Truman declared what became known as the Truman Doctrine in 1947, promising to contribute financial aid to the Greek government during its Civil War and to Turkey following World War II, in the hope that this would impede the advancement of Communism into Western Europe. įollowing the Iran crisis of 1946, Harry S. Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. 5 Applications to communism outside Southeast Asiaĭuring 1945, the Soviet Union brought most of the countries of eastern Europe and Central Europe into its influence as part of the post-World War II new settlement, prompting Winston Churchill to declare in a speech in 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri that:įrom Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an " Iron Curtain" has descended across the Continent.3 Arguments that criticize the domino theory.2 Arguments in favor of the domino theory.Moreover, Eisenhower’s deep belief in the domino theory in Asia heightened the "perceived costs for the United States of pursuing multilateralism" because of multifaceted events including the " 1949 victory of the Chinese Communist Party, the June 1950 North Korean invasion, the 1954 Quemoy offshore island crisis, and the conflict in Indochina constituted a broad-based challenge not only for one or two countries, but for the entire Asian continent and Pacific." This connotes a strong magnetic force to give in to communist control, and aligns with the comment by General Douglas MacArthur that "victory is a strong magnet in the East." So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences. 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. Eisenhower described the theory during a news conference on 7 April 1954, when referring to communism in Indochina as follows:įinally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. It was used by successive United States administrations during the Cold War to justify the need for American intervention around the world. It was prominent in the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s in the context of the Cold War, suggesting that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow. The domino theory is a geopolitical theory which posits that increases or decreases in democracy in one country tend to spread to neighboring countries in a domino effect. For the Steve Wariner song, see The Domino Theory. For the Weather Report album, see Domino Theory (album). This article is about the theory involving communist countries.
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