Short Reviews
new titles by asle Toje (ed.); Eswar S. Prasad; Pál nyíri & Danielle Tan (eds.); glyn Ford; Ian bowers; Van Jackson; David g. atwill; chris Miller; kwame anthony appiah; Daya kishan Thussu, Hugo de burgh & anbin Shi (eds.); Francis Fukuyama; Hitomi koyama; aurelia george Mulgan; Emil kirchner & Han Dorussen (eds.); axel berkofsky, christopher W. Hughes, Paul Midford &
Marie Söderberg (eds.).
the late 1950s onwards, Hanoi’s leaders used fear, brutality and torture to control their opponents on both sides of the 17th parallel that divided the country after 1954.
Unlike the leadership in South Vietnam, the north could rely on propaganda and a tighter control over information to foster an overly romanticized and valorized narrative of national resistance that was all too often embraced uncritically by Western journalists too ready to frame the Indochina wars as a Manichean struggle between the forces of good and evil. Such simplistic narratives were bolstered by the moral appeal of north Vietnam.
Ho chi Minh had a genuine charisma that his South Vietnamese counterparts lacked. Diem, for example, was not only corrupt, but also arrogant and intensely factional, favoring the interests of South Vietnam’s catholic elites while persecuting the buddhist majority. However much the national liberation idealism of north Vietnam appealed to student radicals and some progressives in the US, especially after 1968, Hanoi’s leaders, including Ho, remained (at least according to Hastings) committed communists and wedded to a form of Stalinist authoritarianism that brooked no opposition, both during the conflict and after 1975 when the north finally overran the South.
The tragedy of Vietnam that emerges from Hastings’ poignant and sobering account is not merely the huge costs in lives on all sides of the conflict, but the profound gap between the rhetorical aspirations and day-to-day reality of the various actors involved in the conflict. at all levels of society — both among national leaders and the ordinary, day-to-day protagonists (soldiers, civilians, journalists, spooks, and technocrats) — self-delusion and ignorance all too often encouraged actions that had devasting consequences for tens if not hundreds of thousands of individuals. of the many lessons to be drawn from this experience, one stands out: the need to guard against hubris and overconfidence and the importance of humility in waging war. john Nilsson-wright is senior lecturer, university of Cambridge; senior research fellow for Northeast asia, Chatham house; and a regional editor for Global Asia. In 2003, as China, a fresh WTO member, was scorching its way up the world economy and quietly building its military muscles, one term gained currency: the China threat. In a speech in 2003, Zheng Bijian, China’s eminence grise, tried to dispel that fear by launching the concept of China’s “peaceful rise” to great-power status. Criticized from various quarters, China soon swapped “rise” to “development.” Peaceful or not, the formulation offers a useful focus to explore the implications of its emergence as a major power.
In this volume, edited by Asle Toje, are essays by 16 American, European and Asian political scientists and historians, and offers a stimulating and neatly arranged smorgasbord of ideas and arguments. Unlike many essay collections, this is well structured, with many voices and perspectives seeking to answer five questions posed by the editor: Is China seeking global or regional hegemony? Given its domestic constraints, what kind of military power will it wield? Will its rise pose a threat to the liberal international order? How would other powers react? What will be a more reliable guide in driving China’s future: lessons of history or international relations theories?
The authors provide reasonable and well documented answers but vary in their shades of confidence and concern about China’s development strategy. Overall, I detected a cautious optimism among most that conflict is not inevitable; the US should play it cool, as China’s domestic difficulties and the “profound skepticism” of its neighbors (in Odd Arne Westad’s words) constrain it.