client state

Generally, puppet states are much smaller than the countries that they are a puppet of. What's the largest conceivable puppet state, where you could say the foreign and domestic policy of an entire empire is basically under the control of an entire separate empire? As an example: Something...

Is there any way that once things start looking bad for the confeadrcy that Georgia counter secedes and declares rupublic of Georgia and wile it doesn't get outright annexed it becomes a client state along the lines of pre Castro Cuba.

Very few of the African colonies actually made their European owners any money, in fact most of them were huge economic drains. So what if the colonizers wisened up and, rather than creating colonies for prestige, established puppet/client kingdoms?