Brother Enemy: The War After the War

Brother Enemy is a detailed look at a conflict most Americans have not heard of: that between Vietnam and Cambodia in the late 70s and early 80s. More broadly, this was was a Sino-Soviet proxy war, with the Chinese strongly backing Cambodia (or the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, as its Khmer Rouge rulers christened it) and Vietnam drawing support from the Soviets. Not quite the narrative non-fiction I had hoped, Brother Enemy is a thorough (read: weedy) overview not only of the conflict itself, but of the many geopolitical factors that played into it. In no particular order, these include historic tensions between Vietnam and Cambodia; Vietnam and China; Vietnam and Thailand; the legacy of the first (French) and second (American) Vietnam Wars; the historic role of China in Southeast Asia; the jockeying for position of China, the U.S., and the Soviet Union; the emergence of the Khmer Rouge followed by the utter devastation they wrought on every aspect of life in Cambodia; and U.S. policy toward Vietnam, particularly as regards normalization of diplomatic relations following the Vietnam War, the issue of which was dominated by the MIA question. I've probably missed a couple, but you get the idea. As a journalist, Nayan Chanda had access to impeccable sources at the highest level of every government and regime; it's difficult to imagine a more complete or more even-handed approach.


That said, what Chanda endows upon Brother Enemy in journalist integrity, he lacks in storytelling. Although there are flashes of possible brilliance - the Yugoslav and Chinese diplomats making a mad rush for the Thai border following the Vietnamese assault on Phnom Penh or the momentarily-desired political asylum request of Prince Sihanouk to the United States - by and large, this reads as a white paper. The shame in that is the stories that could have been told, although in fairness 1) Chanda is a journalist, seeking to provide a complete (and seemingly balanced/unbiased) accounting and 2) the book was written in 1986, in the last great thrust of the Cold War. 
 
latter point is especially interesting to reflect upon, for every aspect of the conflict and the book is imbued with the flavors of the Cold War. In hindsight, today's reader knows this was perhaps the last great paroxysm of that war, but in 1986, the Cold War seemed destined to go the distance. (In second grade, we loathed the Soviets, actively cheering against them during the Calgary Olympics, during which my teacher kept a medal table on the blackboard that we updated daily, and once practiced hiding under our desks in the event of an attack. In third grade, we cheered the fall of the Berlin Wall and understood we needn't concern ourselves with Soviets anymore. Soviet attack drills have now given way to active shooter drills, the likelihood of which is far, far greater on any given day in America than a Soviet attack ever was. But I digress.)


Also unresolved (and unresolvable) in 1986: questions of national identity vis-a-vis the big powers. In my travels I've often noticed that the identity of countries with long experience of external pressure and power (even if not outright subjugation) becomes wrapped up with the identity of the larger power. In the Baltic states, it's rare to listen to more than three sentences without a reference to Russia or the Soviets; in Poland, it's the Prussians and Russians; and several years ago in Cuba I was surprised to hear how frequently the US was spoken of by those providing context of Cuban culture and identity. We Americans may give scant thought to the little island off the Keys, but literally and figuratively, our land casts a massive shadow that no one there can escape. (Even more surprising in Cuba: the box of Lucky Charms for sale in the grocery store under the auspices of (Swiss) Nestle, who purchased the rights to the Cuban market from (American) General Mills. Again, I digress.) 
 
Chanda does an admirable job of speaking to the influence of China on the Vietnamese identity, but - largely, one assumes, because Cambodia is still in the throes of warfare - says much less, if anything about the long-term influence of China (or any other country) on Cambodian nationalism, identity, or culture. Chanda does address an issue that could be ripped from the headlines today when he speaks about the tensions over rights to the islands in the South China Sea; to that end, I could only shake my head at the incomplete reporting even the best news sources today offer. There's simply too much history to include in the thousand words some poor journalist is allotted to explain the most recent developments and so that's all we get: current developments and no context. Alas.


Most impressively, though, is the ways in which Brother Enemy grapples with the influence of the big powers - for the purposes of his work, those would be China, the Soviet Union, and the US - on the smaller countries. Anger toward imperialism is an easy trap to fall into - for me, I think of the Panama Canal and David McCullough's Path Between the Seas or Hawaii, which Julia Flynn Siler argues in Lost Kingdom was the U.S.'s first imperial adventure or even the news out of Mali this past week that the leader of the recent coup there was trained by the U.S. military. More broadly, one need look no further than Suzy Hansen's Notes on a Foreign Country, in which she forcefully and effectively makes the case that decisions by the U.S. regularly and directly impact the lives of those around the world....and that because of the nature of U.S. imperialism, as compared to the old European empires, the U.S. version is equally if not more insidious and damaging than those older empires, which were openly acknowledged, and whose ties, for better or for worse, were formalized. 
 
So it's all very depressing, and again, easy to feel a burst of anger about foreign policy. But. But - and I think this may be irony - Chanda's work actually made me feel better instead of worse in the sense that this.is.what.countries.do. All countries. From time immemorial, it seems. Because competition. Because pride (personal and national). Because sometimes man just likes a fight. The best we can hope for, it seems, is writers and reporters like Chanda to capture the story and raise it to the level of consciousness it deserves. For how many stories like this one simply go untold?