Pol Pot and his followers were also paying very close attention to Indonesia. They studied the collapse of the PKI, and concluded that its strategy of aligning with Sukarno and winning mass democratic support had only led to disaster. As a result, he vowed that his movement would not meet the same fate at the hands of reactionaries, and resolved that power for his group would be achieved and maintained through arms and violence. The PKI had no arms, and trusted far too much in democratic niceties; that was its downfall, the secretive leader of the “Khmer Rouge” concluded. He would be
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