Read the statement. 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. – Dwight D. Eisenhower (April 7, 1954) How did President Eisenhower’s comments impact American foreign policy? Eisenhower’s views became the basis for the US economic foreign policy that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower held that US involvement abroad was a slippery slope that would lead to further Communist occupations. American foreign policy held that expanding democratic societies would increase the US sphere of influence. US foreign policy began to directly intervene in Southeast Asia to restrict Communist military insurgents.

The excerpt within the speech is now known as the "domino theory." This is the idea that if one country fell to communism, neighboring countries would also fall to communism. This fear of communism spreading caused the American federal government to adopt the policy of containment. Containment is focused on stopping the spread of communism.

This is why the US will intervene in different Southeast Asian countries like Korea and Vietnam. America fought in both these wars in hopes of stopping the spread of communism within this region.