what the U.S. Senator William Fulbright would call “the arrogance of power,” the idea that America’s might gave it the right to remake foreign societies and governments in its own image. But the extensive U.S. involvement in the Congo is also explained by a Cold War shibboleth: the domino theory. If a single country fell to the Communists, then one by one, so would neighboring ones. The lack of evidence for this theory—never before had a Communist takeover actually set off such a chain reaction—did not keep it from becoming an article of faith among U.S. policy makers and the American public.
