Arguments Against The Domino Theory
The primary evidence against the domino theory is the failure of Communism to take hold in Thailand, Indonesia, and other large Southeast Asian countries after the end of the Vietnam War, as Eisenhower's speech warned it could. However, proponents of this policy argue that this was due in part to the effects of both the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
Critics of the theory charged that the Indochinese wars were largely indigenous or nationalist in nature (such as the Vietnamese driving out the French), and that no such monolithic force as "world communism" existed. There was already fracturing of communist states at the time, the most serious of which was the rivalry between the Soviet Union and China, known as the Sino-Soviet split, which began in the 1950s.
Indeed, Vietnam and Cambodia were at odds from the very beginning. Rivalry between China and the USSR may have exacerbated tensions between them, since Vietnam had affiliated itself with the USSR and Cambodia with China, but nationalism and territorial disputes were obviously more significant factors. Border conflicts, mostly in the form of massacres of Vietnamese peasants carried out by the Khmer Rouge, occurred frequently for the duration of their nearly four years in power, eventually leading to the Cambodian-Vietnamese War of 1978-1979, when Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge and took control of Cambodia. This in turn led China to attack Vietnam in 1979 in the brief Sino-Vietnamese War, and to U.S. and Thai support for the Khmer Rouge, who renounced communism and continued to fight as a guerrilla force against the Vietnamese-backed government until the mid 1990s.
In the cases of both Laos and Cambodia, the adoption of communism was directly attributable to the Vietnam War, which had spread over the borders of Vietnam into these countries, and to Vietnam's political regional ambitions, which included directly organizing communist parties in both countries. The fall of Laos was essentially due to repeated outright invasions by Vietnam and the inability of the army of Laos to defend the country. The fall of Cambodia had more complex causes but ultimately also resulted from the country being dragged into the Vietnam war, first by the Viet Cong who operated bases in the country and used it as part of the Ho Chi Minh trail, and then by full scale NVA attack, in conjunction with the Khmer Rouge, against the pro-U.S Lon Nol republic. The U.S. and South Vietnamese forces also contributed to widening of the war when they invaded and heavily bombed Cambodia in an attempt to root out those bases, causing an upsurge of popular resentment Opponents also argued that the domino theory misrepresented the real nature of the widespread and growing civil opposition that the previous, U.S.-backed regimes in these countries had generated because of entrenched official corruption and widespread human rights abuses, notably in South Vietnam.
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