The fall of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to the forces of communism in the spring of 1975 heralded a distinct shift in the balance of power in the West Pacific. The United States had lost its footholds in the Indochinese Peninsula, was being forced to evacuate military bases in Thailand, and faced a demand for the negotiation of new arrangements to govern the use of naval and air bases in the Philippines. There was a rise in Asian nationalisms, and a corresponding growth of local trends toward neutralism with respect to American “security” projects.

The domino effect of those developments had been less pronounced than some of the American “worstcase” analysts had speculated a quarter-century before; the setback was nevertheless of a magnitude that seemed to call for a massive revision of our grand strategy for Asia. In fact, certain basic American strategic concepts were projected unchanged into the future.