When costly efforts to cement a strategic partnership with the Soviet Union failed, the combined political pressure of economic crisis at home and imminent external threats posed by a Sino-Cambodian alliance compelled Hanoi to reverse course. Moving away from the Marxist-Leninist ideology that had prevailed during the last decade of the Cold War era, the Vietnamese government implemented broad doi moi ("renovation") reforms intended to create a peaceful regional environment for the country's integration into the global economy.
In contrast to earlier studies, Path traces the moving target of these changing policy priorities, providing a vital addition to existing scholarship on asymmetric wartime decision-making and alliance formation among small states. The result uncovers how this critical period had lasting implications for the ways Vietnam continues to conduct itself on the global stage.

Kosal Path is an assistant professor of political science and chair of the Master's Program in International Affairs and Global Justice at Brooklyn College, the City University of New York.

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 3
1 Impact of the Economic Crisis, 1975–1978 19
2 The Decision to Invade Cambodia, December 1978 52
3 Mobilization for a Two-Front War, 1979–1981 79
4 The Two-Faced Enemy in Cambodia, 1979–1985 113
5 Economic Regionalism in Indochina, 1982–1985 134
6 The Road to Doi Moi, 1986 167
Conclusion 203
Notes 211
Bibliography 263
Index 285