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

by Joshua Kurlantzick

Book Overview

1960. President Eisenhower was focused on Laos, a tiny Southeast Asian nation. Washington feared the country would fall to communism, triggering a domino effect in the rest of Southeast Asia. In January 1961, Eisenhower approved the CIA's Operation Momentum, a plan to create a proxy army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces in Laos. Kurlantzick shows how the brutal war lasted nearly two decades, killed one-tenth of Laos's total population, and...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1451667868
• ISBN13: 9781451667868
• Release Date: January 2017
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"