Monastic State of Laos (6.0)

The **Monastic State of Laos**, colloquially known as simply **Laos,** **The Monkstate**, or **Western Viet Nam**, is an independent Agrarian Socialist theocracy located in eastern Indochina. Laos, prior to it's independence in 1946, was landlocked and previously bordered the French Protectorates of Annam, Tonkin, and Cambodia, the Kingdom of Thailand, the Republic of China and the British Colony of Burma; it is now a coastal nation bordered by the newly-formed Kampuchea Bay Federation and it's eponymous bay, an extension of the Gulf of Thailand; the Matriarchy of Yunnan; and the anarchic remnants of alpine Viet Nam and eastern Thailand. Laos proper has an approximate area 236,000 square kilometers, and, despite it's highly mountainous and tropical terrain that renders large urban areas impossible outside of certain areas, a bustling population of approximately 5.1 million.

The Monastic State is a unitary socialist theocracy, representing an ecclectic blend of Buddhist theocratic rule and principled, ideological Agrarian Socialism, best defined by the term "Monastosocialism"— a governing structure which stems from a collision of the traditional structures of the Lao people and the revolutionary wave that swept the nation during and following the collapse of French colonial rule and the Great Flood. Laos' official and traditional capital is the city of Vientiane, also known as Viangchan, which is home to the nation's Head of State and Government, the Sangharaja (Supreme Patriarch), the Grand Council of Laos (the upper house of the national government, representing the 17 traditional provinces of Laos and several minority groups), and the Sangha Council of Laos (the lower house, comprised of Abbots representing nearly 450 monasteries, which themselves serve as the equivalent of municipalities), as well as the primarily and officially advisory Congress for the Advancement of Socialism (CoAS) and the Advisors to the Sangharaja, which serve as the Sangharaja's equivalent to a cabinet. Under the terms of the Convention of 1951, the founding assembly of the Monastic State, the government is tasked with advancing both Socialism and Theravada Buddhism, which it manifests via the five principles that guide day-to-day government policy; the Principle of Compatibilism, which seeks to resolve the inconsistencies between socialist ideology and Buddhist religion; the Principle of Idealism, which codifies the ideals of the state and it's people; the Principle of Moralism, which describes the aim of the government to act and achieve these ideals in a righteous, faithful manner; the Principle of Realism, which acknowledges the practical limitations of the material state of Laos that represents challenges on the path to the achievement of socialism and nirvana, and how the government aims to resolve them; and the Principle of Peripheralism, which guides Laotian foreign policy and aims to ensure the safety and security of the Laotian people from foreign, capitalist domination.

The modern history of Laos is one marked by internal turmoil. Against the backdrop of the waning days of the Second World War, Laos would gain a sort of "independence" via the Japanese; having seen the advancement of the Allied forces of the Pacific Theatre, Japan, fearful of an Allied-backed overthrow of their forces in Indochina by the French, would launch an attempted overthrow of the colonial administrations in Indochina in March 1945, and proclaimed the French Protectorates there dissolved— in their place rose the Kingdom of Laos, the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Empire of Viet Nam, all members of Japan's "Co-Prosperity Sphere". It was not an independence anyone had hoped for, however; the French garrison in their former colonies, some 60,000 strong, would swiftly retaliate, and in doing so begin the nearly 10 year long Indochina War, dragging all three nations into conflict as each side attempted to gain an edge and recruit local Lao, Vietnamese, Cambodian and other minority groups to their side. Under the influence of King Sisavang Vong, Laos turned against Japan and largely sided with the French, prompting repeated Japanese assaults into Laos over the course of the war.

The Trinity Incident would drastically alter the course of Indochina's future, and the future of the war. By early 1946, with the war entering it's second year, the rising seas would prompt the desolation of Vietnam— once the crown jewel of Indochina, the primarily low-lying nation would lose almost all of it's major cities, including Saigon and Hanoi, to the Great Deluge. Cambodia would fare even worse, losing almost it's entire national territory to the rising seas and cutting off Cambodian civilization from mainland Indochina. Only Laos would remain mostly unscathed, but it's status as the last of the unaffected Indochinese nations would bring hundreds of thousands to it's doorstep. Refugees fleeing the conflict, which— although reduced in intensity— would not cease despite the end of World War II and the anarchic conditions of much of Asia and the world, combined with massive convoy trains of fleeing Vietnamese and Cambodians would result in over a million people arriving in Laos, nearly doubling the tiny nations' population effectively overnight, and rendering Lao people a minority in their own nation. The arrival of so many refugees and the full force of the war to Laos' borders would soon overwhelm the nascent nation, combined with existing turmoil over the role of the monarchy and a boiling revolutionary fever, would see the Kingdom of Laos collapse into civil war in January 1947.

The Laotian Civil War, now integrated with the continuing Indochinese War (more driven by spite and a mutual sense of honour than anything else), would see communist revolutionaries, led by the Lao-Indochinese Communist Party (A merger of the Ho Chi Minh founded Indochinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of Laos, founded by Kaysone Phomvihane in 1945), wage a guerilla conflict against the meagre Royalist forces, who would be supported by the French (the Japanese regarded and was regarded by all sides as equally hostile). It is here where the Buddhist faith in Laos first enters the political world, with the Sangha (the community of Buddhist monks in Laos) being courted by both Leftist and Royalist sides as a valuable ally due to it's strong ties to the average Laotian and it's regional penetration into the remotest parts of the country. Although initially hoping to maintain neutrality in the conflict and focus on acting as a humanitarian service and mediator between the two sides, a series of raids on Buddhist temples in central Laos by French forces would eventually result in much of the Sangha siding with the LICP, rejecting the continued excesses of royalty and colonialism as antithetical to Buddhist values and beliefs at the First Laotian Buddhist Council, a gathering of some 7,000 monks in 1947. The civil war would end in Communist victory in 1950, albeit after much brutality and the assassination of Ho Chi Ming in later 1949, with the Royal Family being exiled. Both the French and Japanese would continue to wage a low-level guerilla war in the rural areas of the country until 1955, when exhaustion and dwindling supplies, as well as fading hope of ever returning home again, would drive both parties to agree to a "temporary" ceasefire with each other and with the government that has continued ever since, bringing the Indochina War to an effective, albeit undeclared, end.

With peace returned to Laos, the matter of governance in the post-war, post-deluge era became the first priority for both the victorious communists and the Sangha, which had seen widespread growth and political mobilization due to it's humanitarian aid to all sides of the conflict; indeed, by 1951 many moderate or right-wing Laotians saw the empowerment of the Sangha as the last chance to stop complete communist dominance of Laos. With the sudden death of Ho Chi Minh and the support of the Sangha having been necessary for communist victory, the LICP agreed to hold a meeting with several nominated representatives of the Sangha to formalize a powersharing agreement, where the state apparatus and transition to socialism would be based upon a restructured Sangha and the LICP would transition to a primarily advisory/advocacy/caretaker role designed to ensure continual popular and government support for the advancement of socialism. This meeting, the Convention of 1951, and the agreement signed within would come to form the bedrock of the Monastic State into the current day.