Andrew Mertha. 『Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979』 Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014, 192p.

Abstract

Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979 Andrew Mertha Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014, 192p.Andrew Mertha's book, Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979, not only provides historical insight into the structure of China's aid to its client state, i.e. Democratic Kampuchea (DK) between 1975 and 1979, but also explicates the causal effect of the fragmented Chinese and institutions, the variation of which determines the degree of China's ability to assert influence over DK. The main contribution of this book rests on two major breakthroughs. First, Mertha's access to a variety of high-quality archival sources in Cambodia, combined with extensive interviews with former Chinese and Khmer Rouge officials and cadres, illuminates new details on this important subject. Second, his method of structured, focused comparison is rigorous and cutting-edge social science; he meticulously constructs descriptive accounts of and systematically traces the variation of bureaucratic-institutional fragmentation/ integrity and its corresponding difference in the outcomes (i.e. China's ability to influence DK). He does through three empirical cases, namely military aid, economic aid, and trade in chapters 4-6.This book answers the following question: why was a powerful China to influence its far weaker and ostensibly dependent and client state Cambodia? Grounded in Graham Allison's bureaucratic politics level of analysis of foreign policy decision-making, Mertha focuses on interministerial competition and bureaucratic-institutional infighting and fragmentation in China and as the main units of analysis (chapters 2-3). The central argument in this book is that the varied degree of fragmentation of institutions in China and as they interacted with each other at the implementation stage of China's aid policy explains the corresponding degree of China's ability to exert influence over during the period 1975-79 (p. 9). Before delving into the structured, focused comparison of the three empirical case studies, Mertha asserts that regimes in Beijing and Phnom Penh share at least three common attributes, namely the Leninist single-party state, significant rural development, and power in the standing committee of the Party. However, he makes the case that the degree of institutional integrity varies significantly because of differences in the ways in which individual bureaucrats navigated the two institutional environments in China and DK. As Mertha summed up, both countries suffered from subversions of the formal institutional structure, whether fragmented, as in China, or fluid as in DK (pp. 11-12). Thus, to Mertha, the fragmentation of institutions in countries is the most important explanatory variable of China's ability to influence the during this period. In the three empirical cases (chapters 4-6), the main causal inference from the three case studies can be summarized in the table below:In the case of Kraing Leav military airport, China's influence was severely limited by a political and military stalemate as the then-DK Defense Minister Son Sen, with strong backing of Pol Pot, was able to push back China's assertion of its influence by dictating its preference for the location and the content of the agreement (pp. 87-89). Although the Chinese Military Attache at the Chinese Embassy was under a clear command-and-control authority structure of the Chinese military (p. 91), it was unable to influence in the implementation of China's military aid policy (p. 97). In the case of the Kampong Som petroleum refinery project, the fragmentation of China's vast network of institutions that oversaw energy and petroleum severely limited China's ability to exert its influence over DK's energy sector which would potentially lock down DK's dependence on China's crude oil in the long term. The Chinese could not shape DK's energy policy even when the relevant authority was in disarray (pp. …