Cambodia Confounds the Peacemakers, 1979–1998. By Macalister Brown and Joseph J. Zasloff. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. 272p. $39.95

David W. Roberts

American Political Science Review, 2002, vol. 96, issue 1, 256-257

Abstract: This book takes the reader through the complexities of the search for peace in the first chapters and through the provision of the UNTAC operation up to 1993. It concludes with an overview of the 1998 elections, and in between there is a section dedicated to the period between the two polls. The first section is reasonable, but the text is repetitive and it repeats what several others have already written (Trevor Findlay, Cambodia: The Legacy and Lessons of UNTAC, 1995, and various works by David P. Chandler, Ben Kiernan, and Michael Vickery). The analysis reflects that by several of the recognized Khmer scholars, and is useful to read, but while the analysis is insightful regarding Western peacemaking processes and the Khmer resistance at various points, it does not question assumptions regarding the overwriting of Western peace paradigms onto Khmer political culture. This has a distinctly different historical evolution and an equally dissimilar set of contemporary values regarding the notions of opposition, power sharing, and social harmony. The limits of this type of analysis are present throughout the work and are probably best illustrated by the statement that the violence of July 1997 “transformed UNTAC's enterprise from what may have been termed a [limited success' to a failed rescue of a failed state” (p. 265).

Date: 2002
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