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No Zeal. The history of Laos since then has revolved around the fact that the central Laotian government has never been able or energetic enough to defeat Souphanouvong in war. or to deal with him in peace. The princelings who took over in Vientiane, led most often by Prince Souvanna, were not dedicated nationalists or zealous patriots toughened in a struggle for freedom from their colonialist masters—France had simply handed Laos its independence with chaotic haste in the closing days of its Indo-China disaster. By Geneva's rosy terms, the Pathet Lao were supposed to be integrated into a Royal Laotian Army that was to be trained and equipped by the French. But France, defeated and demoralized, had no interest in doing the job. Leaving behind a few advisers and a republic-style constitution, France quit Laos in 1954 as abruptly as she had come 60 years before.
Build Fast. John Foster Dulles, who had little confidence in neutralism, took an agonized look around and decided that the U.S. had to fill the vacuum. He concluded that the only solution was to build a Laotian army and build it fast.
Though a firm of economic consultants, Washington's Howell & Co., studied the primitive economy and advised that it could absorb a maximum of $24 million a year, the U.S. poured in about twice that amount. As naive in business as in politics, the Laotians hardly knew how to handle their new wealth—until a few sharp Indian and Chinese traders rushed into Vientiane to show them. Favorite device: the import license. Laotians with political pull got import licenses for everything from feather dusters to nail polish to television sets—though there is no TV station in Laos. They could then buy foreign exchange at the official rate of 35 kip to the dollar, sell the dollars on the black market for 100 kip or more, and then rush back to buy more dollars. Corruption became appalling.
Some $1,600,000 and a year's work were spent on a road linking Luangprabang and Vientiane, which proved to be under water half the year. It got paved for only eight miles out of Vientiane—to the tennis court of a former Defense Minister. There was, said an investigator for the International Cooperation Administration, "an almost fairy-tale implausibility" about the transactions. Stately homes and Mercedes cars blossomed along the dusty streets of Vientiane.
Almost all of the aid went to the army (of. the $34.2 million spent by the U.S. in Laos last year, only $590,750 went to agriculture, in a country where 90% of the people are farmers). The soldiers got shiny U.S. equipment and instruction as to its use from a band of U.S. soldiers in mufti euphemistically called the Programs Evaluation Office (since technically only the French, under Geneva's terms, were supposed to train Laotian soldiers).
Trouble was that the 29,000-man army, which even the Pentagon thought too large by at least a third, had no interest in fighting, particularly against other Laotians. In fact, Laotians who joined the ranks did not consider it a fighting job but a pleasant civil-service type career whose $130-a-year pay was twice the average Laotian income.