Philip Short

An excellently written biography of Pol Pot, the chilling despot who ruled Cambodia in the late 1970s as head of the Khmer Rouge. As with the biography I recently read of Ho Chi Minh, there is not much to say about Pol's personality, his likes and dislikes, and his passions- he never wrote them down or revealed much of anything about himself to anyone, especially scholars or journalists. But he was ruthless and pitiless, in the vein of Stalin or Hitler, eating well while the Cambodian people show more in the countryside starved to death or were executed for things like foraging in the jungle for fruit or knowing French. It is also as much a history of Cambodia in the latter half of the 20th century, not to mention a commentary on a culture in which anyone with a certain amount of power or authority can act with impunity. Pol was never punished, in part because when the iron was hot, he was playing the US, China, and Thailand off against the USSR and Vietnam- a Cold War game in which the Cambodian people suffered horrifically. Highly recommended for those with an interest in the region and in what happened in the inner sanctum of the Khmer Rouge during this country's great tragedy. show less

Philip Short demonstrates his integrity by starting with the demolition of a conspiracy theory about Putin. He then gives us a sensitive and intelligent account of the personality of Russia's leader based on in-depth research of his early years and his time in St. Petersburg.

A good chunk of the rest of the book is a little less impressive because, once Putin enters the Presidency, it becomes quite clear that the author does not have, perhaps cannot have, the access to close sources that he show more needs.

Still, with caveats about his later sources (which often are, as he notes, witnesses for the prosecution), the account of Putin's Presidency, if somewhat too close to the standard Western narrative, is still valuable and (as far as the sources allow) factual.

It may not be the last word on Putin but it largely displaces all previous words on the man and his times. It should be the first point of call for someone coming to the subject for the first time. The notes are also excellent and revealing.

So where does the book take us? Short has already upset a lot of people by bothering to understand where Putin is coming from and the role of the West in driving him to decisions that may be good or bad but are logical and almost inevitable.

In fact, what comes out of the book are the unsurprising conclusions that the current crisis is very much the creation of confused, narcissistic and often inept policy-making in the West and that Putin has an analytical mind often much superior to that of his opponents.

What may surprise people more is the evidence that Putin was very much a pro-Western politician for much of his career although always placing Russia first (he saw no necessary incompatibility between those two positions until quite recently).

Russians I know have told me that he was often regarded as both excessively pragmatic and rather weak in defending Russia's interests for many years. In some respects we might see Putin as a man who feels badly let down by the West and who is now hitting back hard in frustration.

The warts of Putin are demonstrated (as one would expect in a largely Western narrative by an honest journalist) although perhaps there is a lack of full explanation and understanding of the political economy that he is trying to manage.

Russia is dysfunctional but it is dysfunctional because Western management of the fall of the Soviet Union was destructive and negative. It was always going to be a slow process getting a busted nation back to a creditable status as a workable economy and society.

Almost every action taken by the regime (albeit frequently crossing Western 'red lines') is only a reflection of behaviours undertaken by the West itself. What the West cannot forgive is the inability to revolutionise the State into a non-corrupt, legalistic liberal democracy.

Russia is more interested in recovery and survival where economic recovery and survival competes with concerns about national security. Russian fears about the latter are often justifiable even if we find it tragic that smaller Ukraine has become the pawn in a greater game.

To Western politicians, severe provocation is no justification but there is an air of the small boy picking on a smaller boy under the protection of the playground bully. Severe provocation is what it was and the Western bully, merely throwing a cosh to the smaller lad, must take some of the blame.

Putin himself is a very interesting man. If he has had an analytical fault, it has probably been one of ignorance of Western arrogance and of American ignorance of Russia and so a rather naive belief in the possibility of Russia being treated as an equal by the hegemon.

The analytical skills are those of an intelligent boy from the wrong side of the tracks, an outsider, who is trained under the old regime and learns life by doing, avoiding mistakes and learning from the mistakes when he cannot avoid them.

Do we like Putin? Well, oddly, one finds oneself in some sympathy for him despite his faults. He learns fast and seems to have an inner ethical core often overwhelmed by the balance of interest involved in surviving what he rules.

What we do see is consummate political skill in holding together the potential for chaos that was post-Soviet Russia and building sufficient prosperity and national security to feel able to claim once again something like great power status.

This delusion may be a delusion shared by two other nations on the winning side of the Second World War - France and Britain - to the effect that the hegemon would ever truly treat them as equals. They would all be favoured 'free' satrapies with pre-set 'values' or nothing.

Russian pride and exceptionalism, the sacrifices of industrialisation and war, the realisation that the old regime they once believed in was an inept, corrupt lie have conspired to create the noble but existentially dangerous view that it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

It is all a matter of timing. Russia has got trapped. Whereas China can afford to wait and let the hegemon slowly decline, Russia has had either to live on its knees like Britain or find that its nemesis would drive it to die on its feet. That is why the current war is existential.

Although Washington back-tracked from regime change as a proxy war aim, there is little doubt that it wants a Russia run from the centre by liberal Muscovites prepared to impose Western values on the smaller towns and rural areas in a modernisation that would unravel a culture.

Putin evidently believed both in the efficacy of the market and in the cultural importance of Russia. At a certain point a Russian leader was going to have to choose between the two. Putin's gamble is a low key version of the German gamble in the 1930s - can a targeted culture, good or evil, survive?

At the time of writing, it is hard to see who will win in Ukraine. The West has the money and is sending substantial military support to Ukraine but it is also finding it difficult to cope with the consequences of its economic war on Russia. Ukraine is technically bust already.

Russia has achieved a temporary victory for the ideology of national self-determination in taking the bulk of the Donbas and Kherson (as well as holding Crimea) but at considerable cost. If it dies on its feet, it will also have opened up space for a resentful global anti-colonialist ideology.

The US is not going to lose entirely because it is too rich to lose and, for China and for the US, techniques and ideas are being tested for a very different end-game - will the Chinese elite bend the knee to the world order or structure itself to be resilient for a new existential struggle?

The posturing and sabre-rattling over Taiwan are really about trying to work out which path China will choose - the early Putin strategy of accommodation and de facto submission or the late Putin strategy of defiance and potential isolation from the core of the global economy.

Europe, meanwhile, has been turned into even more of an unstable satrapy, its energy dependence on Russia merely exchanged for one on the US and its Gulf allies and dodgy African states. Europe is being forced into global imperialism despite itself and to spend billions on guns to boot.

The next few months (August 2022) are going to be very interesting. Although the cards are stacked against Russia, its recent resilience is part of that story as well as the fact that it still sits on vast natural resources and last resort nuclear weaponry.

Vladimir Putin, a frustrated and angry if pragmatic man in his late sixties, backed largely by his own people, is key to what happens next and what happens next could be a global disaster if the West continues to push and prod as it has done since the 1990s.

But there is another factor in all this. The US President has an approval rating around 38%, the hawkish British Prime Minister has been ousted, the Italian Government is in disarray and the German Government is talking about energy rationing.

The economic war unleashed by the West may present serious medium to long term issues for Russia requiring it to be more authoritarian to survive as a culture but that same economic war has delivered high inflation, disruption and possible recession in sensitive democracies.

Personally, I think both Russia and the West will survive this but both will be much weakened in the long run to the benefit of the growing network of non-Western nations prepared neither to be re-colonised not dragged into a new Cold War.

That is a worse result for the West than Russia since the latter can turn in on itself but the raison d'etre of the West is expansion and hegemony. There is a real possibility of a period of implosive politics within the West starting with the US Mid-Terms in November.

The key question left by this book is that of succession. Russian liberals have been knocked sideways. They are as secondary to the big picture as more rational populists like Orban are to the big picture in the West. Lone voices with an alternative vision have been shunted aside by history.

There is almost certainly no leading candidate for the Presidency after Putin who is not going to be approved by Putin and share the view that existential survival of Russian political culture is prior even to participation in the global system. Medvedev speaks like a Russian hawk nowadays.

Wise counsel in the West would have long since negotiated with Putin on sphere of influence lines but there is no wise counsel left. Raw emotion on both sides has taken over. Men, money and material are going to be poured into Ukraine until one side or the other breaks.

Whatever the outcome, this book is a highly recommended account of at least part of how we got into the mess we are in and why no one deep in the hole is going to stop digging - in Washington, London, Berlin, Ky'iv/Kiev, Donetsk, Warsaw or Moscow.

Whatever the slight faults of taking some sources at face value, relying too much on Western sources after 2000 and perhaps failing to explain some of the less contentious aspects of Kremlin administration, Short provides a sad but fair account which should be more widely circulated.

It should certainly make Westerners stop and think about their own moral compass, about their geo-political narcissism and their arrogance before throwing so many (often rightly thrown) stones at Putin's glass house.

His regime is partly dysfunctional, still too inefficient, undoubtedly corrupt and increasingly authoritarian but it is also hard done by, bullied and trying to save some things worth saving. Neither side comes out of this book smelling of roses.

As to poor battered Ukraine, it has become both target of an attack by an older brother on a younger and the battle ground of a far more serious (potentially) proxy war between competing system. It is hitting back hard but it is just a pawn in a bigger game.

Much resides on the outcome of this war and, having been defeated in Afghanistan, having left the Middle East in a two decade mess and desperate to deter its real enemy China, the US is playing this to win over the bones of Ukrainians and bank accounts of Europeans alike.

Putin too is not going to give way - based on this book, he will do what it takes to hold 'Novorossiya' at the least and has got used to long brutal wars of attrition which he mostly wins simply by pragmatically accepting least worst outcomes.

So, read this book, despair at humanity, watch the horror unfold and ask why we should place our trust in the people who got us to this point. As to Russians, they must make up their own mind about Putin and it seems the bulk of them have. show less

The sub-title says it all. Phillip Short has penned a fascinating book about a fascinating person, Francois Mitterrand. The child of seriously Catholic parents, M. Mitterrand would live his adult life with essentially two spouses and families. As a PoW in 1940, he escaped multiple times before being finally successful. He worked for both the Vichy government and the Resistance (and, for a time, both, simultaneously). Elected to the National Assembly as a Rightist in 1946, M. Mitterrand show more would, in 1972, be elected to serve as head of the Socialist Party -- a party of which he had not even been a member of 3 days previously. Mitterrand would serve in the cabinets of 7 PMs, both right and left. He would surprise the nation -- not to mention his opponent, incumbent president Charles de Gaulle -- by forcing a runoff in the presidential election of 1965. Eventually winning election as president himself (defeating the incumbent) in 1981, Mitterrand enlisted 4 Communists into the cabinet, the beginnings of "Eurocommunism." Five years later, with the RPR/UDF legislative victories, he would march strategically into the waters of political "cohabitation." He would serve two 7-year terms, longest in the modern era. But this brief synopsis does not do justice to the splendid research and writing of Mr. Short. Having French in-laws for over 3 decades, and sincere lefties at that (were I nominated as a Socialist candidate in France, they'd vote for me -- but. much more likely than not, they'd be holding their noses while doing so!) , I assumed I was decently informed about M. Mitterrand's career. In a word -- not! Mr. Short has essentially divided his book into two halves: the first tracing M. Mitterrand's life up to the successful 1981 presidential campaign, the second covering his presidency and death, approximately 8 months after leaving office. Not simply a political biography (as compared to the recently published memoirs of Jacques Chirac), Mr. Short has re-constructed the life of a multi-faceted individual, who truly was as intriguing as the "multiple" lives he led. Magnifique!! show less

I found this book very engaging. While it is not a “true” biography of Pol Pot, in that this isn’t what the entire book is about, the book is instead a study on twentieth century Cambodia, its politics, culture, international manipulations, military struggles, and yet, to a certain degree, one Saloth Sar, aka Pol Pot.

I have read a number of biographies of Pol Pot now, as well as studies on 1970s Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge and just what happened between 1975 and early 1979, and I am show more currently reading a book on S-21, Pol Pot’s infamous “interrogation” center (ie, torture and extermination center) located at the former school, Tuol Sleng. It’s difficult reading. Suffice it to say, I have never read anything more unbelievable in my entire life! That these atrocities could be committed by multiple leaders for generations and that the entire culture of Cambodia would permit this to occur without complaint, to accept genocide as a way of life/death is incomprehensible to me. To try and understand how Pol Pot and his fellow former school teacher colleagues could be so utterly ruthless and so completely naïve, stupid, paranoid, and utterly inept is almost beyond belief. To think that after fighting a five year civil war against a US-backed ruthless Cambodian government, on the first day of their victory in 1975, the Khmer Rouge emptied all cities, towns, and villages within 24-48 hours, completely, totally, is surreal. To think they would ban money, markets, education, religion, personal names, families, even laughter, upon pain of “disappearing” one night and being shot is so insane, it almost makes one crazy trying to understand it at all. Imagine living in New York City or Los Angeles and being told after a largely welcome revolutionary victory that you have 24-48 hours to leave all you have, walk out of the city, and go to the countryside to begin working as agricultural workers (they weren’t even told this much), or you will be shot by ten year old children wearing black pajamas carrying AK-47s. Try to picture that. Try to picture NYC and LA totally empty in two days. Except for the dead bodies. Try to picture the anarchy on the roads and kids in black pajamas with big guns herding you along to God knows where with no food or drink, people falling down dead due to malnutrition, hunger, disease, etc. Not knowing where their family is, where their spouses or kids are. Seeing everyone wearing eyeglasses taken away and shot because all such people “must” be intellectuals, who are naturally anti-revolutionary, and therefore must pay the ultimate price. Picture that. Picture 14,00-20,000 people going through S-21 in three years with only seven to 12 surviving to tell their tale, only possibly a dozen alive out of all of those people. This is Cambodia for three plus years in the 1970s. And this was the government that the US government backed, solely because they were anti-Vietnamese. And after the Vietnamese invaded and threw Pol Pot out in 1979, and he escaped to Thailand, he stayed and rebuilt his army and fought in northwest Cambodia with US aid until the late 1990s when he died a natural death, even though the entire world knew of his fucking genocide! Our own government has Cambodian blood on its hands and it’s fucking disgusting!

Yes, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao killed more people than Pol Pot did. But Pol Pot killed a much higher percentage of his people than any of those men did, his own people, and most likely, more than any man in history ever has. He was responsible for the deaths of over one and a half million people, up to one fourth of Cambodia’s population! Think about that. One fourth of your country is wiped out by one man and his insane, secretive regime. In three years. And for what? No one knows. There’s no good reason. To create some sort of completely imaginary neo-Marxist society that bears no resemblance to Marxism at all. The Khmer Rouge were the most inept Marxists in world history, barely able to understand basic concepts like class consciousness, or even what the proletariat is. It was not these concepts that brought them to power, nor even served as the mechanism behind Tuol Sleng.

The fact is that the Khmer Rouge was a total nightmare, but one brought about by many entities. The stupefying US bombardment of Cambodia is probably the most probable reason for the Khmer Rouge's vicious and fast rise to power. The US, France, Vietnam, the USSR, and China -- all of these countries brought about the rise of the Khmer Rouge, and especially in the case of China and America, catered to the exiled Pol Pot throughout the eighties and the nineties, even after the full horror of his genocide was made obvious. The next time someone talks to you about Reagan, America’s hero, make sure they know that under his watch, we kept this group of mass murderers armed for years. Simply because we and the Khmer Rouge shared one longtime enemy: Vietnam. Unreal.

And where does Pol Pot figure in his own biography? As an average, unambitious student, not good enough to get into the best schools, yet an early French and then Indochinese Communist, good enough to rise in the ranks. Good enough to take control of the Cambodian party in 1960, although the party remained hidden and unknown. And no one knew who he was, except for the few at the top with him. He remained a secret, an enigma, even after the Khmer Rouge attained power, not coming out into the public eye until close to a year and a half later. He gave interviews to two western journalists during his lifetime, both American, both during his time in power. They didn’t learn much, but they learned to fear him and his regime. And yet, even though he was “Brother Number One,” by the time of his death in 1997, his body was thrown onto a rubbish heap with a pile of tires and burned. No one ever got their vengeance. No one. Once, late in his life, he was asked if he knew how many deaths he was responsible for. He said a hundred or so. He said it would have been fewer, but some “mistakes” had been made. He had no grasp on reality. I don’t think he ever did. I think he was completely mad his entire life. His wife went mad. Maybe his madness drove her over the edge. No one will ever know, but that’s my theory, for what it’s worth.

Today, Cambodia is still struggling to recover. It still has problems. It’s still an uneducated, agrarian society. It needs help. Who will help the Cambodians? It would be nice if some of the countries that used that country so willingly and brutally during the twentieth century stepped up to the plate. It would be good if Cambodia could survive and one day thrive. They say it is beautiful there, or at least once was. It would be nice to work to regain some of that. show less