Before the Quagmire: American Intervention in Laos, 1954-1961In 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.