Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss 
On this joint Policy Forum and New Mandala podcast, Josh Kurlantzick discusses his new book on the CIA’s secret war in Laos, and how the legacy of the conflict still echoes through US foreign policy today.
America’s Secret War in Laos was a proxy conflict fought during the height of the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, and was orchestrated by the US Central Intelligence Agency. While the enormous devastation inflicted upon Laos during the war is now well-known, the details of the CIA’s role has, until now, been a tale left largely untold. In this week’s Policy Forum Pod, Josh Kurlantzick discusses his new book ‘A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA’, which draws upon extensive interviews and newly declassified CIA records to tell the tale of the Secret War. Listen here: http://bit.ly/PFPLaosWar
Josh Kurlantzick is a Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, and was previously a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has served as columnist and correspondent for numerous news organisations, including the Economist, the New Republic, and the American Prospect. He is also the winner of the Luce Scholarship for journalism in Asia.
Prior to its operations in Laos, the CIA was a fairly regular, run-of-the-mill intelligence agency, as Kurlantzick explains.
“They did spying, they collected intelligence, they did sabotage, they did all sorts of dark arts… there was only a relatively limited amount of military aspects to it.”
But in the 1960s, as violence swept across Southeast Asia, the CIA began an operation that would sow the seeds of its eventual military transformation.
“It was at the time of the Domino Theory, where US officials believed that if Laos became communist, communist forces would move into Thailand, they could move into other parts of Southeast Asia. So by the time Eisenhower handed over power to Kennedy, there was a significant focus on Laos, and it was one of the top foreign policy issues to the United States,” says Kurlantzick
The fear of Laos turning communist prompted US policymakers to launch a CIA operation to train and arm a number of anti-communist fighters in Laos, mostly ethnic Hmong, who could help stop the advance of Laotian and North Vietnamese communist troops.
“They were supposed to be kind of… an anti-communist Viet Cong,” says Kurlantzick. “They were the United States’ guerrilla force. It was like the reverse of South Vietnam.”
However as the war went on, the operation morphed into a massive and devastating US bombing campaign, with the goal of killing as many North Vietnamese as possible. The bombing was largely orchestrated by the CIA, and began to take the place of a coherent strategy on the ground.
“It got to a point where by the late 60s early 70s, bombers were dropping tonnes and tonnes of bombs on Laos, some of it with no clear reason other than that just they had flown to drop some of the bombs in North Vietnam, didn’t find targets, and dropped them in Laos on the way back to Thailand so as not to land with all of them.”
While Laos was left devastated by the war, the CIA had meanwhile become a much more powerful organisation.
“Laos showed… that the CIA could be a major player in the US foreign policy establishment, on the level of the Defense Department and the State Department.”
The CIA had developed the ability to launch paramilitary operations – a lesson that it would bring to bear in future operations around the world. As Kurlantzick said, a modern echo of this today can be found in the US War on Terror.
“Since 2001, the gloves are off, and much of what we saw in Laos has been repeated in other parts of the world, in which the CIA and US Special Forces are really unleashed.”
Josh Kurlantzick was in conversation with Policy Forum’s Nicky Lovegrove.
Josh Kurlantzick is a Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, and was previously a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
This piece is published in partnership with Policy Forum – Asia and the Pacific’s platform for public policy analysis, opinion, debate, and discussion.
In 1972, while in Vietnam and Taiwan as a USAF freight handler , Air America, the CIA Air force attempted to recruit me. Air Americas flew gray, unmarked, mostly cargo aircraft, around Asia. The kind of stuff in the movie of that name was for real, and I wanted no part of the combat situations I would have been in. I hope I can talk about this by now.
0
0
Thanks for this. Interesting. The CIA might have been “a fairly regular, run-of-the-mill intelligence agency,” but its predecessor, OSS, was anything but. Setting up – or trying to – e.g. foreign insurgencies was a part of the Torch operation and as Thailand types will know, OSS worked closely with the Seri Thai (Wild Bill Donovan, who set up OSS, was US Ambassador to Thailand in 1953-54). Bay of Pigs was not quite run of the mill, under a CIA run by former OSS man Allen Dulles.
0
0
Kurlintzik’s thesis is confused. The CIA has – from its’ foundation as OSS sucessor, ALWAYS had two wings : 1, the analytical, 2) the operational. Best coverage of this remains the book Air America. Is Kurlintzik – who I briefly met in Bangkok, years ago – adding anything new ? The Dulles brothers confused their own personal interest, with US national interest -eg. Guatamala 1954. They made an even worse self-interested mess re. Vietnam, and Laos. Ridiculous that Laos was a threat to Thailand, for ideological – or even strategic – reasons. The ONLY way that will EVER be so, is by ETHNIC, REGIONAL identity politics, and uprising by Isaarn to re-join their Lao phi-nong: which the Chinese-based Communist Party of Thailand was FUNDAMENTALLY flawed at.
0
0
“Confused”? I won’t be so charitable.
No, this ‘book’ is nothing more than yet another commercialized PhD thesis. Whose author is desperately trying to use it in order to obtain tenure somewhere or another.
To promote the “thesis”, if you can call it that, that prior to the late 1960’s, the CIA was a run-of-the-mill intelligence service takes chutzpah, but that doesn’t stop it being balderdash, and demonstrably so.
As others above have pointed out, there is a long list of very hot, very militarized operations in the CIA’s canon, long before Laos was a twinkle in the eye of Langley:
1948, Italy, the CIA in league with their clients the mafia, subvert the Italian election and ensure Christian Democrat rule for most of the next forty years, and the rampant corruption, political violence – including the death of at least one PM (OK< PM in waiting) in Aldo Moro, that thus ensued
late 1940 – the present?, CIA sponsored Operation Galdio – we still don't know the true depth and scope of this "stay behind" programme, but what has been revealed makes the WiKi Leaks stuff seem tame
1953, Iran (Persia) – CIA sponsored coup against the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh
1954, Guatemala – CIA sponsored coup against the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz
and on and on, and on………..
The idea that one day in the mid 1960's this up-to-now quiet, retiring, office wallah suddenly discovered (in the unlikely backwater of Laos of all places) his inner Chuck Norris is not only fanciful, it simply doesn't accord with the facts.
Sadly, this is yet another example of modern academia. All self promotion and precious little original research and intellectual substance.
0
0
Grumpy and devastating. I love it!
0
0