Bad Lieutenants

Overview & Synopsis

Bad Lieutenants is a riveting account of how the Khmer Rouge remained a force to be reckoned with even after the fall of Democratic Kampuchea—and of the men behind the movement's strange durability. In 1979, the Vietnamese army seized Phnom Penh, toppling Pol Pot's notoriously brutal regime. Yet the Khmer Rouge did not disintegrate. Instead, the movement continued to rule over swathes of Cambodia for almost another two decades even as it failed to become a legitimate governing organization. Andrew Mertha argues that the Khmer Rouge's successes and failures were both driven by a refusal to dilute its revolutionary vision. Rather than take the moderate tack required for viable governance, it pivoted between only two political strategies: united front and class struggle. Through the stories of three key leaders—Ieng Sary, Son Sen, and Ta Mok—Mertha tracks the movement's shifting from one strategy to the other until its dissolution in the 1990s. Vividly written and deeply researched, Bad Lieutenants reveals the powerful grip political ideology can have over the survival of insurgent movements.