In the decade preceding the first U.S. combat operations in Vietnam, the
Eisenhower administration sought to defeat a communist-led insurgency in
neighboring Laos. Although U.S. foreign policy in the 1950s focused
primarily on threats posed by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic
of China, the American engagement in Laos evolved from a small cold war
skirmish into a superpower confrontation near the end of President
Eisenhower's second term. Ultimately, the American experience in Laos
fore