Western politicians have been running around like a bunch of Chicken Littles lately screaming that Russia will soon be invoading all of Europe and the United States will be forced to send troops. This is similar to the Domino Theory as weaponized in Vietnam except it is even less likely. We are led by buffoons.
Communism was indeed advancing following World War II, and it was an aggressive ideology that claimed that its spread around the world was inevitable. So there was some plausibility to these Domino Theory warnings that dominated the discourse during my youth in the 1960s. Russia, on the other hand, has retreated massively and voluntarily in the past 35 years. It has no track record in this time of expanding and no ideology of expansion. Only twice has it drawn the line -- in Georgia in 2008 and recently (2022) in Ukraine. In these two instances Russia has intervened on the side of ethnic Russians in conditions of civil war. There are just not very many other places in Europe with a lot of ethnic Russians, so further Russian military intervention is unlikely, especially far afield in places such as Germany.
There has been a sort of domino effect in the other direction. Ever since Russia pulled back from the Cold War in 1989, the U.S.-led West has been advancing in Russia's direction, expanding the Western empire. So it's not that the concept of cascading advances is fundamentally flawed. Rather, the Domino Theory is used to blind us to other considerations including military strength, civilizational history, and practical politics.
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