To: i-node who wrote (466115 ) 3/24/2009 11:44:45 PM From: tejek Read Replies (1) | Respond to Eisenhower did NOT start the Vietnam war. The Geneva Conference The United States disapproved of the agreement, did not sign the accord, and announced that it felt no obligation to abide by it. Instead, in September 1954, the United States became, along with Australia, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand, a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). This alliance was designed to resist the spread of communism in southeast Asia. The rationale developed by the Eisenhower Administration to explain its economic and military support of South Vietnam became known as the "domino theory." Likening the countries of southeast Asia as a row of dominos, the President argued that if one country fell, it would trigger the fall of others (like a row of dominos). In The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (Brookings Institution, 1969), Leslie Gelb and Richard Betts point to the rise of a decision rule within the Eisenhower and subsequent administrations: "Do what was necessary to avoid losing South Vietnam by force." The history of the war is, in part, the growing economic, political, and human costs of "what was necessary" to prevent this domino from falling.faculty.smu.edu
