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
Culture during the Cold War of historical materialism to the future, scorning Western nihilistic writings and predicting a peaceful transition to universal communism. Scientocratic visions of the future nevertheless implicitly critiqued the bureaucratically developed socialism of the present. Dissident science fiction writers emerged, such as the Strugatski brothers, Boris and Arkadi, with their "social fantasies," problematizing the role of intervention in the historical process, or Stanislaw Lem's tongue-in-cheek exposures of man's cognitive limitations. In addition to fears of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, during the Cold War, there were also fears of a direct, large scale conventional conflict between