Lao Foreign Policy

This chapter examines the foreign policy of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR or Laos) since 1986 when the country adopted an open foreign policy aligned with market-based economic reforms. This reform saw the ruling Lao People&s;s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) move from the socialist bloc, in close alignment with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) and Soviet Union, to an omnidirectional foreign policy of cooperating with all countries irrespective of ideology—though in practice socialist states remained primary. The chapter’s central argument is that the LPRP’s foreign policy, including its diversification in the 1980s, has been driven by domestic imperatives: the need to secure the nation, mobilise international financial support and, finally, strengthen its legitimacy to rule. While the LPDR has maintained its closest foreign relationships with the SRV and (more recently) China, and ideology has remained an important foreign policy shaper, this chapter’s focus on the domestic drivers of foreign policy highlights Laos’s foreign policy independence and the importance of restoring its relations with China, Thailand and the United States from the late 1980s.