Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America''s Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia
ISBN: 9780300231281
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Yale University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Political Science ; History;

The groundbreaking account of U.S. clandestine efforts to use Southeast Asian Buddhism to advance Washington's anticommunist goals during the Cold War

How did the U.S. government make use of a "Buddhist policy" in Southeast Asia during the Cold War despite the American principle that the state should not meddle with religion? To answer this question, Eugene Ford delved deep into an unprecedented range of U.S. and Thai sources and conducted numerous oral history interviews with key informants. Ford uncovers a riveting story filled with U.S. national security officials, diplomats, and scholars seeking to understand and build relationships within the Buddhist monasteries of Southeast Asia.

This fascinating narrative provides a new look at how the Buddhist leaderships of Thailand and its neighbors became enmeshed in Cold War politics and in the U.S. government's clandestine efforts to use a predominant religion of Southeast Asia as an instrument of national stability to counter communist revolution.