ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the developments to the contemporary period. It describes how they impacted on neighbouring Pakistan. Buffer states are lesser actors sandwiched between more powerfully endowed, ambitious, and often aggressive entities. Afghanistan and Iran became buffer states in the latter part of the nineteenth century as a consequence of British and Russian imperial ambitions and rivalries. The buffer state was thus given the sanctity of international law and although the Russians continued to probe for weaknesses in the agreements they remained intact well into the twentieth century. The chapter shows how the disappearance of Afghanistan as a buffer state affects revolutionary Iran, and transforms Pakistan into the newest buffer state on the rim of Asia. Iran's association with the United States placed the country in the international spotlight. Pakistan was less concerned with the Soviet threat and communist subversion, and more interested in its differences with India.
