A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of the Military CIA.

• Author: Clymer, Kenton
• Position: Book review

A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of the Military CIA. By Joshua Kurlantzick. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017. Hardcover: 323pp.

This aptly, but ironically, titled book tells the story of US involvement in Laos from the early 1950s through the secret war of the 1960s and beyond. Like many journalistic accounts, the book relies substantially on interviews with the American participants and the Hmong military leader Vang Pao, but it is also informed by recent scholarship and some documentary sources. Its focus is on events and actions in Laos, though it does not ignore policy in Washington. Joshua Kurlantzick argues that, despite the enormous damage and huge casualties inflicted in Laos and the ultimate triumph of communist forces, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counted Laos, the first war that the agency directed, among its great successes. Laos provided the template for the militarization of the CIA and its future wars. The author, however, does not think the results were positive for Laos, the CIA or the United States.

Although the book provides a more or less comprehensive account, throughout there is particular attention on four individuals: Vang Pao; Bill Lair, a CIA operative who was there in the beginning and became close to Vang Pao; Tony Poe, another CIA operative who attempted to raise an indigenous army from people not connected with the Hmong; and Bill Sullivan, the diplomat who ran the secret war in its more expansive phase beginning in 1965. Among these, Lair is clearly Kurlantzick's favourite. A World War II veteran, Lair had spent the 1950s in Southeast Asia, mostly in Thailand and, after the Geneva Conference settlement in 1954, in Laos as well, as a covert CIA agent. He knew the region, its languages, customs and culture, better than most Americans. And in 1961 it was his responsibility to inaugurate Operation Momentum to prevent a victory in Laos by the communist Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese allies.

Lair's plan was to have a small US footprint in Laos. Working with the talented Vang Pao, he would train Hmong fighters as guerrillas. They, along with some Thai guerrillas that Lair trained, would engage in low level harassing fights with the communists. This would serve Hmong interests, as well as those of the Americans. Lair had no interest in a large American presence in Southeast Asia and thought American objectives could be achieved as long as Asians themselves were engaged in...