"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. Now, with respect to the specific value of Indochina... it takes away, in its economic aspects, rubber, tin, rice and so forth. Asia, after all, has already lost some 450 million of its peoples to the communist dictatorship, and we simply can't afford greater losses."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, press conference, Washington D.C., 7 April 1954. The press conference took place three weeks before the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and during the Geneva Conference that would divide Vietnam.