In describing the threat of communism to the United States, President Dwight D. Eisenhower employed a famous metaphor that could come to shape much of America’s foreign strategy on containment of what it perceived to be a communist threat. He opined that countries under the direct threat of communism were like dominoes (Gott, 2005). Once one country was taken over by communism, he argued to a reporter, others would then fall, as the communists would have the resources, motivation, and backing to continue taking new countries. This metaphor was both scary and poignant, and it helped to inform the way America handled the Cold War from that point forward.
It is probably true that Vietnam, on its own, was not a very important country and not a very important war. After all, Vietnam was and remains a small country off of the coast of East Asia. The country had little political power and absolutely no ability to harm America (Moss, 2009). What Vietnam was, though, was another domino is a long line that might fall. America’s containment strategy rested on the idea articulated by Eisenhower. If the country failed to contain communism from the beginning, it would spread like wildfire, and then it would become too big a threat to deal with. America believed that it could win a war in Vietnam, and it believed that it could defeat individual incidences of communism in different places around the world. If communism was allowed to spread, though, it would become too big for America to deal with. The forces of communism would then be a direct danger to America, rather than the indirect danger that was posed in places like Vietnam. With this in mind, Eisenhower’s words were especially powerful in shaping American foreign policy for two decades going forward after he made that famous statement.
Use your promo and get a custom paper on
"On Eisenhower and the Cold War".
- Gott, R. (2005). Rough Draft of History: ‘All Right, Let’s Get the @#!*% Out of Here,
- Moss, G. (2009). Vietnam: An American Ordeal, Pearson Publishers.
