Satellite Politics: the Mongolian Prototype

• Author: Owen Lattimore
• Published date: 01 March 1956
• Date: 01 March 1956
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591295600900104
• Subject Matter: Articles

SATELLITE POLITICS: THE MONGOLIAN PROTOTYPE
OWEN LATTIMORE
Johns Hopkins University
N
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 subordi-
nation range through the sphere of influence, the protectorate, the colony,
the puppet state, and what one writer has called the &dquo;client&dquo; stated 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
Yet the differences are there, to be analyzed and compared. A colony
represents collective chattel slavery. The territory and all the people in it
are the collective property of the people of the owning country.3 Colonies
can be and have been sold. A
puppet differs from a colony in that the rul-
ing state, after having imposed control over the puppet by force, has reasons
of its own for setting up a fiction of independence instead of asserting title
of ownership. The classic modern example is Japan’s control of Man-
chukuo. In both the colony and the puppet state some of the subordinated
people take service under the controlling group; but everybody knows
1
Joseph R. Levenson, "Western Powers and Chinese Revolutions: The Pattern of Inter-
vention," Pacific Affairs, XXVI (1953), 3. Levenson describes as "clients" the Chinese
war-lord governments that both were open to coercion by foreign powers and were
supported by foreign powers against their own anti-foreign nationalists.
2
Owen Lattimore, "Hvad forstaar man ved en vasalstat?" Politiken (Kobenhavn), Sep-
tember 24, 1955.
3
Owen Lattimore, "Asia in a New World Order," Foreign Policy Reports, XVIII (Sep-
tember 1942), 153.
36

---

37
which man does this because he has to get along somehow, and is there-
fore not to be considered a traitor and not to be despised, and which man
does it out of subservience or greed, and is therefore to be despised and
hated. In both the colony and the puppet state the dream of nationalism
is to become completely separate from the controlling power. Even where,
under colonial domination, people take all the education they can get from
their rulers in order to meet the demand that they &dquo;qualify&dquo; for self-govern-
ment, and some individuals become to an amazing extent masters of the
alien standards (as did, for example, so many Indians and Pakistanis), the
unquenchable aspiration is still &dquo;the right to be different.&dquo;
In these respects, there are the following significant differences in a
satellite state:
(1) The relationship comes about partly because the controlling state
wants it that way, but that is not the whole story.
(2) It also comes about partly because there are people in the satellite
state who want their country to be a satellite, and this not merely for the
sake of getting jobs as agents of the controlling power, but because they
want to make over their society in the same way that the controlling
country is making over its society; they want to converge on the same line
of evolution as the country to which they attach themselves. Instead of
being concerned with &dquo;the right to be different,&dquo; they aspire to &dquo;the op-
portunity to be the same.&dquo; Thus separation is inherent in colonial na-
tionalism, while eventual association with the controlling country, perhaps
in some kind of federal union, is inherent in satellitism.
(3) As far as my knowledge goes, this conscious political element in
a country that becomes a satellite is always a minority; but a minority that
has a disproportionate influence because the moment of decision arises
when other groups, which taken together are in fact the majority, are...