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H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews, Vol. XIV, No. 29 (2013) falls squarely into this scholarship on the cultural dimensions of American foreign relations. Indeed, The Universe Unraveling appears in Mark Bradley’s series with Cornell University Press 5 and is favorably blurbed on the back cover by Andrew Rotter for its cultural approach. At the heart of Jacobs’ book is the argument that it was the negative, essentialized, and often racist American perception of the Lao, juxtaposed with the more positive image of the warlike and mature Vietnamese, that led President Kennedy to accept the neutralization of Laos in 1962 in order to take a stand against communism in Vietnam. Whether in diplomatic cables or popular culture, Jacobs shows, the Lao appeared in the American mind as “childlike”, “effeminate” and “lazy” beings (6, 12-13). Jacobs’ selection of Laos as a subject is fully justified. First, no one has attempted a cultural analysis of American policy towards this country. This despite the fact that Washington came extraordinarily close to going to war over it in order to hold off world communism at the Indochinese? pass. Two, the primary source material on Laos is enormous given the importance it acquired under the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. Indeed, Jacobs successfully mines the relevant memoirs and a large body of diplomatic correspondence held in the National Archives and Records Administration and presidential archives in the United States. He also makes wonderful use of the press and the private papers of several non-official actors, such as Tom Dooley, Edgar Buell, and Joel Halpern. Third, Jacobs’ shift to Laos and his argument contrasting the official American perception of the Lao to that of the Vietnamese builds upon his earlier research and culturally calibrated books on Ngo Dinh Diem and American policy towards the Republic of Vietnam. 6 Jacobs provides a wonderful cast of characters and analyzes them fairly and effectively to make his point about the importance of culture, race, and ideology in the formulation of American policy towards Laos. Dooley is there; he was everywhere it seems. Jacobs’ discussion of this indefatigable man, his contacts and activities, including his radio show beaming straight into Middle America from Laos is engrossing. Less flamboyant though just as important was the grieving Indiana farmer Edgar Buell, who also landed in Laos with the sincere hope of helping the people. He was soon living among villagers, learning the language, and doing everything in his power to get American aid out of urban blackmarkets and to the farmers in the countryside – and not without success. But he also became deeply involved in local politics and eventually found himself unwittingly helping the CIA. Despite their differences, Dooley, Buell, and even the journalist Stanley Karnow contributed to the essentializing the Lao character (lazy, indolent, and happy-go-lucky) in the American popular imagination. 5 “The United States and the World’ at http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/collections/?collection_id=186 The other editors of the series are David Engerman and Paul Kramer 6 Seth Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005) and his Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America's War in Vietnam, 1950-1963, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006). 18 | P age
H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews, Vol. XIV, No. 29 (2013) Back in Vientiane, Jacobs takes us into the downright scary mind of Ambassador Graham Parsons, whose colonial paternalism, aggressive Cold War worldview, and support from the highest reaches of power in Washington contributed to destabilizing Lao politics from 1954, triggering civil war, its internationalization, and thereby ensuring the meltdown of this small country. Dommen also made this point powerfully in his book, but Jacobs adds a much needed cultural take on it. On the other extreme were men such as the American anthropologist, Joel Halpern. Like Buell, Halpern wanted to help get massive American aid and “modernity” to the people in the countryside and did his best to spur American officials into action. Both Halpern and Buell were critical of the American diplomatic community. Trapped in a bubble, few Americans actually knew the Lao or Laos, let alone their needs and hopes. Jacobs provides one of the best accounts available of how “Little Americas” take form abroad in the form of diplomatic missions (chapter 3). In his 1973 review of Frances Fitzgerald’s Fire in the Lake, David Marr pointed out that she had, in reality, written two books, one on the cultural construction of the Vietnamese national character (“little short of disastrous,” he said), the other on American diplomacy towards Ngo Dinh Diem (an analytical success according to Marr). 7 Like other diplomatic historians looking to make the cultural turn, Jacobs has a hard time reconciling the cultural side of his story with the nuts and bolts of the diplomatic one he also wants to tell or feels compelled to do so. In his earlier research on Ngo Dinh Diem and the United States, Jacobs got around this problem neatly by publishing two books, one on the cultural dimensions of the American interaction with Diem (using race and religion as his analytical categories), the other being a more straightforward diplomatic history of the “origins of America’s war in Vietnam”. In his book on Laos, Jacobs combines both stories into one book with the ultimate goal of showing that the negative American perception of the Lao and the positive one of the Vietnamese was crucial to Kennedy’s decision not to take a stand in Laos but rather in Vietnam. Unlike Fitzgerald, Jacobs’ best chapters are on the cultural aspects of American policy towards Laos (chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6). Less satisfying is his discussion of the complex Lao crisis and the second Geneva conference that ultimately defused it. Readers unfamiliar with the Laos crisis – its complex local, regional, and international dimensions – will struggle to understand what, exactly, is going on and why and how Laos became such an apparent obsession for two presidents. Jacobs’ discussion of Lao politics could be expanded. Nor does he have much to say on the roles played by the Chinese, the Soviets, the British, the French, or the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). Qiang Zhai and Mari Olsen show that the Chinese shared the DRV’s desire from 1958 to push the Pathet Lao as hard as the Americans were backing the far right. 8 Nor did the Sino-Soviet break prevent Moscow and Beijing from collaborating on Laos at Geneva. Jacobs could have better explained how the 565. 7 David Marr, Review of Fire in the Lake, in Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 32, no 3 (May 1973), pp. 564- 8 Qiang Zhai, ‘Buying Time for the Pathet Lao : China and the Geneva Conference on Laos, 1961-1962’; Mari Olsen, ‘The Soviet Union and the Fight over Laos, 1961-1962.’ 19 | P age
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H-Diplo Roundtables, Vol. XIV, No. 29 (2013) - H-Net

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