| | Myth & Reality
The Domino Theory
In 1954 John Foster Dulles, President Dwight D. Eisenhower'ssecretary of state, spoke of what would occur if Southeast Asia fellinto the hands of the communists. "You have a row of dominoes set up,"he told a meeting of reporters, "and you knock over the first one, andwhat will happen to the last one is certainly that it will go over veryquickly." Dulles believed that Southeast Asia was the first domino, andonce it fell it would not be long before Australia, New Zealand, Japan,and the Philippines followed. Soon the United States itself would bethreatened. And so the myth of the domino theory was born.
The domino theory had a profound effect on American thinkingthroughout the 1950s and 1960s. It was widely assumed that the UnitedStates must defend Southeast Asia, and Vietnam in particular, if it wasto save its Pacific -basin allies and itself. Not only presidents andtheir advisers expressed this view, but the mass media did as well. In1968 Time magazine editorialized that if the communist NorthVietnamese were to overrun South Vietnam, "the fall of all of SoutheastAsia would only be a matter of time."
South Vietnam eventually did fall - in 1975 - but with few of theconsequences predicted by the domino theory. Southeast Asia, like otherregions in the world, is composed of both communist and noncommunistnations. The Pacific -basin allies of the United States have not beenthreatened by major communist insurgencies, and the West Coast of theUnited States remains safe from the threat of invasion.
Yet the myth of the domino theory lived on the policies of recentadministrations. Policymakers in the Reagan administration, for example,believed that the dominoes were set up a bit closer to home, in CentralAmerica. Reagan and others argued that Nicaragua posed a major threat tothe stability of Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and other countriesin that region. Once those nations fell, Mexico would be next. Itfollowed that the next domino would be the United States.
President Bush had to contend with the legacy of the Reaganadministration's domino theory, but there were few indications that hisadministration was basing foreign policy on this myth. If the myth ofthe domino theory survives, it is in the area of foreign economicpolicy.
The United States and other industrialized nations are trying tosolve an international debt crisis created during the 1960s and 1970swhen many Third World countries borrowed billions of dollars fromgovernments and banks in the United States and elsewhere. Unable torepay these loans, or even pay the interest due on the accumulateddebts, many Third World nations, particularly Brazil and Mexico, havethreatened to default on their obligations. Fearing that this would setoff a chain reaction and cause a worldwide economic crisis, the WhiteHouse has pursued policies that might reduce this danger. The policieshave included forgiving some Third World debts, rescheduling payments,and convincing major banks to swallow many outstanding loans as baddebts.
For more information on the roots of the domino theory, see WilliamManchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative of America,1932-1972 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), especially p. 837.
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