Buffer State - Americas

Americas

• Canada, during the Cold War, between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Canada, since the fall of the Soviet Union, arguably, is also an economic, although not, political, client state of the U.S. Soviet forces would have, in some scenarios, had to cross Canadian territory and fly through Canadian airspace in order to reach the U.S. Russia viewed Canada more favourably and with less belligerence than the U.S. (particularly after the Avro Arrow and Bomarc missile affairs--which, in essence, meant that Canada was no longer, independently of the U.S., a military threat to the U.S.S.R. after 1972). A Soviet invasion of Canada would almost certainly have triggered war, and both the U.S. and Canada planned for such scenarios actively and intensively--not because the Soviets were thought to have independent, direct belligerence towards Canada, but because of the manifest necessity to use Canada, in a Soviet-U.S. post-Cold War wartime scenario. Legally, by international law between Canada and the U.S., an attack on the U.S. is viewed as an attack on Canada, and vice versa (because of NORAD) although in any reasonable geopolitical wartime strategy, Canada would be deemed distinct from the U.S.

• Uruguay served as a demilitarised buffer-zone between Argentina and the Empire of Brazil during the early independence period in South America.
• Paraguay was maintained after the end of the Paraguayan War in 1870 as a territory separating Argentina and Brazil.
• The colony of Georgia in the 18th century, as a buffer state between Spanish-controlled Florida and the American colonies that comprised the Atlantic Seaboard.