Introduction

The buffer phenomenon is a universal one as humankind has been, in all parts of the world, ingenious in creating ail kinds of cushions of buffers to serve as protective mechanisms. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the buffer state idea grew in popularity as a means to keep hostile neighbor states from engaging in military activities against each other. Today many of the political trouble spots found on the earth once functioned as buffers between greater powers, but with the removal of buffer status internal, as well as external, factions were allowed to exert their dormant hostilities. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the geographic portrayal of buffer states and provides their functions as a general review to the evolution and maintenance of buffer states. It presents seminal ideas related to buffers and strategic roles of states as buffer zones.