Leon Trotsky said that those who yearned for the quiet life had no right to be born in the twentieth century. The lover of the quiet life certainly had no right to be in Southeast Asia in the past year. The speed of events, many of them unexpected and “irrational,” has left a trail littered with hasty analyses and wrong predictions (to which this article will no doubt contribute its fair share). It is plain enough, however, that the dust has not yet settled; neither the Kampuchean question nor the recent thrust of Sino-Vietnamese relations have run their course. It is also undeniable that too little is known about the internal dynamics of decisionmaking that resulted in the first and second open inter-Communist wars in history.

The Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea demonstrated the role and value of conventional warfare—a point to remember in an age when war by conventional means appears to many as a thing of the past. It is natural for regimes fighting guerrilla wars to be mesmerized by those struggles, but it is worth noting how few governments have been toppled by guerrilla wars and how many have been overturned by other means. Even in the military theorizing of the Communists, the guerrilla's place is at the beginning of revolutionary wars; the end game is still reserved for conventional military means.