Domino theory

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The domino theory is a political term from the times of the East-West conflict . It was announced on April 7, 1954 by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower . According to the theory, countries geographically close to a communist country would also become communist through the " populist force" of communist ideology . Accordingly, all the countries in a region would gradually fall over like a chain of dominoes and thus turn away from the western world . On the basis of this theory, too, until the end of the Cold War in 1990, the United States practiced almost continuously a policy that attempted to prevent the advance of communism with overt and covert methods , especially in Latin America , Africa and Southeast Asia . This led, among others, to open military conflicts such as the Vietnam War and the US secretly initiated or supported coups against left as classified democratic governments like the coup in Chile in 1973 . In Latin America in particular, support was given to numerous right-wing military dictatorships that opposed left opposition groups in so-called dirty wars . This resulted in a large number of human rights violations , particularly through the use of state-controlled death squads .

Illustration of domino theory related to Asia

Content and story

During the Cold War, the states of the West , especially the USA , assumed great expansion efforts by the Soviet Union and its communist ideology. The domino theory assumes that as soon as a country fell into communist hands, neighboring countries would also be “at the mercy” of communism within a short time due to the “ populist power of ideology ”. Like a row of dominoes , one country after another would become communist and communism would expand uncontrollably. Eisenhower countered this domino effect with the rollback policy , an offensive further development of the containment policy of Harry S. Truman . However, the rollback policy was never applied in its full offensive nature.

The intellectual founders of the domino theory are Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles , foreign ministers in the Truman and Eisenhower governments. The call for strong measures against the expansion of the communist bloc met with clear approval from the US public at the height of the Cold War, as the domestic political climate was also very anti-communist .

In retrospect, the domino theory seemed to be confirmed with the “loss” of China to communism in 1949 and the further spill over of communist ideology to Korea , Laos and Vietnam . It therefore served as the justification for the US military engagement, especially in Vietnam . The US engagement against socialist or communist governments in Latin America was justified by the domino theory: in 1954 with the overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán ( Operation PBSUCCESS ) , with the tough stance of the United States towards Cuba since the revolution by Fidel Castro and in the covert CIA operations in Chile that led to the military coup on September 11, 1973 against the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende .

The anti-colonial revolutions in the 1960s and 1970s, which often led to socialist regimes in the former African colonies, as well as the 1979 revolution in Nicaragua renewed fears of a domino effect and led, under the Reagan administration, to increased efforts to achieve containment and rollback Attempt to overthrow socialist regimes (such as the US invasion of Grenada ).

The domino theory is a theory that is typically included in realism or neorealism . This explains the insignificance of this theory after the collapse of the Eastern bloc .

criticism

Like realism and neorealism, domino theory is a simple theory that does not depict political processes with the necessary complexity. For example, the change in Soviet foreign policy under Khrushchev was not taken into account. The different orientations of communism and thus also the Sino-Soviet rift were also not taken into account . Due to the offensive, sometimes aggressive behavior of US foreign policy , the domino theory has in part developed into a self-fulfilling prophecy . For example, US support for the dictators in South Korea and South Vietnam has strengthened the communist movements in these countries. The invasion of Laos and Cambodia in the Vietnam War resulted in these neighboring countries “tipping” in the direction of the Eastern bloc, even if fears on the part of the USA that the whole of Asia would become communist had not come true. In addition, the unconditional support of anti-communist politicians by the US, even when they were of dubious honesty with regard to human rights or corruption, has called into question the moral standards of their own actions.

Case study: Guatemala and El Salvador in the 1980s

The massive support of the US government for the military dictatorships in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s is a particularly clear example of the negative effects of this policy. Both countries, ruled by dictatorship for a long time , were faced with very successful left-wing liberation and guerrilla movements, which posed a serious threat to the regimes, at the beginning of the 1980s due to decades of unsuccessful economic and social policy . In the Reagan administration , the factually hardly correct conviction had prevailed that these movements, like the left-wing Sandinista rulers in neighboring Nicaragua since 1979 , were allies of the USSR and Cuba . As a result, she tried largely unsuccessfully, but with great effort and propaganda methods, to portray the uprisings in El Salvador and Guatemala as the result of Cuban or Soviet interference in order to justify support for the military dictatorships, which are also controversial in the USA . After the right-wing Nicaraguan dictator Somoza was overthrown by the Sandinista in 1979, observers in the US feared that El Salvador could be the next "falling domino".

After the support of the Reagan administration began in 1981, which broke with the critical stance of the previous administration of President Jimmy Carter , regime-controlled death squads in El Salvador alone murdered around 40,000 opposition members, around 0.8% of the population, within two years. For domestic political reasons, that is to say to curb the considerable protest from the churches against this foreign policy, the US government officially spoke of "progress" in the area of ​​human rights in the two countries. However, the rulers there actually did not change their approach - this is also attributed to the fact that the military in El Salvador knew, for example, that the USA wanted to prevent an impending "loss" of the country to the left-wing liberation movement FMLN in any case. The US government was well aware internally who it was dealing with, as a Reagan Vice Defense Minister unofficially called the Salvadoran military “a bunch of murderous thugs ” (orig .: a bunch of murderous thugs ). The US government also endeavored to keep news of the atrocities and massacres committed by the assisted military out of the US media . According to the New York Times, attempts were made to cover up the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians carried out by the Salvadoran anti-guerrilla special unit Batallón Atlácatl , and Secretary of State Alexander Haig reported a heavily glossed over one to the US Congress, according to New York Times fictitious version of the rape and murder of three American nuns by Salvadoran soldiers, which he vehemently denied years later.

Bill Clinton's apologies to Guatemala and legal reconsideration

US President Bill Clinton addressed the people of Guatemala in 1999 - it was wrong of the US to support the "military and various intelligence services" of Guatemala, which have participated in human rights violations and the "violent and widespread repression". The dictator of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983, Efraín Ríos Montt , was sentenced to 80 years in prison in May 2013 for genocide and crimes against humanity .

literature

  • Arno Kohl: Domino theory and American policy on Vietnam 1954–1961. A case study on the role of models in international politics . Freiburg 2001 ( uni-freiburg.de [PDF; 4.0 MB ; accessed on December 16, 2008] Inaugural dissertation at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg ).
  • Frank Ninkovich: Modernity and Power: A History of the Domino Theory in the Twentieth Century . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1994, ISBN 0-226-58650-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Domino Theory. In: Fischer Compact. Retrieved December 16, 2008 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Benjamin Schwarz: Dirty Hands. The success of US policy in El Salvador - preventing a guerrilla victory - was based on 40,000 political murders. Book review on William M. LeoGrande: Our own Backyard. The United States in Central America 1977-1992. 1998, December 1998.
  3. ^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 87.
  4. ^ A b Susanne Jonas: Central America As a Theater of US Cold War Politics. In: Latin American Perspectives, 9, 3, Social Classes in Latin America, Part I: Rural Class Relations, 1982, pp. 123–128, here p. 127.
  5. ↑ James John Guy: El Salvador: Another Domino? The World Today, Vol. 36, No. Aug. 8, 1980, pp. 326-330
  6. ^ Activist Church Leaders Oppose US Policy in El Salvador. Reading Eagle, April 19, 1981
  7. ↑ As Rios Montt Trial Nears End, a Look Back at US Role in Guatemala's Civil War. PBS Newshour, May 10, 2013
  8. ^ A b Anthony Lewis: Abroad at Home; Fear Of the Truth. The New York Times, April 2, 1993
  9. ↑ Guatemala: Bill Clinton's Latest Damn-Near Apology. Mother Jones , March 16, 1999
  10. ↑ Guatemala's dictator sentenced to 80 years in prison. Die Zeit, May 11, 2013
  11. ↑ 80 years imprisonment for ex-dictator Rios Montt - news.ORF.at, May 11, 2013