I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country.

From 1971–1973 the motivation changed. This was the first statement of the anti-Vietnamese/self-sufficiency-at-all-costs ideology that would be a major part of the Pol Pot regime when it took power years later. Later that year in response to threats to its borders and the Vietnamese people Vietnam attacked Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge which Vietnam justified on the basis of self-defense.

During his time in power he imposed agrarian socialism forcing urban dwellers to relocate to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects. Pol Pot died in 1998 while under house arrest by the Ta Mok faction of the Khmer Rouge. From 1979 to 1997 he and a remnant of the old Khmer Rouge operated near the border of Cambodia and Thailand where they clung to power with nominal United Nations recognition as the rightful government of Cambodia.