Recent Books

China's Leaders: The New Generation, BY prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, extended
CHENG LI. Lanham: Rowman 8c a helping hand to Mao, through the bor-
Littlefield, 2001,304 pp. $75.00 (paper, der conflicts, and on to the complexities
$22-95)- after the Cold War. Garver shows how
Li takes a quantitative approach to assess India grossly overestimated the value of
the next generation of Chinese leaders, its initial help to China, to the point that
flnding that they will be solid technocrats, Nehru felt he could ignore the territorial
if not the world's best scientiflcally trade-offs that might have resolved border
trained elite. More than 90 percent of problems. India never flally recovered
the Politburo, Central Committee, state from the shock of the Chinese victory
ministers, and provincial leaders are coUege in the 1962 border clash; its diplomatic
graduates; of these, nearly 75 percent are fortunes then steadily sank as it lost status
trained in engineering and the natural within the developing world for its timid
sciences. Li also underscores the dramatic status quo positions and its increasing
shift in leadership from the liberal-arts reliance on Moscow. In contrast, Beijing
graduates of Peking University to the was seen as both a champion of radical
scientists and engineers from Tsinghua change and a truly independent power.
University, often called "China's MIT," Garver documents how the Chinese
who include in their ranks Prime Minister outmaneuvered the Indians in South
Zhu Rongji. This finding leads to a more Asia by forging ties with Pakistan, Burma,
general study of the role of informal and the Himalayan states. Now, the con-
networks of both political principals test wiU be resolved only if India accepts
and their staffs. Li believes that the fourth Chinese hegemony in South Asia or if
generation is also the generation of the China pulls back to leave the subcontinent
Cultural Revolution. That terrible ex- for India to dominate. Garver suspects
perience may have hardened them, he that the former is more likely,
writes, but it also gave them "grassroots
consciousness." He concludes optimisti- Renovating Politics in Contemporary
caUy that an effective leadership will take Vietnam, BY ZACHARY ABUZA.
over and give China a better international Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001,
image. But he is not able to dismiss 271pp. $52.00.
entirely the suspicion that technocrats When Hanoi introduced economic reform
can work for all kinds of regimes, including
in 1986, there were high hopes that Viet-
repressive ones. nam might foUow China in opening up
and achieving spectacular economic
Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in growth. But in 1997 its economy stalled,
the Twentieth Century, BY JOHN W. and the country went back into isolation.
GARVER. Seattle: University of Abuza traces in detail the shifts in Viet-
Washington Press, 2001,450 pp. $50.00. nam's foreign and economic policies,
India and China have long had a contested seeking to explain why it remains so poor
relationship. This thoughtful account despite abundant natural resources and
dissects that connection from the early high literacy rates. The problem, he argues,
days of India's independence, when its comes down to political culture. The

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 Recent Books
Communist Party remains a select elite Africa's ethnic pluralism alone would not
that fanatically monopolizes political make its societies combustible. But as
power and prevents the growth of civil despots struggle to outflank their opponents
society. Any hope for change will thus or keep their regimes afloat without Cold
have to come from dissidents within the War patronage, they flnd it expedient to
party. The author then traces the efforts stoke ethnic rivalries and spawn anarchic
of various party dissidents from the 1950s conditions. That way, they absolve them-
to the present. The postcolonial debates selves of responsibility for the dying and
about democracy were followed by plundering that facilitates their political
attempts by former members of the survival. "Tribalism" is thus no less or-
National Liberation Front in South chestrated in Africa than in Serbia or
Vietnam to establish a more liberal other places where dictators have played
society after uniflcation in 1975. But at the ethnic card. In a persuasive chapter
each turn, the communists' fear of on U.S. complicity in African conflicts,
instability made them repress dissent; Berkeley targets former assistant Secretary
the resulting political stagnation para- of State Chester Crocker as someone
lyzed economic growth. The Vietnamese who most "personified the arrogance of
leadership, without the experience of a unaccountable power." He was less a war
demoralizing Cultural Revolution, still criminal than "the kind of figure many
insists on absolute conformity. war criminals depend on: an articulate firont
man, capable of putting an intellectual gloss
on otherwise crude power politics."
Africa
Angola From Afro-Stalinism to Petro-
GAIL M. GERHART Diamond Capitalism. hV TONY HODGES.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
Tbe Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe^, 2001, 223 pp. $49.95 (paper, S19.95).
and Power in the Heart of Africa, B Y\j It is tempting to imagine Angola emerging
BILL BERKELEY. New York: Basic some day as an African success story—if
Books, 2001,309 pp. $27.50. it could only settle its interminable civil
First-rate reporting informed by good war. Its vast natural resources could finance
social science makes Berkeley's analysis a level of development that would be
of post-Cold War conflicts in Africa a the envy of the rest of the continent,
clarifying introduction for readers trying . But the sad truth, according to the pic-
to understand the continent's apparent ture painted here, is different. Even if
chaos. Drawing out fundamental similar- the destructive forces of the rebel leader
ities in the conflicts that have wracked Jonas Savimbi were to vanish tomorrow,
Liberia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic the venal elites who rule in Luanda lack the
of the Congo, South Africa, and Rwanda, habits and values required to create a
the author builds an argument that blames better future. Having lived for so long in
despotic leaders for large-scale violence. a rentier state financed by oil revenues and
Without the ruthless machinations of (more recently) diamond fields retaken
tyrants in pursuit of power and loot, from Savimbi, the country's leading

FOREIGN AFFAIRS November/December 2001 [ 19 3 ]