New York: Routledge, 2018. viii, 238 pp. (Tables, maps, B&W photos, Illustrations.) US$149.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-63009-3.
Although objective truth is elusive, especially perhaps when writing about civil war, occupation, (post)-Cold War politics, and decades of armed conflict, Brigadier General Boraden Nhem considers it “needless to say” that the views expressed in his book are not solely his own but are “drawn from my objective academic analysis” and are “in no way representative of the official positions of the Ministry of National Defense of Cambodia” (29). However, it is exactly the position(ality) of the author—as a young assistant to Defense Minister Tea Banh, with a PhD from the University of Delaware and an MA from the US Army Command and General Staff College—that makes this book so interesting.
Nhem analyzes the military and strategic history of the Cambodian Civil War during the Vietnamese occupation (1979–1989) until the political settlement in 1991. Only someone with his educational and military background could hope to elucidate the evolution and dynamics of the combat operations of the five involved militaries and the war forhe populace’s “hearts and minds.” In varying detail, Nhem covers the insurgent militaries operating mainly from refugee camps along the border—the Armée Nationale Sihanoukiste (ANS), the Khmer People’s National Liberation Armed Forces (KPNLAF), and the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea (NADK), the Khmer Rouge military. With roots in three previous political regimes, the three insurgent militaries formed the troubled Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) in 1982, retaining the Cambodian seat at the United Nations (previously held solely by the Khmer Rouge) until 1991. Nhem goes on to suggest that these factions were characterized by three main failures of military organization: the formation of a functioning joint command, the management of the hybridity of a people’s war, and the transformation of guerrilla to conventional forces as the war progressed.
Large parts of the book are devoted to the analysis of combat operations from strategic, tactical, and logistic perspectives. Due to source constraints—to which I will return—there is a strong focus on the military organization, organizational learning, and strategic history of the incumbent military, the Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Army (PRKA) of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). Nhem claims that the PRKA learned from the occupying People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN)—the fifth military analyzed—how to maintain high morale through political indoctrination and training; how to wage a hybrid people’s war involving guerrilla and conventional elements; how to establish and maintain effective interplay between mobile and territorial forces; and how to learn from combat experiences. The PRKA did so by following Mao’s guidelines on waging a people’s war. In contrast, Nhem characterizes the non-communist factions’ approach, which did not depend on mobilizing grievances or Mao’s contradictions, as Taiwanese. Nhem also refers to interesting challenges such as the creation of a protective belt consisting mainly of barbed wire and mines to seal off the border (K-5), which he criticizes as a misguided territory-centric idea favored by the Vietnamese occupiers. He also shows how morale declined when units operated in areas far from home.
Nevertheless, it remains problematic that Nhem seeks to depict his views as eternal scientific truths; in fact, they are based mainly on government sources and so-called staff rides to battlefields. While he talked to members of the three guerrilla groups operating along the borders, he spoke to relatively few on the former opposing side—probably because of his position—and fails to address the issue of talking to members of a coalition force that fought against the state military he now represents. In addition, large parts of his analysis rest on propaganda from the fighting militaries’ bulletins. From these, he deduces a superiority in political morale of the state military—for instance, by analyzing attendance rates at political indoctrination programs (129). Nhem’s bias is most obvious in his emphasis on the role of the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation (KUFNS) in “liberating Phnom Penh” (98), as well as on the military’s “friendly competition principle” within its own ranks, and “good people-army relations” (105). That bias is further reflected in his constant praise of current prime minister Hun Sen, whose political apparatus was retained throughout the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) period despite competition from other political parties and formal governance by the UN peacekeeping force, which formed the basis for “his successes in later election cycles” (209). While Hun Sen is regularly cited as a source, Nhem reserves the highest praise forhe Cambodian military and the “unsung heroes” of the militia forces. (Interestingly, he mentions only names from the opposition side but not from the incumbent military.)
Granted this bias, Nhem makes many interesting points, if one takes his descriptions of military successes with a grain of salt. Of particular interest is his account of how the four militaries fought to place politicians who were negotiating a peace deal in favorable positions during the final stages of the conflict—something that non-military observers typically miss. Nhem shows how losses on the battlefield strengthened Hun Sen’s position in crafting a favorable deal for his incumbent government, gaining a 50 percent share in the transitional government or Supreme National Council (SNC) despite the involvement (at least on paper) of four factions. Nhem claims that battlefield losses forced the non-communists within the CGDK coalition to submit to Hun Sen’s demands, not only because of his military prowess but also because of fears that the Khmer Rouge’s stronger voice within its own coalitions would strengthen its chances of returning to power. Additionally, Nhem details the UNTAC period, including its election campaign and the creation of a double-headed government. Again, however, these descriptions are vague and favour Hun Sen, who later instigated his “win-win policy” to incorporate the remaining Khmer Rouge. After forcing the election-winning Funcinpec (under Norodom Ranariddh) into a co-premiership, both sides began to compete over inclusion of the Khmer Rouge. This led to factional fighting in mid-1997 that ousted Ranariddh and ignited a brief return to guerrilla warfare. Finally, Nhem suggests that these events may have resulted in part from a failed joint combat operation launched by the new government coalition against the remaining Khmer Rouge strongholds, but concludes that “this is a story for another day” (209). While this book is undoubtedly an interesting read, it is clearly shaped more by the author’s positionality than by “objective academic analysis.” Positionality is not in itself a problem, but the claimed superiority of political factions as a matter of academic fact seems untenable.
Daniel Bultmann
Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany