After Polarity in International Relataions

... prevented the United States from assessing realistically the threats it faced. In many cases blind anticommunism stood in the way of making sensible policy. Most obviously, the doctrine of containment led to U.S. involvement in a disastrous, unwinnable war in Vietnam (Schulzinger: xi) that had little to do with tangible American interests. Yet, the Domino Theory and fear of communism dominated American foreign policy thinking. According to this theory, if Vietnam fell to communism, other countries of Asia would fall like a row of standing dominoes. As Secretary of State Dulles explained in a 1954 ...