puppet state
Controlled nominal sovereignty
A puppet state is a country that appears independent but is actually controlled by a foreign power.
The metaphor suggests a nation moved by strings from outside, its government installed or sustained by another state to serve that power's interests.
Nazi Germany created puppet states across occupied Europe; the Soviet Union maintained them in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
Critics called the new government nothing more than a puppet state.
- protectorateGuarded semi-autonomous territory
- Mukden IncidentStaged 1931 railway bombing
- quislingTreasonous occupation collaborator
- colonyDependent territorial settlement
- Vichy FranceWartime collaborationist French state
proxy · proxy war · annexation · suzerainty · extraterritoriality · military occupation · regime change · foreign intervention · occupation forces · regime · dictator · imperialism · geopolitical strategy · buffer · Nazi Germany · figurehead · installed · dominion
- Dystopia1984, Nineteen Eighty-Four, dystopian fiction, totalitarianism, Brave New World
- territoryterritory, land, region, domain, realm
- Cold WarBerlin Wall, Iron Curtain, arms race, Warsaw Pact, Cuban Missile Crisis
- Asian ColonialismBritish Raj, British India, Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, East India Company
- dependenciescolony, protectorate, dependency, dominion, crown colony
- Imperial JapanEmperor Hirohito, Hirohito, Rising Sun, Meiji, kamikaze
puppet statesovereign nation
Self-ruled territorial polity
free state · neutral state · sovereign state · sovereign power · superpower
puppet statehegemon
Dominant state over others
imperial power · superpower · puppet master · colonial power · great power
state, puppet, statement, stately, puppets, statesman, statecraft, puppetry, marionette