Customer Reviews

Cambodia After the Khmer Rouge: Inside the Politics of Nation Building

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Evan Gottesman's three years of field work in Cambodia with the American Bar Association Law and Democracy Project gave him an exceptionally solid base from which he launched this study of the history of the PRK and SOC regimes. His use of documents dug out of the National Archives is, as David Chandler has remarked, "masterful." His interviews with the former holders of power provide fascinating insights into the minds of key personalities seldom reached by Westerners. The epilogue is chock full of understated, reasonable, fair, and on-the-mark assessments of the reality on the ground in Cambodia today -- "Cambodian democracy often seems an abstraction...Although the methods of control have changed, the personnel governing the country remain largely the same ... (they) have accepted a new level of political discourse, but they do so only to the extent that it does not jeopardize their power." Life and work in Cambodia as a lawyer would frustrate all but the most idealistic of men. That Mr. Gottesman came away with such a patient and objective look at Cambodia says much about both his character and his intellect. This book is a must read for our new generation of "nation builders." It will allow them to bring to bear a better sense of time scale regarding their grand plans to democratize the world, clearly a task for multiple generations of good men like Evan Gottesman, not one to be attempted by one or two four-year administrations of ambitious politicians.

This is a fascinating telling of the politics of the PRK. The author has adroitly woven a tapestry of the give and take between the ideologically rigid Vietnamese liberators and the ideologically-opportunistic Khmer Rouge. The irony of the title is that there was no "after the Khmer Rouge:" indeed, they are still alive and well and running the PRK's successor state, which could be called the Democratic People's Republic of Royal Camobodia, an amalgam of ex-Pol Potists, Sihounoukists and genuine deomocrats.
Gottesman is to be congratulated on his shrewd observations and the skillful way he merged the ever-morphing political landscape in Phnom Penh with the relatively static, self-serving and corrupt provinical politics that tended to ignore any central dictums that reduced local prerogatives. In sum, pretty much the story of all socialist states; proclaim endless drivel ex cathedra from the capital and pray that somebody out there listens.
This is a must read for anyone interested in a little known asterisk in the cold war and anyone interested in third world politics. Foe all American ideologues eager to proclaim Iraq the next Japan, read, learn and repent!

Mr. Gottesman paints a vivid picture of Cambodia after 1979 that is particularly relevant in this time of reconstruction and nation building in Iraq. This is on my all time top 10 books right after the Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing.

Unlike some other reviewers, I found little in Gottesman's book that would inform an understanding of what is presently happening in Iraq or Afghanistan. The UNTAC mandate in Cambodia didn't even qualify as a half-hearted attempt at introducing democracy, and the attempts to analogize the situations are at best strained. In fact, the history Gottesman lays out has precious little to do with nation-building of any kind (my guess is the subtitle may have been some editor's marketing ploy). Rather, I found the book to be the clear, riveting, and ultimately pitiful inside story of a decaying communist regime. For those trumpeting the planned Khmer Rouge Trials as the day-of-reckoning for Cambodia's tormentors, guess again. After reading Gottesman's book, I'll eat my Mao cap if a single suspect is charged who, as Gottesman puts it, repented of the only real crime under communism-political opposition.