Joseph Fewsmith, Boston University:
Nobody gets into the plumbing of policy implementation like Andrew Mertha. Here, he probes the bureaucracies of China and Democratic Kampuchea to understand their aid relationship and how the DK was sometimes able to parry Chinese pressures but got pulled into the Chinese orbit at other times. Bureaucratic politics has long been understood to be critical in domestic policy; now Mertha extends this approach into foreign policy. All those examining China's burgeoning relations with Latin America, Africa, and other places will want to absorb the lessons of this book.
David Chandler, Monash University, author of A History of Cambodia:
A marvelous book. Brothers in Arms explores the vexed relationship between China and the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979, when China, for better or worse, was Cambodia's most generous friend. Andrew Mertha talked to dozens of Cambodians and Chinese who worked together in the Khmer Rouge era. He has buttressed this research with forays into unexploited archival collections. The outcome—a judicious, vividly written analysis of the Sino-Khmer encounter—is deft, path-breaking, and persuasive.
In essence,Brothers in Armsis a study of Leninist systems and how a larger, nuclear power like China failed to keep its client state in a position of inferiority. Historians studying diplomacy, Cold War, and Southeast Asia history will appreciate Mertha's attention to detail and evidence base. The author's writing style means even readers unfamiliar with the topic will understand Mertha's discussions of the DK's political apparatus. Undoubtedly the author has produced a foundational book on the relationship between China and Democratic Kampuchea.
An interesting account of Chinese aid to Cambodia during the four years in which Cambodia was ruled by the Khmer Rouge.... An impressive strength of this book lies in the detailed, smooth, and illuminating descriptions of the government system of Democratic Kampuchea, the Chinese government's foreign aid institutions, and the three major Chinese aid projects that serve as subjects of the three case studies.
A welcome addition to the literature on Chinese-Cambodian entanglements during the Cold War.... Mertha's treatment of the Cambodian side of the story, especially his chapter on the Khmer Rouge bureaucracy and Pol Pot's work style, is highly revealing and instructive.
The story that Mertha tells is fascinating in its detail and surprising in much of what that detail reveals. Perhaps most importantly is the extent to which China's lack of leverage over the CPK regime was a persistent theme of the relationship... This is an important book, full of important factual information and thoughtful judgments.
As Andrew Mertha demonstrates in Brothers in Arms... bureaucratic interactions are crucial to the success or failure of individual projects and the overall influence that China derives from its [foreign] aid. He does so through a skillful analysis of China's relations with one of its key Cold War 'client states'—Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea....This excellent book merits careful reading.
Andrew Mertha has shed some very much needed light on the relationship between the People's Republic of Chine (PRC) and Democratic Kampuchea (DK) between 1975 and 1979 in Brothers in Arms. Remarkably, that light might extend to our understanding of current-day behaviour with client states as China scrambles for resources in Africa, Latin America, and beyond.
Andrew Mertha's superb book is 35 years overdue. While it has long been appreciated that it was support from China that enabled the Communist Party of Kampuchea, aka the Khmer Rouge, to seize power in 1975 and to brutalize Cambodia until it was ousted by Vietnam in 1979, this is the first detailed study of how Beijing disbursed its aid and of the clash of bureaucratic cultures which ensued.... Brothers in Arms is a masterful account of China’s failed policy of support for Democratic Kampuchea, required reading for anyone who wishes to understand either Beijing’s role in Southeast Asia during the 1970s or the decisive influence of bureaucratic politics.
[Brothers in Arms]not only provides historical insight into the bureaucratic structure of China's aid to its client state, i.e. Democratic Kampuchea (DK) between 1975 and 1979, but also explicates the casual effect of the fragmented Chinese and DK bureaucratic institutions, the variation of which determines the degree of China's ability to assert influence over DK.... This book is the first to provide such insightful detail on China's aid to the DK between 1979 and 1978... [and] is certainly a major breakthrough in the history of China's aid to the DK.... This book is a useful resource for students of China's foreign aid policy.
Robust and fascinating.... Mertha's study represents a rare triumph of comparative research design, made possible by the author's impressive mastery of both Chinese and Khmer, as well as his sensitive and nuanced readings of the functional power relations motivating both systems.... Situated at the intersection of domestic and foreign policy analysis, Brothers in Arms represents a remarkable marriage between two richly detailed and informative case studies, and theoretical insights that make the book indispensable reading.
Remarkable.... Mertha's contributions in Brothers in Arms are many, most notably the adopted explanatory framework that places domestic institutions and bureaucratic organizations in the context of strategic interaction. Scholars of organizations will find much in this work that is novel, compelling, and pathbreaking.... Mertha delivers a truly impressive work, one that advances our understandings of institutions in contexts of strategic interaction, foreign aid, and China's likely influence in the coming years.
