Nicholas Spykman developed the Rimland Theory in response to Halford Mackinder’s Heartland Theory. According to the Heartland Theory, whoever controlled Central Eurasia would eventually come to control the whole of the world. Spykman, like most geographers, disagreed with this hypothesis and argued that the “Rimland” area, the coastal regions of Eurasia, was the logical base for world conquest because it allowed access to the seas.

A buffer state is a state that lies between two much larger and more powerful states. It is so named because it serves the function of preventing conflict between the two larger states by minimizing territorial squabbles. Uruguay’s status as a buffer state between the dominant South American powers of Brazil and Argentina is just one such historical example. Another prominent one is Hungary, which once acted as a buffer state between Austria and the Ottoman Empire.

In an “anarchic state,” there is no government, no laws, no enforcement of laws, and no political life whatsoever. “Anarchy” is the absence of government, the absence of rules and control. In terms of the modern world, the closest state to an “anarchy” is probably a country like Somalia where there is no centralized government and where the “rule of law” has little significant impact.

In a “police state,” the government has absolute control over every aspect of the lives of its citizens. The goal of a police state is to regulate every aspect of an individual's life so as to prevent sedition and insurrection. It is very common for an autocratic government to go hand-in-hand with a “police state,” but it is not confined to autocracy.

“Subsequent boundaries” are political barriers established after an area has already been settled. The same is true of “superimposed boundaries”; however, they differ from one another in one crucial way: “subsequent boundaries” take into the account the cultural, ethnic, or religious differences of people living in a region, whereas “superimposed boundaries” are created without any consideration given to cultural divisions in the population.

“Lebensraum” is the name of Hitler’s expansionist policies in the years leading up to, and including the beginning of, the Second World War. Hitler believed that the German people needed more room to settle to ensure the continued growth of the German nation. To that end, he was willing to invade surrounding countries and massacre or forcibly remove the population.

The Taliban first came to power in Afghanistan following the failed invasion of the Soviet Union during the 1980s. During the war the United States provided weapons and supplies to the Afghan resistance fighters known as the “Mujahideen.” These weapons have been used against the American army in recent American occupations of Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has had far reaching consequences including contributing to the breakup of Soviet Union, the rise of the Taliban, and the continued destabilization of the region.

All of these countries have either hostile relations currently or they have had hostile relations recently. Relations between North and South Korea, however, are particularly extreme. Despite having not been at war since the 1950s the countries are still technically in an “armistice” which loosely means temporary peace. The Demilitarized Zone is a sort of unnatural buffer zone forced into existence to try and prevent the outbreak of further hostilities. It lies between the territory of North and South Korea.

The Boer people were settlers who arrived in what is now called South Africa in the seventeenth century. Following the arrival of the British in the nineteenth century the Boers migrated north to avoid direct control by the British government; however shortly thereafter gold and diamonds were discovered in unprecedented quantities in the territory of the Boer Republic. This led to a brutal war of suppression being waged by the British army against the Boer Republic that ended with the Cape Colony and the Boer Republic being combined into the Union of South Africa -under British control.

The biggest clue here is the name “Franco-Prussian.” “Franco” means relating to France, of France and “Prussia” was the largest German state of the nineteenth century (before German unification in 1871). Both the Franco-Prussian War, fought in 1870-1, and World War I, fought between 1914-1918 were caused or partially caused by territorial animosity and disputes between France and Germany.