TY - JOUR
AU - Clymer, Kenton
AB - 1168 : d iploma tic h istor y kent on cly m er Seth Jacobs, The Universe Unraveling: American Foreign Policy in Cold War Laos. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012. 312 pp, $35.00. The Universe Unraveling is a wonderful, spellbinding account, one of those rare books that you really do not want to put down. It joins recent works by a new generation of scholars on American involvement in Southeast Asia. Jacobs exam- ines American involvement in Laos (a relatively unstudied area) during the Dwight Eisenhower administration and, less comprehensively, the John F. Kennedy administration. Influenced by diplomatic historians who emphasize cultural factors, Jacobs argues that American perceptions of the Laos were the most important determinants of American policy. Throughout the book Jacobs makes it clear that American views of Laos had not advanced much since the days of Rudyard Kipling. The language was less overtly racist, perhaps, but all the negative stereotypes of colonial peoples in the late nineteenth century were still around half a century later. Americans portrayed the Laos as unusually lazy, feckless, weak, docile, apathetic, gutless, spineless, useless, feeble, and dreamy (p. 14). Above all, they had no military skills and did not want 
TI - Culture and Diplomacy in Cold War Laos
JO - Diplomatic History
DO - 10.1093/dh/dht062
DA - 2013-11-26
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/culture-and-diplomacy-in-cold-war-laos-dCyN7pZj07
SP - 1168
EP - 1170
VL - 37
IS - 5
DP - DeepDyve
ER -