Use the feature New Zealand forces in Asia 1948–72 and your own knowledge and ideas to help you complete the following activities.
Read this extract from a press conference given by President Eisenhower in April 1954. In it he refers to what was to become known as the domino theory.
President Eisenhower's news conference, 7 April 1954
Q. Robert Richards, Copley Press:
Mr President, would you mind commenting on the strategic importance of Indo-China to the free world? I think there has been, across the country, some lack of understanding on just what it means to us.
The President:
You have, of course, both the specific and the general when you talk about such things.
First of all, you have the specific value of a locality in its production of materials that the world needs.
Then you have the possibility that many human beings pass under a dictatorship that is inimical to the free world.
Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the 'falling domino' principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.
Now, with respect to the first one, two of the items from this particular area that the world uses are tin and tungsten. They are very important. There are others, of course, the rubber plantations and so on.
Then with respect to more people passing under this domination, Asia, after all, has already lost some 450 million of its peoples to the communist dictatorship, and we simply can't afford greater losses.
But when we come to the possible sequence of events, the loss of Indo-China, of Burma, of Thailand, of the Peninsula, and Indonesia following, now you begin to talk about areas that not only multiply the disadvantages that you would suffer through loss of materials, sources of materials, but now you are talking really about millions and millions and millions of people.
Finally, the geographical position achieved thereby does many things. It turns the so-called island defensive chain of Japan, Formosa, of the Philippines and to the southward; it moves in to threaten Australia and New Zealand.
It takes away, in its economic aspects, that region that Japan must have as a trading area or Japan, in turn, will have only one place in the world to go – that is, toward the communist areas in order to live.
So, the possible consequences of the loss are just incalculable to the free world.
In reference to this press conference:
a. How does Eisenhower appear to divide the world?
b. What are some of the reasons Eisenhower gives for the need to prevent the first domino falling?
c. What has already happened to 450 million people in Asia according to the president?
d. Which countries is Eisenhower referring to when he speaks of '450 million people'?
e. What link does Eisenhower make between Japan and the domino theory?
f. How might this press conference have influenced thinking in New Zealand?
g. Quote ONE fact and ONE opinion from the reply given by Eisenhower at the April news conference.
Role Play
Your class could re-enact a press conference.
Imagine you are a member of the press at a press conference held by the New Zealand Prime Minister, Keith Holyoake, in May 1965. Write three questions to ask the prime minister about whether or not New Zealand should send combat troops to Vietnam. Then, write the replies to these questions that could be expected from him. Your questions and replies should consider the prime minister's justification for becoming involved and his responses to reasons for not going.
- A member of the class could assume the role of Keith Holyoake and the class could select six questions to ask him. Some students could be the various reporters asking the questions. The remainder of the class can record the questions and answers, and a recording of the conference could be made. At the end of the conference, check the accuracy of the notes made by the class 'recorders'.
- This would be an ideal opportunity to discuss the purpose and nature of political press conferences.
