This well-researched volume examines the Sino-Vietnamese hostilities of the late 1970s and 1980s, attempting to understand them as strategic, operational and tactical events.

The Sino-Vietnamese War was the third Indochina war, and contemporary Southeast Asia cannot be properly understood unless we acknowledge that the Vietnamese fought three, not two, wars to establish their current role in the region. The war was not about the Sino-Vietnamese border, as frequently claimed, but about China's support for its Cambodian ally, the Khmer Rouge, and the book addresses US and ASEAN...