And a pitiful spectacle will start- has started already: a desperate talking-up of the prospects of whatever doomed puppet government we will leave behind to save face when we scuttle.

The puppet government [now] know about our power and reach, even in the higher security zones.

Within a couple of years the intervening power would be sponsoring something tantamount to a puppet government there.

Thence began a series of strange conflicts over control of the puppet government of the shogunate.

Others proclaimed that they had given independent governments to the countries they occupied, a claim undermined by the lack of power given these puppet governments.