Domino theory
From Freepedia
- For the philosophical theory, see Domino theory of moral nonresponsibility.
The domino theory was a 20th Century foreign policy theory that speculated if one key nation in a region came under the control of Communists, others would follow one after the other. A related idea, the domino effect, is that some change, small in itself, will cause a similar change nearby, which then will cause another similar change, and so on in linear sequence, by analogy to a falling row of dominoes standing on end.
The theory was used by many United States leaders during the Cold War to justify U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War. The domino theory was applied by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his top advisers in 1954 to describe the prospects of communist expansion in Asia if Indochina were to fall. Eisenhower argued that all of southest Asia could fall. The theory's ultimate validity remained mixed, and debatable. After the U.S. left Vietnam, the North took over the South, and Cambodia and Laos had also turned to Communism, although Cambodia is a democracy now. This limited spread of Communism in Indochina provides ammunition for opponents of the theory, but both sides argue that the historical record overall supports their position.
In the 1980s, the domino theory was used again to justify the Reagan administration's interventions in Central America and the Caribbean region.
From its first conception, many have disputed central assumptions of the domino theory, for instance by arguing that Communist States lacked the tradition of cooperation the theory assumes (eg Cambodia attacked Vietnam, to which Vietnam responded by overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government). Supporters however have continued to argue it was a sensible policy in the context of the times.
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Background
The domino theory was first espoused by name by President Eisenhower in an April 7, 1954 news conference [1], and was originally applied to Indochina, which includes Vietnam. If Communists succeeded in Indochina, Eisenhower argued, they would then successively be encouraged to take over Burma, Thailand, and Indonesia. This would give them a geographically strategic advantage, from which they would be able to win in Japan, Formosa, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand.
The domino theory was expounded periodically since 1954 by top U.S. leaders who used it as a justification for expanding military programs throughout the world. The Johnson administration intervened in the latter half of the 1960s with over one-half million troops to keep the South Vietnamese "domino" from falling.
Controversy
The primary evidence for the domino theory is the communist rule of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, who set about establishing what they thought would be a communist utopia (but turned out to be one of the bloodiest experiments in the history of communism).
The primary evidence against the domino theory is the failure of communism to take hold in Thailand, Indonesia, and other large southeast Asian countries after the end of the Vietnam War, as Eisenhower's speech argued it would. Beside Vietnam only Laos is a communist state now.
Many supporters, however, attempt to explain this in light of the theory. Walt Rostow has argued that the U.S. intervention in Indochina, by giving the nations of ASEAN time to consolidate and engage in economic growth, prevented a wider domino effect. McGeorge Bundy argues that the prospects for a domino effect, though high in the 1950s and early 1960s, were weakened in 1965 when the Indonesian communist party was destroyed.
Some supporters of the domino theory focus on the ability of a communist government in one country to supply communist revolutionaries in neighboring countries, as for instance China supplied the Vietminh. Other supporters focused on the issue of U.S. prestige, arguing that a communist victory would mean that U.S. alliance guarantees for other small nations would no longer be credible, and a series of communist victories could be expected.
Critics of the theory charged that the Indochinese wars were largely indigenous or nationalist in nature (such as the Vietnamese driving out the French), that no such monolithic force as "world communism" existed, and that the theory was used as a propaganda scare tactic to try to justify unwarranted intervention policies. The fracturing of the communist states at the time is supported by the rivalry between the Soviet Union and China. However, this did not stop both powers from providing major military aid to North Vietnam in the form of Soviet tanks and heavy weapons and Chinese troops and supplies.
Michael Lind has argued that though the domino theory failed regionally, there was a global wave, as communist or Marxist-Leninist regimes came to power in Benin, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Angola, Afghanistan, Grenada, and Nicaragua during the 1970s. The global interpretation of the domino effect relies heavily upon the prestige interpretation of the theory.
Al Qaeda and Islamic Terrorism
A top member of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda, Abu Hafiza, proposed his own domino theory in which large-scale terrorist attacks are used to intimidate the populace of a country into voting against an administration that advocates aggressive anti-terror policies. Some argue that the Spanish response to the 2004 Madrid train bombings may demonstrate this effect.
Similarly, another new form of the domino theory has been advocated by those who seek to oppose Islamic terrorism. Some foreign policy advocates in the United States refer to the potential spread of both Islamic theocracy and liberal democracy in the Middle East as representing a sort of domino theory. During the Iran-Iraq war, the United States and many other western nations supported Iraq, fearing the spread of Iran's radical theocracy throughout the region. In the 2003 invasion of Iraq, neoconservatives argued that by invading Iraq a democratic government could be implemented, which would then help spread democracy and liberalism across the Middle East.
Related articles
Domino theory:
Domino effect:
