Original vintage 1970s McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II fighter-bomber advert, w/iconic Cold War "Sphere of Influence" wording.
Dimensions: 8 inches wide by 11 inches high.
In the field of international relations, a sphere of influence (SOI) is a spatial region or concept division over which a state or organization has a level of cultural, economic, military, or political exclusivity.
During the Cold War, the United States was considered to have a sphere of influence over Western Europe, Oceania, Japan, South Vietnam and South Korea, among other places. However, the level of control exerted in these spheres varied and was not absolute.
Spheres of influence are always significant because they give an external organization, group, or institution power in a foreign territory — power they would not typically possess on their own. Spheres of influence typically cause some level of societal change and can be created formally or informally.
Americans don’t like the idea of spheres of influence. The idea that large nations should push around small ones offends our sense of fair play. We envision a world of plucky Davids, squaring off against autocratic Goliaths, with only American might available to right the balance and liberate the oppressed.
Despite this instinct, this is not a concept that has long informed American practice. To the contrary, the U.S promulgated the Monroe Doctrine specifically to establish a sphere of influence. Similarly, Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Policemen” concept for the post-World War II order, which evolved into the UN Security Council, saw the world run by great powers.
In the words of historians Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley, “[t]his distinction between great and small nations quickly became a fundamental element of all U.S. postwar planning.” Even during the Cold War, the U.S. rarely challenged the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, essentially standing aside as Soviet forces crushed uprisings in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland.
Despite this, the U.S. was able to use its predominant power position to push NATO right up to the borders of Russia and into the territory of the former Soviet Union. A liberal world order, like any world order, is something that is imposed, and as much as we in the West might wish it to be imposed by superior virtue, it is generally imposed by superior power.
The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is an American tandem two-seat, twin-engine, all-weather, long-range supersonic jet interceptor and fighter-bomber developed by McDonnell Aircraft for the United States Navy. A highly adaptable airframe, it entered service with the Navy in 1961 before it was adopted by the United States Marine Corps and the United States Air Force, and by the mid-1960s it had become a major part of their air arms.
Phantom production ran from 1958 to 1981 with a total of 5,195 aircraft built, making it the most produced American supersonic military aircraft in history, and cementing its position as a signature combat aircraft of the Cold War. A large fighter with a top speed of over Mach 2.2, it can carry more than 18,000 pounds (8,400 kg) of weapons on nine external hardpoints, including air-to-air missiles, air-to-ground missiles, and various bombs.
Beginning in 1959, it set 15 world records for in-flight performance, including an absolute speed record and an absolute altitude record.
The F-4 was used extensively during the Viet Nam War, where it served as the principal air superiority fighter for the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps and became important in the ground-attack and aerial reconnaissance roles late in the war. During the same conflict, all five American servicemen who became aces – one U.S. Air Force pilot, two weapon systems officers (WSOs), one U.S. Navy pilot and one radar intercept officer (RIO) – did so in F-4s.
The F-4 continued to form a major part of U.S. military air power throughout the 1970s and 1980s, being gradually replaced by more modern aircraft such as the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon in the U.S. Air Force, the F-14 Tomcat in the U.S. Navy, and the F/A-18 Hornet in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps.
The F-4 Phantom II remained in use by the U.S. in the reconnaissance and Wild Weasel (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, or SEAD) roles in the 1991 Gulf War, finally leaving combat service in 1996. It was also the only aircraft used by both U.S. flight demonstration teams: the United States Air Force Thunderbirds (F-4E) and the United States Navy Blue Angels (F-4J).
The F-4 was also operated by the armed forces of 11 other nations. Israeli Phantoms saw extensive combat in several Arab–Israeli conflicts, while Iran used its large fleet of Phantoms, acquired before the fall of the Shah, in the Iran–Iraq War. The F-4 remains in active service with the air forces of Iran, Greece, and Turkey, and the aircraft had most recently been in service against the Islamic State group in the Middle East.
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$49.99Price
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