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Multipolar Infrastructures and Mosaic Geopolitics in LaosThree decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, the media is again rife with Cold War rhetoric as China takes a more assertive stance globally. China’s expansion in, for example, lending, infrastructure, and diplomacy, has prompted debates on whether China’s rise and US reactions to it will create new Cold War dynamics. Although the tensions between China and competing powers – principally the US – have global dimensions, they arguably play out more concretely in third countries. This has become particularly apparent in Southeast Asia and in the infrastructure sector. Indeed, a 2021 article in The Economist contends that ‘the rivalry between America and China will hinge on southeast Asia’. According to media and some recent academic scholarship, Southeast Asia has become a linchpin in China’s strategic and infrastructural engagement, particularly through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (Hiebert, 2020; Lampton et al, 2020; Strangio, 2020). Shambaugh (2020) adds to these perspectives the need to consider US competition in the region alongside China. Laos – low- income, landlocked, and historically considered isolated and peripheral – is centrally located on a primary BRI corridor to Southeast Asia, ostensibly situating the country at the heart of US– China competition. However, in Laos, like many other countries in Southeast Asia, there is little desire within the government to choose between powers – Washington, Beijing, or otherwise. However, at the moment in the infrastructure sector, Laos does not need to choose between the US and China because it is already dominated by Chinese actors, the US is virtually non- existent, and the Lao government instead draws on other regional actors to balance China. These other regional and multilateral actors thus end up playing a far more significant role in the Lao government’s spatial projects than the US.