Domino Theory Redux

President Bush has repeatedly suggested that all we have to do is create a free democracy in Iraq and soon freedom will spread throughout the region. Am I the only one who finds this theory to be oddly familiar?

Remember the Domino Effect theory of foreign policy? As the theory applied to the cold war against communism, the US figured that if one country in a region became communist, then all that countries neighboring countries would convert to communism too like how a row of dominoes.

Thus, US teenagers find themselves fighting in the jungles of Vietnam, because US officials felt that if Vietnam became communist, then Cambodia, Laos and then the entire Southeast Asian region would become communist. After we eventually pulled out of Vietnam, the entire country had become communist, as did Laos. Cambodia wasn't quite communist, but a brutal dictatorship. Meanwhile, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia, did not eventually 'fall' to communism, suggesting that the Domino Theory isn't quite as sound as political scientists originally suggested.

Yet, the US once again finds itself drawn into a messy foreign conflict because of a Domino Effect theory. This time, though, we are trying to be the role of the communists and hope that our democracy will be the thing that spreads across the Middle East like falling dominoes.

What strikes me as the underlying problem with the Domino Theory, though , is that it assumes that foreign countries are these passive entities that just cave in and go along with whatever hip ideology is happening in the region. We are supposed to think that all of a sudden Jordanians are going to think “Wow, Iraq is so hip with its new democracy, I want some of that as well.”

The Domino Effect is a flawed theory because it does not give enough credit to an individual country's ability to determine its own course. That is why it didn't apply to Southeast Asia, and why once again it is not going to work in the Middle East.