Customer Reviews

China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry

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This book is astonishing in it's scholarship and depth. It's not the sort of thing you take to bed for a light read after a hard day. The information is densely packed and most pages contained at least a few spots where I had to stop and ponder the implications of what I'd just read. Like poetry, there's hardly a word that could be left out. I wouldn't recommend this to just anyone, but for those interested in either or both countries, Womack's brilliant and lucid description of the very human factors propelling international relations, the motives, fears and misunderstandings behind the headlines, will cause you to see China and Vietnam in a richer and more vital way.

This book purports to propose a new theory for understanding international relations between asymmetrical powers, but ends up being a restatement of China-Vietnam relations without much added-value. It should be obvious to international relations students that weaker powers have less capacity to influence neighbors, but also that stronger powers face limits on their capacity and desire to influence weaker neighbors. There frankly aren't too many examples in modern IR of larger states completely voiding the sovereignty of smaller ones (even invasions such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq tend to restore full sovereignty in the end). It might have been helpful for Wormack to spend more time discussing the alternative to normalcy.

It is also not clear to me that these two countries, with their linked histories and recent wars, are the best two from which to develop a general theory of asymmetry. It might have made more sense to choose a more "typical" asymmetrical relationship (such as India and Nepal perhaps). The introduction spends more time on the need to simplify the history of the China-Vietnam relationship than it does to justify why that is the most appropriate relationship to analyze.

If you want a history of China-Vietnam relations, this book might be useful. I don't think it really explicates anything insightful on asymmetrical international relationships.