In 1994 and 1999, Frank Ninkovich published two seminal works of American foreign policy history, Modernity and Power and The Wilsonian Century. In these volumes, Ninkovich brilliantly reinterpreted the domino theory as a metaphor for twentieth-century American foreign policy going back to Woodrow Wilson. According to Ninkovich, Wilson interpreted World War I as proof positive that any war, anywhere, could escalate into a world war involving the United States; America therefore had to prevent wars all over the world in order to ensure its own safety. Transmuted into the domino theory, this idea became the defining and tragic thrust of American cold war policy in the second half of the twentieth century, despite the fact that the dominoes never seemed to fall even where (as in Vietnam) the United States failed to stop them.
It's worth asking what impact the current wave of Middle Eastern revolutions has for Ninkovich's theory. After all, the revolutions are in fact a wave, aren't they? Doesn't that mean that the dominoes are falling this time, and that the domino theory is more useful than Ninkovich would like to admit? To answer that question, I want first to distinguish between two types of domino theory in a way that Ninkovich doesn't. The result, I think, bolsters Ninkovich's view while simultaneously salvaging a very different version of the domino theory that can help explain current events in the Middle East.