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The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family by Duong Van MaiElliottReview by: Lucian W. PyeForeign Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1999), pp. 184-185Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20049511 .
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Recent Books
Asia and the Pacific LUC?AN W. PYE
China Joins the World: Progress and Prospects. EDITED BY ELIZABETH ECONOMY
AND MICHEL OKSENBERG. NewYork
Council on Foreign Relations Press,
1999, 260 pp. $22.50 (paper). The Paradox of Chinas Post-Mao Reforms.
EDITED BY MERLE GOLDMAN AND
RODERICK MACFARQUHAR.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1999, 448 pp. $55.00 (paper, $24.95). These two symposium volumes seek to
explain China from different perspectives? but as with the blind men and the elephant, they provide somewhat different pictures. China Joins the World focuses on China's
international relations, askng what
Western policies might induce China to become a constructive participant in
international institutions and regimes. In general, the authors are
optimistic about socializing China in this direction
and see most Chinese officials as anxious
to become effective international players. In contrast, the Goldman-MacFarquhar volume covers the more
problematic
questions of elite politics and the broad
discontent unleashed by economic reforms.
By confronting the problems fragmenting Chinese society, the authors present a less
optimistic picture than Economy and
Oksenberg, but their account also makes
more understandable the xenophobic
explosion after the nato bombing of
China's Belgrade embassy last spring. In a strange way, the two books'
differences mirror a peculiarity in U.S.
China relations. Both governments seem
anxious to separate domestic developments
from interstate relations. The authors in
the Economy-Oksenberg volume hold out
the hope that this is possible, but Goldman and MacFarquhar's authors provide considerable evidence that it is not.
Orphans of the Cold War: America and the
Tibetan Struggle for Survival, byjohn kenneth KNAUS. NewYork
PublicAffairs, 1999,400 pp. $27.50. From 1951 to 1974, the United States pro vided support to the Tibetan resistance,
largely through the c?a. A cia veteran and
the key case officer for Tibet, Knaus tells in
blow-by-blow detail the complex story of
the operations, from the Colorado training of Tibetan fighters and the air drops of
troops and weapons into Tibet to the U.S.
support of the Dalai Lama in India and
diplomatic maneuvers at the United Na
tions. Knaus is unsparing in his criticism
of the cia's mistakes. As one example, he
cites the air drops that attracted flocks of
Tibetans to the drop spots?but then
tragically backfired after they inadvertently alerted the Chinese where to attack. His
story makes it clear, however, that the cia
did not attempt to stir up a rebellion but
supported an essentially Tibetan initiative.
This moving account of the Tibetans'
valiant efforts to resist the Chinese occupa tion captures the daring spirit of the early
Cold War years and the mixture of idealism
and crafty scheming that characterized
American operations at the time. It also
underscores the limited effectiveness of
such covert operations.
The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the
Life of a Vietnamese Family,
by duong
van mai elliott. New York Oxford
University Press, 1999, 608 pp. $30.00. In this vivid and personal account, Mai
[184] FOREIGN AFFAIRS -Volume 78 N0.5
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Recent Books
Elliott succeeds in bringing to life the social and political realities of modern
Vietnam. Her great-grandfather was a
Confucian mandarin-scholar in traditional
Vietnam, her grandfather a high official
under the French, and her father an official
during the transition to independence in
1954. Her own generation of siblings and
cousins experienced the agonies of the
Vietnam War. Today, her once tightly knit
family is scattered in America, France,
Canada, Australia, and Vietnam. Now
married to an American, Mai Elliott
brilliantly captures the social and psycho
logical strains of native officials under
colonial rule as they sought the elusive goals
of national identity and modernization.
She is equally impressive in recounting the
conflicting pressures that all Vietnamese
had to endure in the last days of the war,
when they had to accept the fact that the
future lay with the communists.
Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot, rev. ed. by david p.
chandler. Boulder: Westview Press,
1999, 264 pp. $16.00 (paper).
Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia: Political Culture and the Causes of War. by
Stephen j. morris. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1999, 315 pp.
$45.00 (paper, $16.95). The story of modern Cambodia is so
tragic that it takes moral resolve to read
about it. It also raises some perplexing
puzzles. How could the gentle Buddhist
Cambodians become so violent? What knd
of evil genius was Pol Pot, who presided over the slaughter of more than a million
of his compatriots? In writing his book, Chandler explored every bit of evidence
about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, but the more evidence he uncovered, the
more bland and ordinary the Cambodian
leader became. No traumatic experiences, social or economic difficulties, or
psycho
logical problems explain Pol Pot's brutal
actions; the author found accounts only of a mild-mannered, pleasant personality
who was a normal but mediocre student.
Born into a family with close connections
to the royal palace, Pol Pot was randomly selected as one of the first hundred
Cambodian students after World War II
to study in France, where he never took
any examinations or received a degree.
What did set him apart was joining the French Communist Party, which gave him instant high status among the local
communists when he returned to Cambo
dia. Pol Pot then spent seven years fighting enemies and rising to the top with purge after purge. Chandler concludes that this
experience in Cambodia is probably what turned him into a vicious kller.
The paranoid atmosphere that
enveloped the leaders of both the Cambodian and Vietnamese communist
parties also dominates Morris' vivid
analysis. His systematic study delves
into the causes of the only extended war
between two communist states, seekng to explain the seemingly irrational decision
of weak Cambodia to attack the much
stronger Vietnam and the equally irrational
Vietnamese provocation of China. As
the first Southeast Asian specialist to gain access to the recently opened Moscow
files on the Indochinese Communist Party, Morris ably documents the paranoid
style of thinkng that characterized
these Marxist-Leninist leaders. Given
the mindset that Morris describes, the
behavior of both Pol Pot and the leaders in Hanoi becomes more understandable, if not forgivable.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS September/October 1999 [185]
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