Joshua Kurlantzick

Over 50 years ago, the United States decided to task its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with training guerrilla soldiers to fight against the communist government in Laos. The resulting “secret war” would stretch for two decades, with devastating effects on Laos (even today, the country remains plagued by unexploded bombs) and on the ethnic Hmong who formed the bulk of the CIA-trained force. The conflict would also forever reshape the role of the CIA and even America’s approach to war.

Joshua Kurlantzick, Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, details this “secret war” and its modern-day echoes in A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA. He spoke with The Diplomat about the background of the conflict and how it continues to impact Laos, the United States, and their relationship.

The so-called secret war in Laos, which the book explores, occurred during the height of U.S. worries about communism in Southeast Asia during the Cold War and fears about the region’s “falling dominoes.” Can you describe for us in greater detail the broader regional context under which the war occurred?

The Eisenhower administration had become increasingly concerned, after the end of the French presence in Southeast Asia, that Laos was critical to preventing communism from spreading from Vietnam west into Laos, Thailand, and other parts of South Asia. The conservative Thai government, dominated then as now by military officers, strongly shared this view, especially since Thailand and Laos have a long and porous border. In reality, communism never became a significant threat to the Thai government's stability, but this was the fear at the time.

The United States and Thailand were already heavily involved in Laos, which was in the middle of a growing civil conflict, when, in late 1960, an obscure Laotian army officer launched a surprise coup and stunningly took control of the government. He appeared to just want to make Laos neutralist, reduce corruption, and reduce the impact of foreign actors, but his coup was quickly backed by the Soviet Union, and the Eisenhower (and incoming Kennedy) governments, as well as the Thai government, were terrified of the ramifications of the Laos coup. They supported conservative generals who pushed back against the coup, widening the Laos civil conflict.

Ultimately, in early 1961, as the Laos civil war grew in size, the Eisenhower and then Kennedy administrations made the decision to begin a covert action project to arm and train anti-communist Laotian forces. Most of these forces would be ethnic Hmong, and the training, arming, and overall paramilitary operations would grow into the largest U.S. covert action in history.

You note that while the Laos war is often regarded as “forgotten” in the minds of the American public and among U.S. foreign policymakers, it in fact had a lasting legacy not just on U.S. policy, but in other areas, like the development of the CIA as well as the memory of the Hmong guerrillas themselves. How, in your view, should we think about the legacy of the war?

It's mostly forgotten now, and in fact Laos was the least understood Southeast Asian conflict among Americans even in the ‘60s and ‘70s; there was much less interest in Laos than in Vietnam or Cambodia. But Laos was the place where the CIA, which previously had been focused on traditional spying activities like collecting intelligence and doing acts of political sabotage, gained large-scale paramilitary experience. Essentially, in many ways the CIA and the U.S. embassy in Laos managed large parts of the war, a first for the Agency. That power ebbed in the 1970s but never went away, and today the CIA is heavily involved in paramilitary activities – its focus indeed has become paramilitary activities all over the globe.

The book also explores the operation through the eyes of the key personalities that were central to it, including their perspectives after it had ended. Are there any broader lessons that U.S. policymakers and other interested observers can take from this particular episode and these perspectives?

I think the biggest lesson is that it's highly problematic to shift responsibility for war powers away from the uniformed military to to intelligence agencies and/or Special Forces. They are, almost by design, harder to oversee and less accountable to oversight. This has some benefits for U.S. policy, but it can also lead to unchecked abuses and simply wrong-headed policy.

Toward the end of the book, you explore how Laos has evolved as a country since the end of Vietnam War, noting both continuities as well as changes that have occurred. How do you assess the state of the country today?

I think Laos is still in pretty dire shape. The economy has made some strides since the late 1990s, with high growth rates, but this has not done much to reduce income inequality. Laos is still ruled by one of the most repressive regimes in the world. People travel to Laos as tourists and don't really understand this, but Laos is roughly as repressive as Vietnam, China, Eritrea, or Uzbekistan. The lack of any clear opposition movement in Laos, which would be repressed by the government, and the fact that Laos is still mostly rural, creates a facade where visitors can ignore the country's repression. 

The legacy of the war remains substantial – Laos was, per capita, the most heavily bombed nation on earth, and unexploded bombs are still a huge impediment to building infrastructure and just daily life in Laos. In addition, after 1975, and the end of the Indochina War, the Laos government reportedly took massive revenge against many Hmong and other groups who had fought on the anti-communist side, and the legacy of the war's anger lingers still today. Parts of Laos remain virtually no-go zones for foreigners, controlled essentially by the security forces, and there are still reports of armed Hmong groups active in central and northern Laos – there has been a spike of violence in central Laos in the past year.

The book also juxtaposes the lingering legacy of the war against the improvements in U.S.-Lao relations, most recently during the Obama administration. How would you describe that relationship today, and how do you see its trajectory over the next few years under the new administration?

The Obama administration tried to improve U.S.-Laotian relations as part of the rebalance to Asia. Both former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama visited Laos – the president for the ASEAN summit last year. The U.S. and Laos stepped up a broad range of cooperation on environmental and health issues, and Laos acceded to the World Trade Organization.

But still, the bilateral relationship remains very limited. Laos is reliant on its economic and diplomatic relationships with China, Vietnam, and Thailand, and the United States is a far-off country that has relatively little actual influence in Laos' economy or politics. That's not surprising – Laos is a tiny country and a small economy, far from the United States.

What is surprising, instead, is that such a small country could become, for a time in the late 1950s and early 1960s, one of the central concerns of U.S. foreign policy makers – so important to U.S. policy that it was one of the biggest topics of discussion during the Eisenhower/Kennedy transition period. That's what's so shocking today.