The road to Pinkville
Sir : George Gale may unintentionally have misled us ('Viewpoint', 29 November)—it is not quite accurate to speak of Eisenhower adumbrating the domino theory as if he simply invented a notion to justify his feel- ing that a Communist victory in Indochina would be a catastrophe. Like most of the concepts current in the present American war effort—'Vietnamisation', for example, or 'pacification'—the domino theory was at least in part responsible for the French determination to hang on in Indochina at all costs. As early as 1951, General, de Lattre de Tassigny 'maintained—and secured government approval for his views —that the loss of Tonkin would lead to the West's loss of Indochina and South-East Asia' (Phillipe Devillers and Jean Lacouture, End of a War, Indo-China, 1954). It's surely futile to deny that the doMino theory is true—unless the Americans hold on, South-East Asia is gone. The question is solely whether it matters. George Gale is no doubt correct when he says that the argument that America's allies would lose faith in American pledges if she were to withdraw from Vietnam cannot be sus- tained. But. it is difficult to see that Eisen- hower was wrong when he implied that if South-East Asia went, the effect 'on our . . . global strategic position could be disastrous'. It is not at all clear why America's Euro- pean allies are prepared to wish such a disaster upon her when twice in a genera- tion they themselves haye gone to war—in Europe—to prevent one.
Peter Stein Bowden Court, 24 Ladbroke Road, London wil
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