presence which was then extended to other Asian regions that were in their zone of occupation.

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