This case study examines the human rights implications arising from the construction of Cambodia’s largest hydroelectric dam, the Lower Sesan II. As a long-standing initiative intended to dramatically expand access to reliable energy sources within Cambodia, the Lower Sesan II was adopted by and labeled a “key project” of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, project developers and contractors face significant criticism as the construction efforts have displaced Indigenous communities and failed to address environmental reports that projected a substantial disruption to local biodiversity, adverse effects that were later documented by local groups and nongovernmental organizations. Drawing from international, transnational, and domestic sources of law, and interviews with various community stakeholders, this study illustrates how Chinese parties building BRI projects engage with applicable human rights obligations through the example of the Lower Sesan II and discusses the consequences of noncompliance.

From a strategic standpoint, the final years of the American war in Vietnam highlighted a persistent uncertainty over how the conflict would end. Both civil and military leaders wrestled with confusing estimates on the war’s progress. These uncertainties mattered because they influenced the timing of and ways in which US forces withdrew from a war that would not end once the Americans had departed. Despite arguments that General Creighton Abrams had fought a “better war” in Vietnam leading to a military victory, a sense of strategic stalemate hung over these final years. Problems remained in assessing the political aspects of pacification, the staying power of the South Vietnamese armed forces once American troops departed, and the longterm viability of the Saigon regime. By early 1969, Abrams also had to confront political decisions leading to the first withdrawal of US troops, decisions that would pit him against the Nixon administration and bring to the surface grave civil–military tensions. Despite years of effort, a key question remained unanswered as these withdrawals began – how stable would South Vietnam be once Americans departed? Ultimately, these final years left the Americans no closer to answering the question of whether they would achieve “victory” in Vietnam.

This chapter situates the communist victory in the Second Indochina War in the broader context of Third World revolution during the 1970s. It argues that 1975 represented a high-water mark of secular revolutionary activity in the global Cold War, and that the following years witnessed the retreat of left-wing revolutionary politics in the Global South. The period that followed saw the rise of a new model of political organization among Third World revolutionaries that largely abandoned secular progressive ideologies in favor of appeals to ethnic and sectarian identities as the basis of armed revolution. If Vietnamese communist fighters represented the archetype of Third World Revolutionaries in the long 1960s, the Afghan Mujahideen would come to symbolize the revolutionaries of the 1980s.

The chapter provides testimonies of individuals who took part in a genocidal process in order to understand how mass atrocities can take shape across different human societies. Through the analyses of interviews conducted with former genocide perpetrators in Rwanda and in Cambodia, it appears that many of them reported that they participated because they simply followed orders. It thus suggests that obedience to orders strongly influences individual actions during a war or a genocide. The chapter also highlights the key role of other forms of social influence, such as conformity to a group and compliance. However, the interviews reveal that complex additional factors have influenced former perpetrators in their actions, such as elements of coercion, the fear for one’s own life, and hateful propaganda. This chapter illuminatesthe many reasons that can lead a human to perpetrate evil acts.

Hanoi entered into negotiations with Washington and Saigon in 1968–9, Chapter 4 explains, but merely to probe and sow division among its enemies. But then unsettling circumstances intervened, including the Sino-Soviet Border War of early 1969; the death a few months later of Ho Chi Minh, who, despite his lack of influence over communist decision-making, remained the venerable face of the Vietnamese struggle for reunification and independence and thus an important public relations tool; and, finally, Nixon’s decisions to “Vietnamize” the anticommunist war effort in the South and then to authorize incursions into Cambodia and Laos. The period 1969–71 was marked by uncertainty and indecisiveness as communist decision-makers reassessed their strategic priorities and placed greater emphasis on alternative modes of struggle. Concerned about potential diplomatic isolation and the loss of Soviet and Chinese support, Le Duan decided to go-for-broke once more. The 1972 Easter Offensive was an abject disaster. Hanoi then tried its luck at the bargaining table, resulting in the Paris peace agreement of 1973 and the suspension of the Fourth Civil War for Vietnam.

The Nguyen Cochinchina was a maritime power. Its Archipelago-like landscape facing the South China Sea gave it a special character and made it stand out from all the Vietnamese dynasties. The synergy of its economy and the hybridity of its population and culture should all be seen against this background. Overseas trade defined seventeenth-century Cochinchina and regulated its labour and cash crop production on the coast and penetrated all sectors of local production and consumptions and accelerated its interactions with the uplanders. The Nguyen Cochinchina’s history challenges the conventional version of a single Vietnamese past, and the narrow strip of land between the mountains and the sea encouraged people to seek a much freer way of being Vietnamese. In such a way, it was little surprise that Cochinchina became the historical engine of change and pulled the national Vietnamese centre of gravity – whether seen in political, economic, or even cultural terms – southwards from the seventeenth century.

Chapter 5 assesses US air power following the Tet Offensive through the cross-border incursion into Cambodia in 1970. The newly elected US president, Richard Nixon, sought an American withdrawal from South Vietnam. However, he initially expanded the conflict into Cambodia to deny the NVA/VC sanctuary and sever their southern supply lines. Leading up to the invasion, the Commando Hunt air interdiction campaign in southern Laos slowed the movement of supplies. It also imposed substantial costs on the North to keep the Ho Chi Minh Trail open. Commando Hunt could not halt the NVA troops from making the journey to South Vietnam on foot, but the direct attack of fielded forces in South Vietnam and Cambodia did continue to keep the NVA/VC dispersed and hidden. Keeping the North Vietnamese on the defensive provided the time and space for South Vietnam’s pacification program to take root and for the Vietnamization program to generate conventional capabilities for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) to replace withdrawing American combat troops.

The twentieth century witnessed the rise of nationalism associated with decolonization throughout Asia and Africa. Indochina inspired nationalist movements around the world as communist-led movements there scored major victories against French colonialism and American intervention. The phenomenon was complex not only because Indochinese nationalisms were entangled with communism, but also because of their apparently ancient roots.

This chapter aims to explore the origins and nature of nationalisms in Indochina. It examines the processes that gave birth to national consciousness among the people in the Indochinese peninsula. Indochina, a modern name for this region born out of French imperial conquests, consisted of diverse communities of different religions, cultures, and histories. These communities had existed and interacted with each other for centuries prior to their contact with European powers.

Although the North Atlantic was plunged into crisis in the early 1970s, radicals proved unable to seize the opportunity as they entered a crisis of their own. In France, to a degree unparalleled elsewhere, prominent former radicals not only disavowed anti-imperialist internationalism but rallied behind the rival human rights internationalism. In so doing, they brought with them a set of experiences, which strengthened human rights activism. Despite their fading fortunes, and the growing strength of their rivals, radicals struggled to reinvent anti-imperialist internationalism. But they found themselves trapped in an uphill battle facing one obstacle after another. One of the most devastating blows was the internecine war between China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Revolutionaries in all three countries had developed a revolutionary strategy based in Leninism, joined hands in the struggle against imperialism, and claimed they were transitioning to communism together. Now they slaughtered each other in the name of national self-determination. Although the Third Indochina War did not destroy radicalism, it severely destabilized radical politics. While much of this failure can be traced to deeper histories of colonialism, imperialism, and American intervention in the region, revolutionaries, and the ideas that guided them, played a role as well. In this context, the idea of the right of nations to self-determination specifically, and the Leninist problematic more generally, suffered a terrible blow. The horrific events in Southeast Asia deepened the gnawing crisis of Leninism, which would ultimately bring down the project of anti-imperialist internationalism as such, creating a perfect opportunity for the rival human rights internationalism to take the stage.

The high watermark in the Sino-American relationship during the Henry Kissinger era came in 1973 with the creation of “liaison offices,” or de facto embassies, in each capital: These liaison offices further deepened and formalized the diplomatic relationship after the Richard Nixon–Mao Zedong summit of 1972 and would remain the closest that the two governments would come to establishing official diplomatic relations before Kissinger left government in January 1977. This chapter reveals that – in cause, conception, and execution – liaison offices were a direct outgrowth of the exchange relationship. Other new milestones in that relationship were also set in 1973, not least during the visit of the largest cultural delegation yet to travel to the People’s Republic of China: the Philadelphia Orchestra. However, 1973 also saw the first signs of new tensions in exchange diplomacy as lingering Sino-American disagreements about Cambodia and Taiwan, as well as turbulent Chinese domestic politics, led to confrontations in cultural contacts and during a Congressional delegation to China led by Senator Warren Magnuson.

This chapter discusses the Cambodian Constitution’s recognition of both Mahanikay and Thommayuth sects, arguing that the reseparation of the sangha was the outcome of a political compromise made in the country’s peace-building process, which has since been overtaken in secular politics. Cambodia’s 1993 Constitution not only symbolized the purported transition to democracy but also the return of Buddhism to the status of state religion. The traditional separation between Mahanikay and Thommayuth sects replaced the unified sangha structure in place since the end of the Khmer Rouge. This new status quo maintains constitutional recognition through the inclusion of the Supreme Patriarch of each sect as members of the Throne Council. However, the novel position of Great Supreme Patriarch brought into question this division. This chapter will suggest that the division should be understood as a political compromise made by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party to the cosignatories of the Paris Peace Accords, and that it leaves an ambiguous new de facto situation within the Buddhist hierarchy. The chapter highlights how the constitutional recognition of Buddhist authority in contemporary Cambodia has been structured by a confluence of party-political and peace-making considerations.