Satellite Politics: the Mongolian Prototype

Abstract

IN CONTEMPORARY world politics we have to reckon with a number of kinds of subordinate states. They represent not only different degrees but different methods of subordination. Even in alliances, there is almost never perfect equality of strength, and therefore of initiative, between two allies. Quite frequently, indeed, the disparity is so great that the onlooking world has no doubt whatever which of the two is subordinating itself to the other for the sake of the protection that it derives from the alliance. It would be absurd, however, to say that in all cases of legally equal but politically or militarily unequal alliance the weaker ally is a satellite. From the alliance between states of unequal power, the kinds of subordination range through the sphere of influence, the protectorate, the colony, the puppet state, and what one writer has called the client state.' It should be possible to arrange these in a graduated scale (which I have not attempted here) and to find in that scale the proper place for the satellite, if we wish to use that term as an exact definition in political science. No attempt is usually made, however, to use the term with precision, because under the conditions of the cold war it has come, instead, to be used loosely as a term of opprobrium for the conditions that are disliked by the Western world when a state is under the domination of the Soviet Union. In a general way, the prevailing usage implies that a satellite state is either practically the same thing as a colony, or practically identical with a puppet state.2