Today in the Arab world, we witness a theory in action first articulated almost 57 years earlier by a US president who raised its applicability to a different part of the world. In an April 1954 news conference, with France on the verge of devastating defeat by communist Viet Minh forces in Vietnam, President Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed concerns communism could spread throughout the region. He introduced the “Domino Theory” with the following comment: “You have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the ‘falling domino’ principle. You have a row of dominos 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.”
