1954 in the Vietnam War 5 April The National Security Council met again to consider U.S. intervention at Điện Biên Phủ. The Army, including Army Chief of Staff General Matthew Ridgway, was negative, stating that U.S. intervention would require 7 army divisions and heavy air support. 7 April President Eisenhower used the phrase "falling dominoes" in a press conference. This was the origin of the domino theory which postulated that if Vietnam became communist the other nearby states would soon follow. The domino theory was a prominent justification for the Vietnam War in the United States during the 1960s. 14 April Secretary of State John
Historiography of the Cold War use nuclear weapons to stop Soviet expansion, though they failed to do so. New Left historians Joyce and Gabriel Kolko's "The Limits of Power: The World and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1945–1954" (1972) has also received considerable attention in the historiography on the Cold War. The Kolkos argued American policy was both reflexively anticommunist and counterrevolutionary. The United States was fighting not necessarily Soviet influence, but also any form of challenge to the American economic and political prerogatives through covert or military means. In this sense, the Cold War is less a story of rivalry between two blocs, but more a