Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military 1945–1980 by Tanya L. Roth

Abstract

persecution and purges” were “strong evidence of a Kampucheanization of Maoism” (p. 173), as if this did not also occur in the Soviet Union. One might rather argue that it is actually strong evidence of Stalinism. Galway exaggerates the influence of some and underplays that of others. He says Yuon and Nim helped develop the party’s strategy of “combined political and armed struggle” and initiated the party’s secret defense units (p. 145). He offers no evidence for this. Neither man was ever a member of the party’s Central Committee. Khieu Samphan wrote a doctoral dissertation on “Cambodia’s Economy and Its Problems with Industrialization “(1959), drawing on Samir Amin’s center-periphery theory. Like Yuon and Nim, he, too, was Paris-educated, joined the CPF, initially took the parliamentary route to reform as part of Sihanouk’s government, and then was driven into the maquis in 1967. But unlike Yuon and Nim, Samphan went on to become head of state in DK and a leading defender of the regime. He is now in his 90s, the only surviving senior leader of the CPK. The autarkic development model advocated by Samphan in his thesis is precisely what the CPK implemented. It is striking that Galway mentions Samphan repeatedly but does not credit him as one of the regime’s intellectual leading lights. Despite these issues, Galway’s volume exhibits immense scholarship and is likely to ignite considerable debate among Cambodia scholars. It is a fascinating contribution to the historiography of modern Cambodia.