Based on new archival research in many countries, this volume broadens the context of the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Its primary focus is on relations between China and Vietnam in the mid-twentieth century; but the book also deals with China's relations with Cambodia, U.S. dealings with both China and Vietnam, French attitudes toward Vietnam and China, and Soviet views of Vietnam and China. Contributors from seven countries range from senior scholars and officials with decades of experience to young academics just finishing their dissertations. The general impact of this work is to internationalize the history of the Vietnam War, going well beyond the long-standing focus on the role of the United States.

When the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia in 1975, they inherited a war-ravaged and internationally isolated country. Pol Pot’s government espoused the rhetoric of self-reliance, but Democratic Kampuchea was utterly dependent on Chinese foreign aid and technical assistance to survive. Yet in a markedly asymmetrical relationship between a modernizing, nuclear power and a virtually premodern state, China was largely unable to use its power to influence Cambodian politics or policy. In Brothers in Arms, Andrew Mertha traces this surprising lack of influence to variations between the Chinese and Cambodian institutions that administered military aid, technology transfer, and international trade. Today, China’s extensive engagement with the developing world suggests an inexorably rising China in the process of securing a degree of economic and political dominance that was unthinkable even a decade ago. Yet, China’s experience with its first-ever client state suggests that the effectiveness of Chinese foreign aid, and influence that comes with it, is only as good as the institutions that manage the relationship. By focusing on the links between China and Democratic Kampuchea, Mertha peers into the “black box” of Chinese foreign aid to illustrate how domestic institutional fragmentation limits Beijing’s ability to influence the countries that accept its assistance.

This book examines closely the origins, evolution, and prospect of the Sino-Vietnamese conflict over Kampuchea from both historical and geopolitical perspectives, with particular attention to the interplay of the conflicting perceptions and security needs of the three countries involved.

This book reveals the nature of Sino-US strategic competition by examining the influence exerted by major secondary stakeholders, e.g. Japan, Russia, India, the Koreas, and ASEAN, on the two powers, USA and its rival China, who consider each other as a source of greatest challenges to their respective interests. By adopting “strategic triangles” as the analytical framework and assessing triangular relational dynamics, such as US-China-Japan or US-China-Russia, the author illustrates how secondary stakeholders advance their own interests by exploiting their respective linkages to the two rivals, thereby, shaping Sino-US completive dynamics. This work adds a regional and multivariable perspective to the understanding of the Indo-Pacific’s insecurity challenges.

This book addresses the most important question in geopolitics today - the future of relations between the US and China. Concerned that the rise of China will challenge the its hegemony in world affairs, the US has decided to reassert its influence in Asia to counteract any challenge. Examining and challenging the dominant causal explanations for and professed intentions of this shift in US policy, this book uncovers the real dynamics of contemporary Sino-American relations, surveying their complex interactions in the context of their post-war history, offering the reader an accessible and informative survey of the relations between China and the US in Asia, ranging from Russia's turn to the east, the rise of Japanese nationalism, democracy in Myanmar, North Korea's nuclear programme to disputes in the South China Sea. This book is an illuminating introduction to the defining issue shaping global politics for our time.