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Books > Humanities > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945
Few historians of the Vietnam War have covered the post-1975 era or
engaged comprehensively with refugee politics, humanitarianism, and
human rights as defining issues of the period. After Saigon's Fall
is the first major work to uncover this history. Amanda C. Demmer
offers a new account of the post-War normalization of US-Vietnam
relations by centering three major transformations of the late
twentieth century: the reassertion of the US Congress in American
foreign policy; the Indochinese diaspora and changing domestic and
international refugee norms; and the intertwining of
humanitarianism and the human rights movement. By tracing these
domestic, regional, and global phenomena, After Saigon's Fall
captures the contingencies and contradictions inherent in
US-Vietnamese normalization. Using previously untapped archives to
recover a riveting narrative with both policymakers and nonstate
advocates at its center, Demmer's book also reveals much about US
politics and society in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
How is foreign policy made in Iraq? Based on dozens of interviews
with senior officials and politicians, this book provides a clear
analysis of the development of domestic Iraqi politics since 2003.
Zana Gulmohamad explains how the federal government of Iraq and
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have functioned and worked
together since toppling Saddam to reveal in granular detail the
complexity of their foreign policy making. The book shows that the
ruling elites and political factions in Baghdad and in the capital
of the Kurdistan Region, Erbil, create foreign policies according
to their agendas. The formulation and implementation of the two
governments' foreign policies is to a great extent uncoordinated.
Yet Zana Gulmohamad places this incoherent model of foreign policy
making in the context of the country's fragmented political and
social context and explains how Iraq's neighbouring countries -
Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Syria before the civil war - have
each influenced its internal affairs. The book is the first study
dedicated to the contemporary dynamics of the Iraqi state - outside
the usual focus on the "great powers" - and it explains exactly how
Iraqi foreign policy is managed alongside the country's economic
and security interests.
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