Puppet state

[2] Puppet states have nominal sovereignty, except that a foreign power effectively exercises control through economic or military support.

Puppet states differ from allies, who choose their actions of their own initiative or in accordance with treaties they have voluntarily entered.

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.

Specifically, the People's Republics in Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Albania were dominated by the Soviet Union.

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.

[citation needed] The Soviet Union continued to exert some influence over the People's Republic of China before the Sino-Soviet split in 1961.

[citation needed] The Netherlands formed several puppet states in the former Dutch East Indies as part of its effort to quell the Indonesian National Revolution.

[30][31][32] 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.

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.

[citation needed] 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.