DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
FATEFUL DECISION 2:
Support of NGO Dinh Diem in his rejection of national elections as provided in 1954 Geneva Accords.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
NOBLE CAUSE: America was forced to support Diem and go against the Geneva accords. Unfortunately, the Communist forces in the north had lured the people into giving them overwhelming support during the oppression of the French and Japanese regimes. This meant that a free election would have swung the way of the Communists. Another loss in Asia would have been devastating in the Cold War.
This decision did help lead to the creation of the N.L.F. but helped consolidate the power of Diem, a strong anticommunist.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
President Eisenhower Articulates the "Domino Theory"
During a News Conference
During a News Conference
7 April 1954
Q. Robert Richards, Copley Press: Mr. President, would you
mind commenting on the strategic importance of Indochina to the
free world? I think there has been, across the country, some lack
of understanding on just what it means to us.
THE
PRESIDENT. You have, of course, both the specific and the general
when you talk about such things.
First
of all, you have the specific value of a locality in its production
of materials that the world needs. [383]
Then
you have the possibility that many human beings pass under a
dictatorship that is inimical to the free world.
Finally,
you have 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. So you
could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most
profound influences. Now,
with respect to the first one, two of the items from this
particular area that the world uses are tin and tungsten. They are
very important. There are others, of course, the rubber plantations
and so on.
Then
with respect to more people passing under this domination, Asia,
after all, has already lost some 450 million of its peoples to the
Communist dictatorship, and we simply can't afford greater
losses.
But
when we come to the possible sequence of events, the loss of
Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of the Peninsula, and Indonesia
following, now you begin to talk about areas that not only multiply
the disadvantages that you would suffer through loss of materials,
sources of materials, but now you are talking really about millions
and millions and millions of people.
Finally,
the geographical position achieved thereby does many things. It
turns the so-called island defensive chain of Japan, Formosa, of
the Philippines and to the southward; it moves in to threaten
Australia and New Zealand.
It
takes away, in its economic aspects, that region that Japan must
have as a trading area or Japan, in turn, will have only one place
in the world to go--that is, toward the Communist areas in order to
live.
So,
the possible consequences of the loss are just incalculable to the
free world.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
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