Sphere of influence

From Free net encyclopedia

A sphere of influence (SOI) is an area or region over which an organization or state exerts some kind of indirect cultural, economic, military or political domination.

A country within the "sphere of influence" of another more powerful country may become a subsidiary of that state and serve in effect as a satellite state or de facto colony. For example, during the height of its existence, the Japanese Empire had quite a large sphere of influence, with the Japanese government influencing, or directly governing events in Korea, Manchuria, Vietnam, Taiwan, and parts of China. The Japanese "sphere of influence" could thus be quite easily drawn on a map of the Pacific Ocean as a large "bubble" surrounding the islands of Japan and the Asian nations it controlled.

During the Cold War, Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea were often said to lie under the sphere of influence of the United States, while Eastern Europe, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, and (until the Sino-Soviet split) the People's Republic of China were said to lie under the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union.

Sometimes portions of a single country can fall into two distinct spheres of influence. In the colonial era the buffer states of Iran and Thailand, lying between the empires of Britain/Russia and Britain/France respectively, were divided between the spheres of influence of the imperial powers. Likewise, after World War II, Germany was divided into four occupation zones, which later consolidated into West Germany and East Germany, the former a member of NATO and the latter a member of the Warsaw Pact.

In rarer instances, multiple spheres of influence by different imperial powers can be established in a single country as a compromise between the imperial powers and also when establishing a single sphere of influence is not feasible due to the size of that single country. For example, between the 1870s and the 1910s, although the Chinese Empire still existed as a sovereign country, it was divided into 6 SOI zones officially in which Russia took the area north of the Great Wall, Germany the Shandong Province, Japan the Fujian Province, Britain the Yangtze River basin, France the southwestern Chinese provinces bordering French Indochina and Britain/France jointly the Guangdong Province. Similarly, the Ottoman Empire was divided by the imperial powers into several SOIs at around the same time.

In California "sphere of influence" has a legal meaning as a plan for the probable physical boundaries and service area of a local agency. Spheres of influence at California local agencies are regulated by Local Agency Formation Commissions (LAFCO). Each county in California has a LAFCO.

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