Word: buffer
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Until recently, both Laos and Cambodia served as buffer states that separated the Thais from their ancient enemies, the Vietnamese. Now Laos is firmly under Hanoi's direction, and Cambodia is embroiled in war fare between an invading Vietnamese army and resisting Khmer Rouge forces. Both Laos and Cambodia are providing sanctuary for thousands of Thai Communist insurgents, who roam almost at ran dom over several provinces in northern and northeastern Thailand...
...future to push farther, perhaps into Thailand." Thai military leaders last week were spending long "crisis hours" at their desks, and one general even dusted off an old contingency plan that calls for a pre-emptive Thai invasion of the Cambodian centers of Sisophon and Battambang as a buffer against any Vietnamese advance. Publicly, however, Bangkok authorities preferred to appear unconcerned. At his press briefings, Premier Kriangsak insisted last week that "Thailand loves everybody. There is nothing to worry about as long as we Thai people are united...
...Palestinians and Egyptians who lived in the town of El Arish near the Israeli border. The Egyptians, who have had a somewhat vaguely defined sovereignty over the area since 1906, developed some oilfields in the Sinai, but for the most part they preferred to preserve it as a buffer zone between themselves and the Israelis. To the Egyptian peasants, the region seemed a scorched, treeless moon scape, ill-suited for settlement. They preferred the congested misery of their villages in the fertile Nile Valley...
...Syrians are in Lebanon, there is no peace," warned Chamoun last week. Equally adamant was Syrian President Hafez Assad, who insisted that his troops had opened fire on the Christians in order to "establish the authority of the Sarkis government." But when the Lebanese President proposed that a buffer force of Lebanese soldiers be deployed between the Christians and Syrians, Assad had a brusque reply: "There is no Lebanese army, and what there is represents the Christians." After Sarkis completed a hasty tour of six Arab capitals, Assad laconically submitted to an essentially meaningless compromise, under which part...
Assad fears that the Christians might eventually link the portions of southern Lebanon under their control into a pro-Israeli buffer zone. Conversely, Israel fears that the defeat of Christian forces may leave Lebanon in the hands of radical Muslim leftists and Palestinians-in effect creating a new "confrontation" state. TIME has learned that two months ago, Assad attempted to cut his losses in Lebanon by bluntly demanding that the Christians make a final choice between Israel and the Arab states. Chamoun's reply: "We choose the Israelis." At that point Assad decided to cripple the militias...