wonders whether parts of the model could have been revived with more reliable and (perhaps wealthier) local clients. One also wonders whether there was any active discus- sion or debate around these programs in West Africa, and whether different Soviet bodies had competing priorities. We know that the Soviet Union continued to be involved in pro- viding economic assistance to African countries, such as Angola and Ethiopia in the 1970s, and it remains to be seen whether it indeed learnt the lessons of its early economic engagement with West Africa. Overall, Arrested Development is an essential read, as it persuasively explains the nature of Soviet development in West Africa and raises new questions about the economic Cold War. Natalia Telepneva University of Strathclyde Amanda C. Demmer, After Saigon’ s Fall: Refugees and US–Vietnamese relations, 1975–2000, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press, 2021, ix + 318 pp.; US$24.99; ISBN 9781108726276 Few scholars investigate the immediate humanitarian fallout of the Vietnam War and its implications for US–Vietnam post-war reconciliation. Amanda Demmer’s book, After Saigon’s Fall: Refugees and US–Vietnamese relations, 1975-2000, explores this largely ignored part of history. Relying on previously closed archives, Demmer examines the US–Vietnam normalization process and the issues that loomed large over it – the search for American POW/MIAs and the US resettlement of South Vietnamese migrants. The book premises that in the post-1975 era, the US still treated the communist regime in Hanoi and the South Vietnamese – formerly US allies – as distinct groups. Washington lost the war but retained disproportionate power and global influence, allowing it to per- petuate hostilities against the now unified communist-ruled Vietnam through non- military means. The war also persisted beyond 1975 for many South Vietnamese, who faced displacement and family separation. The US alliance with the South Vietnamese lived on even as their nation ceased to exist, prompting policies to address the refugee crisis that emerged following Saigon’s fall in April 1975. The book is chronologically divided into three parts, each with two chapters. Part I covers the period from 1975 to 1980, outlining the debates in Washington on American obligations towards South Vietnamese amid geopolitical shifts in Asia. Chapter one looks at the Ford administration’s hard-fought efforts in securing the inclu- sion of South Vietnamese in the US evacuation from Saigon during April 1975. After that, non-executive actors (namely members of Congress and non-state actors) pushed for expanded admission of Indochinese refugees. Chapter two shows how Washington’s policies on normalization with Hanoi, human rights and refugees became intertwined. Following its US–China rapprochement, the US halted talks on nor- malization with Vietnam, demanding that Hanoi withdraw its troops from Cambodia and cooperate on a ‘full accounting’ of POW/MIAs before negotiations could be resumed. At the same time, non-executive actors’ activism prompted the Carter administration to treat the Indochinese refugee crisis as a human rights issue. Book Reviews 583