Cambodia Confounds the Peacemakers, 1979-1998
ISBN: 9781501733550
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Cornell University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Cambodia -- Politics and government -- 1979–;

The peacemaking efforts in Cambodia since the dispersal of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 were the most comprehensive ever undertaken by the international community. Two seasoned observers of Southeast Asia now offer a detailed account of this endeavor, including the negotiation and planning that produced the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) and a free and fair election in 1993.

MacAlister Brown and Joseph J. Zasloff unravel the tangled web of civil war from 1979 to the coup d'etat by Hun Sen in 1997, and the effort to hold a second election in summer 1998. They trace the years of diplomacy and warfare sustained by outside powers, the establishment of a constitutional government, and the achievements and shortfalls of the U.N. presence in Cambodia.

With the results of the 1998 election appraised in an epilogue, this engaging book provides the most complete and up-to-date account of international peacekeeping and political rescue in long-suffering Cambodia.


MacAlister Brown is Professor of Political Science, Emeritus at Williams College. Joseph J. Zasloff is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh. They also coauthored Communist Indochina and U.S. Foreign Policy: Postwar Realities .

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