Voting Together: Intergenerational Politics and Civic Engagement among Hmong Americans

By Carolyn Wong

Hmong American immigrants first came to the United States as refugees of the Vietnam War. Forty years on, they have made a notable impact in American political life. They have voter participation rates higher than most other Asian American ethnic groups, and they have won seats in local and state legislative bodies. Yet the average level of education among Hmong Americans still lags behind that of the general U.S. population and high rates of poverty persist in their community, highlighting a curious disparity across the typical benchmarks of immigrant incorporation.

Carolyn Wong analyzes how the Hmong came to pursue politics as a key path to advancement and inclusion in the United States. Drawing on interviews with community leaders, refugees, and the second-generation children of immigrants, Wong shows that intergenerational mechanisms of social voting underlie the political participation of Hmong Americans. Younger Hmong Americans engage older community residents in grassroots elections and conversation about public affairs. And in turn, within families and communities, elders often transmit stories that draw connections between ancient Hmong aspirations for freedom and contemporary American egalitarian projects.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Release date: Jun 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781503600430

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Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

This book has been published with the assistance of the University of Massachusetts Boston.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wong, Carolyn, author.

Title: Voting together : intergenerational politics and civic engagement among Hmong Americans / Carolyn Wong.

Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2017. | Series: Asian America | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016021289 (print) | LCCN 2016019337 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503600430 () | ISBN 9780804782234 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Hmong Americans—Politics and government. | Political participation—United States. | Intergenerational relations—Political aspects—United States. | Hmong Americans—Ethnic identity.

Classification: LCC E184.H55 (print) | LCC E184.H55 W66 2017 (ebook) | DDC 305.8959/72073—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021289

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Voting Together

INTERGENERATIONAL POLITICS AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AMONG HMONG AMERICANS

Carolyn Wong

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

ASIAN AMERICA

A series edited by Gordon H. Chang

The increasing size and diversity of the Asian American population, its growing significance in American society and culture, and the expanded appreciation, both popular and scholarly, of the importance of Asian Americans in the country’s present and past—all these developments have converged to stimulate wide interest in scholarly work on topics related to the Asian American experience. The general recognition of the pivotal role that race and ethnicity have played in American life, and in relations between the United States and other countries, has also fostered the heightened attention.

Although Asian Americans were a subject of serious inquiry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they were subsequently ignored by the mainstream scholarly community for several decades. In recent years, however, this neglect has ended, with an increasing number of writers examining a good many aspects of Asian American life and culture. Moreover, many students of American society are recognizing that the study of issues related to Asian America speak to, and may be essential for, many current discussions on the part of the informed public and various scholarly communities.

The Stanford series on Asian America seeks to address these interests. The series will include works from the humanities and social sciences, including history, anthropology, political science, American studies, law, literary criticism, sociology and interdisciplinary and policy studies.

A full list of titles in the Asian America series can be found online at www.sup.org/asianamerica

Contents

List of Tables, Figures, and Maps

Acknowledgments

Preface

1. Citizenship and Participation

2. Reconstructing Identity Narratives

3. Participation in Local Contexts

4. Views on Politics: From Leadership and the Grassroots

5. Human Rights Advocacy Across Borders

6. Deepening Intergenerational Participation

Appendixes

A. Interview Questions for High School Students

B. Interview Responses of High School Students

C. Interview Questions for Adults

D. Interview Responses of Adult Grassroots Participants

E. Interview Responses of Adult Business and Service Professional Individuals Recruited from Phone and Online Directories

Notes

Index

Tables, Figures, and Maps

TABLES

1.1. Poverty and incomes of selected racial-ethnic groups in the United States

3.1. Hmong Americans in four cities: Social indicators

3.2. Hmong Americans in four cities: Economic indicators

3.3. Per pupil educational expenditures in four states, 2006–2010

3.4. Registered nonprofits by county, 2010

FIGURES

1.1. Mean per capita income of Asian American ethnic groups

1.2. Educational attainment of Asian American ethnic groups

1.3. Occupational distributions: US and Hmong population

1.4. Common occupations of Hmong Americans: Detailed categories

1.5. Two photographs of young campaign volunteers, St. Paul, MN, 2010

2.1. A photograph of Tou SaiKo Lee and his grandmother Zhoua Cha

MAPS

1.1. Migration of Hmong Americans across regions of the United States, 1995–2000

1.2. In-migration of Hmong Americans to WI, MN, NC, and CA from other states, 1995–2000

Acknowledgments

I thank all the community participants who shared parts of their life story and rich insights for contributing to the research. Many colleagues and research assistants helped with this project. Special thanks are owed to Chai Lee, who led a team of undergraduate research assistants from four academic institutions. Chai continually offered inspiration and thoughtful suggestions, helping me learn from literature on the Hmong diaspora, refine the research design, conduct and transcribe interviews, and interpret findings. The team of research assistants was based at Carleton College and also included students from California State University–Fresno, Stanford University, and University of North Carolina–Charlotte. The team members included PaChia Yang, Via Yang, Fue Thao, Pa Lor, Gao Yang, Meena Xiong, Yer Yang, Koua Her, Derek Vang, Bill Vang, Sasah Xiong, Lilian Thaoxaochay, Mai See Vang, Arasely Linares, Lilisee Thao, Malee Yang, Xiao Zhou Zhu, and Claire Yanjing Du. Pao Xiong and Xai Lor provided additional research assistance. Several colleagues and research assistants helped with compilation of data shown in census-based maps and tables: John Her, Xinxin Xie, Meg Her, Wei-shin Fu, and S. S. Rishard.

I was fortunate to receive helpful suggestions about the project from many colleagues, including Mai Na Lee, Gary Yia Lee, Kou Yang, Mark Pfeifer, Karthick Ramakrishnan, Andy Aoki, Pei-te Lien, Paul Watanabe, Mae Ngai, Naran Bilik, Zhang Xiao, Yu Xiao Long, Robert Entenmann, Barbara Allen, the late Roy Grow, and Mary Lewis Grow. Lee Pao Xiong led a 2010 study tour to Thailand and Laos, where I was able to learn about the history and contemporary life of the Hmong in these two countries. Neal Thao gave advice on the translation of survey instruments. Parts of the manuscript were presented at panels of two annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, as well as the Association of Asian American Studies, the Boston Immigration and Urban History Seminar, and a seminar hosted by the Asian American Studies program at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. I thank the panelists and workshop participants for their excellent comments.

Linda Lee and Yang Lor helped me explore the scholarly literature on the Hmong in Asia and the United States when the project was first conceived. I thank Pam Tau Lee and Ben Lee for insights into research questions to pursue. At conferences and during reading groups and dinner conversations, Eric Shih, Hai Binh Nguyen, Linda Tran, Alex Tom, Calvin Miaw, Timmy Lu, Owen Li, Michael Liu, and May Louie joined me in lively conversations about the Hmong American experience and its relationship to Asian American history and American politics.

Nou Her, See Yee Yang, Mai Ka Moua, Jay Xiong, Mike Vang, Molina Tang, and Jonathan Eidsvaag contributed to ongoing academic conversations and a research conference at Carleton College on the experience of the Southeast Asian American in 2007. Many of the questions and themes explored in this book were discussed by students and faculty members at these sessions.

At the Institute for Visualization and Perception Research, University of Massachusetts–Lowell, Georges Grinstein, William Mass, and Jim Giddings provided assistance by creating maps of electoral districts in St. Paul and Fresno on the Weave platform.

Chai Lee, Mai See Yang, Mai Neng Yang, Mai Na Lee, Alice Wong Tucker, and Pao Her read drafts of the manuscript in part or in its entirety, contributing helpful suggestions. Brian Wong, Susan Stone Wong, Emily Wong, Julia Wong, Daniel Wong, the late Steven Stone, and Som Stone contributed fresh perspectives on the research when we discussed it at family gatherings.

Two reviewers provided detailed comments on the manuscript, enabling me to improve it. I thank Kate Wahl, Eric Brandt, and Margo Irvin at Stanford University Press for their assistance in publishing this work. Gordon Chang, editor of the Asian America series, gave ongoing support and thoughtful advice. I am especially grateful to my mother, Rose Wong, for proofreading and editing multiple drafts. I’d also like to thank the project manager at Newgen North America, Jay Harward. Katherine Faydash performed the copyediting, Diane Il Grande proofread the text, and Jay Marchand indexed the book. The dean of Carleton College provided support for research assistance and travel. All errors are of course solely my responsibility.

Preface

One of the legacies of the Vietnam War is the story of the Hmong refugees from Laos who resettled in the United States at the end of the military conflict in Southeast Asia. It is estimated that, when the communist forces prevailed in Laos in 1975, 13 percent of the country’s population fled as refugees. Most of the refugees were ethnically Hmong and resettled in the United States in the decades following the war.

The story of the Hmong refugees’ harrowing exodus from Laos has been told in riveting autobiographical accounts, historical narratives, poetry, and spoken-word performances since the war. Their escape to Thailand has been reenacted on the stage in community theaters and performed by children in public parks. The wartime experience of the Hmong was the subject of congressional hearings during the 1990s, when Hmong veterans of the Secret War in Laos, an arena of the Vietnam War, demanded recognition for their service in aiding the US military.

Forty years after the end of the war, however, few Americans know much about the history of this ethnic minority group from a small and distant country in Southeast Asia. In the scholarly literature, little attention is given to what bearing this ethnic history has on the process of immigrant inclusion or the meaning of citizenship to new Americans. Living in small ethnic communities or scattered across urban and suburban neighborhoods, many Hmong Americans are culturally isolated. The Hmong of Laos practiced a subsistence agriculture, and most were preliterate when they came as refugees to the United States. They might easily be ignored and neglected as an invisible minority group. Yet in the first decade of this century, the residents of several US cities have taken note of the political energy and acumen of Hmong Americans, particularly the American-educated offspring of the adults who came as heads of refugee families. Running successful campaigns for local and state elected office—primarily in California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin—a growing number of younger Hmong Americans have called attention not only to their people’s long and compelling ethnic story but also to the community’s more pressing contemporary needs. The spokespersons of a younger generation of Hmong Americans are forging new paths in projects aiming for the Hmong Americans to be fully included and recognized as contributors to the American community. The lessons from their efforts are not yet widely discussed in the national discourse on immigration, but they are becoming part of the political history of local cities and metropolitan areas.

In part, what can be learned from the Hmong American experience is the meaning of citizenship to immigrants of refugee origin. Internationally, the number of persons displaced by other wars and thrust into refugee status has grown to unprecedented levels. In 2015, the United Nations’ refugee agency, UNHCR, reported that 59.5 million persons were displaced, forced to leave their homes because of violent conflict and persecution. Among those persons, nearly 14 million had been displaced in 2014 alone, and about half were children.¹ Providing safe haven and shelter for refugees is a daunting challenge for the international community. Beyond the immediate crisis, national policy makers and leaders in local communities of resettlement have been called upon to help forge opportunities and assistance for the refugees so that they can rebuild a stable livelihood.

The interviews conducted in the field reveal that leaders and ordinary members of Hmong American communities share and frequently express a yearning for a freedom infused with meaning derived from a collective history of marginalization and oppression as a minority ethnic group in Asia. The identity narratives of the Hmong recount repeated experiences of territorial displacement as refugees. From ancient times, in each new place of settlement in China and Southeast Asia, the Hmong were never recognized as full members of political society or majority social institutions. Some modern-day ethnic leaders have hoped to eventually win a Hmong national homeland, but most members of the ethnic group fight simply for the right to live with some minimum degree of economic security and to practice an ancient culture that defines their identity. Without the protection of a nation-state, the Hmong of Asia had no ground on which to contest the most elemental human rights for themselves. The Hmong in America continue to think of their quest for liberties in this historical context, and like members of other American ethnic groups with refugee origins, they hope to use their settled position as citizens of the United States as leverage in international efforts to gain human rights protections not only for themselves but also for relatives and coethnics abroad.

The notions of full membership in the body politic are also influenced by the egalitarian tradition of the American civil rights movement. Hmong American social activists have expressed support for, and some identify with, the politics of redressing racial inequality, recognizing the contributions of Hmong culture in American society, and attaining parity of opportunity in education and the workforce. In this book these goals are considered within the framework of a theory of social justice defined by Nancy Fraser in terms of participatory parity—or the ability to participate as equal members of society without systematic hindrances.²

A close examination of the struggles of Hmong Americans to attain participatory freedom and parity can shed light on the process by which new citizens become fully included in national and local communities. In the American system, some elementary knowledge of the nation’s history and laws is required of naturalized citizens. For a new American to discover the deeper meaning of being a US citizen, however, requires sustained interaction with members of the political body. The encounters and associations established between immigrants and longer-term US residents and citizens have a reflexive character. The new citizen not only assimilates a political culture but also introduces new energy and perspectives to the political body by engaging in public life. Because of this two-way exchange, the immigrant’s process of citizenship inclusion has the potential for productive synergy: as immigrants learn about and affirm core ideals of democracy, their inclusion in the citizenry holds the possibility of invigorating and expanding its solidarities.

Immigrants, however, frequently face formidable barriers to such a positive mutuality of exchange and interaction. Having come to America with few material resources and low levels of formal education, Hmong Americans have experienced high rates of poverty and linguistic isolation. Poverty increases their vulnerability to fear and prejudice toward foreigners, an obstacle in its own right. In communities where Hmong Americans have settled, the perception of cultural and racial differences among native-born residents too often can extend to distrust, fear, and even open hostility toward newcomers. To advance intercultural understanding and social inclusion, a growing number of young community activists educated in the United States have joined with elders to create projects to claim respect for Hmong American culture and history. In politics, members of a relatively young and US-educated segment of the community have focused on building community-level capacity to participate in elections and field candidates. These young Hmong American activists have spread awareness about the value of political participation as a path toward social inclusion and advancement of the Hmong American communities.

I first became interested in political life in communities of ethnic Hmong in the United States when two Hmong Americans were elected to the state legislature in Minnesota. These events followed the winning of elected office by Hmong Americans on city councils and school boards in other Midwestern states. My colleagues and students in Asian American studies began to ask why the Hmong Americans, who came as refugees of the Vietnam War to the United States in the late 1970s and 1980s, seemingly jumped over hurdles to political participation. They seemed to steer their way through the local electoral system quite handily. Why were the Hmong Americans able to elect their own coethnic representatives in state and local governments less than three full decades after the first arrivals?

In 2007, I helped organize some academic conversations to engage Hmong American students and faculty from around the United States to discuss these questions. The experience of Hmong Americans remained a new subject among political scientists studying Asian Americans. Important progress has recently been made. Although most national surveys do not include sampling strategies or language interpretation in interviews of Hmong-speaking individuals, the 2012 National Asian American Survey included the first sizable subsample of Hmong Americans. In results discussed in Chapter 1 of this book, the researchers found that Hmong Americans have a high rate of voting for Democrats and a high rate of voting among eligible citizens, as compared to other Asian American groups.³ The in-depth interviews reported in this book shed light on some of the underlying dynamics influencing this finding. This research also gives a more detailed portrait of a group that is often neglected in studies, such as that of the 2012 report of the Pew Research Center, The Rise of Asian Americans, which examines sociodemographic trends and values among eight Asian American ethnic groups but does not reveal the particularities of experience and political thinking of many smaller ethnic groups, including Hmong Americans, who present a very distinctive picture.⁴

The research assistants for this project were young Hmong American college students from the Twin Cities in Minnesota; Fresno, California; and Hickory, North Carolina. They were conversant in the traditional cultural practices of their families. As in other traditional Asian cultures, ancient beliefs dictate that the Hmong funeral is the most important ritual and event in the lives of Hmong families. Its importance stems from the veneration of ancestors. I had learned on a summer trip to study Hmong village life in southwestern China that at weddings sometimes parents and elders would toast the newly wedded couple by singing songs expressing the high esteem afforded to a career as a government official. My research assistant set out to listen carefully for similar themes in ceremonial songs. At a funeral ceremony held by a Lee clan in St. Paul during the summer of 2007, an officiating leader sang a qhuab kom, or a song of blessing. This is one type of funeral song that typically has the intent of bringing closure to a funeral. The lyrics included these lines:

You the remaining sons stay focused

And those of you who do well in education

May you become government officials . . .

May you live on to become kings and sovereigns.

Throughout an intercontinental diaspora, Hmong people continue the tradition of using such ceremonial songs to pass on wisdom from the deceased ancestor to the living.⁵ The intent of the qhuab kom is to inspire the children of the deceased person to look forward and imagine new possibilities for their future. It helps shift the focus of the family away from the hardship and pain felt during the funeral.⁶ It is common for the officiant at a funeral to perform songs instructing the living sons of the deceased about how to lead their future lives. In the funeral of the Lee clan, for example, the song lyrics including naming careers to which they should aspire. This instruction emphasized building affinity among members of the clan and service to the community. In particular, sons should not hunger for power or fight for government positions; if a younger brother wins a kingship, his older brother must support him. Young men should pursue education, and should they excel, they should go into government service.

There are similar teachings in Hmong proverbs: If you heed your parents’ advice when young, you will become the village chief when grown.⁷ However, the respect for officials is sometimes coupled with a warning about the price government officials have exacted on Hmong families in collecting taxes. In another proverb, children are cautioned, See a tiger and you will die; see a government official and you will be poor. These themes reflect the memory of conflicts of economic interests between Hmong villagers and government authorities who represented the ethnic majority. Although the proverbs and songs have roots in ancient history, a government official in premodern China is a figure far removed from the democratically elected official or administrator in the contemporary United States. In antiquity, and even in recent history, the residents of Hmong agrarian communities often interacted with administrators of central or provincial governments who came to the village to collect taxes, typically placing an onerous burden on subsistence farmers.

In my conversations with several Hmong American scholars, a few have commented on the historical line of Hmong leadership in Laos throughout the twentieth century to the present day. In the ethnic diaspora, there is a high regard for the talent of individual leaders and the historical precedent of political representation in Laos. The precedent set by these early Hmong leaders in Laos is likely one important factor helping motivate the desire of Hmong Americans to participate in politics and governance in the United States.⁸ In Hmong at the Turning Point, Yang Dao recounts a celebrated line of Hmong leaders in Laos. Under French colonial rule during the late 1910s to early 1930s, Lo Bliayao emerged as a political leader of the Hmong. He was followed by Hmong who were chiefs of subdistricts in the French protectorate before the Second World War. Three brothers of the Lyfoung family held higher office after 1947: Touby Lyfoung was deputy to the province chief of Xieng Khoung and vice governor of the same province; Toulia Lyfoung was elected to the Constitutional and National Assemblies; and Tougeu Lyfoung was a member of the National Assembly, a King’s Council.⁹

After Laos’s independence in 1954, a number of Hmong served in the National Assembly, including Tougeu Lyfoung, Touby Lyfoung, Ly Yia, Lao Chue Cha, Moua Sue, and others. In the mid-1970s during the Provisional Government of Laos, Yang Dao was appointed by the king of Laos to the National Consultative Council, the equivalent of the Laotian Congress. A Hmong woman has served on the eleven-member Politburo and as president of the National Assembly of Laos. The country’s current minister of justice, Chaleun Yiapaoher, is of Hmong ethnic background.¹⁰

My research team’s interviews of Hmong Americans revealed some of the complexities in the process of adapting traditional thinking about Hmong leaders as it evolved in Laos to the contemporary circumstances of politics in the United States. When Hmong American parents place a high valuation on careers in government, for example, this has helped encourage some young persons among the growing pool of political activists to consider running for elected office or to dedicate themselves to service in government in another way. There are many other influences on the career choices of young Hmong Americans, which vary as they do in any ethnic group, and individuals will decide to enter public service for other reasons, including personal proclivities, talents, and opportunity. To the extent that political careers are well regarded in families, this cultural view is a positive influence on expanded political participation. It also stands in contrast to the attitudes of many American and Asian American parents. More often these parents encourage children to enter careers considered more financially lucrative and freer from the turbulence of politics, such as law, medicine, engineering, the sciences, or business.

Traditional notions of Hmong leadership are problematic. The idea that Hmong leaders serving in government should act principally as brokers for Hmong interests persists in the contemporary American context. Two elected officials, Blong Xiong and Mee Moua, discussed problems with this commonplace viewpoint in our interviews. As legislators, each served a whole district. Their responsibilities were wider than those perceived as appropriate for a Hmong leader, as often expressed by some older members of the ethnic community. American legislatures typically consist of members representing different districts and a diverse range of constituency interests. As a result, there is a need for individual members to build political alliances with colleagues across district lines. Educating older Hmong Americans who came from Laos as adults in these realities of governance in the United States and the limits of ethnic parochialism remains a challenge for the community.

In conducting the empirical investigation for this book, the research team conducted in-person interviews of individuals in four principal localities and from a broad cross section of Hmong American communities, including leaders and ordinary citizens and residents. Invited to participate in the study, the research participants were asked to describe their understanding of politics and identity, how they regard citizenship and political participation, their criteria for choosing among political candidates, and concerns about their communities. Our aim was to evaluate responses in light of an analytical framework formed by integrating insights from various strands of an interdisciplinary scholarship on citizenship acquisition and inclusion. Informed by this theoretical scholarship, the history of the Hmong as a refugee group, and the narratives told by Hmong Americans, we sought to learn about the motivation of individuals to engage in politics and how they thought about the experience in politics.

Observing the election campaigns of several Hmong American candidates in St. Paul from 2007 to 2010, the research team took note of the young volunteers’ energy in bringing elders into conversations about elections and to the polls. These activities have continued in subsequent elections, but it is still important to consider that political engagement can deepen and grow. The patriarchal thinking in clans persists. Clans are tightly knit and lines of decision-making authority are hierarchical. Participatory democratic deliberation is not customary. The cultural gaps in thinking between young people raised in the United States and their immigrant parents pose obstacles to community-wide collaborations.

The following chapters examine the evolution of Hmong American politics, which is still in its early phases of development. Already active participants in recent elections in several US cities, Hmong Americans are exploring new avenues for expanding civic and political participation. Some projects are experimenting with the integration of traditional storytelling arts and contemporary spoken word to describe identity narratives. Alongside the community’s political leaders, Hmong American writers, musicians, craft artisans, and visual artists are forming a complementary body of work reinterpreting and constructing narratives of identity. Drawing on recollections of struggles for dignity and recognition in the homeland of their parents, this emerging generation of intellectual and grassroots spokespersons is constructing a living story. Among the most compelling themes is an ethnic people’s move from the status of a minority people living on the margins of states in their homeland to undertake a quest for equality and participation as American citizens.

ONE

Citizenship and Participation

At the end of the Vietnam War, tens of thousands of Hmong adults and children fled from their homes in Laos to seek temporary refuge and protection in Thailand. One of many ethnic minority groups in Laos, the Hmong had been divided on both sides of a civil war fought between the reigning Royal Lao Government and the Pathet Lao communist insurgency. Those Hmong who had sided with the Royal Lao Government against the communists had a legitimate fear of retribution when the Pathet Lao declared military victory and prepared to establish the Lao People’s Democratic Republic in December 1975.

The civil war in Laos was part of a series of wars that took place in Southeast Asia after the end of the Second World War. Beginning in 1946, the First Indochina War was fought principally in Vietnam by independence forces against French colonial rule; later, the war in Vietnam extended into the French protectorates of Laos and Cambodia. This regional conflict ended with the signing of the 1954 Geneva Accords, which included an agreement by France to withdraw its troops from Vietnam, as well as separate cease-fire agreements in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

It was not long before fighting broke out again in Vietnam, which had been temporarily divided under the 1954 Geneva Accords between a northern zone under the administration of the Viet Minh, an independence coalition led by the Communist Party, and a southern zone governed by the rival Republic of Vietnam. Again, the conflict in Vietnam grew to encompass interconnected civil wars in Cambodia and in Laos. Known popularly in the United States as the Vietnam War, the Second Indochina War began in the late 1950s and came to an end in 1975.¹ Its intensity and regional scope were fueled by direct military intervention and various types of military assistance given by the United States and the Soviet Union to their allies.

One hidden part of the Vietnam War is known as the Secret War in Laos. The United States, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam were technically obligated under an international agreement not to militarily intervene in the internal affairs of Laos because of that country’s neutrality. Instead of sending troops to assist the Royal Government of Laos in opposing the communists, the United States provided massive military assistance to the royalist government. Castle writes that the United States ran a multi-billion dollar U.S. aid program, staged largely from Thailand and headed by the US ambassador to Laos, which came to include a complex military logistics network, a civilian-operated airborne resupply and troop movement system, a multinational ground and air force, and the introduction into Laos of a limited number of U.S. military personnel.²

The geography of Southeast Asia made Laos strategically important in the war. The small country is sandwiched between Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar (formerly Burma). With shared borders with each of these countries, Laos stood at a geographic crossroads strategically vital to the war. Military supply lines from North to South Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh trail ran through Laos.

The status of Laos as a neutral state complicated matters for the foreign powers seeking control in the region. Laos had declared independence from France in 1953. At the 1954 Geneva Conference, representatives of the nine participating states agreed on undertaking to respect the sovereignty, the independence, the unity and territorial integrity of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.³ Subsequently, under the agreements of the 1962 Geneva Accord, the United States, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and eleven other states agreed with Laos to respect its neutrality under the International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos, and the 1962 Protocol to the Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos prohibited the introduction of foreign regular or irregular troops, foreign paramilitary formations, and foreign military personnel into Laos. In addition, the protocol included a prohibition against the introduction of armaments, munitions, and war material generally, except for conventional armaments in quantities