Falling Dominoes and System Dynamics: A Risk Aversion Perspective

Notes

• Douglas J. Macdonald , “The Truman Administration and Global Responsibilities: The Birth of the Falling Domino Principle,” in Robert Jervis and Jack Snyder , eds., Dominoes and Bandwagons: Strategic Beliefs and Great Power Competition in the Eurasian Rimland ( New York : Oxford University Press , 1991 ), 112 – 44 . The terms “Falling Domino Principle” and “Falling Domino Theory” are often used interchangeably by various analysts, but either usage is acceptable .
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• For evidence that the Clinton administration views Islamic fundamentalism in containment and domino terms, while avoiding the metaphor , see Steven A. Holmes , “Fundamentalism Alters the Mideast's Power Relationships,” New York Times, 22 August 1993 , p. E1 .
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• See Anthony Lewis , “Foreign Policy Morass,” New York Times, 11 October 1993 ), p. A17 ; Lewis, “Mean What You Say,” New York Times, 15 October 1993, p. A35. Lewis was a caustic critic of domino thinking when it was aimed at the containment of communism during the cold war .
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• For a discussion of the reasons that revolutions are destabilizing and should be contained by Great Powers , see Stephen M. Walt , “Revolution and War,” World Politics 44 , no. 3 ( April 1992 ): 321 – 68 .
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• See the examples of domino thinking from different nations and in different eras in Robert Jervis , “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior,” in Jervis and Snyder , Dominoes and Bandwagons , 20 – 50 , esp. 20–22; and Jack Snyder, “Conclusion,” in ibid., 276–87 .
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• For recent discussions of the cold war in the Third World that argue that the United states often exaggerated its interests there, and therefore implicitly or explicitly criticize the Domino Theory, see Stephen M. Walt, “The Case for Finite Containment: Analyzing U.S. Grand Strategy,” International Security 14, no. 1 (Summer 1989): 5–49; Robert H. Johnson, “Exaggerating America's Stakes in Third World Conflicts,” International Security 10, no. 3 (Winter 1985/ 86): 32–68; Jerome Slater, “Dominos in Central America: Will They Fall? Does it Matter?” International Security 12, no. 2 (Fall 1987): 105–34; Stephen Van Evera, “American Intervention in the Third World: Less Would Be Better,” Security Studies 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1991): 1–24; Bruce W. Jentleson, “American Commitments in the Third World: Theory vs. Practice,” International Organization, 41, no. 4 (Autumn 1987): 667–704; Charles L. Glaser and Ted Hopf, “Models of Soviet-American Relations and Their Implications for Future Russian-American Relations,” in William Zimmerman , ed., Beyond the Soviet Threat: Rethinking American Security Policy in a New Era ( Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press , 1992 ), 174–76.
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• Jack Snyder, “Conclusion,” 280–81; Jervis, “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior,” 39–40; Leslie H. Gelb, with Richard Betts , The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked ( Washington , D.C. : Brookings , 1979 ), 199 – 200 ; John H. Ester-line and Mae H. Esterline, “How the Dominoes Fell”: Southeast Asia in Perspective (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990.)
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• Michael Mandelbaum , The Fate of Nations: The Search for National Security in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries ( New York : Cambridge University Press , 1988 ), 137–52.
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• The only full length book on domino dynamics that I am aware of is the collection of essays in Jervis and Snyder , eds., Dominoes and Bandwagons.
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• The French used a “ten pin” metaphor to evoke a similar idea, although they feared the spread of nationalism in their colonies rather than the spread of communism in regions . See George McT. Kahin Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam ( Garden city : Anchor Books , 1987 ), 9 . Then Assistant Secretary of state Acheson famously used a rotten apple metaphor to make the same point about the Middle East and Southeastern Europe in 1947, Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York: Norton, 1969), 219 .
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• For discussions of the Domino Theory that do treat contingency in some form, see Jervis, “Domino Beliefs,” 20–50; Deborah Welch Larson, “Bandwagon Images in American Foreign Policy: Myth or Reality?” in Jervis and Snyder, Dominoes and Bandwagons, 85–111; Jack Snyder, “Conclusions,” in ibid., 276–86; Glenn Snyder and Paul Diesing , Conflict among Nations: Bargaining, Decisionmaking, and System Structure in International Crises ( Princeton : Princeton University Press , 1977 ), 178; William C. Gibbon, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, pt. 1, 1945–1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 67, 88, 201, 202 .
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• Macdonald , “The Truman Administration and Global Responsibilities,” 112 .
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• Bernard Brodie , War and Politics ( New York : MacMillan , 1973 ), 144 – 53 ; Kahin, Intervention, 29, 40, 126, 166, 239,314,387; Jervis, “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior,” 41; see also, James S. Olson, ed., Dictionary of the Vietnam War (New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1987), 119; Jerome Slater, “Reassessing Third World Interventionism: A Response to Macdonald,” Security Studies 2, No. 2 (Winter 1992): 247–59 .
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• Brodie , War and Politics , 152 .
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• The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United states Decision-making on Vietnam, Volume One , The Senator Gravel Edition Boston : Beacon Press , 1971 ), 83 – 84 . The passage does go on to predict dire consequences for the rest of the world in a more or less mechanistic fashion. Emphases added .
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• Ibid. , 106 .
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• Ibid. , 107 .
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• Dwight D. Eisenhower , Public papers of the Presidents of the United states, 1954 ( Washington , D.C. : Government Printing Office , 1960 ), 473.
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• Gibbons , The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War , 201 .
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• Larson, “Bandwagon Images,” 100. The British Foreign Office believed in a version of the Domino Theory in Malaya until after the outbreak of war in Korea and their own recognition of the People's Republic of China, when they apparently became convinced that China was no longer directly promoting revolution in the region outside of Indochina . R. B. Smith , “China and Southeast Asia: The Revolutionary Perspective, 1951,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 19 , no. 1 ( March 1988 ): 97 – 98 .
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• I have argued elsewhere that the Domino Theory originated in the Truman Administration as a rational response to an arguably real security threat, but eventually took on a momentum of its own that caused a distorted perception of the way the international system works. Macdonald, “The Truman Administration and Global Responsibilities,” 112–44 .
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• Douglas J. Macdonald , “America and Democratic Reform in the Third World: A Reply to Jerome Slater,” Security Studies 3 , no. 1 ( Autumn 1993 ): 163 – 73 .
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• Ritchie Ovendale, “Britain, the United states and the Cold War in South-east Asia, 1949–1950,” International Affairs (U.K.) (Summer 1982): 454, 458. See also, Smith, “China and Southeast Asia,” 98; David McLean, “American Nationalism, the China Myth, and the Truman Doctrine: The Question of Accommodation with Peking, 1949–50,” Diplomatic History 10, no. 1 (Winter 1986): 35–36; Joseph M. Siracusa and Glen St. John Barclay , “Australia, the United states, and the Cold War, 1945–51 ,” Diplomatic History 5 , no. 1 ( Winter 1981 ): 39 – 52 .
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• Quoted in Jay Taylor, China and Southeast Asia: Peking's Relations with Revolutionary Movements ( Berkeley : University of California Press , 1976 ), 151 .
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• For the Soviets, see Macdonald, “The Truman Administration and Global Responsibilities,” 120–121 ; Adam B. Ulam , Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973, , 2nd ed. ( New York : Praeger , 1973 ), 488 – 890 ; Joseph L. Nogee and Robert H. Donaldson, Soviet Foreign Policy Since World War II (New York: Pergamon Press, 1981), 71–77; William O. McCagg, Jr., Stalin Embattled, 1943–1948 (Detroit: Wayne state University Press, 1978), 286–87. For the Chinese and North Korean communist views, see Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol. 2, The Roaring of the Cataract, 1947–50 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 371–73, 654. Cumings labels these views “pan-Asianist,” but non-communist leaders were excluded at this point, making it largely a “pan-communist” phenomenon. For the effects of the Chinese communist victory in Southeast Asia, see also, Evelyn Colbert, Southeast Asia in International Politics, 1941–1956 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 125. For the rebellions in Southeast Asia more generally in the period 1948–52, see Ruth McVey, “The Southeast Asian Insurrectionary Movements,” in Cyril E. Black and Thomas P. Thornton, eds., Communism and Revolution: The Strategic Uses of Political Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 145–84; J. H. Brimmell, Communism in South East Asia: A Political Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 176–271 .
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• ASEAN leaders’ views cited in, Barbara Crossette, “So utheast Asia Talks Face Major Shift,” New York Times, 14 December 1987, p. A14. See also , Robert O. Tilman , Southeast Asia and the Enemy Beyond: ASEAN Perceptions of External Threats ( Boulder : Praeger , 1987 ), 137 – 38 . Only Indonesia had any sympathy for the Vietnamese communist revolution, since in the region only Indonesia and Vietnam fought wars of independence from colonial powers, but a good deal of that sympathy presumably dissipated following the attempted coup by the Indonesian communist party in 1965 and Indonesia's subsequent turn toward the West. Malaysia, on the other hand, strongly identified with South Vietnam's struggle and supported the war effort, as did most of the rest of Southeast Asia. Ibid., 74–75 .
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• For a brief discussion of both sides of these issues, see Eric J. Labs , “Do Weak states Bandwagon?” Security Studies 1 , no. 3 ( Spring 1992 ): 408 .
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• For an exchange along these lines, see Slater, “Reassessing Third World Interventionism,” 249–52; Macdonald, “America and Democratic Reform in the Third World,” 164–66 .
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• Snyder and Diesing note that Neville Chamberlain believed that there was a very low probability of domino dynamics appearing in Europe in the 1930s; Eisenhower believed in a very high probability in Southeast Asia in the 1950s. Snyder and Diesing, Conflict among Nations, 178. Many ex post-facto critics argue that both decision-makers were wrong.
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• Frank C. Zagare , “Rationality and Deterrence,” World Politics 42 , No. 2 ( January 1990 ): 241 . For discussions, see also Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman, War and Reason: Domestic and International Imperatives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 18–19; Edward Rhodes, Power and MADness: The Logic of Nuclear Coercion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 47–81 .
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• The classic critique of the concept is Graham Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis ( Boston : Little, Brown , 1971 ).
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• Herbert A. Simon , “Rationality as Process and as Product of Thought,” The American Economic Review 68 , no. 2 ( May 1978 ): 8 .
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• Robert O. Keohane , After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy ( Princeton : Princeton University Press , 1984 ), 108 , 114 . Thus, Walt's casual statement that realist analysts assume policy decisions are made in “a more-or-less rational fashion” is something of an understatement and obscures some of the major theoretical assumptions inherent in that approach. See Stephen M. Walt, “Alliances, Threats, and U.S. Grand Strategy: A Reply to Kaufman and Labs, “Security Studies 1, no. 3 (Spring 1992): 473, n. 1 .
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• Simon , “Rationality as Process and as Product of Thought,” 6–8; Keohane, After Hegemony, 108, 114 ; Robert Gilpin , The Political Economy of International Relations ( Princeton : Princeton University Press , 1987 ), 44 – 46 .
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• For discussions, see Simon, “Rationality as Process and as Product of Thought,” 8–12; Keohane, After Hegemony, 111–16; Snyder and Diesing, Conflict among Nations, 345–48, and n. 6.
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• Simon notes that decision makers both optimize and satisfice in the real world, but argues that if there is doubt the assumption of satisficing behavior is preferable. Simon, “Rationality as Process and as Product of Thought,” 8; see also, Keohane, After Hegemony, 108, 112–14; Snyder and Diesing, Conflict Among Nations, 345–48.
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• Simon , “Rationality as Process and as Product of Thought,” 2 .
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• Herbert A. Simon , Reason in Human Affairs ( Stanford : Stanford University Press , 1983 ), 85.
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• For both the necessity for and difficulty in recreating a decision-makers viewpoint, see James Rosenau , “Introduction,” in James Rosenau , ed., Comparing Foreign Policies: Theories, Findings, and Methods ( New York : Wiley , 1974 ), 4 – 8 , 18–19. For other relevant discussions see Wolfram Hanreider, “International and Comparative Politics: Toward a Synthesis?” in ibid., 480–493; Alexander George, “The ‘Operational Code’: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision-making,” International Studies Quarterly 13, 2 (June 1969): 190–222; Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 13–31 .
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• Quoted in Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman, War and Reason , 18 .
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• The term was coined by Jack Snyder in “Introduction,” in Jervis and Snyder , Dominoes and Bandwagons , 9 ; for its application to the Domino Theory specifically, see Macdonald, “The Truman Administration and Global Responsibilities,” 112–44 .
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• For a recent discussion of how and why the anarchy of the system tends to produce rational fears of dominoes, see Mandlebaum, The Fate of Nations, 137–52. See also, Jervis, “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior,” 26–29. Walt notes that revolutions increase uncertainty in the international system. Walt, “Revolution and War,” 341–42.
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• Mandlebaum , The Fate of Nations , 138 ; Jervis, “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior,” 20–22 .
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• For two skeptical views of the efficacy of early intervention as a policy posture, see Brodie, War and Politics, 151; and, Jervis, “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior,” 30–31; for a more positive view of early intervention , see Robert G. Kaufman , “‘To Balance or to Bandwagon?: Alignment Decisions in 1930s Europe,” Security Studies 1 , no. 3 ( Spring 1992 ): 417 – 47 .
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• Using his information processing model, Simon defines worst case analysis as: “the maximum amount of computation required to solve any problem of a given class.” Simon , “Rationality as Process and as Product of Thought,” 11 , n. 10.
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• Quoted in Tim Weiner, “Military Accused of Lies Over Arms,” New York Times, 28 June 1993 , p. A10 .
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• Gary R. Hess , “The First American Commitment in Indochina: The Acceptance of the ‘Bao Dai Solution,’ 1950,” Diplomatic History 2 , no. 4 ( Fall 1978 ): 334 – 35 .
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• Jack Snyder , “Conclusion,” 282 ; Herbert A. Simon , Models of Thought ( New Haven : Yale University Press , 1979 ), 10 ; Rhodes, Power and MADness, 55 .
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• On the desirability of the United states taking a more “relaxed” view of international events during the cold war , see Stephen M. Walt , The Origins of Alliances ( Ithaca : Cornell University Press , 1987 ), 282 – 83 .
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• Mandlebaum , The Fate of Nations , 137 ; Jervis, “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior,” 26–29 .
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• Quoted in Macdonald, “The Truman Administration and Global Responsibilities,” 133 .
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• Simon , “Rationality as Process and as Product of Thought,” 13 .
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• Quoted approvingly in, Mandlebaum , The Fate of Nations , 138 .
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• In June 1947, the Joint Chiefs placed China thirteenth out of sixteen nations considered to be important to containment. As late as September, 1949, 44 percent of the American public had never heard of or had no opinion of Chiang Kai-shek. Macdonald, “The Truman Administration and Global Responsibilities,” 120, 127. Within a year of this poll the Americans would be fighting the Chinese in Korea and “Who Lost China?” would come to dominate a good portion of the foreign policy debate in Washington. The realism of these changes in perceptions can be debated, but the rapidity with which a region can change from strategic backwater to strategic hot spot can be breathtaking. It should be noted that Dean Rusk was Assistant Secretary of state for Far Eastern Affairs in the Truman Administration when most of these changes took place.
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• James Gleick , Chaos: Making a New Science ( New York : Penguin , 1987 ), 11–31.
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• Brodie , War and Politics , 146 , n. 46. Brodie strongly criticizes such modes of thinking .
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• Interestingly, Gleick cites the same children's saying noted above to illustrate the notion of chaotic dynamics in various sciences. Gleick, Chaos, 23. For applications of chaos theory to international relations subjects more generally, see Steven R. Mann, “Chaos Theory and Strategic Thought,” Parameters 22, no. 3 (Autumn 1992): 54–68; Diana Richards, “A Chaotic Model of Power Concentration in the International System,” International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 1 (March 1993): 55–72. For its application to mathematical models of security policy , see Alvin M. Saperstein , “Chaos and the Making of International Security Policy,” in Saul Krasner , The Ubiquity of Chaos ( Washington , D.C. : American Association for the Advancement of Science , 1990 ), 167 – 80 , and Gottfried Mayer-Kress, “A Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Approach to International Security,” in Krasner, ed., The Ubiquity of Chaos, 181–96. For a skeptical view from an historian, see H. W. Brands, “Fractal History, or Clio and the Chaotics,” Diplomatic History 16, no. 4 (Fall 1992): 495–510. For a skeptical view from a political scientist, see Jack Snyder, “Introduction: New Thinking About the New International System,” in Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis, eds., Coping with Complexity in the International System (Boulder: Westview, 1993), 12. Far more research and thinking about chaos theory and its relevance to the international system is needed. The point here is that the similarities between many of its basic assumptions and the perceptions of decision makers in certain situations are striking .
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• Quoted in Tilman, Southeast Asia and the Enemy Beyond , 84 .
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• Rosenau , “Introduction,” 6.
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• Keohane , After Hegemony , 116 , see also 106, 108, 126. Keohane is primarily discussing the “low politics” of political economy. The concentration on reputation is presumably even greater in the “high politics” of international security policies because the stakes are higher .
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• Larson , “Bandwagon Images,” 96 – 99 . See also, Ovendale, “Britain, the United states and the Cold War,” 448, 450–51, 453–57, 460 .
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• Macdonald , “The Truman Administration and Global Responsibilities,” 129. On the damage to the American reputation, see also Hess, “The First American Commitment in Indochina,” 345; Colbert , Southeast Asia in International Politics , 154 .
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• Quoted in Walter L. Hixson , “Containment on the Perimeter: George F. Kennan and Vietnam,” Diplomatic History 12 , no. 2 ( Spring 1988 ): 151 – 52 . See also Kennan's belief that a hard line policy against the Sino-Soviet bloc in Asia was necessary to bolster morale in Western Europe, in Macdonald, “The Truman Administration and Global Responsibilities,” 131, 143 n. 85 .
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• For a contrasting argument that such relationships can be created relatively easily , see Walt , “Alliance, Threats, and U.S. Grand Strategy,” 472 ; Labs, “Do Weak states Bandwagon?,” 408 .
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• Tilman , Southeast Asia and the Enemy Beyond , 133 – 34 ; William R. Kintner, “Thailand Faces the Future,” Orbis 19, no. 3 (Fall 1975): 1126, 1129; Leszek Busynski, Soviet Foreign Policy and Southeast Asia (New York: St. Martin's, 1986), 102–106 .
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• Tilman , Southeast Asia and the Enemy Beyond , 69, 135, 138, 144 n. 42. See also, Barbara Crossette, “Southeast Asia Talks Face Major Shift,” New York Times, 14 December 1987, p. A14; Byszynski, Soviet Foreign Policy and Southeast Asia, 108–109. Buszynski argues that the Filipinos did not pull further away from the United states in the event and realign because of American penetration of their political system and a dependence on American aid .
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• Ibid. , 96 .
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• Such commitments can also cause grave difficulties in dealing with clients and allies, what is known colloquially as “the tail wagging the dog,” and what I have termed the “commitment trap,” but that is a different problem than I am discussing here . Douglas J. Macdonald , Adventures in Chaos: American Intervention for Reform in the Third World ( Cambridge : Harvard University Press , 1992 ), 68 – 73 .
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• Ibid. , 68 .
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• This is also true for corporations dealing with uncertainty in the marketplace . See Fred R. Bleakley , “Managing Risk: Corporate Treasurers Adopt Hedging Plans, With Some Wariness,” Wall Street Journal , 17 August 1993 , pp. Al , A8.
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• I will make operational definitions here of the concepts of revolution and rebellion as I use them in this article. Revolution refers to the political phenomenon of one form of government replacing another through an armed struggle for power. Thus, for example, the American Revolution was a real revolution and not simply a war of independence. Rebellion refers to an armed uprising that fails to replace one form of government with another. In essence, rebellions are failed revolutions as used here .
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• Walt, “Revolution and War,” 358–59. See also E. J. Hobsbawm's remark that the clustering of revolutions in the mid-seventeenth century was “abnormal.” Discussion Group, “Seventeenth Century Revolutions,” Past and Present, no. 13 (April 1958): 63; and Paul Kattenburg's critique of the use of the Domino Theory specifically along these lines in The Vietnam Trauma in American Foreign Policy, 1945–1975 ( New Brunswick : Transaction , 1980 ), 43–44.
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• The literature is voluminous. For representative examples see the following: political explanation: Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies ( New Haven : Yale University Press , 1968 ); sociological explanation: Theda Skocpol, states and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China ( New York : Cambridge University Press , 1979 ); psychological explanation: E. V. Wolfenstein, The Revolutionary Personality: Lenin, Trotsky, Gandhi ( Princeton : Princeton University Press , 1967 ); economic explanation: Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, Revised and Expanded Edition ( New York : Vintage , 1965 ). For an excellent discussion of the various approaches, see Isaac Kramnick, “Reflections on Revolution: Definition and Explanation in Recent Scholarship,” History and Theory 11, no. 1 (1972): 26–63 .
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• Walt , The Origins of Alliances, 283. To give but one example, Walt portrays Palmiro Togliatti as an independent leader of the Italian Communist Party who challenged Soviet international control. Yet Stalin restrained Togliatti, against the latter's own judgment, from pressing for revolution in early postwar Italy in service to Soviet foreign policy goals. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 100. In international politics from 1948 to Stalin's death in 1953: “when the chips were down Togliatti's loyalty to the Communist cause outweighed his doubts about Stalin.” In virtually every case, Togliatti followed the Soviet lead on international questions until after destalinization in 1956. Joan Barth Urban , Moscow and the Italian Communist Party: From Togliatti to Berlinguer ( Ithaca : Cornell University Press , 1986 ), 180–81, 188, 212–15, 217, 347, quote from p. 181; see also, James E. Miller, The United states and Italy, 1940–1950: The Politics and Diplomacy of Stabilization ( Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press , 1986 ), 215, 231–34, 236; Conquest, The Great Terror, 400–401, 404. With the notable exceptions of Yugoslavia and Albania, virtually all of the communist parties of the world followed the Soviet lead on major and minor questions in international politics until destalinization in 1956–57.
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• For relevant discussions of the international communist movement, see Urban, Moscow and the Italian Communist Party; Robert W. Kitrinos, “International Department of the CPSU,” Problems of Communism 33 (September-October 1984): 47–75; Donald L. M. Blackmer and Annie Kriegal , The International Role of the Communist Parties of Italy and France ( Cambridge : Center for International Affairs, Harvard University , 1975 ); Franz Borkenau, World Communism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962); Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982); Richard Lowenthal, Model or Ally?: The Communist Powers and the Developing Countries (New York: Oxford Uuniversity Press, 1977); Ruth T. McVey, The Calcutta Conference and the Southeast Asian Uprisings (Ithaca: Department of Far Eastern Studies, Cornell University, 1958); Taylor, China and Southeast Asia; Justus M. van der Kroef, Communism in South-east Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Peter J. Stavrakis, Moscow and Greek Communism, 1944–1949 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); Alfred J. Rieber, Stalin and the French Communist Party, 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962); Peter Van Ness, Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy: Peking's Support for Wars of National Liberation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970 .)
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• It is interesting to note that the origins of the phrase and the concept of “monolithic communism” were Stalin's, not his critics in the West, who nonetheless believed this Soviet propaganda too easily and completely. Eugenio Reale, “The Founding of the Cominform,” in Drachkovitch and Lazitch, The Comintern, 263. R. B. Smith correctly notes, however, that: “In recognizing the importance of the international dimension for an understanding of the overall trend in communist strategy [in the late 1940s and early 1950s], in this or any other period, it is not necessary to assume monolithic control over actual decisions.” Smith, “China and Southeast Asia,” 103. Moreover, it is not clear if American decisionmakers ever really accepted the simplistic notion of the “monolith” in the ways that critics charge, or the concept was simply used as rhetorical overkill to sell the policy. For a provocative argument that they saw the communist bloc in a more sophisticated and nuanced way , see David Allan Mayers , Cracking the Monolith: U.S. Policy Against the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949–1955 ( Baton Rouge , La. : Louisiana state University Press , 1986 .)
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• Lowenthal , Model or Ally? , 279 – 80 , 302–4.
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• Arthur Krock , Memoirs: Sixty years on the Firing Line ( New York : Funk and Wagnalls , 1968 ), 350.
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• On the application of the Nazi analogy to Soviet actions in the 1940s , see Ernest May , “Lessons” of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy ( New York : Oxford University Press , 1973 ), 50 ; Macdonald, “The Truman Administration and Global Responsibilities,” 122. For an excellent treatment of large and small power alignment behavior in the 1930s, see Kaufman, “To Balance or to Bandwagon,” 417–47 .
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• Macdonald , “The Truman Administration and Global Responsibilities,” 122 – 24 .
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• Douglas J. Macdonald , “Anti-interventionism and the Study of American Foreign Policy in the Third World,” Security Studies 2 , no. 2 ( Winter 1992 ): 239 .
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• Harvey Starr, “Democratic Dominoes: Diffusion Approaches to the Spread of Democracy in the International System,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 35, no. 2 (June 1991): 356–81. For the best analysis of the spread of democracy in the 1970s and 1980s , see Samuel P. Huntington , The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century ( Norman , Ok. : University of Oklahoma Press , 1991 ).
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• Walt, “Revolution and War,” 356–62. Walt argues persuasively that, to use the Cold War verbiage, containment rather than rollback is the best strategy for Great Powers in dealing with successful revolutions. He does not, however, deal adequately with the strategy of preventing the first revolution or “falling domino” through pre-emptive political action such as promoting reform. This has at times been an aspect of American policy in the Third World in order to deny a position of influence to other Great Powers. Macdonald, Adventures in Chaos, 45–46.
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• For a theoretical discussion of general war as the catalyst in creating new patterns of alignment in the world , see Robert Gilpin , War and Change in World Politics ( New York : Cambridge University Press, 1981 .)
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• Some of these factors can also be found in Jervis, “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior,” 40; Snyder, “Conclusion,” 280.
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• Macdonald, “Anti-interventionism and the Study of American Foreign Policy,” 231–32; Macdonald, “America and Democratic Reform in the Third World.” There is sometimes confusion, however, in determining what are “acceptable” costs. For example, Walt argues that the human costs of such containment of revolution in American foreign policy during the cold war should have been far less and chastises the United states for creating so many “victims of global containment.” Walt, “Alliance, Threats, and U.S. Grand Strategy,” 467. At other times, he congratulates the United states on encouraging dictator allies “to suppress their domestic opponents more vigorously” as an intelligent policy option to contain revolution. Walt, “Revolution and War,” 359. If analysts believe that such repression can be both encouraged and controlled easily, never mind fine tuned, I fear they are sadly mistaken. For periodic American attempts to control repression in clients, often following periods when it had been tolerated if not sometimes encouraged, see Macdonald, Adventures in Chaos, passim.
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• For such a call to “think otherwise,” see Bruce Cumings , “‘Revising Post-revisionism,’ or, The Poverty of Theory in Diplomatic History,” Diplomatic History 17 , no. 4 ( Fall 1993 ): 539 – 70 .
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