Laos. The universe unraveling: American foreign policy in Cold War Laos. By Seth Jacobs. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012 and Singapore: NUS Press, 2013. Pp. 328. Index.

Abstract

The universe unraveling: American foreign policy in Cold War Laos By SETH JACOBS Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012 and Singapore: NUS Press, 2013. Pp. 328. Index. doi: 10.1017/S0022463413000465 Professor Seth Jacobs writes readably, sometimes even racily, as we already know from his two books on Ngo Dinh Diem, America's Miracle Man (Duke University Press, 2004) and Cold War Mandarin (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006). There is no fashionable jargon nor burdensome 'theory'. But he puts forward arguments that are well worth the consideration of historians and indeed of others. His new book, covering American policy towards Laos between the Geneva conferences of 1954 and 1961-2, has two thrusts, which might be roughly categorised as 'cultural' and 'political'. The first is concerned with the American 'construction' of Laos and the Lao. Here Jacobs is at his most entertaining. He writes well of 'Dr Tom' and 'Mister Pop', and of the image of the laid-back Lao who were unwilling to fight, retarded children who were not prepared to help themselves or be helped, lethargic and party-loving. Jacobs also offers some telling images of the Americans, most memorably of the pompous ambassador J. Graham Parsons, and, more broadly, of the obsession with the Cold War and the way it provided a lens through which to view the Lao and the international situation in general. Neutralism was as unacceptable to the Americans as the failure to take sides was incomprehensible to Mao. The two images combined in a disastrously simplistic policy towards Laos. That is Jacobs' second focus. He gives some account of the policies of the Eisenhower Administration and of the changes that Kennedy made. It would be hard to obtain as clear a narrative from his book as that provided on a grander scale by Arthur Dommen, for example. Jacobs' prime intention is rather to argue that the 'cultural' attitudes he describes inflected the political approaches adopted even at the highest levels, not merely those of Americans who read their newspapers or listened on the radio to Dr Tom and Mr Pop. He is, he tells us, interpreting US policy towards Laos 'as a product of cultural prejudices rather than logistical considerations or other ostensibly more salient imperatives' (p. 7). Even those sympathetic to the Lao, like young Joel Halpern, were unable to shed a patronising attitude. Kennedy's decision for neutralisation, Jacobs suggests, was primarily based on his conviction that the Lao were 'incorrigible pacifists' (p. 250). Certainly American leaders were quite unwilling to appreciate the most sophisticated Lao they met, Prince Souvanna Phouma, or to make a realistic assessment of his policies. He was a neutralist: he had to be distrusted. Neutrality was the only option for Laos if it was to be kept intact, independent and at peace. But the message, as Jacobs puts it, 'never got through' (p. 18). Indeed Parsons, later assistant secretary of state, worked against Souvanna, who bitterly complained that the former was 'the most reprehensible and nefarious of men, ... the ignominious architect of [the] disastrous American policy toward Laos' (quoted, p. 102). But the Kennedy Administration was unwilling to accept Souvanna as prime minister, and most unwilling to drop the man the CIA had supported, Phoumi Nosavan. Indeed, after neutralisation the United States--while complaining of the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese--retained its connection with Phoumi, not to mention Vang Pao and the Hmong whom the United States had organised and armed under Eisenhower and to an even greater extent under his successor. …