The subtitle of this absorbing study promises more than the book delivers for two reasons: (1) because Ford limits his discussion of “America’s secret strategy in Southeast Asia” to American interactions with Southeast Asian Buddhism, focusing on Thailand, and (2) because even though America’s strategy in Southeast Asia to contain the Sino-Soviet bloc and to come out ahead in the Cold War was always in the open, many of its tactics, and the sources for its funding, were not.
This issue is important because the tactics that America used to influence Thai Buddhism in the Cold War were managed by the Asia Foundation (taf)—a seemingly independent ngo (nongovernmental organization) that had been secretly funded and overseen by the Central Intelligence Agency (cia) since its inception in the early 1950s. The cia/taf connection broke in 1967 when the Agency’s cover was blown. taf soon withdrew from...