Dilemmas of Foreign Aid

Cambodia’s Curse is a milestone. Although there are dozens of books about the Khmer Rouge, Joel Brinkley’s is the first major one to look at present-day Cambodia, which is finally at peace after three decades of civil war (the last of the Khmer Rouge didn’t surrender until 1999). The traumas of the recent past—1.7 million dead during the Pol Pot years, the savage American bombing campaign of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a decade-long Vietnamese occupation—have produced a society that is, in many ways, fundamentally broken. Brinkley’s book, despite flaws, is an astute look at the debilitating effects of violence and upheaval on a country still finding its way out of the premodern era.