buffer state

I took my seat beside him, while the lady, a useful little buffer state, was squeezed in between the two men of wrath at the back.

She sketches out a letter to be written to the lady who is at present a buffer-state between the dried man and the parched women.

The “buffer-state” of modern diplomacy is of the same ineffectual type.

The fierce mountaineers had allied themselves with Median tribes and overrun the buffer State of the Mannai.

And the little buffer state began to be very wise and politic and energetic.