Of course you do not if you are younger than 40.

For those too young to remember a controlling policy of the US foreign policy then I shall explain it to you.

The Domino Theory was a prevailing belief that communism was an internationalist movement that would spread from one country to the next until it dominated the world, much as a row of dominos collapses one after the other. The Domino Theory was accepted by a succession of United States presidents and Western policymakers. As a result, it shaped the foreign policy of the US and its allies during the Cold War.

Western leaders believed that once communism gained a foothold in a nation, its neighbors would quickly be infiltrated, overrun and seized by communists – much like a row of standing dominos topples, one knocking over the next until all have fallen.

Take Southeast Asia….if Vietnam fell then all countries around it would as well….Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, etc on and on until it consumed the world….it being Communism.

The first public mention of it was made by US president Eisenhower in a speech in 1954, where he explained why America would aid the French in their struggle against communists in Indochina (Vietnam).

“[There are] 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… But when we come to the possible sequence of events, the loss of Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of the Peninsula (Malaysia and Singapore) and Indonesia following, now you begin to talk about … millions and millions and millions of people.”

Apparently the theory is making a resurgence…..the tale is the Russia will not be happy with Ukraine….thoughts from a post by Ted Galen Carpenter

…

The notion that a country with an economy just modestly larger than Spain’s and a military budget less than one-tenth the size of the US military budget could pose a threat of that magnitude should seem absurd on its face. Even without Washington’s involvement, Russian forces would have difficulty conquering even one major European power, much less NATO Europe as a whole.

Moreover, the assumption ignores extensive evidence that Ukraine is uniquely important to Russia for both cultural and security reasons. In particular, Russian leaders were not about to allow the United States to turn Ukraine into a NATO military asset directed against their country. It does not follow at all that they would make a similar effort or incur comparable risks to conduct a geo-strategic offensive against other portions of Europe. Even if Ukraine falls to the Kremlin’s current military operation, there is no credible reason to assume that Poland, the Baltic republics, or Slovakia – much less such major powers as Germany, France, or Italy – would be next on an expansionist agenda.

A similar simplistic formulation is beginning to influence thinking in the United States regarding policy toward China, especially among the growing roster of anti-PRC hawks. The underlying assumption is that if Beijing successfully uses coercion to gain control of Taiwan, the PRC will then pose an expansionist threat to all of East Asia and become a candidate for global hegemony. Just as analysts who embrace a refurbished domino theory with regard to Russia ignore Ukraine’s exceptional importance to Moscow, people who contend that Beijing’s acquisition of Taiwan would trigger an expansionist binge ignore the island’s unique status for PRC leaders and China’s population. For many Chinese, Taiwan is the last unresolved territorial issue from the civil war that ended on the mainland with a communist victory in 1949. The island also is seen as territory that a foreign power (Japan) stole during China’s “long century of humiliation.”

…

The domino theory was simplistic nonsense when Eisenhower presented it in the 1950s. The current zombie version is equally detached from reality. It needs to be rejected emphatically, lest it entangle the United States in even larger unnecessary, disastrous conflicts than the original version did.

(antiwar.com)

The US and its War Department will clutch at old straws to keep the cash flowing and the people in fear.

STOP! believing the hype!

Especially if it comes for the War Department and its civilian agents.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”