One of the interesting things about the podcast that followed the Burns and Novik Vietnam War documentary is that Burns is interviewed and openly questions whether his pre documentary belief that The Domino Theory was ridiculous was in error.
That surprised me a bit as the documentary doesn't address the theory much other than to note that it was a basis for our going into Vietnam.
I've written on the Domino Theory here before, more specifically in my 2013 post on
Looking at the Vietnam War differently. Not a war, but as a campaign in the Cold War. In that post I urged that the Vietnam War should be looked at as a campaign in the Cold War in order to be viewed historically accurately. That post came, of course, nearly four years ago and I doubt that very many people search back for post that old here very often (I suppose some might surf into it and I know that occurs with some of our older posts), but in the interesting of not repeating too much what I already have said, I'll quote at length from that post (although, please note, I'm not quoting the whole post):
As noted, I'm not quoting from the entire 2013 post here. So perhaps I should flesh that out. I did so a bit in that post when I noted:
It’s easy to dismiss the Domino Theory now, although erroneously in my view, but at the time dominoes really were falling. One giant one fell, China, and another one, South Korea, nearly tipped over almost immediately thereafter. With that history, with Communist insurgencies breaking out all over South East Asia, and with a big huge Communist neighbor behind nearly all of them, geographically, starting in 1947 things looked pretty darned grim.
Let's still flesh that out just a bit.
The idea was, and it was based on prior experience, that once one nation fell to the Communist that put pressure on its neighbors, particularly if the fallen nation was in a strategic area and particularly if there was already Communist activity in the region.
This idea, following Vietnam, was widely discredited. But was it as absurd as many would now have us believe? Many historical examples of the success of militant movements would suggest otherwise. When the USSR was founded, for example, Communist revolutions did in fact spared to nearby states. Hungary, for example, had one immediately after Russia and while it didn't succeed, it nearly did. Germany's red revolution in the 1918-1919 time frame nearly did as well.
Fascism provides a good example also. It wasn't as if Germany was the only state that went to the far right in the 1930s. It was preceded by Italy and joined by Spain and Romania. Arguably it was somewhat joined by France. When fascism was on the rise, it wasn't on the rise in one state. Even the United Kingdom and Ireland had fascists movements in the 1930s.
And before we get too far on the topic of the Vietnam War, let's consider Asia as a whole.
Southeast Asia. It's big. . . but more connected when you take a little higher view.
One of the things that missed in discussions on the Vietnam War, and it was missed in the Burns and Novik documentary, is that it was Australia that was demanding Western powers get into the Indochinese War after France fell there, not the United States at first. Australia was begging the US to get in and threatened the Kennedy Administration with going it alone if the US wouldn't go. In retrospect, maybe we should have allowed for that. Australia had thinner resources but it also had more experience in fighting guerrilla was in the jungle than we did.
Australian soldiers of the Royal Australian Rifles in Vietnam.
They weren't the only nation concerned about what they were seeing, of course, but looking at the map, and recalling World War Two, you can see why the Australians were particularly concerned.
Royal Australian Rifles in Vietnam. We didn't ask them to come. .. they asked us.
Stepping back a second, and before considering the validity of the theory itself, you can at least see why there was legitimate concern about it. China had emerged from a long civil war in 1948 with the Red Chinese the surprise victors. Everyone would have presumed, to include Stalin, that the Nationalist Chinese would come out on top. They didn't, and of course, its now clear that one of the many straws that broke that camels back (and there were many) was pretty effective efforts by Soviet agents to hinder and delay US resupply to the Nationalist Chinese. That deprived them of effective resupply in some instances, but that doesn't explain what occurred in and of itself by a long shot. Not that we're doing a history of the Chinese Civil War here. Of interest, the Nationalist Chinese provided some air support to the South Vietnamese early during the Vietnam War and contributed some special troops, some of whom were killed in combat, to the South Vietnamese effort during the war.
South Korean soldiers in Vietnam. The ROK had a major military commitment to South Vietnam and late in the war appeared set to retain up to 50,000 troops in the country even after the United States was set to withdraw. American encouragement that they leave, during the "Vietnamization" program period, secured their departure. "Soldiers of the ROK 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam. Photo by Phillip Kemp. Photo taken by Phillip Kemp from cockpit after sling-loading water drums to outpost..jpg" Posted pursuant to Wikepeidia license. South Korea was second only to the United States in terms of the number of troops it sent to support the Republic of Vietnam.
Anyhow, China fell. North Korean was left Communist following World War Two as part of an arraignment with the United States on post war occupation. In 1950 that turned into a North Korean invasion of South Korea that was only halted at great costs to the United States and its allies, and only after the Truman Administration changed its mind about what was going on globally and regionally. We'll pick up on that in a moment.
Soviet troops marching into North Korea at the end of World War Two. They'd stay briefly, as would US troops in the South, and set up a state modeled on the USSR while they were there. That nation would try to reunite the peninsula by armed force in 1950.
And it wasn't just there.
The Philippines had presented the US with a domestic Communist guerrilla movement to contend with as the US was returning to them during World War Two. Of the various anti Japanese guerrilla movements that sprung up during the war was the Hukbalahap, more commonly called the Huks. Relationships with them were tense following the war as the Philippines moved towards independence and they broke out in full scale rebellion in 1949, the year after China fell. The Philippine government managed to put them down with US military assistance and, significantly, through the co-opting of their movement by some rather brilliant men in the early CIA. Even at that however, various Communist guerrilla movements continue on in the Philippines to the present day.
During the Vietnam War the Philippines would supply 10,000 non combat troops to aid South Korea.
Of course, as we've already noted, the British also contended with Communist guerrillas in Southeast Asia in the Malayan Emergency, which they successfully managed to counter in a combined policing and military operation that went on from. . . yes, 1948, and lasted until 1960.
Malayan police patrol in 1950.
And then there was Burma.
Burma was a region which was, at first, largely happy to see the Japanese take over from the British during World War Two, but soon grew discontent with the Japanese. Some armed groups that supported the Japanese at first actually switched sides during the war. This did not mean that they looked forward to the return of the British. They country, now Myanmar, became independent in that fateful year of 1948 and did not join the English Commonwealth. In 1962 a military coup brought the military into power and it chose to rule the country in a manner inspired by the Soviet Union to a significant degree. The country even changed its name to the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma.
Between Burma and Cambodia/Laos is Thailand. Thailand did not participate in World War Two and was not a colony of any nation during that period or any other. It's the only nation in Southeast Asia that has never been colonized (it even sent an envoy to the Pope as early as 1688.) A monarchy, it had acquired Japanese military aid prior to World War Two, it was in a difficult spot during the war and more or less participated on both sides of the war, while technically, due to a declaration of war, was at war with the United States and the United Kingdom, after having fought briefly against Japan. It's treaty with Japan provided that Japan would assist Thailand to reacquire territories lost to colonial powers on all sides of it, include to the French in what became Laos and Cambodia.
Following World War Two Thailand faced an encamped Nationalist Chinese army in its far north (for decades) and a domestic Communist insurgency that broke out in the 1960s. Thailand would provide air bases to the United States during the Vietnam War and would ultimately contribute combat troops just as the United States started to withdraw. Thailand's commitment to the war would amount to 12,000 men just as the United States was pulling out, with their troops including contributions of elite units.
Artillerymen from New Zealand's army in Vietnam. New Zealand was still more English than the English the time, but unlike the UK or any European power (excluding France) they also sent troops to Vietnam. . . no doubt looking at their position on the globe.
That takes us to the Vietnam War. Communist forces were not just active in South Vietnam or even North and South Vietnam. They were active in Laos, where they succeed after the fall of South Vietnam, and in Cambodia, where they also did. They were also active throughout Southeast and Central Asia. Indeed, the Communist Party is still a political force in India. So, no wonder:
Looking at it that way, with Communist insurgencies breaking out everywhere in Asia, with the potentiality for more breaking out where they hadn’t already, and with a lot of the insurgencies seeming to be successful, it’d be hard to imagine Western nations regarding any of the wars as mere local affairs without global implications. A person might ask “why Vietnam” but the answer might just be that it was Vietnam’s turn. The British and Australians had already fought one war against Communist in Southeast Asia and it reasonably looked like not putting the fire out where it broke out would make things worse. Indeed, it almost certainly would have. The Australians were, for their part, urging the US to take action in Vietnam before we did. And in terms of the big Communist powers, China and the USSR, Vietnam did have a good deep water port which was strategic enough that the US had attacked it from the air,during WWII, when the Japanese occupied it.
Maybe the theory was, therefore, correct. At least it seemed rational to believe it was, as we noted:
Indeed, I was less clear on the challenges faced in my earlier post than I have been in this one (which I researched on this topic a bit more). During the early 1960s, when the Kennedy Administration was faced with trying to decide how much, and how, to support South Vietnam, it faced a situation in which nearly every country in the region had been challenged by a Communist insurgency and some had been successful while others had only been recently defeated by hard effort.
I went on from there in my original post to ponder what that meant, and I'll leave the reader to review that in the context of my Cold War analysis that I offered there, but I'll note that it started off with this:
This went on, and looked at the war in the context of a Cold War campaign. You can judge for yourself whether I was right or wrong, or partially right or wrong on that, but I'm going to divert from quoting that post here to go on to the main point here. That is, was the Domino Theory correct?
Well, the evidence would suggest. . . it was correct.
The proponents of the theory argued that if Vietnam fell (or continued to fall, as North Vietnam had fallen to Communism) then Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma and India would all follows suit.
So how can you say that it was correct, critics (now) say, Thailand didn't fall the Communists?
That's right, Thailand didn't. But you have noticed that Laos and Cambodia did, correct?
And they fell after South Vietnam, which is more than a little coincidental. Both nations had been part of French Indochina and both had Communist movements in the 1940s, but neither fell to Communism until after Saigon fell in 1975.
Now, to be fair, Laos was falling in slow motion since the mid 1960s. . . or even the 1950s. But something kept it from teetering completely over the edge. That something was the war in South Vietnam. North Vietnam was willing to dominate parts of the country and to force it into an uneasy neutrality but it apparently feared tipping it over the edge as that might have caused the United States to intervene full scale in Laos, rather than low scale as it was doing.
Pathet (Communist) Laotian troops, 1972.
That came to an end when the South collapsed in 1975. At that point, the North basically invaded Laos and forced it into Communism, where it remains.
So, I suppose, a person could argue that it didn't fall, it was pushed. The significant thing there, however, is that it wasn't pushed any earlier than that.
Cambodia wasn't pushed, it fought it out late in the Vietnam War and then fell to the Khmer Rouge as it received increased support, for awhile, from the North Vietnamese. Cambodia had favored the Communist effort, slightly, during most of the Vietnam War but when its monarchy fell in a coup the Army chose to actively enter the Vietnam War, albeit on its own soil. This turned into a fierce civil war and when the war went badly for the South Vietnamese in the end it went just as badly for Cambodia. Like South Vietnam and Laos, it fell in 1975.
By that time, of course, Burma had already gone to its own odd brand of near Communism. Thailand was surrounded.
But nobody else fell. So surely that means that the Domino Theory was wrong, correct?
Well, that''s hard to tell, in the end. What we do know is that nearly every Southeast nation fought a war against a communist insurgency. Some were successfully fought, some were not. A person might argue that the long war in Indochina gave other nations that had already fought a war against Communist insurgents the chance to consolidate politically so that their wars would not renew. Arguably the war in Thailand failed as it came too late, after the Thai government had been given an extra decade to plan against it and to have cut its teeth on the war in Vietnam.
Of course, you can argue it the other way around. After the North Vietnamese won against the South and then intervened with finality in Laos, they ended up invading Communist Cambodia and fighting a guerrilla war against the Khmer Rouge. China invaded North Vietnam and was thrown back. The rift between Chinese Communism and Soviet Communism proved to be pretty bitter and the respective allies of those nations would fight amongst themselves. North Vietnam proved to be highly Soviet at first, but it was never a Soviet puppet and ultimately, would be forced to later abandon much of its hardcore economic Communist that it espoused. Cambodia would reemerge from Vietnamese rule as a free state and a royal one at that, no longer Communist. So things didn't work out they way they were hoped for or feared for anyone.
None of which answers the question. Was the Domino Theory correct? It's impossible to say, but even now, the evidence suggests it might have been.
