![]() To the French, having Laos as a protectorate was a means to control the Mekong River, a valuable trade route through Southeast Asia.įrance’s grasp on Laos first slipped in 1945, when the Japanese occupied Laos in the closing days of World War II. Decades-old craters are all over the village.Įuropeans entered the fray in 1893, when France declared Laos part of French Indochina. The secret war in Laos had begun.Ī man walks past a 30+ year-old bomb crater in the middle of a village in Laos. The 1962 International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos, signed by China, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, the United States and 10 other countries, forbid signees from directly invading Laos or establishing military bases there. Johnson and Richard Nixon, all approved escalating air support for the guerrilla fighters, but not publicly. Their mission: To disrupt communist supply routes across the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Vietnam.Įisenhower’s successors in the White House: John F. On the day of his farewell address in 1961, President Eisenhower approved the CIA’s training of anti-communist forces in the mountains of Laos. “If Laos were lost, the rest of Southeast Asia would follow,” Eisenhower told his National Security Council. Eisenhower’s Domino Theory of keeping communism at bay. Its proximity to Mao Zedong’s China made it critical to Dwight D. Laos is a landlocked country bordered by China and Myanmar to the North, Vietnam to the East, Cambodia to the South and Thailand and the Mekong River to the West. ![]()
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