Brother Enemy: The War After the War

by Nayan Chanda

Book Overview

Based on extensive research and hundreds of interviews with key officials in Hanoi, Peking, Phnom Penh, Washington, and Moscow, Brother Enemy provides the most authoritative portrait of Indochina since the Vietnam War.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0020493614
• ISBN13: 9780020493617
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Collier Books
• Length: 479 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A tour de force of Communist international relations

In this book, Chanda details the events leading up and during to the Third Indochina War. Chanda provides intimate detail of the diplomatic maneuverings, petty egos of key players, and the kind of minutiae only Communist bureaucrats could love. For example, he writes that at one point in the late 1970s, Vietnam's relations with China and Russia were determined by how long Vietnamese officials spent at each country's embassy during parties. Reading this book shows the hidden diplomacy of Communist powers and how little we understood. In addition to the wonderful addition to our understanding of Indochina, the book also allows those of us who came of age after the Cold War to understand this era of international politics and how much has changes in the past 30 years. One note: this is not a book for beginners. Chanda assumes the reader knows the basic history of the U.S.-Indochina War and does not provide background on Vietnam's history until chapter 3. This book would make a good companion to the much more famous (but ultimately less interesting) Stanley Karnow book on the history of the Vietnam War.

Yankee come back.

A fascinating account of the war after the war in Indo China.Chanda gives us a wonderful review of the participants on the Vietnamese, Chinese, Cambodian, and American sides. When South Vietnam and Cambodia fell to the Communists in 1975, Americans in general and the government in particular closed the book on this awful period in American history. The Vietnamese were gulled into thinking that after their violations of the ceasefire, they were entitled to billions of dollars for rebuilding their shattered economy. Instead they got nothing and selected the Soviets as sponsers. This presented a problem to the Chinese who went to the Khymer Rouge as their proxy. As a result, war followed the war. Cambodia was shattered by first American bombing, then the Khymer Rouge terror and finally the war with Vietnam. Both the Chinese and Vietnamese wanted the Americans to come back and serve a role.Nayan Chanda does an excellent and even handed job of presenting the views of all the participants. This is a wonderful book to read if you are interested in geopolitics. At 500 some odd pages, this book will take some time to read.

Fascinating like a thriller novel

While visiting Cambodia's wonderous Ankor, I picked up this book out of curiosity from the Central Market in PnomPenh. It is an amazing piece of historical reporting, thouroughly researched and extremely readable. The author puts together the pieces of the puzzle to explain the wars between Vietnam-Cambodia and Vietnam-China, after the American retreat in 1975. The rise and fall of the notorious, murderous Khmer Rouge, the flamboyant Prince Sihanouk, the struggles of the Vietnamese, Chinese power plays, all of this weaved into a thrilling book of history. This book opens my mind to realpolitik: diplomacy, military power, geopolitics, race, and history. Simply a great book which tells the truth with extraordinary balance and fascinating details.

Brilliant

If you are interested in South East Asia, then get this book. Fascinating and revealing account of international involvement in Vietnam and Cambodia. Getting a little old now (could do with an update) but still highly recommended.

The time in between

Most westerners know about the Vietnam War and, thanks to the movie The Killing Fields, the story of the Khmer Rouge. But very few of us have much of a clue what happened in Indochina between these events and the region's reopening to the west in the 90s.Brother Enemy is a rich, compelling chronicle of the struggles that shaped the entire region, but primarily Cambodia and Vietnam, during that "in between time." It's a wonderful read because it manages to both detail the politics that shaped events while communicating how those events impacted real people. Nayan Chanda does this by weaving the experiences of individuals, including utterly common folk living day to day lives, into the larger story of regional power politics. It makes for great reading and a book that is both moving and informative. And, it's a great, page turner too.Highly recommended.