The Apathy of Empire

What America’s intervention in Cambodia during the Vietnam War reveals about Cold War–era U.S. national security strategy
 

The Apathy of Empire reveals just how significant Cambodia was to U.S. policy in Indochina during the Vietnam War, broadening the lens to include more than the often-cited incursion in 1970 or the illegal bombing after the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. This theoretically informed and thoroughly documented case study argues that U.S. military intervention in Cambodia revealed America’s efforts to construct a hegemonic spatial world order. 

James Tyner documents the shift of America’s post-1945 focus from national defense to national security. He demonstrates that America’s expansionist policies abroad, often bolstered by military power, were not so much about occupying territory but instead constituted the construction of a new normal for the exercise of state power. During the Cold War, Vietnam became the geopolitical lodestar of this unfolding spatial order. And yet America’s grand strategy was one of contradiction: to build a sovereign state (South Vietnam) based on democratic liberalism, it was necessary to protect its boundaries—in effect, to isolate it—through both covert and overt operations in violation of Cambodia’s sovereignty. The latter was deemed necessary for the former. 

Questioning reductionist geopolitical understandings of states as central or peripheral, Tyner explores this paradox to rethink the formulation of the Cambodian war as sideshow, revealing it instead as a crucial site for the formation of this new normal.

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"This copiously documented account of the American political reasoning that led to the destruction of Cambodia in the 1970s is a must-read addition to geopolitical analysis. It very clearly shows how, when places are coded ambiguously in the grandiose narratives of national security, the failure to consider practicalities on the ground can lead to the misapplication of military force, with tragic consequences for those caught in the resultant violence."—Simon Dalby, Wilfrid Laurier University

"James A. Tyner brilliantly blends discussion of U.S. Cold War policy in Southeast Asia, grand strategy, and geopolitics with impressive scholarship, accessible prose, wisdom, and a dash of dry wit. The Apathy of Empire is a masterful demonstration of how to understand geopolitics through a relational approach that connects territories near and far through combinations of geopolitical practices and representations. Tyner shows the importance of viewing military strategy through the lens of critical geopolitics."—Colin Flint, Utah State University