“…you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the falling domino principle.  You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.  So you have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences…So, the possible consequences of the loss [of Indochina] are just incalculable to the free world.”  President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 7, 1954, in a statement to the press

In its most basic articulation, the Domino Theory postulated that the fall of one pro-Western nation to communism would lead to the rapid communist subjugation of adjoining Western-bloc nations.  Every president from Truman to Nixon, either believed in the Domino Theory or recognized its usefulness as a tool in garnering domestic support for U.S. involvement abroad.  The theory’s proponents did not believe it applicable to every region of the world.  However, it was considered most pertinent to the East-West confrontation in Indochina. Continue Reading »