ABSTRACT
It is difficult to ascertain the extent to which geopolitical ideas have directly influenced policy and action or whether they merely reflected the Zeitgeist, with both theories and actions manifesting ambient attitudes. In May 1967 McNamara recognized the error of the domino view and attempted to defuse it by reference to the Indonesian case and the first stirrings of Chinese realignment when he broached the subject of a more politic, less militarily quantitative approach to Johnson. Potential energy is imparted by standing the pieces on their ends aligned so that each strikes the next as it falls. It utterly fails to capture the significance of regional or national identity which we see daily dominating mankind's sense of self and place. What has been proposed here as an alternative to the domino model is something akin to that employed for market area analysis.
