Book review : Reframing the buffer state in contemporary international relations : Nepal’s relations with India and China

Abstract

Chand urges scholars of international relations (IR) to consider how buffer states exercise agency within ‘buffer systems’: the frameworks in which buffer and buffered states interact. Bringing the buffer-state concept back to the fore is an ambitious endeavour. This is even more so because the study of small states – a category into which Chand places most buffer states – has often been neglected. Using his country of birth, Nepal, as a case study is a welcome contribution, given that state’s atypical geopolitical circumstances. Not only is Nepal landlocked but, along with Bhutan and Mongolia, it is one of only three states in the world to be completely surrounded by two nuclear-armed neighbours. Nepal therefore faces strategic risks and options that differ from those of many small states, which often have maritime access, multiple neighbours, or both. Chand claims that discussions of the buffer-state concept must include “its roots in the field of geopolitics [which developed] in Europe just before World War I” (p. 14); yet, a little later, he describes it as “… an ancient form of state strategy … traced back to the era of the Roman Empire” (p. 16). A reader unfamiliar with this history might find the chronology of this overview confusing; on closer reading, however, these assertions distinguish between concept and practice, rather than being contradictory. Most innovatively, Chand proposes a “new buffer state concept” (p. 22). Its overarching features are, firstly, the recognition that geography remains important in international affairs but has declined in relative importance because of advances in military technology. As a result, rather than simply utilising buffer states as ‘early warning systems’, buffered states increasingly use them as spaces in which to competitively make overtures and assess one another’s capabilities. Secondly, buffer states, having traditionally been viewed as passive objects, should have their limited degree of agency in determining their own course acknowledged in any serious IR studies.