The Universe Unraveling: American Foreign Policy in Cold War Laos

Seth Jacobs

During the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, Laos was positioned to become a major front in the Cold War. Yet American policymakers ultimately chose to resist communism in neighboring South Vietnam instead. Two generations of historians have explained this decision by citing logistical considerations. Laos's landlocked, mountainous terrain, they hold, made the kingdom an unpropitious place to fight, while South Vietnam - possessing a long coastline, navigable rivers, and all-weather roads - better accommodated America's military forces. The Universe Unraveling is a provocative reinterpretation of U.S.-Laos relations in the years leading up to the Vietnam War. Seth Jacobs argues that Laos boasted several advantages over South Vietnam as a battlefield, notably its thousand-mile border with Thailand, whose leader was willing to allow Washington to use his nation as a base from which to attack the communist Pathet Lao.

More significant in determining U.S. policy in Southeast Asia than strategic appraisals of the Laotian landscape were cultural perceptions of the Lao people. Jacobs contends that U.S. policy toward Laos under Eisenhower and Kennedy cannot be understood apart from the traits Americans ascribed to their Lao allies. Drawing on diplomatic correspondence and the work of iconic figures like "celebrity saint" Tom Dooley, Jacobs finds that the characteristics American statesmen and the American media attributed to the Lao - laziness, immaturity, and cowardice - differed from the traits assigned the South Vietnamese, making Lao chances of withstanding communism aggression appear dubious. The Universe Unraveling combines diplomatic, cultural, and military history to provide a new perspective on how prejudice can shape policy decisions and even the course of history.

«It is impossible to understand U.S. intervention in Vietnam in the 1960s without understanding what happened in Laos between 1954 and 1962. Seth Jacob's cultural approach to U.S.-Lao relations offers a very exciting way to analyze events in that tortured nation. Jacobs has discovered enormously suggestive evidence that the policies the United States pursued toward Laos were shaped by how U.S. policymakers thought of the Laotian people.»
-Andrew J. Rotter
Charles A. Dana Professor of History, Colgate University

Seth JACOBS is Associate Professor of History at Boston College.

publication year: 2012
328 pages
ISBN: 978-9971-69-665-8  Paperback  US$30.00  S$38.00

Our edition is available in East and Southeast Asia