The Daily Bulletin

Please join the Geography and Planning Department, the Political Science and Public Administration Department, and the Equity and Campus Diversity Office for the book talk “Vietnam's Strategic Thinking during the Third Indochina War” on Thursday, March 24, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Bulger Communication Center 425 and virtually. This talk is part of the Buffalo State College celebration of the 11th annual Southeast Asia Week.

Kosal Path, associate professor of political science and chair of the master’s program in international affairs and global justice, Brooklyn College, CUNY, will discuss his book, which contributes to the existing scholarship in three major ways. First and most importantly, it challenges the conventional wisdom that Hanoi’s invasion and occupation of Cambodia was an irrational decision driven by the imperial ambitions of the Vietnamese political elites in Indochina, and their paranoia spiraled by Hanoi’s false belief that Beijing was instigating Khmer Rouge attacks on Vietnam. Archival evidence shows instead that the invasion and occupation were a calculated decision based on geopolitical priorities and domestic imperatives at that time.

Second, the book contributes to broader scholarship on the relationship between war and state-building by showing how Vietnam came to view war as a cure-all that would resolve its economic crisis and external threats to its territorial sovereignty and solidify alliances.

Third, the book provides new insights into why Vietnam decided to engage in a costly regime change and nation-building in Cambodia and why these efforts failed to establish a loyal client state in Cambodia in the 1980s.

For scholars who are interested in the Third Indochina War that engulfed the region after the fall of Saigon, the book provides a detailed historical account—a Vietnamese perspective—that fills a gap in the existing scholarship. More broadly, this book contributes to emerging scholarship on the shift in the Vietnamese political elites’ thinking from the doctrinal Marxist-Leninist ideology during the last decade of the Cold War to the reform and opening of the post-Cold War era.

Participants must register online by 2:00 p.m. Wednesday, March 23.