Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Fifth Freedom
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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must maintain our military strength, particularly air power: “without
superior air power America is a bound and throttled giant; impotent and
easy prey to any yellow dwarf with a pocket knife.” 56
The sense that we will be “a pitiful, helpless giant” unless we act
forthrightly in defense against the overwhelming power of our Third
World adversaries, in the terms used later by President Nixon in
announcing the invasion of Cambodia, is a common refrain in US
political discourse, reminiscent of a rich and spoiled child who whines
that he does not have everything—though to render the image more
accurate, we should place a squadron of storm troopers at the child’s
command.
This version of the domino theory is undoubtedly believed at some
level of consciousness, and expresses in a vulgar way the concerns over
maintaining the “disparity” outlined in more sophisticated terms by
Kennan at the time when Lyndon Johnson was voicing his fears about
the “yellow dwarves.” This crude domino theory is, however, regularly
dismissed with scorn if things go sour and policy must be revised. But
there is also a rational version of the domino theory, the operative
version, which is rarely questioned and has considerable plausibility;
adopting the terminology of the planners, we might call it the “rotten
apple theory.” The rotten apple theory was outlined by Dean Acheson
when he concocted a remarkable series of fabrications concerning
alleged Soviet pressure on Greece, Turkey and Iran in February 1947 in
a successful effort to convince reluctant congressional leaders to support
the Truman Doctrine, an incident that he cites with much pride in his
memoirs; “Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the
corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the east” and would
“carry infection” to Asia Minor, Egypt and Africa, as well as Italy and
France, which were “threatened” by Communist participation in
democratic politics. 57 This adroit and cynical invocation of a fabricated