949, Secretary of State Dean Acheson indicated that the United States then viewed the struggle of the French against the Vietminh as a facet of the West's opposition to world communism in the Cold War. In May 1950, the United States began military and economic assistance to the French, which by 1954 reached $2 billion or more than 75 percent of the total cost of the war to date.
As he explained his domino theory to the press on April 7, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower viewed the preservation of a non-communist South Vietnam as a vital interest of the United States: "if someone sets up a row of dominoes, and
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