A Great Place to Have a War

America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA

By: Joshua Kurlantzick

Narrated by: Tim Campbell

In 1960 President Eisenhower was focused on Laos, a tiny Southeast Asian nation few Americans had ever heard of. Washington feared the country would fall to Communism, triggering a domino effect in the rest of Southeast Asia. So 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. While remaining largely hidden from the American public and most of Congress, Momentum became the largest CIA paramilitary operation in the history of the United States. The brutal war, which continued under Presidents Kennedy and Nixon, lasted nearly two decades, killed one-tenth of Laos' total population, left thousands of unexploded bombs in the ground, and changed the nature of the CIA forever.

Joshua Kurlantzick gives us the definitive account of the Laos war and its central characters, including the four key people who led the operation - the CIA operative who came up with the idea, the Hmong general who led the proxy army in the field, the paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong, and the State Department careerist who took control over the war as it grew.

©2016 Joshua Kurlantzick (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Superb!... A Great Place to Have a War is rich and jarring in its historical insight, fast in its pacing, and gripping in its read. You won't want to put it down." (Douglas Waller, author of Disciples: The World War II Missions of the CIA Directors Who Fought for Wild Bill Donovan)

Another Southeast Asia disaster, courtesy of USA bureaucrats aka CIA

This book gave me some background on a conflict I was unaware of, and it gave me insight into some of the seemjnglg stupid or incompetent operations reportedly carried out by CIA or by others using their intelligence product in the following years. This book has a powerul story to tell, and like in life, there are soom good guys trying to do what is right, while under terrible supervisors and restrictive orders for combat. No wonder we are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, while bureaucrats want us to stay in Syria, and as of yesterday some are calling for us to go into Venezuela.

Very interesting read

Definitely a worth-while read if you're into SE Asia or the evolution of the CIA. There's no one thing about this book that stands out but it's a good source of information to fold in with other works.

Fills in a big gap

Very good listen and difficult subject but very enlightening for someone born in 1968. Highly recommend. It’s the nuts & bolts of the secret.

Excellent book

The US CIA war in Laos is fully covered in this excellent book. The changes in the CIA that this war engendered leads directly to the post 9/11 torture sites and failed efforts to rein in the CIA. Without intending to, the author paints a damning portrait of the CIA.

illuminating read of Laos' relationship with USA

Excellent history lesson that anyone with interest in Laos should check out. Engaging from beginning to end.