Bad Lieutenants

The Khmer Rouge, United Front, and Class Struggle, 1970–1997

Andrew Mertha

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781501781025
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

Table of contents

• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chronology
• Key Individuals
• A Note on Sources
• Introduction: Political Cycles: United Front and Class Struggle
• 1. The First United Front: Colonizing the Movement from Within, 1970–1972
• 2. Before and After Year Zero: A World of Class Struggle, 1973–1978
• 3. Dusting Off United Front Doctrine, 1979–1984
• 4. Command and Control in the Shadows and on the Periphery, 1985–1989
• 5. An Unattainable Political Space, 1990–1993
• 6. Back to Basics: Scorched-Earth Class Struggle, 1994–1997
• Conclusion: “Pure Socialism”
• Selected Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index