China experienced several power vacuums throughout its history after being first unified under emperor
Qin Shi Huang in 221 BCE, ushering in more than two millennia in which China was governed by one or more imperial dynasties. From the start, China has experienced power vacuums after dynasties have been toppled, usually resulting in civil wars between different factions vying to form the next dynasty or political regime. These have included but are not limited to the
Warring States period (475-221 BC),
Three Kingdoms (220-280 AD), the
Manchu conquest of China (1618-1683 AD), and the
Chinese Civil War (1927-1949 AD). During the course of the
Ming treasure voyages (1405–1433), the Chinese
Ming empire was the dominant political and military force within the Indian Ocean. In 2003, when the
United States led
a coalition to oust
Saddam Hussein in the
Iraq War, the absence of an all-out Iraqi opposition force at war with government forces meant that once the
Ba'ath Party was removed, no local figures were on hand to immediately assume the now vacant administerial posts. For this reason,
Paul Bremer was appointed by the United States government as the interim head of state to oversee the transition. In other western-led interventions such as in
Kosovo (1999) and
Libya (2011) where the initial claim of justification in each case was a humanitarian matter, there had been active opposition fighting on the ground to oust the relevant governments (in the case of Kosovo, this meant removal of state forces from the desired territory rather than ousting the government itself). Subsequently, successor entities were immediately effective in Libya and Kosovo. Power vacuums often occur in
failed states sometimes referred to as
Fragile states where the state has lost the power to prevent its citizens from forming states within states, such as in post-communist
Moldova's
Transnistria. The ongoing
war in Sudan is an example of a power vacuum in the aftermath of the
Sudanese revolution. ==Non-political contexts==