Thus the Joint Chiefs, in 1955, outline “three basic forms of aggression”: armed attack across a border (aggression in the literal sense) “Overt armed attack from within the area of each of the sovereign states” “Aggression other than armed, i.e., political warfare, or subversion.” An internal uprising against a US-imposed police state, or elections that come out the wrong way, are forms of “aggression,” which the US has the right to combat by arbitrary violence. Recall that “subversion,” like “concealed aggression,” is a technical concept covering any form of unwelcome internal political development. The “loss of Vietnam” would therefore be of great significance that it is ours to “lose” is again axiomatic. Outlining the “falling dominoes” theory in a news conference on April 7, 1954, President Eisenhower warned that Japan would have to tum “toward the Communist areas in order to live” if Communist success in Indochina “takes away, in its economic aspects, that region that Japan must have as a trading area.” The consequences would be “just incalculable to the free world.” Walter LaFeber observed in 1968 that “This thesis became a controlling assumption: the loss of Vietnam would mean the economic undermining and probable loss of Japan to Communist markets and ultimately to Communist influence if not control.” Eisenhower’s public statements expressed the conclusion of NSC 5405 (January 16) that “the loss of Southeast Asia, especially of Malaya and Indonesia, could result in such economic and political pressures in Japan as to make it extremely difficult to prevent Japan’s eventual accommodation to communism.” Communist domination of Southeast Asia “by whatever means” would “critically endanger” US “security interests,” understood in the usual sense. The guiding concerns are articulated in the public record as well.

Rethinking Camelot by Noam Chomsky