A Far Greater Prize Than Vietnam
U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Indonesia in the Era of Vietnam (1961-1967)
University of Amsterdam
Graduate School of Humanities
Institute for History, Archaeology, and Region Studies
Master Dissertation History of International Relations
June 2015
Chea Goossen
Vincent[Datum]
Goossen (10310835)
1
A Far Greater Prize Than Vietnam. U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Indonesia
in the Era of Vietnam (1961-1967)
Vincent Goossen
COPYRIGHT
Attention is drawn to the fact that copyright of this thesis rests with its author. This copy of the thesis has
been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognize that its copyright rests
with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published
without the prior written consent of the author.
This thesis may be made available for consultation within the University Library and may be photocopied or
lent to other libraries for the purpose of consultation.
Signed:
© Amsterdam and Deventer, June 2015 / University of Amsterdam / Graduate School of
Humanities / Institute for History, Archaeology, and Region Studies / Postgraduate dissertation
History of International Relations / Thesis promoter: Beerd Beukenhorst, PhD.
2
Indonesia is the best thing that’s happened to Uncle Sam since World War Two.
—
World Bank official, November 19671
The reversal of the Communist Tide in the great country of Indonesia [is] an event that will probably
rank along with the Vietnamese war as perhaps the most historic turning point in Asia of this decade.
—
Deputy Undersecretary of State U. Alexis Johnson, October 19662
I have a clear conscience. We knew what we were doing. We did what we were doing because we thought
it was the right thing to do, and I sleep easy at night knowing that we played the role that we did.
—
National Security Advisor (1961-1966) McGeorge Bundy3
I think [the Indonesian regime change of 1965-1966] was a momentous moment in world affairs, and I
don’t think the press and the public has ever seen it that way. And I don’t think I’m saying this simply
because I was there at the time: I think that it was true – that here was what is now the fourth largest
nation in the world.... the country is very rich in resources, and it stands astride almost all the seaways
in that part of the world: the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, where two oceans meet; enormously
strategic…it was about to go communist, and almost did.
— U.S.
Ambassador to Indonesia Marshall Green (1965-1969), National Security Archive
interview, January 15, 19974
1
World Bank official cited in John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World (London: Verso, 2002), 42.
U. Alexis Johnson cited in John Roosa, Pretext for mass murder: the 30th September Movement and Suharto’s Coup d’état in
Indonesia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 16.
3
McGeorge Bundy cited in Errol Morris, “The Murders of Gonzago,” Slate, July 10, 2013, available at
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/07/the_act_of_killing_essay_how_indonesia_s_mass_killings_could_have_slowed.sin
gle.html (accessed July 11, 2013).
4
Marshall Green, National Security Archive Interview, January 1, 1997, available at
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/coldwar/interviews/episode-15/green6.html (accessed March 1, 2014.
2
3
Contents
Map of Southeast Asia
5
Preface / Voorwoord
6
Introduction
8
1. The Kennedy Administration and the Struggle for the Indonesian Mind
27
Towards an Accommodationist Indonesia-Policy 30
Courting Sukarno 37
Resolving the West New Guinea Crisis 41
Moving Forward: An “Action Plan” for Indonesia 53
2. New Challenges on the Horizon: Oil, Aid, and Konfrontasi
67
Action Implementation and Stabilization Efforts 68
The Onset and Escalation of Konfrontasi 78
3. Big Trouble in the Archipelago State: the Johnson Administration Shifts Policy
89
The Revival of the Hard-Line Approach 92
Surviving Indonesia’s “Year of Living Dangerously” 105
4. The Great Bonus of 1965
122
The United States, the September 30th Movement and the Indonesian “Killing Fields” 125
Suharto’s Creeping Coup D’état 138
Securing the Anchor: from Old Order to New Order Indonesia 144
Conclusion: A Far Greater Prize than Vietnam
162
Bibliography
171
4
Map of Southeast Asia
Figure 1: Map of Southeast Asia, 1961.
5
Preface / Voorwoord
Deze scriptie is veel meer dan alleen de afsluiting van mijn Master Geschiedenis aan de Internationale
Betrekkingen aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Zij is in zekere zin ook de uitkomst en het slotstuk van
mijn Bachelor Geschiedenis aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, mijn studieperiode aan de School of
Oriental and African Studies in Londen, en mijn stage op de Nederlandse Ambassade in Washington
D.C., alwaar ik mij gedurende vier maanden heb mogen bezighouden met de achtergrond, content en
implicaties van de Amerikaanse “pivot” naar de Azië-Stille Oceaan regio, welke in het najaar van 2011
door de Obama-administratie werd aangekondigd. Met het afronden van de scriptie gaat ook een wens in
vervulling: het binnenhalen van een masterdiploma die mij de mogelijkheid geeft nieuwe uitdagingen aan
te gaan.
Het onderwerp van deze scriptie, het Amerikaanse buitenlandbeleid in Indonesië ten tijde van
‘Vietnam’ (1961-1967), kwam beslist niet uit de lucht vallen. Al reeds gedurende mijn tijd in Groningen,
en met name na mijn eerste reis door Zuidoost-Azië in de zomer van 2009, raakte ik geïnteresseerd in de
geschiedenis en ontwikkeling van deze zo fascinerende, dynamische en cultureel zo gevarieerde regio.
Deze interesse heeft mij er rond het jaar 2010 toe gebracht mijn aanvankelijke focus op Duitslandstudies
en moderne Europese geschiedenis te verschuiven naar de moderne en contemporaine historie van
Zuidoost-Azië, ofwel Zuidoost-Azië studies. De nieuwsgierigheid naar bredere, grensoverschrijdende
ontwikkelingen, met name op het vlak van internationale relaties en veiligheid, was er al langere tijd, in
ieder geval sinds de middelbare school. De interesse in het Amerikaanse buitenlandbeleid, in het
bijzonder in Zuidoost-Azië ten tijde van de Koude Oorlog, werd met name gewekt tijdens mijn perioden
in Londen en Amsterdam, alwaar ik colleges volgde over onder meer het Amerikaanse buitenlandbeleid
sinds 1776, de rol van de Verenigde Staten in Zuidoost-Azië vanaf de Tweede Wereldoorlog,
internationale en regionale perspectieven op de Vietnamoorlogen, en de dieperliggende oorzaken en
mogelijke implicaties van de razendsnelle opmars van Azië in zijn geheel.
Tijdens mijn studie en het schrijven van mijn scriptie hebben diverse mensen een belangrijke rol
vervuld. Allereerst natuurlijk mijn ouders, Johan en Chea, die mij niet alleen de kans gaven te studeren,
maar mij tevens, na verscheidene jaren elders te hebben gewoond, een fijn thuis boden waar ik eindelijk
de broodnodige rust en concentratie kon hervinden om het stuk af te schrijven. Daarnaast wil ik mijn
broer, Martijn, mijn zus, Marjanne, hun beide partners, Karlijn en Pim, en mijn vrienden, Sven, Alex,
Gada, Niek en Anouk, bedanken. Zonder hun aanmoedigingen, interesse, aanvullingen en relativerende
woorden was afstuderen ongetwijfeld een lastigere klus geweest. Tot slot wil ik uiteraard mijn
6
scriptiebegeleider, Dr. Beerd Beukenhorst, bedanken. Zijn tips, feedback, geduld en vertrouwen in het
eindresultaat zijn van begin tot eind uitermate waardevol geweest.
Ik wil dit voorwoord graaf afsluiten met een noot over het schrijfproces. Het schrijven van deze
scriptie is niet alleen een intellectuele, maar vooral ook persoonlijke uitdaging geweest. Ik ben mijzelf
meer dan ooit tevoren meerdere malen tegen gekomen en misschien is het wel om die reden dat het
schrijfproces langer heeft geduurd dan aanvankelijk verwacht. Passie voor een bepaald onderwerp,
nieuwsgierigheid, perfectionisme, het streven volledig en origineel te zijn: het zijn maar een aantal van
de vele belangrijke ingrediënten voor het schrijven van een goed stuk en niet in de laatste plaats voor een
scriptie. Echter, zij kunnen op sommige moment even zozeer het schrijfproces in de weg zitten. Misschien
is dit wel de belangrijkste les die ik de afgelopen tijd geleerd heb.
Vincent Goossen
Amsterdam en Deventer, 2015
7
Introduction
In the fall 1965, not long after the Johnson administration’s decision to escalate the Vietnam War, a
sudden change in political outlook took place in Indonesia. Following an alleged leftist coup-attempt and
the murder of six army generals of the Indonesian Army High Command in the early morning of October
1, Commander of the Strategic Reserve (KOSTRAD) General Suharto successfully staged a counterreaction, crushing the coup-plotters and the Beijing-oriented Communist Party (PKI), the largest
communist party outside the “Communist Bloc,” recruited from the world’s fifth largest population, and
a formidable but unarmed force in Indonesian politics.5 In the weeks and months that followed, against
the backdrop of a brutal purge against the PKI and its suspected sympathizers, resulting in the death of
“anywhere between 250,000 and perhaps 800,000” and the arrest of 750,000 more, Suharto limited the
powers of the left-leaning President Sukarno.6 On March 12, 1967, having stripped Sukarno of all his
remaining powers, the General was appointed president, completing his creeping coup d’état and
consolidating the “New Order” regime with himself and the pro-American Indonesian military in the sole
seat of power. Instead of “falling” to communism, Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest and most populous
country, rich of natural resources and strategically located in the center of the region, was definitely saved
for the “Free World.”7
The Indonesian regime change marks not only a turning point in modern Indonesian history, but also
a decisive and often overlooked or underestimated pivotal moment in the international history of the Cold
War.8 A number of its key geopolitical consequences are easily summed up. First, it brought to a close a
decade-long period of intense competition for influence in the “archipelago state,” triggered by Sukarno’s
determination to follow a policy of non-alignment in the Cold War, between the United States, the Soviet
5
Although the assassination of the generals took place in the early morning of October 1, the affair came to be known as the Gerakan
30 September (“September 30th Movement”) affair, abbreviated as G30S or Gestok. In the propaganda of the “New Order” regime, the
movement was referred to as Gestapu, which implied that the coup-plotters were as dangerous as the secret Nazi police, the Gestapo. In
the days and weeks that followed, the movement was linked to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). It is still a matter of high
controversy what exactly happened in the early morning of October 1 and whether the movement indeed intended bring about a regime
change. The most recent and careful analysis is from historian John Roosa, who suggested that there was no central “mastermind” behind
the coup and that it was organized as a putsch against the Army High Command to forestall an anti-Sukarno coup. Roosa, Pretext for
mass murder, passim. For a treatment of the events of early October 1965, see also chapter 4 of this dissertation.
6
Robert Cribb, “How many deaths? Problems in the statistics of massacre in Indonesia (1965-1966) and East Timor (1975-1980),” in
Ingrid Wessel and Georgia Wimhöfer, eds., Violence in Indonesia (Hamburg: Abera, 2001), 92.
7
The term “Free World” refers to the non-communist countries of the world, and originates in the early Cold War. Ironically, U.S.
officials considered right-wing authoritarian states, such as Franco’s Spain and Apartheid-South Africa, also as part of the “Free World.”
Obviously Indonesia became part of the “Free World” after Suharto’s ascendancy.
8
Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 181.
8
Union and, from the early 1960s onwards, the People’s Republic of China (PRC).9 Second, it put to a halt
Indonesia’s drift leftwards since the outbreak Konfrontasi, Sukarno’s anti-Malaysia campaign, initiated
in early 1963. This removed the threat of a possible communist takeover of Indonesia and of “a successful
Sino-Indonesian alliance,” which could have created “a great communist pincer in Southeast Asia, with
the largest and fifth-largest countries of the world enclosing not only Vietnam but also vulnerable
countries of mainland Southeast Asia.”10 Third, the regime change led to a cessation of Konfrontasi, a
conflict that, as one scholar reminded us, had the potential to escalate into “another “Vietnam War” had
it not been for the annihilation of the PKI.” This stabilized the Cold War in what the British Foreign
Office used to call the “lower arc” of Southeast Asia. 11 Fourth, the regime change paved the way for a
period of rapid economic development and increased political cooperation in the region, symbolized most
profoundly by the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in August 1967.
To be sure, the impact of the Indonesian turnaround was different on each nation involved. For the
Soviet Union and the PRC it was, as historian Odd Arne Westad observed, “perhaps the greatest
setback…in the Third World in the 1960s.” It not only undermined their geopolitical strength and
credibility as revolutionary powers, but also increased their need to hold firm to Vietnam.12 For Indonesia
itself, the consequences were at best mixed. On the one hand, due to Suharto’s embrace of a free market
economy, millions and millions of Indonesians were able to escape poverty in the years and decades that
followed.13 On the other hand, his ascendancy also meant the beginning of a thirty-year long dictatorship
during which freedom of speech was continuously curtailed, human rights were routinely violated, and
any political opposition brutally suppressed. We can now conclude that few regimes in the twentieth
century were as brutal as Suharto’s New Order regime, not only at the time of the Indonesian “Killing
Fields” of 1965-1966, but also in the years and decades thereafter, for example during the East Timor
invasions in the mid-1970s and early 1990s.14 For the United States, then, the regime change was a more
than welcome development. Having just reached a “point of no return” elsewhere in Southeast Asia, it
significantly eased American concerns of a communist takeover in the region, allowing U.S. officials to
focus their attention entirely on the escalated war in Vietnam. Moreover, the regime change shifted the
balance of power in the East Asia in Washington’s favor and realized a scenario that it had long
Indonesian leaders often referred to their country as the “archipelago state,” which implied that the sea lanes between the more than
3,000 islands of the archipelago were an integral part of Indonesian territory.
10
Marshall Green, Indonesia: Crisis and Transformation: 1965-1968 (Washington, DC: Howells House, 1990), 150.
11
Ang Cheng Guan, “The Johnson Administration and ‘Confrontation,’” Cold War History 2, no. 3 (April 2002), 111-128; Albert Lau,
“Introduction. Southeast Asia and the Cold War,” in Albert Lau, ed., Southeast Asia and the Cold War (London and New York:
Routledge, 2012), 1.
12
Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: The Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 185.
13
Pilger, The New Rulers of the World 17; Roel van der Veen, Waarom Azië Rijk en Machtig Wordt [Why Asia will become rich and
powerful] (Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2010), 339.
14
The phrase “Indonesian Killing Fields” is from Dutch journalist Step Vaessen. See “Indonesia’s Killing Fields,” prod Al Jazeera,
December 21, 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2012/12/2012121874846805636.html. The recent opening of
discussion on the regime’s committed crimes reveals moreover that many Indonesians still suffer immensely from them. See Annie
Pohlman, “Telling Stories about Torture in Indonesia: Managing Risk in a Culture of Impunity,” Oral History Forum d’histore orale
33, special issue “Confronting Mass Atrocities,” (2013), http://www.oralhistoryforum.ca/index.php/ohf/article/view/529/607.
9
9
envisioned: defeat for Sukarno and the PKI, and a swing to the right of the Indonesian government under
a pro-American military modernizing elite that secured the so-called “island defense chain” and
integrated the archipelago state into the global economy on terms “exceptionally favorable” to the United
States and the West.15
Noting that until October 1, 1965 the continuation of U.S.-Indonesia relations had been all but certain
as Sukarno moved increasingly towards the PKI and the PRC, U.S. policymakers and commentators
greeted the regime change with euphoria. Downplaying the massacres, which, according to a CIA study,
“in terms of numbers killed,” rank as “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century along with the
Soviet purges of the 1930's, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist blood
bath of the early 1950s,” they viewed Suharto’s ascendancy and anti-PKI campaign exclusively in terms
of new economic advantages and as victory over communism.16 James Reston, renowned columnist of
The New York Times, reported the political turnaround and “staggering mass slaughter of Communists
and pro-Communists” in Indonesia as a “gleam of light in Asia.” Time, in a July 1966 cover story under
the heading “Vengeance with a Smile,” cheered Suharto’s rise to power and “boiling bloodbath that
almost unnoticed took 400,000 lives” as “the West’s best news for years in Asia.” “No one cared,”
Howard Federspiel, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) staffer for
Indonesia, recalled, “as long as they were Communists, that they were being butchered.”17
Curiously, there were many officials and commentators who saw the events in Indonesia as closely
intertwined with developments in Vietnam. For those individuals, Suharto’s rise to power was a
demonstration that the Vietnam War was “the Right War at the Right Time.” 18 President Lyndon B.
Johnson, speaking to his troops in Korea in late 1966, explained that the American intervention in
Vietnam made possible that “in Indonesia there are 100 million people that enjoy a measure of freedom
today that they didn’t enjoy yesterday.” The eminent Washington-based think tank Freedom House, in a
statement signed by “145 distinguished Americans” in November 1966, justified the war for having
“provided a shield for the sharp reversal of Indonesia’s shift toward Communism.” 19 Richard Nixon, who
in 1965 had argued in favor of bombing North Vietnam to protect Indonesia’s “immense mineral
potential,” argued that it was due to Washington’s presence in Vietnam that the Indonesian military had
“found the courage and the capacity to stage their counter-coup and, at the final moment, rescue its
country from the Chinese orbit.” Implying that the U.S. war effort on the Southeast Asian mainland was
Phrase in Fortune magazine article of 1973, cited in Lisa Pease, “JFK, Indonesia, CIA & Freeport Sulphur,” originally published in
Probe 4, no. 3 (May-June 1996), available at http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/collections/hidden/freeport-indonesia.htm (accessed
March 28, 2014).
16
Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, Intelligence Report: Indonesia-1965, The Coup that Backfired (Washington
DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1968), 71.
17
James Reston, “Washington: A Gleam of Light in Asia,” New York Times, June 19, 1966; “Indonesia: Vengeance with a smile,” Time,
July 15, 1966; Howard Federspiel cited in Kathy Kadane, “U.S. Officials' List Aided Indonesian Bloodbath in `60s,” The Washington
Post, May 21, 1990.
18
“Vietnam: The Right War at the Right Time,” Time, May 14, 1965.
19
Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks to American and Korean Serviceman at Camp Stanley, Korea, November 1, 1966. Available at The
American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=27974; Noam Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest Continues
(Boston: South End Press, 1993), 126.
15
10
for the sake of the whole region, Nixon claimed that “without the American commitment in Viet Nam
Asia would be a far different place today.”20
This dissertation delves into the logic of those American officials and commentators who claimed that
events in Indonesia were decisively influenced by the U.S. war effort in Vietnam. It will do so by
investigating how it was possible that the archipelago state, since its independence in 1949 determined to
follow a neutral path in the Cold War, and by early 1965 in the process of becoming, as Secretary of State
Dean Rusk described it, “for all practical purposes a Communist dictatorship,” in less than two years
transformed into a right-wing military dictatorship, or to use Richard Nixon’s phrase, America’s “greatest
prize in the Southeast Asian area.”21 Was this sudden transformation, as some scholars have claimed, a
matter of “bloody good luck,” resulting from “developments of essentially Indonesian origin?”22 Or was
there more to it and was the United States, as others have argued, indeed an “important and witting
accomplice?”23 Assuming that the United States was no “silent bystander,” how deeply was the United
States involved in Indonesian politics during the 1960s, how did it develop over time, and in what way
was it connected to Washington’s regional policies? Moreover, to what extent can the United States be
held responsible for the dramatic and bloody political turnaround in Indonesia? In order to answer these
questions, this study analyses the means and objectives of U.S. Indonesia-policy, its imperatives and
constraints, its continuities and discontinuities, and its links with Washington’s priorities elsewhere in
Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, during the turbulent 1961-1967 years.
The Importance of Indonesia to U.S. Foreign Policy (1961-1967)
Largely due to ignorance or lack of interest, the general impression in the United States of Indonesia in
the 1960s was of “just another of the Balkanlike countries of Southeast Asia blowing its big trumpet.”
Most Americans knew little about Indonesia, and for those who shared a little concern, Laos and Vietnam
were better known. Illustrative is in this regard is an anecdote of Howard Jones, the U.S. Ambassador to
Richard Nixon cited in Peter Dale Scott, "Exporting Military-Economic Development: America and the Overthrow of Sukarno” in
Malcolm Caldwell, ed., Ten Years’ Military Terror in Indonesia (Nottingham: Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation for Spokesman Books,
1975), 241; Richard Nixon, “Asia After Vietnam,” Foreign Affairs (October 1967), 111.
21
Dean Rusk cited in H.W. Brands, “The Limits of Manipulation: How the United States Didn’t Topple Sukarno,” The Journal of
American History 76, no.3 (December 1989), 798; Nixon, “Asia after Vietnam,” 111.
22
“Bloody good luck” is the title of chapter 6 in H.W. Brands, The Wages of Globalism. Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American
Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 155-182. The chapter is a slightly revised version of the above cited article “The Limits
of Manipulation,” in which Brands claims that Sukarno’s overthrow “had little to do with American machinations” and “resulted from
developments of essentially Indonesian origin. Numerous other contributions have followed this line of argumentation, including Robert
J. McMahon, The Limits of Empire: The United States and Southeast Asia since World War II (New York: Columbia University Press,
1999), 120; B. Hugh Tovar, “The Indonesian Crisis of 1965-1966: A Retrospective.” International Journal of Intelligence and
Counterintelligence 7, no. 3 (1994), 313-338; Matthew Jones, Conflict and confrontation in South East Asia, 1961-1965: Britain, the
United States, Indonesia and the creation of Malaysia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 277.
23
Frederick Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy toward Indonesia in the Months Leading up to the 1965 “Coup,”” Indonesia 50
(October 1990), 60. See also Peter Dale Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno, 1965-1967.” Pacific Affairs 58, no. 2
(Summer 1985), 239-264; David Easter, “‘Keep the Indonesian Pot Boiling’: Western Covert Intervention in Indonesia, October 1965–
March 1966,” Cold War History 5, no. 1 (February 2005), 55-73; Mark Curtis, “US and British Complicity in the 1965 slaughters in
Indonesia,” Third World Resurgence 137 (2002), available at http://markcurtis.wordpress.com/2007/02/01/us-and-british-complicityin-the-1965-slaughters-in-indonesia/ (accessed March 28, 2014).
20
11
Indonesia from February 1958 to May 1965: “when I was first assigned there one of my Washington
friends who should have known better asked me whether I spoke French well enough to handle that
assignment.”24 Among those who were not directly involved in the making of U.S. foreign policy towards
Indonesia, or towards the Far East in general, there were few who did not share the general sceptic or
hostile attitude towards the archipelago state. This was particularly the case in the American press and on
Capitol Hill, where Washington’s Indonesia-policy, and Sukarno’s actions in particular, continuously
provoked harsh criticism and opposition.
However, as often the case with U.S. foreign policy, there was a huge difference in views and opinions
between those in power and those outside the government. Accordingly, a different view on Indonesia
was held by policymakers directly responsible for U.S. foreign policy towards the archipelago state,
and/or the Far East in general. Predominately active in the White House National Security Council (NSC),
the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JSC), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the State Department’s Office of
Southwest Pacific Affairs, Far East Bureau, and Indonesia desk, and, of course, the U.S. Embassy in
Jakarta, these officials accorded a tremendous strategic value to the archipelago state. Although not on
the frontline like the countries of Indochina, Indonesia was considered by many policymakers as the
largest and most important “domino” of Southeast Asia. In fact, as historian William S. Borden has
stressed until at least the mid-1960s most policymakers considered Indonesia even “of far greater
importance than Laos and Vietnam.”25 Borden’s argument is perhaps best exemplified by quoting Dean
Rusk, who was Secretary of State under both Kennedy and Johnson. Discussing U.S. Indonesia-policy
during a NSC-meeting in early 1964, Rusk stated that “more is involved in Indonesia with its 100 million
people, than is at stake in Vietnam.”26
That U.S. policymakers attached so much importance to the archipelago state was no surprise. With
its one hundred million inhabitants and a horizontal sweep larger than that of the United States, Indonesia
was not only the fifth most populous nation in the world, but also by far the largest country of Southeast
Asia.27 With its vast tropical forest lands and abundance of natural resources, including oil, rubber and
tin, the country also had a tremendous economic value. Until the late 1950s, these resources were
considered key to the post-war economic recovery and stability of Western Europe and Japan in
particular. From early on, however, the country’s economic value was also regularly explained in terms
of its links to the health of the American economy. There was a lot of stake for the United States in in
this regard. Large American multinationals, such as Caltex, Stanvac, Goodyear, and U.S. Rubber, largely
24
Howard Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 202; Roger Hilsman, To Move a
Nation (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967), 376.
25
William S. Borden, The Pacific Alliance: United States foreign economic policy and Japanese trade recovery, 1947-1955 (Madison
1984) 194.
26
Summary Record of the 521st National Security Council Meeting, January 7, 1964, in: U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations
of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume XXIII, Southeast Asia; hereafter cited as FRUS (2001), 198 (the numbers given in citations of
FRUS refer to document numbers, not pages).
27
The World Bank stated that Indonesia had a population of approximately 92 million in 1960. In 1970, its population had grown to
more than 118 million. In 2010, Indonesia’s population exceeded 242 million, which makes it the world’s fourth most populous country
after China, India and the United States.
12
controlled Indonesia’s petroleum and rubber productions, and U.S. Steel and Freeport Sulfur had mining
concessions in West New Guinea. “Losing” Indonesia to a hostile power would thus also mean losing
vast sums of corporate investments. Further adding to Indonesia’s importance was its key strategic
location. The country was located in the middle of Southeast Asia, on a vital maritime passage between
the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. That this location mattered tremendously is illustrated by the U.S.
Navy’s assessment that “whoever controlled the archipelago, controlled the entrance to the Indian Ocean
from the Pacific.”28 Lastly, Indonesia was of great political value. It was the world’s largest Muslimmajority country and with India and Egypt one of the frontrunners of the non-aligned movement that
emerged in the 1950s. When by the end of that decade the Soviet Union became an important competitor
for influence in Indonesia, and the Third World in general, Jakarta’s leading role in the non-aligned
movement became an increasingly important factor in Washington’s strategic considerations. In other
words, as former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia Marshall Green put it in early 1967, Indonesia was “a
vitally important “swing” country in Asia.”29
U.S. policymakers assessed that, due to its size, resources, location and political outlook, Indonesia
could have a profound effect on the politico-economic orientation of the rest of Southeast Asia, other
non-aligned states in the world, and the oil-rich Islamic countries in the Middle East.30 The installment
of a pro-western government in Jakarta was therefore considered vital to secure what George Kennan had
called the “anchor in that chain of islands stretching from Hokkaido to Sumatra” and to develop in the
region a “new Pacific Community” of “free” non-communist states.31 Contrariwise, U.S. officials
considered the “loss” of the archipelago state to the “Communist Bloc” or any other power that would
restrict Washington’s access to Indonesia’s strategic position and rich national resources, a doom scenario
that “could be as significant as the loss of mainland Southeast Asia.” Such a scenario, they assessed,
would certainly make “the defense of the latter considerably more difficult.” Eventually, it could even
Harry Felt quoted in Stig Aga Aandstad, “Surrendering to Symbols. United States Policy Towards Indonesia 1961-1965,” PhD
dissertation University of Oslo (1999), 5.
29
Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson, February 21, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26,
231. Today, Indonesia is still considered one of the world’s key swing states, see Daniel M. Kliman and Richard Fontaine, “Global
Swing States: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey and the Future of the International Order,” report of the Center for a New American
Security
and
the
German
Marshall
Fund
of
the
United
States
(November
2012),
available
at
http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_GlobalSwingStates_KlimanFontaine.pdf.
30
See Richard Mason, “Containment and the Challenge of Non-Alignment: The Cold War and U.S. Policy toward Indonesia, 19501952,” in: Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann, eds., Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in
Southeast Asia, 1945-1962 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 39-67.
31
For Kennan’s quote, see Gouda, American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia, 142. The “new Pacific community” is
described in Timothy P. Maga, “The New Frontier vs. Guided Democracy: JKF, Sukarno, and Indonesia, 1961-1963,” Presidential
Studies Quarterly 20, no. 1 (Winter 1990), 91-102, and more extensively in his book, John F. Kennedy and the New Pacific Community,
1961–63 (London: Macmillan, 1990). The term is still relevant. In July 1993, President Bill Clinton spoke the need for the United States
“to join with Japan and others in this region to create a new Pacific community.” More recently, President Obama announced the U.S.
strategic “pivot” to Asia to upgrade its regional alliances with Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and the nations of Southeast Asia.
There can be little doubt that the “pivot” is designed to keep the region America-oriented, one of Washington’s biggest challenges the
coming decades in light of the economic and military rise of China. See President Bill Clinton, “Building A New Pacific Community.”
Address to the students and faculty at Waseda University, Tokyo, July 7, 1993, available at http://www.state.gov/1997-2001NOPDFS/regions/eap/930707.html; President Barack Obama, Remarks By President Obama to the Australian Parliament, Canberra,
November 27, 2011, available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/17/remarks-president-obama-australianparliament.
28
13
“threaten the security of the rest of Asia” and “menace” all U.S. influence in the Far East, endangering
the position of the entire “Free World.”32
Whether the strategic assessments of U.S. policymakers, and the political, economic, and
psychological concerns that underpinned them, were exaggerated or not, they illustrate that the
archipelago state ranked among Washington’s highest post-war “planning priorities.”33 In line with the
dominant theories on falling domino’s, credibility and (military) modernization, U.S. officials did
everything in their power to prevent Indonesian from falling to communism and to turn it instead towards
the West.34 Until at least the mid-1960s, U.S. attention for Indonesia was extensive, sometimes even far
more extensive than U.S. attention for Vietnam and Laos, and in particular at moments of crisis. As
Benedict Anderson, one of the leading American Indonesia specialists, rightfully observed: “with the
exception of Vietnam, no country in Southeast Asia caused more annoyance and anxiety to American
specialists or more trouble to American policymakers” than Indonesia in the first half of the 1960s.35
Historiography
Despite the tremendous importance and attention that U.S. policymakers attached to Indonesia in their
post-war strategic considerations, the topic of U.S. Indonesia-policy is still one that lacks scrutiny. For
many years, Cold War and U.S. foreign relations scholars accorded, to phrase historian Bradley Simpson,
“scant attention” to the archipelago state, leaving the field instead to political scientists, anthropologists,
Memorandum From Robert H. Johnson of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security
Affairs (Bundy), FRUS, 1961–1963, v. 23, 15; Felt quoted in Aandstad, “Surrendering to Symbols,” 5.
33
The question whether U.S. officials exaggerated the communist is beyond the scope of this dissertation. It is worth stressing however
that Robert H. Johnson himself later admitted that the Soviet threat was greatly exaggerated, see Robert H. Johnson, Improbable
Dangers: U.S. Conceptions of Threat in the Cold War and After (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994). On Indonesia as a “planning
priority,” see Bradley Simpson, Economists with guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 53.
34
On the domino theory, see Ang Cheng Guan, “Southeast Asian Perceptions of the Domino Theory,” in Christopher E. Goscha and
Christian F. Ostermann, eds., Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945-1962 (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2009), 301-334, and R.B. Smith, An International History of the Vietnam War. Volume III: The Making of a Limited
War, 1965-1966 (London: The Macmillan Press, 1991), 14. Curiously, in a June 1964 memo, the CIA stated that “We do not believe
that the loss of South Vietnam and Laos would be followed by the rapid, successive communization of the other states of the Far East,”
and that “with the possible exception of Cambodia, it is likely that no nation in the area would quickly succumb to communism as a
result of the fall of Laos and South Vietnam.” See Memorandum From the Board of National Estimates to the Director of Central
Intelligence (McCone), June 9, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 1, 209. I think it makes sense to say that by 1964, and perhaps already by
the early 1960s, it were primarily credibility concerns that kept the United States militarily engaged in Indochina. As Kennedy said
during his inaugural speech: the United States had to live up to its commitment “to pay any price and bear any burden” to ensure the
“survival of liberty.” See Theodore C. Sorensen, ed., Let the Word Go Forth: The Speeches, Statements and Writings of John F. Kennedy,
1947-1963 (New York: Laurel, 1988), 11-15. On the “doctrine of credibility,” or “psychological domino theory,” see Gabriel Kolko,
Anatomy of a War. Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 113, and
Jonathan Schell, The Time of Illusion (New York: Knopf, 1976), 9-10.
35
Benedict Anderson, “Perspective and Method in American Research on Indonesia,” in: Benedict R. O’G. Anderson and Audrey Kahin,
eds., Interpreting Indonesian Politics: Thirteen Contributions to the Debate (Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, Southeast Asia
Program, Cornell University, 1982), 125. Anderson is not the only scholar who pressed this point. Timothy P. Maga observed that “in
terms of official visits, negotiations, length of cabinet discussions, and stacks of policy papers, Indonesia occupied more of [President
Kennedy’s] time than Vietnam.” See Maga, “The New Frontier,” 91. Similarly, David Webster noted that “during its first two years in
office, President John F. Kennedy’s administration had to direct more sustained crisis management attention to Indonesia than to
Vietnam.” David Webster, “Regimes in Motion: The Kennedy Administration and Indonesia’s New Frontier, 1960-1962,” Diplomatic
History 33, no. 1 (January 2009), 95.
32
14
and leftist historians, who focused predominately on Indonesia’s domestic affairs.36 Since the mid-1990s,
the situation has improved somehow due to the availability of a larger number of Western and
“Communist Bloc” sources and the subsequent “internationalization” of Cold War history. To be sure,
we can now no longer speak of a “relative scholarly neglect of nearly all parts of the region outside
Indochina,” as historian Robert J. McMahon did in 1995. However, the historiography United StatesIndonesia relations remains by no means voluminous, especially when compared to the extensive
scholarship conducted on Vietnam.37
Before turning to a more description of the recent and current trajectories in Cold War and U.S. foreign
relations research from where this dissertation takes its viewpoint, it makes sense to briefly explain why
the topic of U.S. foreign policy towards Indonesia, and Southeast Asia in general, has long been neglected.
Apart from a lack of sources on Washington’s foreign policy, the initial lack of attention stemmed
predominately from the traditional assumption that in order to understand the dynamics of the conflict
one had to study the roles and perspectives of the superpowers. Although “orthodox” and “revisionist”
historians had different views on who was to blame for bringing about the Cold War, their approach was
similar in one important respect: they both paid scarce attention to the nations of the Third World. Instead,
these nations were considered as little more than “pawns” or “victims” in what was then solely seen as
an East-West conflict.38 Notwithstanding the contributions from a small number of leftist historians in
the 1970s and 1980s, this view remained largely intact until fall of the Berlin Wall.39
In the years thereafter, the research field changed dramatically. When in the early 1990s, government
documents were released in Russia, the PRC and Vietnam, scholars were, for the first time in history,
able to study the roles and perspectives of the “Communist Bloc” countries. The research on the “other”
side in the Cold War soon resulted in a number of important new insights. It appeared, for example, that
Stalin’s role and ambitions in the Third World were more modest than previously assumed. Also, it turned
out that indigenous actors, in this case the North Vietnamese, were considerably more inclined to follow
36
Curiously, attention from anthropologists, and political scientists, and area specialists, such as Benedict Anderson, Clifford Geertz,
J.A.C. Mackie, Rex Mortimer, Ruth McVey, Harold Crouch and Harry J. Benda was far more extensive than from historians. The latter
wrote in 1964 that “no country in Southeast Asia has in postwar years received greater attention, institutional support, and dedicated
individual scholarship than Indonesia.” See Harry J. Benda, “Democracy in Indonesia,” in: Benedict Anderson and Audrey Kahin, eds.,
Interpreting Indonesian Politics: Thirteen Contributions to the Debate (Ithaca 1982) 13. For Simpson’s remarks on the historiography
of U.S.-Indonesia relations, see Economists with Guns, 4.
37
Robert J. McMahon, “The Cold War in Asia: The Elusive Synthesis,” in Michael J. Hogan, ed., America in the World: The
Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 524. Perhaps illustrative
for the scant attention for Indonesia is that country’s absence in what is perhaps the best and most comprehensive Vietnam War
bibliography compiled by Clemson University’s Dr. Edwin E. Moïse at http://www.vietvet.org/edsbib.htm (accessed March 1, 2015).
38
A great example of this narrow-minded view is the following quote from Henry Kissinger. During a conversation with the Chilean
Foreign Minister Gabriel Valdes in 1969, the Secretary of State stated that the developing world, or Global South, was “not important”
because “history has never been produced in the South.” According to Kissinger, “the axes of history starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn,
crosses over to Washington, and then goes to Tokyo. What happens to the South is of no importance.” Kissinger cited in Seymour Hersh,
“The
Price
of
Power.
Kissinger,
Nixon,
and
Chile,”
The
Atlantic
(December
1982),
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/12/the-price-of-power/376309/ (accessed March 1, 2015). For an excellent and
critical treatment of the traditional Cold War paradigm, see Immanuel Wallerstein, “What Cold War in Asia? An Interpretative Essay,”
in: Zheng Yangwen, Hong Liu and Michael Szonyi, eds., The Cold War in Asia: The Battle for Hearts and Minds (Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2010) 15-24.
39
Exceptions include Akira Iriye, The Cold War in Asia: A Historical Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974), and
Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1980 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988).
15
their own nationalist agenda than those of Moscow and Beijing.40 Ultimately, these discoveries
culminated into a challenge from a group of scholars, headed by John Lewis Gaddis, to many of the
traditional paradigms. Although Gaddis and his followers again picked up the old questions of blame and
inevitability, they also concluded that the Cold War had been more than a conflict between only the
superpowers; at times, smaller and medium powers in the Third World, or “periphery,” played a crucial
role as well.41
The “new” or post-Cold War historians left the genie out of the bottle. For this dissertation it is
important to stress that their observation that Ho Chi Minh and his comrades had played a much more
independent role in the Cold War than previously assumed also held significant implications for the study
of the roles and perspectives of other actors in the Third World, including Indonesia. As a result, in the
second half of the 1990s, following another phase of government documents declassification in the United
States, Great Britain, and Australia, more and more scholars began to study and reevaluate the dynamics
of the Cold War and U.S. foreign policy in the Third World. With regard to Southeast Asia, this led to
contributions on long neglected topics, varying from the Malayan Emergency and the “Secret War” in
Laos to U.S. foreign policy towards “other” Southeast Asian states.42 With regard to Indonesia, this
resulted in Audrey R. Kahin’s and George McT. Kahin’s authoritative work on Washington’s failed
attempt to topple Sukarno during the Outer Island Rebellion in 1957-1958, Subversion as a Foreign
Policy: the secret Eisenhower and Dulles debacle in Indonesia (1995), and Paul Gardner’s Shared Hopes
and Separate Fears: Fifty Years of U.S. Indonesian Relations (1997), still the only extensive recollection
of United States-Indonesia relations through the entire period since the latter’s independence in 1949. 43
See, for example, Ilya V. Gaiduk, “Soviet Cold War Strategy and Prospects of Revolution in South and Southeast Asia” (chapter 5)
in: Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann, eds., Connecting Histories: decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia,
1945-1962 (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Press, 2009) 123-136; Ilya V. Gaiduk, “The Second Front of the Cold War: Asia in the
System of Moscow’s Foreign Policy Priorities, 1945-1956” (chapter 2) in: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, ed., The Cold War in East Asia 19451991 (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2011), 63-80; Qiang Zhai, China & the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975 (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2000; Marc Jason Gilbert, ed., Why the North won the Vietnam War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
41
Gaddis characterized the “new” Cold War history by the centrality of “ideas, ideologies, and morality” and the employment of multiarchives in an attempt to go beyond “America centrism.” At the same time, he shifted the primary responsibility for the Cold War back
to the Soviet Union, whose “fundamental expansionism the U.S. had sought to contain.” See John Lewis Gaddis, We now know.
Rethinking Cold War history (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 281-295.
42
With “other” Southeast Asian countries, I refer to all countries in the region except Vietnam, but including Laos and Cambodia.
Examples of such studies are Daniel Fineman, A Special Relationship: The United States and Military Government in Thailand, 19471958 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997); Robert M. Blackburn, Mercenaries & Lyndon Johnson’s “More Flags”: The Hiring
of Korean, Filipino and Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994); Arne Kislenko, “Bamboo in
the Shadows: Relations between the United States and Thailand during the Vietnam War” in: Andreas W. Daum, Lloyd C. Gardner, and
Wilfried Mausbach, eds., America, the Vietnam War and the World: Comparative & International Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003); Robert Jackson, The Malayan Emergency: The Commonwealth’s War (New York: Routledge, 1991); Paul
Ham, Vietnam: The Australian War (Sydney: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007).
43
Audrey Kahin and George McT. Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia
(Washington, DC: University of Washington Press, 1997); Paul F. Garnder, Shared Hopes, Separate Fears: Fifty Years of U.S.Indonesian Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997). Kahin & Kahin and Gardner were trendsetters. In the early 2000s, various
authors began to focus on U.S. foreign policy towards Indonesia, both during the 1950s and 1960s. See for example John Subritzky,
Confronting Sukarno: British, American, Australian and New Zealand diplomacy in the Malaysian-Indonesian confrontation, 1961-65
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Andrew Roadknight, United States policy towards Indonesia in the Truman and Eisenhower
years (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Matthew Jones, Conflict and confrontation in South East Asia, 1961-1965: Britain, the
United States, Indonesia and the creation of Malaysia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Frances Gouda and Thijs
Brocades Zaalberg. American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia. US Foreign Policy and Indonesian Nationalism, 192040
16
Although still largely focusing on Western roles and perspectives, the research of the second half of the
1990s contributed to a further broadening of horizons of Cold War and U.S. foreign history. This trend
continued and accelerated in the twenty-first century.
When looking back at the contributions of the last ten to fifteen years or so, we can identify a number
of distinct, but overlapping trajectories that have truly “internationalized” the Cold War and U.S. foreign
relations research field. Three of these trajectories, which greatly influenced this dissertation, will be
briefly addressed here. First, while the focus has long been on the European theater of the Cold War, there
is now an equal amount of attention for the dynamics of the Cold War and Washington’s policies in other
continents. This has added to the Cold War an important North-South dimension and makes it that the
conflict is no longer seen as solely a bipolar struggle between Washington and Moscow. It has also led
to a recognition of the fact that American and Russian might had its limits – not only in Cuba, Vietnam,
and Afghanistan, but also elsewhere – and that indigenous actors often played a crucial role too. As Karl
Hack and Geoff Wade have observed, by “drawing on outside factors for their own material and
ideological purposes,” local forces turned the Cold War at times considerably “hot.” This was perhaps
nowhere more true than in Southeast Asia.44
Second, instead of looking at the dynamics and impact of the Cold War and of U.S. foreign policy in
only one nation, as has long been the standard method of research, an increasing number of scholars now
apply a regionalist, trans-nationalist, or internationalist approach. By doing so, they try to investigate how
regional, transnational, and international developments affected local events and vice versa and in what
way the Cold War intersected with other longue durée developments of the twentieth century, such as
decolonization, modernization, and globalization. It is worth emphasizing that in this process of
“internationalizing” the Cold War, non-western scholars are playing an important role. Though still
limited by a lack of sources – most Southeast Asian archives remain closed to scholars – they have
brought in valuable new insights on the roles and perspectives of indigenous actors, revealing, among
other things, how these actors experienced the Cold War and where, when, and if the conflict became
more important than, for example, the remnants of colonialism in shaping their view on themselves and
their place in the world.45
1949 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002); Robert J. McMahon, “The Point of No Return: The Eisenhower Administration
and Indonesia, 1953-1960,” in Kathryn C. Statler and Andrew L. Johns, eds., The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the
Globalization of the Cold War (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 75-100; David F. Schmitz, The United States and RightWing Dictatorships, 1965-1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), especially chapter 2, “Degrading Freedom;” Roosa,
Pretext for mass murder; and Simpson’s Economist with Guns.
44
Karl Hack and Geoff Wade, “The Origins of the Southeast Asian Cold War,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (October
2009), 443. See also Westad, The Global Cold War, 396. It should be stressed here that the Cold War was not only hot in Korea and
Indochina, but also in Malaysia (during the “Emergency” of the 1950s and Konfrontasi in the 1960s), the Philippines (during the
Hukbalahap Rebellion in the 1940s and 1950s), Thailand (during the numerous military coup attempts throughout the entire Cold War
and the brutal suppression of leftist student demonstrators in Bangkok in the 1970s), and of course in Indonesia (during the
PPRI/Permesta Rebellion in the late 1950s, the West New Guinea crisis in 1961-962, Konfrontasi, and the anti-PKI massacre of 19651966).
45
Ang Cheng Guan noted that “there is still no sign that Southeast Asian governments are considering making documents of the Cold
War years accessible to scholars, except perhaps in some cases on a very selective basis.” Ang Cheng Guan, Southeast Asia and the
Vietnam War (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 1. Important non-western contributions include Tuong Vu and Wasana
Wongsurawat, ed., Dynamics of the Cold War in Asia: Ideology, Identity, and Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009);
17
Third, Cold War and U.S. foreign relations scholars have finally begun to move beyond the questions
of inevitability and guilt to focus on other important factors that shaped the conflict, such as economics,
culture, ideology, science and technology. With regard to U.S. Cold War policies, this trend has led to a
growing number of studies on Washington’s relations with Third World countries, non-aligned states,
and Asian nations that stood, to borrow a phrase from Timothy Castle, “in the shadow of Vietnam.” 46
Moreover, it has contributed to a fresh interest in the impact of development concerns and modernization
theory on the views and policies of U.S. officials, particularly those of the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations.47 As historian David Schmitz observed, modernization theory implied that economic
development had followed unique paths in Western Europe and the United States, and that these paths,
including the value systems and political and economic institutions that underpinned them, could be
transferred to other countries, including those in the Third World. The theory allowed policymakers not
only to rank nations “in terms of their “objective” developmental status, political systems, and cultural
institutions” and “determine their needs and problems,” but also to assume a leading role in shaping a
new economic world order. Modernization theory clearly reflected the racist ideas that were prominent
in Western thinking during much of the nineteenth and twentieth century. In Washington’s case, it also
echoed the notion of “American exceptionalism,” which can be traced back to at least the writings of
Alexander the Tocqueville in the early nineteenth century.48
In the past ten to fifteen years, scholars have unquestionably expanded our knowledge of the Cold
War and of U.S. foreign policy during the conflict since the whole topic is now studied from a wide range
of regional and international perspectives and with various thematic approaches. Though some scholars
consider current “international” Cold War history nearly indistinguishable from “global history,” we
cannot deny the positive fact that historians have finally begun to move beyond the long-time dominant
Eurocentric approach to pay equal attention to the “hot” and often bloody dynamics of the conflict and
of U.S. policy in other parts of the world, from Africa to Latin America and from Asia to the Middle
East.49 To be sure, it goes too far to embrace Westad’s conclusion that “the most important aspects of the
Cold War were neither military nor strategic, nor Europe-centered, but connected to political and social
development in the Third World,” for it leaves out, for example, the importance of the nuclear arsenal on
Yangweng Zheng, Michael Szonyi and Hong Liu, eds., The Cold War in Asia: the Battle for Hearts and Minds (Leiden: Brill, 2010);
and the earlier cited Zhai, China & the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975.
46
This is the title of Timothy N. Castle’s book, At War in the Shadow of Vietnam: U.S. Military Aid to the Royal Lao Government, 19551975 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
47
See Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel
Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000); David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction
of an American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Corinna R. Unger and David C. Engerman, “Modernization
as a Global Project: American, Soviet, and European Approaches,” prepared for conference on “Modernization as a Global Project” at
the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, March 28-29, 2008, available at http://hsozkult.geschichte.huberlin.de/tagungsberichte/id=2083; Daniel Immerwahr, “Modernization and Development in U.S. Foreign Relations,” Passport 43, no.
2 (September 2012), 22-25.
48
Schmitz, The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 11-12; James W. Ceaser, “The Origins and Character of American
Exceptionalism,” American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture 1 (Spring 2012), 1-25.
49
Odd Arne Westad, “The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms,” Diplomatic History 24, no. 4 (Fall
2000), 564.
18
the European continent, the role played by politicians such as Charles de Gaulle and Willy Brandt, and
the large impact that the Cuban Missile Crisis had on the conflict. However, based on what we now know,
we can say that the suggestion of Tuong Vu and Wasana Wongsurawat to re-conceptualize the Cold War
as “an intercontinental synchronization of hostilities” in which Asian actors shared equal responsibilities
with Western and Soviet actors in the spread of conflict, certainly makes sense.50
Having said this, there are still important gaps in our knowledge of the Cold War and of U.S. foreign
policy, in particular in Indonesia and in Southeast Asia more generally, that remain to be filled. First,
when looking at the historiography of U.S. Cold War policies in Southeast Asia, one has to conclude that
there is still an over-fixation on Vietnam. Certainly, this is understandable because the Vietnam War was,
as George C. Herring has taught us, “America’s longest war,” with a socio-political impact that exceeded
that of any other conflict the United States fought since World War II. 51 However, by focusing so
exclusively on Vietnam “historians have generally neglected the crucial importance of [Indonesia] to
overall American strategy in the region.”52 Until at least the mid-1960s, U.S. officials considered the
strategic and economic importance of Indonesia at least on par with Vietnam if not with the whole of
Indochina, and for this reason the archipelago state equaled Vietnam in dedicated time and worry. Due to
their preoccupation with Vietnam, scholars have also failed to appreciate the earlier outlined geopolitical
consequences of the Indonesian regime change and wholesale annihilation of the PKI in 1965-1966.53
This is a remarkable neglect given the fact that the Johnson almost immediately administration praised
the “reversal of the Communist Tide in the great country of Indonesia an event that will probably rank
along with the Vietnamese war as perhaps the most historic turning point of Asia in this decade.”54
Without exaggeration, one can conclude that the Indonesian turnaround was a decisive pivotal moment
in the history of the Cold War, perhaps even equal in importance to the détente in relations between the
United States and China in the 1970s, which allowed the Washington to shift its focus from East to West
Asia and the Middle East. In this sense, there is much to say for the argument put forward by Noam
50
Westad, The Global Cold War, 396; Tuong Vu and Wasana Wongsurawat, Dynamics of the Cold War, 3.
George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950 – 1975 (New York: John Wiley, 1979). Vietnam
was the first war to be televised, enabling millions of people to witness from their living room the horrors of a conflict fought on the
other side of the globe. It was also the first war in which the United States suffered a clear defeat. (Ironically, the United States realized
its larger objectives in the region despite this defeat, see the conclusion of my thesis). Despite having an army of over half a million
soldiers, backed from the sky by the world’s most powerful and sophisticated air force, the Americans were unable to crush the attempts
of the North Vietnamese revolutionaries to overthrow the government in Saigon and reunite the country. By 1973, American troops had
gone home, and in 1975, the North Vietnamese army conquered the South. Almost fifty years after the outbreak of the war, Vietnam
still serves a warning for U.S. policymakers, see for example Ed Hornick, “Afghanistan haunted by ghost of Vietnam,” CNN, October
27, 2009, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/27/afghanistan.vietnam/index.html?iref=24hours (accessed March 1, 2015). The
impact of the war was felt globally, of course particularly in Asia itself, but also in Western Europe. See Leopoldo Nuti, “Transatlantic
relations in the era of Vietnam: Western Europe and the Escalation of the War, 1965-1968.” Paper presented at the conference “NATO,
the Warsaw Pact and the Rise of Détente, 1965-1972,” Dobbiaco, Italy, September 22-28, 2002; and Rimko van der Maar, Welterusten,
mijnheer de president (Amsterdam: Boom 2007).
52
Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno, 187.
53
To mention one – otherwise very good – account of U.S. foreign policy, the coup is not even mentioned in George C. Herring’s From
Colony to Superpower: U.S. foreign relations since 1776 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Praised by Diplomatic History
as “the standard master narrative of the history of U.S. diplomacy,” the book in fact barely mentions Indonesia at all. This point is not
stressed however in the following review: Robert D. Schulzinger, “The Master Narrative of U.S. Foreign Relations” (book review),
Diplomatic History 33, no. 5 (November 2009), 959-962.
54
U. Alexis Johnson quoted in Kolko, Confronting the Third World, 181.
51
19
Chomsky that by the time that Suharto consolidated power, the United States had actually “won the war”
in Southeast Asia.55 Ironically, U.S. officials failed to recognize themselves that “fewer dominoes now
existed, and [that] they seemed much less likely to fall.”56
Second, while scholars have increasingly looked at the Cold War from a regional and/or international
perspective, they have paid only limited attention to the links between U.S. foreign policy towards
Indonesia and Washington’s priorities elsewhere in the region, particularly in Vietnam. Former National
Security Advisor and modernization theorist Walt Whitman Rostow recalled that from 1965 onwards,
American policymakers and commentators had a tendency to discuss the war in Vietnam without
reference to Southeast Asia.57 In recent years, scholars have done a great deal to redress this by exploring
the dynamics of the war in other parts of the region. However, in doing so they have dealt predominately
with the countries that belonged to the “upper arc” of Southeast Asia. “The southernmost states in the
region,” including Indonesia, have thus “not received as much attention.”58 This is curious because U.S.
policymakers believed that “what happened in the north [of Southeast Asia] affected what happened in
the south,” and vice versa. Moreover, they framed the importance of Indonesia like any other Southeast
Asian country “squarely in regional terms.” This way of framing stemmed from Washington’s
commitment in the late 1940s and early 1950s to seek the reconstruction of Japan, regional economic
integration, and the containment of communism throughout East and Southeast Asia.59
Third, when looking at the historiography of U.S.-Indonesia relations, we can conclude that there are
still various episodes and aspects that deserve more scholastic attention. In the past two decades,
considerable attention has been paid to the Eisenhower administration’s dramatic intervention in
Indonesia during the Outer Island Rebellion in 1957-1958 and the same counts for the CIA’s activities in
Chomsky admitted that it was a “partial victory,” for Washington did not achieve its maximal objectives. It did not succeed in
establishing a pro-American regime in Vietnam, nor in Laos and Cambodia, but it had achieved its “major objectives” of defeating
communism in most of the region, maintaining access to the region’s natural resources (particularly those in Indonesia), and creating
the climate for increased cooperation among the nations of the region along the lines that would follow the natural flow of economic
utility. Various officials, including Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, later came
to similar conclusions. See McNamara, In Retrospect, 214-215; Mueller, “Reassessment of American Policy,” 52; Green, Indonesia,
152-153. For Chomsky’s claims, see Kevin Hewison, “Noam Chomsky on Indochina and Iraq: an Interview,” Journal of Contemporary
Asia 37, no. 4 (November 2007), 1-13.
56
As McNamara observed, “the largest and most populous nation in Southeast Asia had reversed course and now lay in the hands of
independent nationalists led by Suharto,” while “China, which had expected a tremendous victory, instead suffered a permanent
setback.” Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), 214-215.
McGeorge Bundy also affirmed later that Vietnam was no longer of vital interest “at least from the time of the anti-Communist
revolution in Indonesia.” See John Mueller, “Reassessment of American Policy,” in Harrison E. Salisbury, ed., Vietnam Reconsidered:
Lessons from a War (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 52.
57
Walt W. Rostow, “The Strategic significance of Vietnam and Southeast Asia” in: James F. Veninga and Harry A. Wilmer, eds.,
Vietnam in Remission (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1985) 33-53. Obviously, by the mid-1960s, the war “had come
to acquire a logic of its own, divorced from the domino theory,” which had been an important theoretical underpinning for years. See
Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder, 15.
58
Lau, “Southeast Asia and the Cold War,” 1. The “upper arc” of Southeast Asia consists of the countries of Indochina, Thailand, the
Philippines and Burma. The “lower arc” consists of Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, and, since 1999, East Timor
(which was brutally annexed by Indonesia in 1975). Initially, the region also included India and Ceylon and excluded the Philippines.
On the “birth” of Southeast Asia as a geographically unified region, see Donald K. Emmerson, ““Southeast Asia:” What’s in a Name?,”
Journal of Southeast Asia Studies 15, no. 1 (1984) 1-21.
59
Dewi Fortuna Anwar, “The Cold War and its impact on Indonesia. Domestic Politics and foreign policy,” in Albert Lau, ed., Southeast
Asia and the Cold War (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 133-150; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 16; McMahon, The Limits
of Intervention, 44.
55
20
these years and Washington’s role as a midwife of Indonesian independence in 1949.60 Also, historians
have looked extensively at U.S.-Indonesia relations during the West New Guinea conflict in 1961-1961
and during Konfrontasi, Sukarno’s anti-Malaysia campaign in 1963-1966.61 Washington’s policies
towards the archipelago state in the months up to and following the September 30th Movement, and
America’s alleged complicity in the Gestapu “coup” affair and the subsequent Indonesian killings has
become a topic of special interest, and as recent as 2008, Bradley Simpson wrote an excellent account of
the Indonesia-policy of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, one that is likely to remain a standard
reference work for many years to come.62 However, with the exception of Simpson and perhaps Gardner,
scholars have paid only limited attention to the continuities and discontinuities of U.S. foreign policy
For Washington’s support for Indonesian independence and U.S.-Indonesia relations during the 1950s, see Robert J. McMahon,
Colonialism and Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945-49 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1981); Gouda and Zaalberg, American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia; Richard Mason, “Containment and the
Challenge of Non-Alignment: The Cold War and U.S. Policy toward Indonesia, 1950-1952” and Samuel E. Crowl, “Indonesia’s
Diplomatic Revolution: Lining Up for Non-Alignment, 1945-1955,” both in: Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann, eds.,
Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945-1962 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). 3967 and 238-257. For the CIA’s activities in Indonesia in the 1950s, see Kahin and Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy; Kenneth J.
Conboy and James Morrison, Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957-1958 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999);
Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers. John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and their Secret World War (New York: Macmillan, 2013), chapter 8,
“The Self-Intoxicated President.” William Blum’s Killing Hope. US Military & CIA Interventions since World War II (London: Zed
Books, 2004) has two chapters on Indonesia, one on 1957-1958 and one on 1965. A broader analysis of U.S. policies in Indonesia in the
1950s can be found in Robert J. McMahon, “The Point of No Return: The Eisenhower Administration and Indonesia, 1953-1960,” in
by Kathryn C. Statler and Andrew L. Johns, eds. The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold
War (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 75-100; and in Andrew Roadnight’s United States policy towards Indonesia in the
Truman and Eisenhower years (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
61
For Kennedy’s Indonesia policy during the conflict between the Netherlands and Indonesia over West New Guinea, see Maga, “The
New Frontier vs. Guided Democracy,” Webster, “Regimes in Motion,” and the first chapter in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation. The
topic has received considerable attention in the Netherlands, with Arend Lijphart’s The Trauma of Decolonization: The Dutch and West
New Guinea (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966) still being the classic study. An extensive treatment can also be
found in a recent biography (in Dutch) of the Dutch ambassador at the time, Herman van Roijen 1905-1991: een diplomat van klasse
[an outstanding diplomat] (Amsterdam: Boom, 2013) by Rimko van der Maar and Hans Meijer. Also valuable is C.L.M. Penders’ The
West New Guinea Debacle: Dutch Colonization and Indonesia , 1945-1962 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000). For U.S.Indonesia relations during Konfrontasi, see Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno; Jones, Conflict and Confrontation; Guan, “The Johnson
Administration and ‘Confrontation.’” David Easter’s Britain and the Confrontation with Indonesia, 1960–1966 (London: I.B. Tauris,
2004) deals predominately with London’s policies, but also includes sections on U.S.-Indonesia policy. The following article is useful
for similar reasons, Pamela Sodhy, “Malaysian-American relations during Indonesia’s Confrontation against Malaysia, 1963-1966,”
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 19, no. 1 (1988), 111-136.
62
While often disputed, particularly in the United States itself, Peter Dale Scott’s “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno,
1965-1967,” in Pacific Affairs 58, no. 2 (Summer 1985), 239-264, is not only the first, but also the most cited article in which it is
claimed that the United States had a hand in the Indonesian regime change. For an article that perfectly shows how the United States
contributed to the climate in which the regime change could take place, see Frederick Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy toward
Indonesia in the Months Leading up to the 1965 “Coup,”’ Indonesia 50 (October 1990), 29-60. The claims of Scott and Bunnell are
challenged somehow by H.W. Brands in “The Limits of Manipulation,” and in his chapter “Bloody Good Luck” in The Wages of
Globalism. Brand’s line is followed by McMahon in The Limits of Empire, 119-124. Other works that deal with U.S. and Western
complicity in the Indonesian regime change and massacre of 1965-1966 are Kolko, Confronting the Third World; Noam Chomsky, Year
501: The Conquest Continues (Boston: South End Press, 1993), 121-133; Kai Bird, The Color of Truth. McGeorge Bundy and William
Bundy: Brothers in Arms. A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998); Mark Curtis, “US and British Complicity in the 1965
slaughters in Indonesia.” Third World Resurgence 137 (2002), available at http://markcurtis.wordpress.com/2007/02/01/us-and-britishcomplicity-in-the-1965-slaughters-in-indonesia; and David Easter, “‘Keep the Indonesian Pot Boiling’: Western Covert Intervention in
Indonesia, October 1965–March 1966,” Cold War History 5, no. 1 (February 2005), 55-73; Schmitz, The United States and Right-Wing
Dictatorships; and Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder. Particularly interesting is David Ransom, “Ford Country: Building an Elite for
Indonesia” in: Steve Weissman, ed., The Trojan Horse: A Radical Look At Foreign Aid (Palo Alto, CA: Ramparts Press, 1975), 93-116.
Ransom lays a connection between the Indonesian and the modernization attempts in Indonesia of the Ford Foundation in the 1950s.
Ransom’s article served as an important source for Naomi Klein’s bestseller, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New
York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), and for Simpson’s Economists with Guns. Surprisingly, neither Ransom nor Simpson are cited in Van
der Veen’s Waarom Azië rijk en machtig wordt, which aimed to analyze the rise of Asia and contains two chapters on Indonesia.
60
21
towards Indonesia throughout the first half of the 1960s, and to the links between U.S. Indonesia-policy
and Washington’s priorities elsewhere in the region, particularly in Vietnam.63 Whereas scholars are now
placing the Vietnam War in a broader, international frame, the same cannot be said about the events in
Indonesia in the 1960s, despite the fact that they had such a tremendous impact on the regional balance
of power, Southeast Asia’s politico-economic development, Washington’s regional policies, and the Cold
War in Asia. In other words, the contributions on U.S. Indonesia-policy during the 1960s that do exist are
thus yet to be integrated into the voluminous scholarship on the Vietnam and Southeast Asian Cold War.
This dissertation can be seen as a preliminary attempt to such an undertaking.
Thesis Goals, Demarcations and Approach
By analyzing the continuities and discontinuities in U.S. foreign policy towards Indonesia throughout the
Kennedy and Johnson years and the links between these policies and Washington’s priorities elsewhere
in Southeast Asia during the 1960s, this dissertation attempts to make an original contribution to the
historiography of United States-Indonesia relations and the gradually growing literature on the
international history of the Cold War, and of the Vietnam War more specifically. In addition, it aims to
broaden our knowledge of U.S. foreign policy in the first half of the 1960s, in particular towards Third
World countries, non-aligned states, and Asian nations other than Vietnam. As stated in the
historiography section above, U.S. relations with countries that fall within one or more of these categories
have received increased scholastic attention in recent years.
As in any research, demarcations are necessary and inevitable to keep direction. The first demarcation
has to do with the time-scope of this study. As stressed earlier, the primary focus is on U.S. Indonesiapolicy during the 1960s. The natural starting point of this study is therefore January 1961, the month in
which John F. Kennedy assumed office and took over the remnants of Eisenhower’s failed policies in
Indonesia. The ending point of the dissertation is late 1967. The reason for this is simple: at that time,
Suharto fully consolidated power, which allowed for Indonesia’s full alignment with the West. It should
be stressed that although the focus of this study is on the 1960s, I will sometimes briefly discuss events
and developments of the 1950s. I will do so when that is necessary to understand the context of the 1960s.
63
An attempt in which the events and U.S. policies in Indonesia are linked to Vietnam can be found, not surprisingly, in R.B. Smith’s
An International History of the Vietnam War. Volume II: The Struggle for South-East Asia, 1961-1965 (London: The Macmillan Press,
1985) and Volume III: The Making of a Limited War, 1965-1966 (London: The Macmillan Press, 1991); Matthew Jones, “U.S. Relations
with Indonesia, the Kennedy-Johnson Transition, and the Vietnam Connection, 1963-1965,” Diplomatic History 26, no. 2 (Spring 2002),
249-281; and Guan, Southeast Asia and the Vietnam War. Gardner’s Shared Hopes. Separate Fears, Simpson’s Economists with Guns
and Aandstad’s PhD dissertation, “Surrendering to Symbols,” are the only works that deal with U.S. Indonesia-policy throughout entire
period of the 1960s, if one does not take into account the memoirs of Hilsman, To Move a Nation; and Jones, Indonesia. It is worth
stressing that Kennedy’s Indonesia-policy has received much more attention than Johnson’s. Apart from the earlier cited articles of
Maga and Webster, one study deserves special mention because it demonstrates how and why Indonesia came to occupy a central place
in Kennedy’s strategy for Southeast Asia: Frederick Bunnell, “The Kennedy Initiatives in Indonesia, 1962-1963” (PhD dissertation,
Cornell University, 1969).
22
What the remnants of Eisenhower’s failed policies where, will be briefly discussed at the beginning of
chapter 1.
A second demarcation concerns geographical space. Since this dissertation aims to provide an analysis
of the links between U.S. foreign policy towards Indonesia and Washington’s broader priorities in
Southeast Asia, particularly in Vietnam, it deals essentially with developments on the local and regional
level. The reason for focusing on U.S. foreign policy in Indonesia is elaborated already. The decision to
pay considerable attention to American policy towards Southeast Asia more generally as well stems from
the simple fact that Washington’s approach to the archipelago state, as to many other countries in the
world since America’s “rise to globalism” in the 1940s, was essentially regional in outlook. When
assessing the strategic importance of Indonesia, U.S. officials did this always in regional, sometimes even
global, terms.64 It has been claimed that American policymakers often defined the Southeast Asian region
as one whole, as if all countries were culturally similar. This is incorrect. From the beginning of their
engagement in the region, U.S. officials were well aware of the differences between the various countries
of Southeast Asia and of the fact their efforts in one country could affect policies elsewhere. If one wants
to understand the failures of U.S. policies in the region, for example in Indonesia in the late 1950s or
ultimately in Vietnam, it is important to recognize that it was, as historian Mark Atwood Lawrence noted,
not so much the “lack of investigation or expertise of Southeast Asia so much as the unwillingness of top
decision makers to draw on that knowledge in making policy decisions.”65
The third and last demarcation involves the natural focal point or thematic approach of this
dissertation. Though this study recognizes the importance of studying cultural and social dynamics of the
Cold War, its approach is closest to classic diplomatic history. The primary focus is thus on the roles and
perspectives of those who were directly responsible for U.S. foreign policy towards Indonesia. The most
important individuals in the policymaking process were the officials in the White House National Security
Council (NSC), the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JSC), and the State Department, the latter through the Indonesia
64
Stephen E. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 (New York: Penguin Books, 1997). The first examples
of such a regional approach can be found in the Council on Foreign Relations’ (CFR) massive post-war policy planning project called
the “War and Peace Studies.” One of the project’s results was the conception of the “Grand Area,” that is “the amount of the world the
United States can defend most economically…with the least readjustment of the American economy.” Noam Chomsky cynically defined
the Grand Area as “a region that was to be subordinated to the needs of the American economy.” But it can indeed be viewed as the
geopolitical space needed to dominate in a world divided by empires, power blocs, and spheres of influence. Initially, the Grand Area
was conceived as U.S-led non-German bloc, encompassing the Western hemisphere, the Far East and the former British empire.
Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, the area was extended to include the Eurasian land mass, later described by political scientist
and National Security Advisor Zbignieuw Brzezinksi as the “grand chessboard,” as well. Southeast Asia, given its strategic location and
rich amount of raw materials, with Indonesia in the center, was an area of key strategic importance to the Grand Area from the start, a
fact demonstrated by Japan’s quick takeover of the region in the early 1940s. The significance of the Grand Area concept is illustrated
by the fact that the first official statements of American national interest in Southeast Asia in the early 1950s were almost identical with
the CFR view on why the region was so important. See G. William Domhoff, “The Council on Foreign Relations and the Grand Area:
Case Studies on the Origins of the IMF and the Vietnam War,” Class, Race and Corporate Power 2, no. 1 (February 2014), 1-41;
Laurence Shoup, “The Council on Foreign Relations and American Policy in Southeast Asia, 1940-1973,” Insurgent Sociologist 7, no.
1 (Winter 1977), 19-30; Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide. U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace (Boston:
South End Press, 1985), 106-107.
65
Mark Atwood Lawrence, “Explaining the Early Decisions, The United States and the French War, 1945-1954,” in Mark Philip
Bradley and Marilyn B. Young, eds., Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars. Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008), 23-44.
23
Desk, the Office of Southwest Pacific Affairs and the Far Eastern Bureau. The staff of the U.S. Embassy
in Jakarta played of course a crucial role, in particular Howard Jones, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia
from early 1958 to early 1965. According to historian Stig Aga Aandstad, Jones was perhaps even “the
single most influential person in policymaking after the president.”66 For general guidelines and specific
issues, several people from the top nation security echelons played an in important role, including
Assistant Secretary of State for Far Easter Affairs Averell Harriman, Undersecretary of State George Ball,
Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara, and of course the two presidents: John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. The most
influential agencies regarding U.S. Indonesia-policy were the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the U.S.
Intelligence Agency (USIA), and the Peace Corps. Other important parties included the Agency of
International Development (AID), the Military Assistance Program (MAP), and the Food For Peace
(PL480) Program. Then, a number consultant agencies and think tanks, such as the Ford Foundation and
the Research and Development Corporation (RAND), played their part, often in cooperation U.S. elite
universities such as Berkeley, Harvard, Cornell and MIT.67 Finally, the U.S. Congress had of course
influence on the policymaking process, though mostly in a constraining way. This was particularly the
case when a debate on the foreign aid budget was on the agenda and when Sukarno embarked on a policy
of confrontation with the Netherlands in West New Guinea, in 1961-1962, and with Britain and Malaya
over the formation of Malaysia, in 1963-1966.
Note on Sources
This dissertation relies on a combination of primary and secondary sources. In addition, to get a hold of
broader as well as more specific topics that touch on the topic of this study, a number documentaries have
been used.68 The primary focus of the thesis, as outlined above, is on the roles and perspectives of those
officials who developed and executed policy towards Indonesia in the 1960s. These are scrutinized
predominately through primary materials, such as diplomatic cables, transcripts of congressional hearings
and presidential speeches, and strategic assessments and memorandums of the State Department, the Joint
Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and the National Security Council (NSC). To understand the broader historical
context of the views and perspectives of U.S. policymakers as well as the developments that influenced
them, a wide range of secondary sources, varying from monographs to articles in newspapers, magazines,
journals and edited volumes, have been used. Although the limited space of this dissertation does not
Aandstad, “Surrendering to Symbols,” III.
Ford’s role in Indonesia is discussed in Ransom, “Ford Country,” and in John Bresnan, At Home Abroad. A Memoir of the Ford
Foundation in Indonesia, 1953-1973 (Jakarta: PT Equinox Publishing Indonesia, 2006). On RAND and Indonesia, see Budiawan,
“Seeing the Communist Past through the lens of a CIA consultant: Guy J. Pauker on the Indonesian Communist Party before and after
the ‘1965 Affair,’” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 7, no. 4 (2006), 650-662.
68
An example of such a media source is Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (2012). This documentary, rewarded with various
important film prices, focusses on the role played by “ordinary” Indonesians during the killings of 1965-1966. For a review (in Dutch),
see
Dirk
Vlasblom,
“Applaus
voor
de
moordenaars,”
NRC
Handelsblad,
October
27,
2012,
http://www.nrc.nl/handelsblad/van/2012/oktober/27/applaus-voor-de-moordenaars-1165574 (accessed January 12, 2013).
66
67
24
allow for a full explanation of the selection of these secondary sources, it should be stressed that I have
tried to consult the most recent and comprehensive studies on the Cold War and U.S. foreign relations.
Most of the primary sources were directly accessible to the author. Examples of such sources, are the
ones that are published in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series and those that are
accessible via the website of the Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project (CWIHP). 69
However, some primary materials are cited from secondary literature. This is because the author, for
practical reasons, did not had access to all sources. This applies to the primary materials that are stored
in the presidential libraries in Boston (John F. Kennedy Library) and Austin (Lyndon B. Johnson Library)
and the National Security Archives in Washington D.C. (NSA) and Maryland (NARA). The same goes
for a number of primary sources that can be found in British and Indonesian archives.70
Narrative Structure
This dissertation consists of four largely chronologically ordered chapters. The first two chapters deal
with the policies of the Kennedy administration, the last two with those of the Johnson administration.
Chapter 1 offers a treatment of the Kennedy administration’s first two years in office, during which it
embarked on a new and ambitious program for Indonesia in an attempt to repair the damage caused by
the Eisenhower administration’s disastrous intervention in 1957-1958 and counter the Soviet Union’s
growing influence in the archipelago state the late 1950s. We will see in this chapter that new president
was immediately confronted with a looming crisis between Indonesia and one of America’s allies, the
Netherlands, over West New Guinea. Following an analysis of the U.S. handling of the West New Guinea
crisis, this chapter then focusses on the development and background of the Indonesian “Action Plan,”
which offered a comprehensive strategy of military and technical aid, economic assistance, an
stabilization support. Chapter 2 deals largely with the implementation of this “Action Plan.” We will see
that this implementation went far from smooth, as the administration was confronted by an increasing
number of challenges: not only in the United States itself, but also in Indonesia. Eventually, these
challenges were in fact so large that the administration had to give up on the program’s full
implementation. Chapter 3 deals with the Johnson administration’s Indonesia-policy in the months up to
September 30, 1965. During this period, the United States shifted from an accommodationist approach to
a hard-line or “low-posture” rollback approach, as the situation in Southeast Asia, not only in Vietnam,
but also in Indonesia and Malaysia, turned increasingly problematic. The fourth and last chapter deals
with the post-September 30, 1965 era. In this period, Washington’s fortunes in Indonesia turned
69
The FRUS series contain documents from Presidential libraries, Departments of State and Defense, National Security Council, Central
Intelligence Agency, Agency for International Development, and other foreign affairs agencies as well as the private papers of
individuals involved in formulating U.S. foreign policy. A large section of the series is published online by the State Department’s
Office of the Historian, see http://history.state.gov/. The CWIHP, launched in 1991, has published numerous sources on its website, see
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/cold-war-international-history-project.
70
It should be stressed that most Indonesian sources are still unavailable. There is also no sign that the Indonesian government are
considering making documents of the Cold War years accessible to scholars, except perhaps on a very selective basis. The JFKL is in
in the middle of a process of publishing numerous primary sources online, see http://www.jfklibrary.org/.
25
completely. We will see that the United States was all but a silent bystander in this process. The main
questions of this dissertation, outlined above, will be answered implicitly throughout the four chapters.
In the final part of this thesis, the conclusions, they will be treated more explicitly. I will finish the
dissertation with some larger observations on the topic, which must further underline the importance of
studying U.S. Indonesia-policy in what has been called the “era of Vietnam.”
26
1
The Kennedy Administration and the Struggle for the
Indonesian Mind
On January 25, 1961, Secretary of State Dean Rusk received a lengthy telegram from the U.S.
Ambassador to Indonesia, Howard Jones. For the first time since Indonesia’s independence in 1949, Jones
wrote, the United States “has been seriously challenged by the Communist Bloc.” The immediate result
was that the “economic, military, [and] psychological programs which [were] formerly good enough, no
longer can assure [the] achievement of [the] US minimum objective of preventing Indonesia from falling
under Communist control.” Jones concluded that the time had come that “U.S. interests demand [a]
reassessment of the situation in Indonesia and review of our policy and courses of actions.”71 The telegram
introduced the Kennedy administration to the problems of the largest, richest and strategically most
important country of Southeast Asia. “Slightly less than a year ago,” the Ambassador explained, the
“USSR apparently reached [the] conclusion [that] it could not afford [to] have the largest Asian
Communist Party outside China go down [the] drain.” At about that time, after President Eisenhower
ignored an invitation from Sukarno, Khrushchev came to Indonesia, offering it “practically unlimited”
economic and military aid. In addition, the Soviet leader promised the Indonesians something that the
United States was until then unable or unwilling to give: a “sky’s-the-limit” support for Jakarta’s West
New Guinea claim, a problem of colonial heritage that had lingered on for years and now dominated
Indonesian politics more than ever before.72
The reasons for concern were immediate. “Should war break out between the Netherlands and
Indonesia over WNG,” Jones explained, the “consequences are such that our entire position in Asia would
be threatened.” In that scenario, the “Sino-Soviet bloc would at once come to support of Indonesia, [and]
Australia would at once come to support of Holland.” This would force the United States “to choose
between [the] unsatisfactory position of neutrality and support of the Netherlands on an issue which all
of Asia and Africa would regard as [a] struggle of [a] new nation against colonialism.” Jones added that
a war over West New Guinea would also seriously affect U.S. relations with the Netherlands and
71
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, January 25, 1961, FRUS, 191-1963, v. 23, 143 (the numbers
given in citations of FRUS hereafter refer to document numbers instead of pages).
72
Ibid. See also Larisa M. Efimova, “Soviet Policy in Indonesia during the “Liberal Democracy” Period, 1950-1959.” Paper prepared
for the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), e-Dossier No. 26. Available at http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/edossier-no-26 (accessed March 28, 2014).
27
Australia, allies to which it had mutual security obligations through NATO and ANZUS respectively.
Moreover, a war over West New Guinea could further problematize the already strained relationship with
Jakarta, pushing the latter “closer and closer into waiting Soviet hands.”73
As Jones wrote his telegram, the stakes were raised by Soviet aid shipments and Dutch provocations.
In the second half of the 1950s, the Soviet Union had embarked on a massive foreign aid offensive in the
third world, and one of the prime targets of this policy was Indonesia. Between 1958 and 1965, Soviet
economic aid to the archipelago state averaged approximately $120 million annually, more than twenty
percent of all Soviet aid to the non-communist world, and more than any other developing country
received, except Egypt and including North Vietnam.74 Soviet aid began to expand rapidly after 1957.
Within one year, the total amount of Soviet economic and technical aid pledged to Third World countries
nearly doubled, and by 1961 it had reached almost triple the 1958 figure at approximately 2.5 billion
rubles.75 Soviet assistance to Indonesia was mostly in the form of loans, and focused largely on industrial
and infrastructural projects, such as the building of thermal power stations, steel production sites, and a
huge sports stadium. While the United States promoted large infrastructure projects in Afghanistan,
Vietnam, and numerous other developing countries, in Indonesia it was the Soviet Union that held the
initiative.76
But Moscow also offered large sums of military assistance. By 1961, of all nations receiving Soviet
military aid only Cuba ranked on the same level as the archipelago state. At that time, over 400 communist
bloc military technicians were in Indonesia, while more than 5,000 Indonesians were under or had
finished training in the Soviet Union or another bloc country. The peril of Soviet military aid was that it
made the Indonesian army increasingly dependent on bloc expertise, maintenance, and spare parts.
Striking was the difference with U.S. military assistance, which until then had focused largely on lowtech small arms and hence offered only limited potential for dependency. 77 Dutch provocations
complicated these matters further. In early 1960, the Netherlands had dispatched its aircraft carrier, the
Karel Doorman, on a flag-waving cruise to West New Guinea. The goal was to gather international
support for the Dutch position and send the Indonesians a warning, but the outcome was far from
satisfying: no political backing was secured and the Dutch action only led to a further increase of Soviet
73
Ibid.
Until 1965, North Vietnam received in fact less than half the amount (389 million rubles) given to Indonesia. See Ragna Boden, “Cold
War Economics: Soviet Aid to Indonesia,” Journal of Cold War Studies 10, no. 3 (Summer 2008), 116; Brad Simpson, “Indonesia’s
“Accelerated Modernization” and the Global Discourse of Development, 1960-1975,” Diplomatic History 33, no. 3 (June 2009), 472.
75
Despite these large sums of aid, however, the Soviets often lacked a well thought-out plan for their economic aid to Jakarta. By 1965,
only eleven percent of the projects was finished. By 1965, only eleven percent of the projects was finished. Dissatisfaction with Soviet
aid opened the door to Chinese competition. See Boden, “Cold War Economics,” 127; Jeremy Friedman, “Soviet Policy in the
developing world and the Chinese challenge in 1960s,” Cold War History 10, no. 2 (May 2010), 253.
76
As Jones complained in early January 1961: “at the moment there are no Indonesian applications for substantial U.S. loans at [a] time
when books are being filled with [Soviet] bloc projects ranging from multi-purpose hydro projects to steel mills, chemicals, textiles,
etc.” Simpson, Economists with Guns, 49; Boden, “Cold War Economics,” 110, 127; Friedman, “Soviet Policy in the developing world,”
257; Nikita S. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament [translated by Strobe Talbot] (New York: Bantam Book, 1976),
314.
77
Stig Aga Aandstad, “Surrendering to Symbols. United States Policy Towards Indonesia 1961-1965.” PhD dissertation, University of
Oslo (1999), 14-15.
74
28
assistance. As Jones summarized, “however innocent” and “well-grounded” Dutch intensions may have
been, the consequences of their actions were “mischievous and long-lasting.”78
Despite the mounting tensions, the Ambassador believed that the situation could be turned to
Washington’s favor. He stressed that if a “positive program to meet [the] new situation” was pressed
“immediately, vigorously, [the] Communists can be beaten here.” The first priority was to find a solution
to the West New Guinea problem that was “acceptable to [the] Indonesians.” However, a solution to that
problem alone was “no longer sufficient.” Jones then recommended a number of action points that had to
bring about a long-term “readjustment of [the] Indonesian posture.” Among other things, Jones called for
a “greater speed in supporting development projects and programs,” a “greater flexibility in technical
assistance” and “educational exchange,” and the “provision of heavier weapons,” with a “token aid”
character so that Indonesia’s military and technical dependency on the United States could be increased.
Particularly important was the “establishment of [a] personal relationship between President Kennedy
and President Sukarno.” The President, Jones stressed, had to convince the Indonesian leader that the
United States was “not hostile” to him personally, and that required a “recognition of [the] fact that there
[is currently] no group in Indonesia except [the] rebels that [is] willing to oppose Sukarno and therefore
no immediate means to replace him.” Lastly, Jones called for an action point that was truly remarkable
in light of Washington’s disastrous covert intervention in Indonesia only three years earlier: “preparation
for [a] possible major psychological war campaign coordinating covert and overt resources when [the]
proper climate can be developed.”79
Jones’ telegram provides a useful starting point for understanding the shifts in U.S. Indonesia-policy
under Kennedy. However, it should be stressed that by 1961, other officials, too, had come to the
conclusion that the United States had to change its policy towards Indonesia to prevent the country from
falling under hostile control. In NSC 6023, its analysis of the Indonesian situation, prepared for the
incoming Kennedy administration in December 1960, the NSC warned that “domestic instability,
burgeoning Sino-Soviet Bloc economic and military aid, and substantial local Communist strength may
lead to a Communist takeover or to a policy increasingly friendly toward the Sino-Soviet Bloc on the part
of whatever regime is in power.” A “vigorous U.S. effort” was needed “to prevent these contingencies.”
In the short term, containing or rolling back the PKI remained a priority. Accordingly, the NSC
recommended using “all feasible means, including…the use of U.S. armed force if necessary and
appropriate” to prevent Indonesia from falling to communism, whereby priority was to be given to
“programs and projects which offer opportunities to isolate the PKI, drive it into positions of open
opposition to the Indonesian Government.” Eventually, this would create “grounds for repressive
measures politically justifiable in terms of Indonesian national self-interest.” However, like Ambassador
Jones, the NSC believed that more was needed to protect U.S. interests in Indonesia on the long-term. It
78
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, January 25, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 143;
Maarten van Eek, “Machtsvertoon en confrontatie in de Oost. Besluitvorming over de reis van de Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman naar
Nederlands Nieuw Guinea,” Marineblad 122, no. 5 (August 2012): 29-32.
79
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, January 25, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 143.
29
stressed that “ultimately, actions to defeat communism in Indonesia must…be supplementary to longrange effective programs to improve the living standards of the masses and to demonstrate capacity for
progress in solving Indonesia’s serious economic and social problems.”80 Required, in other words, was
a comprehensive economic and military aid strategy that would strengthen U.S. relations with Indonesia
and improve the outlook of a pro-Western regime in Jakarta.
The “positive” program that Jones and the NSC advocated reflected the ideas of the report that Max
Millikan and Donald Blackmer of MIT’s Center for International Studies (CENIS) had published a year
earlier at the request of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and suggested long-term integrated
planning for the developing world.81 Furthermore, it was in line with the paradigmatic shift in Washington
in late 1959 that viewed indigenous militaries as the most suitable partner for advancing modernization
in Third World countries like Indonesia. The “positive” program approach contained new elements, but
also reflected some remarkable continuity with Washington’s foreign policy towards the archipelago state
in the 1950s. Essentially, it consisted of two strategies: an offensive and a defensive strategy. The
offensive strategy aimed at making Indonesian leaders, both civilian and military, more susceptible to
Western ideas of development. This was to be realized through diplomacy on an official level
(government-to-government relations) and on a professional level (military-to-military relations) and
through the launch of new and expanded foreign aid and training programs. The offensive strategy,
reflecting the “New Frontier” ideology of the Kennedy administration, was indeed new and far more
ambitious than the United States had ever attempted to realize Indonesia. The defensive strategy reflected
continuity and aimed at strengthening Indonesia’s anti-communist forces, particularly in the military and
the police, to contain the rise of the PKI and halt the country’s leftward drift. The defensive part of the
program also suggested that the United States would once again commit itself to provoking a clash in
Indonesian politics. But there was one important difference, compared to the late 1950s. During the failed
intervention of 1957-1958, anti-communists were fighting anti-communists, with both sides using
American weapons, a tactical blunder of the highest order.82 This time, however, the United States would
not make the same mistake again. On the contrary, it would do everything it could to make sure that in
the event of a clash between the PKI and the Indonesian armed forces, the latter would be victorious.
Towards an Accommodationist Indonesia-Policy
Scholars have often characterized the divides in Washington over U.S. foreign policy towards Indonesia
in the 1960s as between those who favored a “confrontationist,” or “hard-line,” approach and those who
favored an “accommodationist” approach. The first group, largely unilateralist in outlook, advocated what
“U.S. Policy on Indonesia,” NSC 6023, December 19, 1960, FRUS, 1958-1960, v. 17, 293. The same words were used in “U.S. Policy
on Indonesia,” NSC 5901, January 16, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, v. 17, 177.
81
Michael Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and ‘Nation Building’ in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
82
Kahin and Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy, passim; Conboy and Morrison, Feet to the Fire, passim; Kinzer, The Brothers,
chapter 8; Blum, Killing Hope, chapter 14.
80
30
historian Ron Robin called a “coercive” strategy aimed at isolating Sukarno, or even overthrowing and
replacing him by a right-wing military regime.83 The confrontationists or “hard-liners” were primarily in
the State Department’s European Division, the Pentagon and the CIA. The group attracted support from
leaders of declining industries and nationalist businessmen, such as the Texas oilman Howard L. Hunt,
who believed that Sukarno was “second only to Khrushchev in the conspiracy to destroy freedom.” 84 The
confrontationists had dominated the foreign policy domain during the Eisenhower years. They focused
largely on short-term gains, an approach that culminated in the disastrous covert intervention of 19571958. Following this failed rollback operation, the influence of the confrontationists on U.S. Indonesiapolicy declined. However, they never disappeared far from the surface and continued to influence the
policymaking process, especially when the situation in Indonesia, and in Southeast Asia more generally,
started to deteriorate by 1963.85
The accommodationists favored a more “constructive” approach, one that included working with
Sukarno. This group was multilateralist in outlook and gathered predominately around Ambassador
Howard Jones, the State Department’s Bureau for Far Eastern Affairs, and the NSC. The
accommodationists were backed by companies with large investments in Indonesia, such as Stanvac,
Caltex, and U.S. Rubber. They focused more on the long-run in the hope that the archipelago state would
one day have a leader that would be more susceptible to American ideas of nation-building than Sukarno.
The accommodationists favored working with Sukarno not because they liked him, but because they saw
no immediate alternative. Admittedly, some accommodationists, particularly Jones, believed that all
Sukarno wanted was to be treated like an important leader and that the latter could still be convinced of
embracing a Western-backed development program and then turn to the West for assistance. Other
accommodationists, however, just did not want to embark on another risky rollback operation in Indonesia
and thought that a conciliatory approach could buy time to buildup Indonesia’s anti-communist forces,
particularly in the police and in the military, who at some point would rise to power and align Jakarta
with Washington. When Kennedy was elected president, the accommodationists gained the upper hand.
They consolidated their position, as we will see further on in this chapter, in late 1961, when Averell
Harriman was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs.86
Jones and the NSC rightfully believed that the arrival of John F. Kennedy in the White House provided
an opportunity to implement a “positive program” aimed at turning Indonesia’s expansionist nationalism
into the constructive channels of stabilization and nation-building. Compared with Dwight D.
Eisenhower, who had managed to keep the peace in Europe, but failed “to gauge accurately and adapt
83
Ron Robin, The Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the Military-Intellectual Complex (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2001), 11.
84
Howard L. Hunt quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 41.
85
Gardner, Shared Hopes. Separate Fears, 172-199; Kahin and Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy, 217-230; Simpson, Economists
with Guns, 39-40; Bunnell, “The Kennedy Initiatives in Indonesia,” 78-94 and “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 31-32; Brands, “The
Limits of Intervention,” 791-792.
86
This was of course also a result of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the failed CIA operation in Cuba in April 1961, which aimed at overthrowing
Fidel Castro. Following this event, Kennedy sacked the hawkish CIA Director Allen Dulles. In addition, he put the agency on a far
shorter leash than it had enjoyed under Eisenhower. See Brands, “The Limits of Manipulation,” 788.
31
effectively to Third World nationalism,” the single most dynamic new element in international relations
during the 1950s, Kennedy was indeed less reflexively anti-communist and more understandable with
regard to the wishes and concerns of Third World and neutralist leaders such as Sukarno.87 Through the
years, Kennedy had taken up a special interest in the process of decolonization. For example, in 1957, he
did not shy away from criticizing the French colonial war in Algeria. In a now-famous speech before
Congress, the then-Senator of Massachusetts claimed that the single most important test for the United
States was how it responded to the “challenge of imperialism,” not only of the Soviet Union but also of
the West. If Washington failed to meet that challenge, Kennedy argued, “then no amount of foreign aid,
no aggrandizement of armaments, no new pacts or doctrines or high-level conferences can prevent further
setbacks to our course and to our security” – a clear reference to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’
“pacto-mania” of the 1950s.88
For the Eisenhower administration, Westad noted, “it was more important to spoil the chances for a
successful left-wing development strategy than it was to impose its own version of development on newly
independent countries.”89 The Kennedy administration, however, advocated a more positive and
ambitious approach and believed that U.S. foreign policy during the 1950s had been too much focused
on short-term objectives. To reduce global poverty, thwart the appeal of communism, which flourished
where poverty was rampant, and regain the initiative in the Cold War the United States seemed to have
lost, Kennedy declared the 1960s a “Decade of Development,” introducing policies that focused on a
much more ambitious modernization effort, particularly in the Third World. The bible of modernization
was of course Walt Whitman Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960).
In this book, Rostow explained how foreign aid, if properly applied, could speed-up the transition of preindustrial societies to modernity and help Third World nations realize an economic “take-off.” Closely
related to modernization effort was the promotion of liberty, so that the West could conquer “the hearts
and minds,” particularly of the revolutionary movements and “uncommitted millions in Asia and
Africa.”90
Obviously, the Kennedy administration believed that the central arena of Cold War competition had
shifted from Europe to the developing world, where nationalist movements were becoming an
increasingly prominent feature of life.91 To confront the Third World and international communism, the
President launched a series of initiatives, such as the Alliance for Progress in Latin America, the Peace
Robert J. McMahon, “US national security policy from Eisenhower to Kennedy,” in: Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, eds.,
The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume I: Origins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 300.
88
During the Eisenhower years, Washington erected a global network of pacts and alliances to share the burden of anti-communism. It
contracted formal treaty relations with almost one hundred nations. Also, it became the chief lynchpin of two new multilateral alliance
systems, the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), established in Manila in 1954, and the Central Treaty Organization
(CENTO), established in Baghdad in 1955. See Cornelia Navari, Internationalism and the State in the Twentieth Century (London:
Routledge, 2000), 316, and McMahon, “US national security policy,” 294.
89
Westad, Global Cold War, 130.
90
John F. Kennedy quoted in Ekbladh, The Great American Mission, 191-192.
91
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1982), 174.
87
32
Corps, and the Food for Peace program. Symbolizing the moral premise of the New Frontier, the idea for
the Peace Corps suggested that an interaction of highly educated Americans and Third World peoples
would lead to an U.S.-Third World partnership that could thwart communist growth and forever bury the
“Ugly American” image.92 The Food for Peace program offered cheap food from U.S. agricultural
surpluses to be used as partial wagers for workers building schools, hospitals, roads and bridges.93
Another important initiative was Civic Action, a program designed to use indigenous military units on a
wide range of civic projects. Roger Hilsman later explained what Kennedy meant by civic action:
“rehabilitating canals, draining swampland to create new rice paddies, building bridges and roads, and so
on,” through which the Third World militaries could develop greater grassroots support among the
peasantry. But civic action was also a cover for psy-war, offered an opportunity enhanced security and
justified the military to maintain a large army in peacetime. Civic action, as we will see in more detail
later in this chapter, was also one of the administration’s initiatives that stemmed from the idea that Third
World militaries could be agents of modernization.94
Another important feature of the Kennedy administration’s foreign policy that deserves mention here
is the relative tolerance it had for neutralism. While Eisenhower administration officials had openly
denounced such a foreign policy outlook as “dangerous” and “immoral,” the Kennedy administration
viewed non-aligned countries, like Indonesia, as potential partners in the struggle against communism.95
As Kennedy stated, the trend of countries going neutral was something “inevitable” where Washington
“had to live with,” and an important motivation to work with neutralists was the idea that they would
otherwise join the communist bloc. Once in office, he stated that the United States “must keep [its] ties
to…[the] neutralists even if we not like many things they do because if we lose them, the balance of
power could swing against us.” To those suspicious of non-aligned countries, Kennedy said that the
United States had once been itself a neutral power when it was “in a comparable stage of development.”96
Yet both the President and his foreign policy team realized that they could not tilt too far towards
neutralist countries without paying a price elsewhere in the Third World. For example, in Southeast Asia,
loyal anti-communist allies like Thailand and the Philippines could be alienated if they would find out
that a neutralist country like Indonesia would receive as much or more economic and/or military aid as
they did. Congressional leaders could react similarly suspicious if support for a neutral power went too
By late 1962, Kennedy wanted Indonesia to have Southeast Asia’s largest contingent of Peace Corps volunteers. See Maga, “The
New Frontier vs. Guided Democracy,” 94. The argument of William Lederer’s popular 1958 novel The Ugly American was that the
United States was losing the Cold War in the Third World because it assigned to those countries diplomats who could not understand
the language and culture of these countries and isolated themselves in neo-colonial style in posh embassies. See Ekbladh, The Great
American Mission, 181.
93
John F. Kennedy quoted in Herring, From Colony to Superpower, 704; Hubert Humphrey quoted in Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr., A
Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (New York: Fawcett World Library, 1967), 605.
94
Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 377.
95
See, for example, John Foster Dulles, “The Cost of Peace,” Department of State Bulletin 29 (June 18, 1956), 999-1004.
96
Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 507; Record of the 508th Meeting of the National Security Council, January 22, 1963, FRUS, 19611963, v. 8, 125.
92
33
far. This thought certainly played a role in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ approach towards
Indonesia.
As he assumed office, Kennedy was immediately confronted with a number of security challenges.
Fidel Castro’s rise to power in 1959-1960 had awakened anxiety among U.S. policymakers that the Cuban
Revolution could be an example for other countries throughout the Western Hemisphere. The communist
insurgencies in Vietnam and Laos posed similar challenges in Southeast Asia. Kennedy’s fear that the
Soviet Union had shifted its strategy to exploit the turmoil accompanying the process of decolonization
in the Third World seemed to be confirmed by Nikita Khrushchev’s speech of January 6, 1961. In this
speech, the Soviet leader announced that he would do what all he could to assist revolutionary tendencies
in the Third World through the provision of economic and military aid and diplomatic and propaganda
support for “wars of national liberation.” As a result of these perceived threats, Kennedy concluded that
both Washington’s way of conducting war had to shift from conventional military tactics to a more
flexible strategy consisting of “unconventional warfare and paramilitary operations” aimed at domestic
unrest. Dulles’ doctrine of “massive retaliation,” was no longer sufficient, for it left the President no other
choice than “suicide or surrender.”97 But fighting communism alone was not sufficient. Equally important
was to put forward a much more positive and constructive picture of world, which George Kennan had
called for already as early as 1946. In the remainder of this chapter, I will discuss how this idea translated
into policy with regard to Indonesia, but not before we have taken a brief look at Kennedy’s views on
Southeast Asia and Indonesia.98
Kennedy, Southeast Asia and Indonesia
The Kennedy administration’s view on Southeast Asia’s and Indonesia’s importance stemmed from many
of the same calculations that had determined U.S. foreign policy during the Truman and Eisenhower
years.99 Just as his predecessors, Kennedy believed that a pro-western government in Jakarta would be
key to safeguard Washington’s economic interests in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, and to realize the
long-term objectives to develop in the region a “stable group [of] independent Asian nations as [an] offset
and counter to Chinese Communist power” and to foster “increased cooperation among nations of the
region” along lines that “must follow the natural flow of economic utility.” Like the Truman and
Eisenhower administrations, the Kennedy administration considered the loss of the archipelago state to
the communist bloc a doom-scenario that could alter the balance of power in the Far East, which in turn
would be “a catastrophe to the free world.” Washington’s goals in Indonesia and Southeast Asia naturally
97
John F. Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 198.
In March, 1961, two months after Khrushchev’s speech, Kennedy pointed out before Congress that the entire Global South was either
under direct communist pressure or facing “intensive subversive activity designed to break down and supersede” the frail governmental
institutions there. See Special Message to Congress on Foreign Aid, March 22, 1961 in: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United
States: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington DC: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Service, 1962), 205;
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 73; George F. Kennan’s “Long Telegram,” February 22, 1946, available at
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm (accessed March 1, 2015).
99
McMahon, The Limits of Empire, 106.
98
34
required a long-term American presence in the region as a “military shield for the developing nations of
South and Southeast Asia” and “as the major outside contributor to technical training, economic planning
and economic development.”100 An important difference with the 1950s, however, was that by the early
1960s Japan’s economic recovery “factored far less prominently in U.S. thinking about Southeast Asia.”
This stemmed from the fact that Tokyo by then showed some of the highest sustained growth rates the
world had ever seen.101
To be sure, the Kennedy administration was much less driven by domino considerations than by
credibility concerns and the idea that a loss against the communists in Asia would inflict considerable
political damage domestically. “The integrity of the U.S. commitment is the principal pillar of peace
throughout the world,” Secretary of State Dean Rusk explained in 1965. “If that commitment becomes
unreliable, the communist world would draw conclusions that would lead to our ruin and almost certainly
to a catastrophic war.”102 Indeed, Kennedy stated repeatedly that Vietnam represented “the cornerstone
of the Free World in Southeast Asia, the keystone to the arch, the finger in the dike,” and that the security
of all surrounding countries “would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into
Vietnam.” It is also true that Kennedy was informed by Eisenhower that Laos was “the cork in the bottle”
and that he said that the fate of that little country “will tell us something of the world about what kind of
future our world is going to have.” 103 It is often overlooked, however, that Kennedy considered neither
Vietnam, nor Laos, but Indonesia the most important country of Southeast Asia. Given the archipelago
state’s size, location and valuable natural resources of tin, rubber, and oil, he placed it at the center of his
regional policy, especially after the administration had managed to resolve the crisis in West New Guinea
and drawn the conclusion that Laos was “no place to fight a war.”104
As historian Timothy Maga noted, “in terms of official visits, negotiations, length of cabinet
discussions, and stacks of policy papers, Indonesia occupied more of the young President's time than
Vietnam.” Canadian researcher David Webster similarly observed that Kennedy had to direct “more
sustained crisis management attention to Indonesia than to Vietnam,” especially during his first two years
in office. That Indonesia necessitated so much attention was not only a result of the fact that it was such
a mighty important place, however. An equally important factor was that it was “one of the few countries
in the world where U.S. and Soviet officials competed directly for influence with military, economic, and
technical assistance.”105 Another important reason was that by early 1961, the relationship between
Chester Bowles cited in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 11. See also “U.S. Policies in the Far East,” Memorandum From the
Ambassador at Large (Bowles) to the President, April 4, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 2, 142.
101
McMahon, The Limits of Empire, 106.
102
Dean Rusk quoted in Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 238.
103
Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at the Conference on Vietnam Luncheon in the Hotel Willard, Washington, D.C., June 1,
1956, available at http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/Vietnam-Conference-WashingtonDC_19560601.aspx (accessed March 1, 2015); President Kennedy’s News Conference, State Department Auditorium, Washington
D.C., March 23, 1961, available at http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/Press-Conferences/NewsConference-8.aspx (accessed March 1, 2015); Fred I. Greenstein and Richard H. Immerman, “What Did Eisenhower Tell Kennedy
about Indochina? The Politics of Misperception,” The Journal of American History 79, no. 2 (September 1992), 575.
104
Maga, “The New Frontier vs. Guided Democracy,” 93.
105
Maga, “The New Frontier vs. Guided Democracy,” 91; Webster, “Regimes in Motion,” 95; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 9.
100
35
Indonesia and the United States clearly begged for review. To understand this necessity, we have to take
a brief look at U.S. Indonesia-policy during the 1950s.
Kennedy inherited an Indonesia-policy that had been far from successful. In 1949, the United States
acted as midwife of Indonesian independence, after George Kennan had warned the State Department
that “the problem of Indonesia” was “the most crucial issue at the moment in our struggle with the
Kremlin” and Indonesia’s civilian and military “moderates” had managed to crush a communist rebellion
in the Javanese city of Madiun.106 U.S. policymakers hoped that their support for Indonesian
independence would guarantee close security ties. However, distrustful of any foreign engagement due
to more than three centuries of Dutch colonial rule, the archipelago state believed its interests would be
served best by siding with neither the United States nor the Soviet Union in the emerging Cold War.
Accordingly, like India and Burma, Indonesia adopted a policy of non-alignment. Initially, U.S.
policymakers had no problem with such a policy outlook, but as the situation in Asia turned more grim
in the course of the 1950s, Jakarta’s neutralism was increasingly seen as “an immoral and shortsighted
conception.”107 After years of unfruitful attempts to pull Indonesia towards the West and make it more
susceptible to western aid and influence, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles shifted to a policy of covert rollback. In late 1957, they instructed the NSC to use “all
feasible covert means” to promote rebellion in Indonesia, for they believed that without such an effort the
country would “fall” to communism. When, shortly after, revolts broke out in Indonesia’s outer islands,
the CIA rushed into action and supplied the rebels with money, weapons and ammunition. But the tillthen largest covert military action in U.S. history failed miserably. Not only did the U.S.-backed rebels
face a humiliating defeat, also it was discovered that the CIA had a hand in the rebellion when the
American pilot Allen Pope was shot down and captured.108
In the wake of these events, the archipelago state’s domestic politics changed radically: parliamentary
democracy was replaced by “Guided Democracy,” a tripartite power structure that consisted of the
Indonesian military, the PKI, and Sukarno, who’s power had grown stronger than ever before. Several
political parties, among them the anti-communist, CIA-sponsored Masyumi Party, were banned from
politics.109 To avoid a deep freeze in relations, Dulles quickly resumed food aid to Indonesia, lifted bans
on the of small arms and airplane parts, and announced that he would help pay for several dozen diesel
generating plants and a highway in Sumatra. For two years, military assistance was even expanded to the
order of $16.9 million per year – three times the amount of the annual assistance until 1958.110 But this
was not enough to repair the damage, for Indonesian officials remained highly distrustful of the
Eisenhower administration. Moreover, when in 1960 Eisenhower refused to visit Indonesia and declined
106
Gouda, American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia, 142.
Dulles, “The Cost of Peace,” 999-1004.
108
Gardner, Shared Hopes, 145; Conboy and Morrison, Feet to the Fire, passim; Kinzer, The Brothers, 241; Kahin and Kahin,
Subversion as Foreign Policy, passim.
109
M.C. Ricklefs, A history of modern Indonesia since c. 1200 (Stanford 1991), 256.
110
Conboy and Morrison, Feet to the Fire, 145-46; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 47.
107
36
it to sell $400 million worth of military hardware for fear that Jakarta would use such hardware against
the Dutch in West New Guinea, Sukarno turned again to the Soviet Union for assistance.111 It was thus
more urgent than ever to confront Sukarno and court him towards the West.
Courting Sukarno, Assessing Indonesian Development
In late January 1961, Jones had his earlier request met when the State Department confirmed that Kennedy
would meet with Sukarno at the White House in April. In a memo for the President, Rostow outlined the
“main points” for the meeting: to provide the Indonesian President with a “red carpet treatment” in all
manners, with the American President not only expressing “personal warmth,” but also a “willingness to
discuss – as one statesman to another – your domestic objectives and international perspectives.” It was
crucial was that Kennedy made clear to Sukarno that the United States was a “friend,” and “not engaged
in hostile action against him.” To convince the Indonesian leader of the administration’s new perspective,
Rostow added that his team had prepared a get-together with the President’s family and a special surprise
– a chopper – which could be delivered at the end of the meeting if everything went well.112
The prospect of Sukarno’s visit to Washington inflicted fresh debates in the Kennedy administration
on how the West New Guinea issue ought to be resolved. The discussion reflected the divide between
accommodationists and confrontationists in the Kennedy administration. Deputy Director of Central
Intelligence (DCI) Robert Amory opined that Washington’s neutrality in the West New Guinea dispute
was “no longer tenable” and suggested a stance that supported Indonesia, so that an issue “which unites
the Army, Sukarno and [the] Communists” could be eliminated.113 NSC staffer Robert Johnson agreed
and stated that “our principal objective is to improve the outlook for a non-Communist Indonesia and
only secondary to satisfy Dutch emotional needs.” Forrestal was fully informed by the embassy in Jakarta
that “all Indo foreign policy, [and] much of Indo internal political life, revolves around this cardinal
issue.” If it was for him to decide, the United States would aim at “an Indonesian takeover of WNG at a
reasonably early date.”114 But the hard-liners in Washington had a different view. Guy Pauker, a RAND
Corporation consultant who by the late 1950s had become an important advisor to the U.S. government,
believed that supporting Indonesia’s claim was a dangerous strategy. He stated that the country was led
by an “anti-Western” leader, who believed that “Communism is the wave of the future.” Equally sceptic
was CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell. In his view, support for Indonesia would only
111
Kahin and Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy, 183
Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Rostow) to President Kennedy, April 22,
1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 171.
113
Robert Armory quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 42.
114
Telegram From Jakarta to State, March 3, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 150; Memorandum From Robert H. Johnson of the
National Security Council Staff to the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Rostow), April 18, 1961,
FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 166.
112
37
“cement relations between Indonesia and the USSR” and “help to consolidate a regime which is innately
antagonistic toward the United States.”115
Without having made a definite policy decision, Kennedy met with Sukarno on April 24 and 25, right
at the time that the United States undertook another disastrous intervention, this time at the Bay of Pigs
in Cuba. Both leaders discussed the West New Guinea issue at length, in addition to a number of other
trouble spots in Southeast Asia, such as Vietnam. Sukarno urged upon Kennedy to see his demands, like
those of Ho Chi Minh, “through the glass of nationalism,” and explained that Southeast Asian
communism was actually “revolutionary nationalism.” Speaking of the PKI, the Indonesian leader
pointed out that perhaps ten percent of its members were “real communists;” the remaining ninety percent
were nationalists. With regard to West New Guinea, Sukarno commented that “I cannot always keep my
people in my hand only a quick solution could give him “more grip” on his people. Kennedy was receptive
to Sukarno’s perspective, but tried to maintain a balance between America’s need for a friendly
Netherlands and its ambition to improve relations with Indonesia. Accordingly, Kennedy pointed out that
he still had “relations with NATO to consider,” though he also stressed that he was “very much interested
in ensuring a peaceful resolution of the West New Guinea question.”116
Various scholars, including Kennedy’s special assistant, Arthur Schlesinger, commentated that the
meeting the two presidents was “no great success” and that it did not accomplish “anything concrete”,
but this is not a wholly accurate assessment.117 Both presidents had indeed a different view of each other.
Kennedy found Sukarno “an inscrutable Asian,” especially because the Indonesian leader, as Dean Rusk
recalled, “kept diverting the talk to Gina Lollabrigida and other sex symbols,” which the American
President found very “un-presidential” and “didn’t like at all.”118 Sukarno was however favorably
“impressed with Kennedy” and returned home with the impression that new U.S. administration was
taking “a different view on Indonesia” than its predecessor. This, Howard Jones recalled, opened the door
for further talks. The two leaders also agreed on a number of concrete follow-up steps. Sukarno welcomed
the Kennedy’s proposal to launch in Indonesia a “Civic Action” Program (CAP). The Indonesian
President also gave his approval for an American team of economic experts and government officials,
headed by professor Donald Humphrey of Tufts University, to travel to Indonesia and evaluate Sukarno’s
Eight Year Economic Development Plan, which was launched in early 1961.119
Memorandum From Robert H. Johnson of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs (Rostow),” March 20, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 154; Memorandum From the Deputy Director for Plans, Central
Intelligence Agency (Bissell) to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy), March 27, 1961, FRUS, 19611963, vol. 23, 155.
116
Memorandum of Conversation, April 24, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 172.
117
Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (New York: Fawcett World Library, 1967),
533; Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967), 373.
118
Dean Rusk, As I Saw It: a Secretary of State’s Memoirs (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990), 267. Walt Rostow recalled
that “of the many men on the world scene [Kennedy] had to deal with the two he disliked the most were [Prime Minister of Canada]
Diefenbacker and Sukarno.” Rostow quoted in Aanstad, Surrendering to Symbols, 33.
119
Howard Palfrey Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 197; Hilsman, To Move a
Nation, 373.
115
38
The Humphrey Mission
Both follow-up steps were small, but significant steps forward with regard to the implementation of a
“positive program” for Indonesia. As we will see in more detail later, the agreement to launch in Indonesia
a CAP offered an opportunity for U.S. officials to build-up and strengthen relations with the country’s
anti-communist forces. Sukarno’s approval for a team of economic experts to travel to Indonesia, to which
I will now turn, offered a chance to orient Indonesia’s economy to the “Free World.” The Humphrey
Team travelled to Indonesia in the summer of 1961, where it would “study the Indonesian economic
situation, the proposed 8-year (1961–1968) economic plan, and what the United States could or should
do in relation to the plan.”120 The team focused on “sustainable,” and market-oriented economic growth,
which required of course a fair amount of alignment with the West. Its conclusions were delivered in bits
and pieces from the fall of 1961 and the summer of 1962. The Humphrey Team’s final report,
Perspectives and Proposals for United States Economic Aid: Indonesia laid the foundation for the
offensive part of Washington’s Indonesia-policy for the coming years.121
The Humphrey Team’s findings also demonstrated how modernization theory had come to influence
American thinking on U.S. Indonesia-policy. Reflecting Rostow’s theory on economic growth, it “found
Indonesia in a very early stage of economic development,” but added that there was “a growing awareness
in high government circles of [the] needs and priorities and [a] growing sense of commitment to policies
to promote development.” The team considered Indonesia “not yet ready for the take-off into sustained
growth,” but stressed that “the native ability of her people and her rich natural resources make the outlook
for economic progress promising once the pre-conditions of self-sustaining growth are developed.” It
assessed that the country’s “location, climate, human and natural resources are such that when the plane
does take-off it will fly high and fast.”122 What this meant in reality, Roger Hilsman recalled, was that
when fully developed, Indonesia could “become the third of the fourth richest nation in the world.”123
The team’s report also paid considerable attention to Indonesia’s function in the international economy
and the roots of its current problems. It compared the country’s situation with that of the United States
after its independence and characterized it as a classical “periphery economy.’ Such an economy provided
raw materials for the world’s industrial core, the United States, Europe and Japan, in exchange for spare
parts, capital and consumer goods. Socially and economically, the team considered Indonesia still
“backward.” It believed that this was the result of three decades of Dutch colonialism and of Indonesia’s
“mismanagement” after its independence. The team believed that the Indonesians were ill-prepared to
develop their country, and that Sukarno’s ouster of Dutch nationals in 1957, allowing for the
nationalization of Dutch businesses, had had a particular devastating effect on the Indonesian economy.
Memorandum From Robert H. Johnson of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs (Rostow), September 8, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 186.
121
“Perspective and Proposals for United States Economic Aid. A Report to the President of the United States by the Economic Survey
Team to Indonesia” (hereafter cited as “Humphrey Report”), September 25, 1962, available at: http://www.jfklibrary.org/AssetViewer/Archives/JFKNSF-423-004.aspx.
122
Humphrey Report, 8.
123
Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 361.
120
39
The latter decision had left Indonesia with “a poorly staffed governmental, agricultural, and industrial
administration,” deepening the economic countries problems.124
Despite Indonesia’s economic ills, the Humphrey Team was still generally optimistic about the
country’s future. It argued that with the necessary steps towards stabilization, Indonesia could be
stabilized and lay the groundwork for an economic “take-off.” The team recommended an ambitious fiveyear long aid program of $325-390 million dollar, of which $125-155 million was to be financed
multilaterally and $200-235 million by the United States, starting in FY 1963. The aim of the program
was to increase technical training and educational assistance, improve infrastructure and industrial
capacity, expand resource extraction and agricultural production, and provide assistance to private capital
for the development of light industries. Key to this program was to develop networks of personal contact
between the Americans and the Indonesians.125 In this sense, the team mirrored the ideas of the Ford
Foundation, which already in the mid-1950s had launched a series of research and training programs in
Indonesia, often in cooperation with elite universities, such as Cornell, Berkeley, and MIT, to study “the
causes of Indonesia’s economic stagnation” and expose a group of the Indonesian elite to American
culture. The ultimate goal of these programs was to create in Indonesia, as Ford put it, a “modernizing
elite.” Like Ford, the Humphrey Team believed that ultimately a group of Western-trained Indonesians
would be able to overcome Indonesia’s problems by launching a “rational” program of “sustainable”
western-oriented development, with American experts delivering “the kind of ideas that…are appropriate
for their development.”126
The Humphrey team’s findings were in line with a general belief in the United States that Western –
preferably American – capital and counselling could help jumpstart a modernization process in
developing countries like Indonesia. The question, however, was whether foreign aid was a financial
responsibility of private organizations, such as the Ford Foundation, or one of the government as well?
Modernization theorists and those in favor of an accommodationist approach to Indonesia believed the
latter. They argued that, although private finding was “necessary,” it offered only “limited solutions[s],”
whereas additional public funding could help to create new markets for American and European goods
by developing local infrastructures and increasing the purchasing power of developing nations. But
congressional leaders and conservative nationalists opposed public funding. In their view, a governmentfunded foreign aid program was in fact an internationalized version of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal
and an effort to promote socialist development in the Third World. Some individuals, like Senator
William E. Jenner from Indiana, even went as far as seeing foreign aid as a communist conspiracy that
was helping the United States to “spend [its] way to bankruptcy.”127
124
Humphrey Report, foreword.
Humphrey Report, 243. See also Simpson, Economists with Guns, 65-66.
126
The Director of Ford’s International Training and Research Program, John Howard, recalled that “Ford felt it was training the guys
who would be leading the country when Sukarno got out.” See Ransom, “Ford Country;” Simpson, Economists with Guns, 66.
127
Ibid, 66-67; Burton I. Kaufman, Trade and Aid: Eisenhower's Foreign Economic Policy, 1953-1961 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1982), 55.
125
40
As the foreign aid debate turned more intense, supporters of an expanded foreign aid program for
Indonesia also prepared a watered-down version of the Humphrey Team’s proposal. This “modernization
lite” program consisted of more limited quantities of PL 480 aid, AID technical assistance, and Military
Assistance Program (MAP) funding, and served as a minimum fallback program in the not likely event
that continuing with the full program would be a bridge too far.128 U.S. policymakers were well aware
that other factors could still spoil the party. At home, the administration had to deal with an eternally aidsuspicious Congress. Abroad, President Sukarno was still an unpredictable factor, especially as long as
the problem of West New Guinea lingered on. As Walt Rostow recalled, “if Indonesian political life was
ever to turn to the laborious tasks of modernization the issue of West New Guinea would have to be
removed from its agenda.”129
Resolving the West New Guinea Crisis
“Given the enormous attention historians have devoted to Vietnam and Laos,” historian Bradley Simpson
noted, “it is easy to forget that in early 1961, the NSC listed Indonesia and West Guinea among its most
“urgent planning priorities.” It was West New Guinea, after all, that threatened war with a key European
ally and it was Indonesia where the United States and the Soviet Union competed most directly for
influence.”130 Simpson stresses an important point, but could have added another reason why U.S.
officials devoted so much attention to Indonesia’s West New Guinea claim: it was also an issue with a
high risk-reward ratio. It could threaten peace and stability the region, if not solved. This was a very
unattractive scenario for U.S. officials at a time that they were already hindered by crises in Berlin, Cuba,
Laos, and Vietnam. But if handled successfully, U.S. officials could proceed with the “positive program”
and continue their efforts to take over Indonesia’s political agenda. Due to successful diplomatic
maneuver, it was the latter scenario that became reality. The process, however, was far from easy and by
mid-1962 the crisis came dangerously close to turning into a “hot” regional war.
Before turning to the story of Washington’s successful resolve in West New Guinea, let us first briefly
explore the build-up of the crisis and the different interests that were at stake. As mentioned earlier, the
West New Guinea crisis was a territorial dispute between Indonesia and its former colonizer, the
Netherlands. The origins of the dispute date back to 1949, when the Netherlands and Indonesia reached
an agreement on the latter’s independence. The “Round Table Agreement” included the transfer of
sovereignty of all territories of the Dutch East Indies from the Netherlands to Indonesia, except for one
area: West New Guinea. Despite Indonesian objections, it was decided that the status-quo of the territory
would be maintained for another year and then negotiated bilaterally. However, when by that time the
future of West New Guinea was discussed again, both parties were still unable to resolve their differences.
128
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 67.
Walt Whitman Rostow, The Diffusion of Power: an essay in recent history (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1972), 194.
130
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 53; Maga, “The New Frontier vs. Guided Democracy,” 96.
129
41
Hence, to the annoyance of Indonesia and with silent approval of the United States, West New Guinea
remained a Dutch colony.
The Dutch and Indonesian visions on the area conflicted in nearly every perceivable way. The Dutch
maintained that since West New Guinea had no clear ethnic and geographic ties to the rest of the
archipelago, the Indonesians could make no claim to it based on history, culture, language or religion. In
addition, they stated that the area had always been administrated separately and that the inhabitants of the
territory, the Melanesian Papuans, had no interest in being under Indonesian rule. 131 The Indonesians
countered that the area was an intrinsic part of their country on the grounds that Indonesia was the
successor of the entire Netherlands East Indies empire, and that empire encompassed West New Guinea
as well. Moreover, they argued that Indonesia’s independence remained incomplete until all former Dutch
colonial territories of the archipelago, the entire area from Sabang to Merauke, were reverted to
Indonesian rule.132
But other – psychological, economic, political – factors played a role too. As Dutch historian Arend
Lijphart pointed out, there were various right-wing groups in the Dutch parliament who saw West New
Guinea as a “symbol of Holland’s continued national grandeur, power, and moral worth.” Traumatized
by the loss of Indonesia, they wanted to hold on to the area so that at least some of the Netherlands’
former status as a world power could be maintained.133 Some officials, including Foreign Minister Joseph
Luns and Herman van Roijen, the Dutch Ambassador to the United States, indeed expressed a “sense of
task, of mission” to educate the Papuans and prepare them for eventual self-rule. These intentions
certainly sounded honorable, but there are good reasons to assume that they were simply an attempt to
secure Dutch interests in the area.134 If the account of Greg Poulgrain can be believed, the Dutch,
including Luns, were well aware that West New Guinea was home to two mountains, one of which
contained the world’s largest gold ore reserve and one that contained one of the world’s largest copper
reserves.135 This made the area tremendously interesting from an economic perspective. Finally, the
Netherlands also had its own plans in West New Guinea. Not only did it wish to maintain its naval base
there, also it wanted to use the area for the housing of the Dutch Eurasian population, which had become
displaced by the Indonesian National Revolution.136
131
The latter also did not participate in the struggle for Indonesian independence.
Indonesian sentiments were reflected in the revolutionary slogan "Indonesia Free—from Sabang to Merauke,” the westernmost- and
easternmost cities of the archipelago state. See Kahin & Kahin, Subversion, 45
133
Arend Lijphart, The Trauma of Decolonization. The Dutch Decolonization and West New Guinea (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1966), 288.
134
Memorandum of Conversation, April 10, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 162.
135
Poulgrain’s claims are based on a conversation he had with Joseph Luns in the early 1980s. Luns told Poulgrain that he had suggested
to U.S. officials “that America and Holland [could] together benefit from the West Papuan’s territory’s great potential in natural
resources,” but that the latter bluntly replied that “we will (benefit), as soon as Holland is out.” Poulgrain also claims that “millions of
dollars” came “from an American source,” presumably one of the big American oil companies, to fund the Indonesian army’s campaign
against the Dutch. He stated that this is what two former Indonesian foreign minister later told him. Greg Poulgrain, “Oil and politics
prove fatal mix for the people of West Papua,” Sydney Morning Herald, December 31, 2009. See also David Webster, “Did US Business
Shape Early US Policy That Thwarted Papuan Self-Determination?,” West Papua Report no. 123 (July 2014), available at
http://www.etan.org/issues/wpapua/2014/1407wpap.htm (accessed December 1, 2014).
136
Lijphart, The Trauma of Decolonization, 25-35.
132
42
For Indonesian officials, it were predominately political and strategic concerns that mattered. They
believed that as long as the Netherlands maintained a foothold in the area the stability of their country
was at risk. These concerns were not without foundation. Since its independence, Indonesia had been the
target of at least twice Western coup-attempts, and by the late 1950s the country was “literally surrounded
by countries with hostile military dictatorships.”137 As Subandrio explained the Soviet Ambassador in
Jakarta, Indonesia did “not want to allow such a military dictatorship to take hold in Indonesia as well.”138
Then, there was also a strong pressure from several political parties, particularly the PKI, to integrate the
area into the Indonesian Republic. Though the Indonesian political spectrum became increasingly
polarized by the 1950s, West New Guinea was, as historian David Webster noted, the one topic that
boosted unity among all Jakarta’s main political forces.139
Unable or unwilling to reach an agreement, the Dutch and Indonesians quarreled over the area for
another decade. During this period, the Indonesians undertook various efforts to annex the territory. In
1954, after years of unfruitful bilateral talks and ill-fated small-scale infiltration campaigns, it took its
claim to the U.N. General Assembly. Two-thirds of the voting committee was in favor of the Indonesian
claim until twelve non-voters – Canada, Israel, Taiwan, and nine countries in Latin American – suddenly
shifted their vote to the Netherlands. Never again would Indonesia come so close to realizing its ambition
by peaceful means. Following another U.N. defeat in 1957, Sukarno shifted to a strategy of economic
confrontation. He nationalized Dutch banks and corporations, and expelled thousands of Dutch nationals
from Indonesian territory. But this strategy proved even more disastrous. It pushed pro-Western dissidents
into open rebellion and the country into further economic and political disorder, which was only restored
when Sukarno introduced “Guided Democracy” in 1959.140
By 1960, Sukarno had enough. During the fifteenth session of the U.N. General Assembly in
September, he expressed his anger over the issue. “We have tried bilateral negotiations. We have tried
that seriously and for years. We have tried using the machinery of the UN, and the strength of world
opinion expressed there. But hope evaporates; patience dries up; even tolerance reaches an end.” West
New Guinea, he explained, “is a colonial sword poised over Indonesia. It points at our heart, but it also
threatens world peace.”141 A month earlier, the Indonesian President had announced to break off all
diplomatic ties with the Netherlands and prepare the country for an arms build-up to increase pressure on
the Dutch. To Jones, who since long believed that “colonialism is finished and the longer we continue
support small western enclaves in Asia the longer we delay winning Asians to our cause,” the message
137
The first attempt, in January 1950, is less-known than the second, much larger CIA intervention in 1957-1958. The first attempt was
led the notorious Dutch military officer, Raymond “the Turk” Westerling. During the Indonesian National Revolution, Westerling waged
a counter-insurgency operation in Sulawesi. In January 1950, a month after the official transfer of sovereignty, he was responsible for a
coup attempt against the Indonesian government. See Lina Sidarto, “Westerling’s War,” The Jakarta Post, May 19, 2010.
138
Journal Entry of Ambassador Volkov: A Conversation with Subandrio, November 13, 1958, Cold War International History Project,
Wilson Center, available at: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110286 (accessed March 28, 2014).
139
David Webster, “Regimes in Motion: The Kennedy Administration and Indonesia’s New Frontier, 1960-1962,” Diplomatic History
33, no. 1 (January 2009), 96.
140
Ibid., 99.
141
President Sukarno quoted in Jones, Indonesia, 189.
43
was clear: Sukarno would not cease his efforts to realize his ambitions in West New Guinea. Hence, in
his view, a Dutch withdrawal from the area was simply “inevitable.”142
The West New Guinea Crisis and U.S. Foreign Policy
For the United States, the West New Guinea issue raised some difficult dilemmas. As early as October
1952, the Truman administration had made clear that “this question was one that concerned the
Netherlands and Indonesia” and that it was not going to become involved in it.143 Under Eisenhower this
policy of “passive neutrality” was maintained, for a strong relationship with the Netherlands, crucial to
consolidate NATO, had a higher priority. But America’s position of non-involvement was inherently
problematic. Jakarta saw Washington’s commitment to the status-quo as nothing less than support for the
Dutch position.144 The Netherlands, like Australia, was particularly disturbed by the military aid that the
United States offered to Indonesia. Though Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had stated as late as
October 1957 that “it would be contrary to the security interests of the United States for West New Guinea
to come under Indonesian rule,” he quickly expanded U.S. military assistance to Indonesia after the failed
CIA intervention in 1958. Still, both Dulles and his successor from April 1959, Christian Herter, refused
to make a long-term commitment to the archipelago state’s development, thereby giving both the Hague
and Jakarta the impression that Washington would maintain a policy of “passive” non-involvement.145
Towards the end of Eisenhower’s final year in office, however, officials in Washington began to a
develop a different look at Indonesia. A growing number of policymakers, particularly in the NSC, now
considered West New Guinea as “the price paid to entice Jakarta back to “constructive” paths of
development.”146 For many officials the question was no longer whether the Netherlands had to give up
West New Guinea, but how and when. In December 1960, the NSC warned that “not to support Indonesia
on this issue [of West New Guinea] is to leave this key gambit to the Communist Bloc.”147 Two months
later, with the Kennedy administration in office, NSC staffer Robert Komer stressed that “we must bite
the bullet, for this issue is heading towards a crisis.” The West New Guinea conflict, Komer explained,
only strengthened the position of the PKI and Indonesian relations with the USSR. Moreover, a procommunist Indonesia “was an infinitely greater threat…than Indo[nesian] possession of a few thousand
square miles of cannibal land.”148
In early 1961, U.S. officials discussed the West New Guinea issue in addition to the importance of
Indonesia to U.S. foreign policy. Accommodationists in the administration, as stressed earlier, favored of
142
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, January 23, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, vol. 17, 174.
Memorandum of Conversation, by Homer M. Byington, Jr., Adviser to the United States Delegation at the United Nations General
Assembly, October 31, 1952, FRUS, 1952-1954, vol. 12, part 2, 234.
144
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, November 17, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960 vol. 17, 230.
145
United States Minutes of ANZUS Council Meeting, Washington, October 4, 1957, FRUS, 1958-1960, vol. 22, 273; Matthew Jones,
Conflict and confrontation in South East Asia, 1961-1965: Britain, the United States, Indonesia and the creation of Malaysia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 33.
146
See Webster, “Regimes in Motion,” 96.
147
NSC 6023, “Draft Statement of U.S. Policy on Indonesia,” December 19, 1960, FRUS, 1958-1960, vol. 17, 293.
148
Komer quoted in Webster, “Regimes in Motion,” 108-109.
143
44
a policy that supported the Indonesian position so that the outlook of a non-communist Indonesia could
be improved. The confrontationists were not convinced of a pro-Indonesian approach because they
believed that it would only help to consolidate a regime that was already in many aspects communist. For
the meantime, however, the last word was with Dean Rusk’s State Department. With many more pressing
problems in early 1961, and a Congress that was highly suspicious of neutralist countries such as
Indonesia, Rusk was, as historian Matthew Jones noted, still “dubious about pursuing ideas…of replacing
Dutch rule.”149 Despite angry memo’s from Komer, and after talks with Luns and various other voices of
influence in the Netherlands, who were more willing than the Dutch Foreign Minister to talk about a
diplomatic solution, the Secretary of State ultimately adopted a middle-way.150 This position held that the
Netherlands must eventually leave the area, but instead of a direct transfer of West New Guinea to
Indonesia, as Jones and Komer advocated, the Dutch were giving a chance to “retire gracefully,” via the
introduction of a Malayan-led trusteeship. If such a trusteeship could not be worked out, the
administration would fall back on an earlier proposal from the Far Eastern Bureau for a direct
trusteeship.151
Having adopted a middle-way approach, the next crucial step was to persuade the Dutch and
Indonesians to enter negotiations. In early April, Kennedy met with Dutch Foreign Minister Luns at the
White House. This meeting certainly went all but smooth, with the Dutch Foreign Minister showing, as
Rostow recalled, “the most improper behavior in the President’s office” when Kennedy refused to
guarantee American military support in case of an Indonesia attack. As the president explained, the United
States was already “heavily engaged in other parts of the area,” and “West New Guinea was one [place]
he would like not to have to fight.”152 Yet, at the end of their talks, Luns stubbornly accepted Kennedy’s
proposal to explore possibilities for a U.N. trusteeship, provided that the prospect for self-determination
would be kept intact.153 Two weeks later, it was Sukarno who came to Washington. During their meeting,
as outlined above, the American president expressed his willingness to help finding a peaceful resolution
to the issue, but also stated that he still had “relations with NATO to consider.”154
149
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 40.
Not all Dutch voices of influence were as anxious to hold on to West New Guinea. Luns was, as Hillman recalled, indeed “the most
stubborn Dutchmen of them all,” and it seemed as if the Foreign Minister was pursuing his own, “personal crusade” against Sukarno.
Business leaders, represented by Prince Bernhard, husband of Queen Juliana, as well as Paul Rijkens, managing director of Unilever,
were more realistic and willing to talk about a transfer, because they believed it would permit freer Dutch investment in the lucrative
Indonesian economy. Herman van Roijen, Dutch Ambassador to the United States, and General Dirk Stikker, a former Minister of
Foreign Affairs, were also more realistic. Van Roijen certainly did his best to secure as much Dutch influence in West New Guinea as
possible by stressing the Dutch concern for eventual Papuan self-determination, but he was realistic enough to realize that the Hague
sooner or later would have to give up its colony. Stikker stated that most Dutchmen “would be extremely grateful if [the] US will take
leadership in pushing through an international trusteeship arrangement.” See: Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 374; Webster, “Regimes in
Motion,” 108; Webster, “Did US Business Shape Early US Policy.” For Komer’s alarming memorandum see: Memorandum From
Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy),
March 27, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 156.
151
Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Kennedy, April 3, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 158. See also
Memorandum From Robert H. Johnson of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs (Rostow), April 18, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 166.
152
Rostow cited in Webster, “Regimes in Motion,” 108.
153
Memoranda of conversations, April, 10 and 11, 1961.” FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 156 and 162.
154
Memorandum of Conversation, April 24, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 172.
150
45
By May 1961, U.S. officials had a slight sense of optimism that they had “a unique but transient
opportunity” to solve the issue since both sides seemed to be “more interested in a settlement than they
have been for some time.”155 But developments thereafter soon made it uncertain whether the issue could
still be solved peacefully. The first blow to the administration’s plans took place in early June, when
Sukarno visited Khrushchev in Moscow to bolster Soviet-Indonesian relations and finalize the purchase
of Soviet aircraft and military equipment. This further bolstered Indonesian confidence, leading Komer
to warn Kennedy that the issue was now moving from a “crisis” to a full “blow up.”156 The second blow
took place in September, when negotiations over a trusteeship reached a stalemate in the General
Assembly. Before travelling to New York, the Dutch announced that they were willing to give up their
sovereignty over West New Guinea. However, when they presented their draft resolution, they stated that
they would neither abandon the self-determination principle, nor transfer their sovereignty over West
New Guinea to Indonesia. What the Hague called for instead was a U.N. “Commission of Inquiry,” which
would organize a plebiscite on West New Guinea’s future, and a trusteeship with Dutch administrators
staying on as U.N. accredited officials. Not surprisingly, the Indonesians considered this resolution
unacceptable and rejected it immediately. A furious Subandrio even denounced the Dutch proposal as a
“declaration of war.”157
Following the Dutch-Indonesian clash in New York, the U.S. delegation worked hard to save the
administration’s U.N. strategy by preparing an alternative compromise resolution. It was at this stage that
Rostow grew so frustrated with Rusk’s approach that he appealed directly to Kennedy and advised his
deputies to do the same. In a memo for the President, Rostow stated it was time to talk “very frankly to
the Dutch” that “if they continue to ignore the Indonesian interest in West New Guinea, their actions can
only lead to a political collision in the UN and to ultimate military collision in West New Guinea with
disastrous results for all concerned.” In Rostow’s view, the Hague was “playing a double game” which
forced the United States into a position of either siding with the Dutch resolution, and thereby
antagonizing Indonesia, or opposing it, which would appear as a rejection to the principle of Papuan selfdetermination. He concluded that “the only resolution of the West New Guinea issue with any
permanence will be one that clearly looks to Indonesian control.”158 Rostow’s view was shared by the
entire NSC staff, but Rusk still went his own way. What the Secretary of State decided was to move on
with the U.S. delegation’s compromise resolution, which still left open the final arrangements for West
New Guinea’s status. When at the end of November this proposal also failed to receive the necessary
two-thirds majority, Washington’s U.N. gambit lay in tatters.159
Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Rostow) to the Deputy Under Secretary
of State for Political Affairs (Johnson), Washington, May 12, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 174.
156
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 43; Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President
Kennedy, September 11, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 189.
157
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 43-44.
158
Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Rostow) to President Kennedy, October
13, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 197.
159
Memorandum From Robert H. Johnson of the National Security Staff to the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs (Rostow), November 16, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 200;
155
46
To prevent a military conflict and accommodate a shift in favor of Indonesia, the NSC concluded that
it had “to get the President personally to weigh in on [the] State [Department].” Rostow then wrote
Kennedy once again and stated that “it is the feeling of all of us on your staff that that the Western world
has got to consider this problem somewhat less in terms of the pure diplomacy of West New Guinea and
more in terms of common interest in frustrating communism in Indonesia.” He added memo’s from
Johnson and Komer, who believed that “with the failure of our UN gambit, time has come to take the
gloves of and adopt a frankly pro-Indonesian stance while there’s still time to get some capital out of
it.”160 The next day, McGeorge Bundy also delivered the President a memo, stating that “most of the
specialists in the area believe that the Secretary’s respect for the Australians and dislike of Sukarno has
led him to take a position in the UN debate which, if continued, can only help the Communists.” Bundy
stressed that he knew that Sukarno was not the President’s “favorite statesman,” but added that the real
point was that Washington was “working against the interest of the Indonesian moderates,” such as
General Nasution, “our one reliance against Communist take-over there.”161 The NSC memos had their
desired effect. Within days, Kennedy intervened personally by writing Sukarno a letter in which he
stressed his hope that Indonesia would avoid the use of force. Moreover, he offered to facilitate
negotiations between Indonesia and the Netherlands to assure a peaceful settlement.162
The NSC’s dissatisfaction over Rusk’s handling of West New Guinea was part of a broader frustration
in Washington over the State Department’s decisions throughout the year. “Too often,” Hilsman recalled,
“from the Bay of Pigs debacle to the Berlin crisis to Vietnam, the department seemed to be walking
behind other agencies in offering advice and developing policy.”163 In late November 1961, this made
Kennedy decide to dramatically change his foreign policy team. The bureaucratic shakeup, immediately
dubbed by the media as the “Thanksgiving Day Massacre,” included Rostow’s transfer to the Policy
Planning Staff, Chester Bowles’ replacement by George Ball as Ambassador at Large, and Averell
Harriman’s appointment as Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs. Rusk, who earlier had been put
forward by Kennedy’s advisors, Dean Acheson and Robert Lovett, was spared because the President
believed that this would reveal that he made a wrong decision in making the appointment.164
The appointment of Harriman was particularly important. With his arrival, the accommodationists,
and those in favor of a transfer of West New Guinea to Indonesia, consolidated their position. Often
recalled is the change in tenor after Harriman’s arrival. When the Assistant Secretary of State, shortly
after his appointment, received a question during a television-interview on “that Communist, Sukarno,”
he bluntly snapped back: “he is not a Communist, he’s a nationalist!”165 To modernize the Far Eastern
Memorandum From Robert H. Johnson of the National Security Staff to the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs (Rostow), November 30, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 206;
Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Rostow) to President Kennedy, November
30, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 205.
161
Memorandum from Bundy to Kennedy, 1 December 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 205.
162
Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, December 9, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 210.
163
Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 34-39.
164
See Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 365-366, 384-387; Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 377.
165
Harriman quoted in Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 378; see also Jones, Indonesia, 203.
160
47
Bureau, which had suffered a lot from the loss of its finest Asia specialists during the McCarthy area,
after which it became one of the most conservative sections at Foggy Bottoms, Harriman also recruited
new staffers, including Roger Hilsman and Michael Forrrestal. Both officials would come to play an
important role in the Kennedy administration’s policymaking process with regard to Indonesia.
Ambassador Howard Jones even later described Harriman as his “tower of strength in Washington.”166
Within days of his arrival, Harriman informed the Dutch that they could expect no American support
in case of an Indonesian attack. This was particularly encouraging to Jones and the NSC, who believed
that the United States had to “shock the Dutch into a realization that the U.S. is not in their corner.”167 As
Harriman arrived, the State Department had also come to the conclusion that it was urgent to find a
solution to the West New Guinea crisis. In its long awaited policy review on Indonesia, initiated in
response to the Joint Chief of Staff’s call for a “detailed and dynamic plan to take the political, economic
and psychological offensive” on Indonesia from the Soviet Union, it assessed that Washington’s relations
with Jakarta would continue to be problematic until it removed the West New Guinea dispute “from
Communist exploitation” and buried its image as a “protector of colonial interests.”168
Sukarno’s actions in late 1961 ultimately gave the last push for a shift in policy. On December 11, the
Indonesian leader told Jones had was “fed up” with hearing about peaceful solutions and that a forceful
resolution to the problem was now his only option. “I can’t stand any more of it,” he said. “I have run out
of patience and we are running out of time. My people are impatient. There will be a mass meeting of one
million people this week to demand that I give them the order to march on West New Guinea. What will
I tell them? They already think I am getting soft, getting too old for action.” 169 On December 19, after
PKI Chairman Aidit had secured the support for Indonesia’s demand of all communist parties at a
congress in Moscow, Sukarno proved that he was still “in charge.” In his now-famous “Trikora” speech,
he announced the formation of the tripartite “Mandala” command, a National Defense Council. In
addition, he called for a “confrontation on all fields” to dismantle the Dutch “puppet state” of West New
Guinea. The Indonesian leader pledged to put the Indonesian flag on West New Guinea within a year.170
Escalation, Diplomatic Maneuver and Settlement
Washington’s shift towards a pro-Indonesian approach came too late to avoid a military confrontation.
On January 15, 1962, tensions mounted when the Indonesian Navy attempted to land a force of 150
marines near Vlakke Hoek and the Dutch warship Hollandia managed to sink an Indonesian torpedo boat.
Following these armed clashes around West New Guinea’s southern coast, Komer warned that without
Jones quoted in Aandstad, “Surrendering to Symbols,” 65-66.
Memorandum From Robert H. Johnson of the National Security Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security
Affairs (Bundy), December 18, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 215.
168
Memorandum from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense McNamara, “U.S. Strategic Interest in Indonesia,” October 13,
1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 198; “Guidelines of U.S. Policy in Indonesia” cited in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 55.
169
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, December 11, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 211.
170
Aandstad, “Surrendering to Symbols,” 52.
166
167
48
an even bigger shift in policy “we may be heading for a really major defeat in SEA – one which would
dwarf the loss of Laos.”171 Kennedy shared this view, telling his NSC staff on January 18 that:
The area is a most unsuitable one for a war in which the United States would be involved. We would not
wish to humiliate the Dutch, but on the other hand it would be foolish to have a contest when the Dutch
really do want to get out if a dignified method can be found. We should recognize that this territory was
likely eventually to go to Indonesia, even though we ourselves might deeply dislike Sukarno as an
individual. The real stake here is not West New Guinea but the fate of Indonesia, the most rich and populous
country in the area and one which was the target of energetically pursued Soviet ambitions.172
Now that Sukarno had shifted to military confrontation, American corporations with interests in
Indonesia also began to press for a solution. On a flight back from Jakarta, John D. Rockefeller III of
Esso (which was controlled by Stanvac) urged Rusk that “our government lay the situation on the line
with the Dutch almost to the point of an ultimatum.”173 Other businesses stressed similar concerns.
Freeport and U.S. Steel had mining concessions in West New Guinea, which were delayed by the
uncertainty over who would govern the territory. “These companies,” historian David Webster noted,
“added to the pressure for an early settlement.”174 Meanwhile, Sukarno signaled from Jakarta that he was
still willing negotiate with the Dutch, provided that the latter expressed an understanding in advance that
the aim of such talks was to reach an agreement on West New Guinea’s transfer to Indonesia. During
earlier talks with Jones, the Indonesian leader had stressed that “America will have my eternal gratitude
if it helps us solve this problem peacefully.”175
To get both parties back to the negotiation table, Kennedy send his brother, Attorney General Robert
Kennedy, to talk with the Indonesians and the Dutch. Robert Kennedy’s first destination was Jakarta,
where he met with Sukarno, and according to some scholars also laid contact with “Mandala” commander
General Suharto.176 Jones recalled that both men “hit it off beautifully” and that Sukarno even went “out
of his way” to display friendliness.177 By the end of their first meeting, Kennedy had persuaded Sukarno
to drop his preconditions and re-enter peace talks, whereby the United States would act as a third-party
mediator. In subsequent talks Kennedy focused on removing the “side issue” of Alexander Pope, a selfproclaimed “soldier of fortune” that had been captured in the spring of 1958, when the CIA attempted to
topple Sukarno. When Sukarno was in Washington in April 1961, he had promised President Kennedy to
release Pope. However, by 1962 the man was still in prison. It was crucial for Washington that Sukarno
171
Komer quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 50.
Summary of President Kennedy’s Remarks to the 496th Meeting of the National Security Council, January 18, 1962, FRUS, 19611963, vol. 8, 69.
173
John D. Rockefeller III quoted in Webster, “Regimes in Motion,” 113.
174
Jones to Rusk, May 30, 1962; see also Greg Poulgrain, “Delaying the Discovery of Oil in West New Guinea.” The Journal of Pacific
History 34, no. 2 (1999), 205-218.
175
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, December 27, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 218.
176
Charles Maechling, “Camelot, Robert Kennedy, and Counter-Insurgency: A Memoir,” Virginia Quarterly Review 3, vol. 75 (Summer
1999), available at http://www.vqronline.org/essay/camelot-robert-kennedy-and-counter-insurgency-memoir (accessed June 14, 2014);
Jeremy Kuzmarov, Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation-Building in the American Century (Amherst, MA: University
of Massachusetts Press, 2012), 104.
177
Jones quoted in Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 569.
172
49
released Pope. His capture served as a bad reminder of the strained relations during the 1950s. Moreover,
if he would be executed, this could cause great stir in the United States and potentially derail the
administration’s stabilization effort in Indonesia. After a skillful piece of bluffing from the Attorney
General, the Indonesian leader gave in. Pope was eventually released in June, after which Sukarno told
him to “go home, hide yourself, get lost, and we’ll forget the whole thing.”178
Robert Kennedy’s next destination was the Hague, where he was ordered to tell the Dutch that the
United States would only be prepared to act as a third-party moderator if the Netherlands agreed in
advance to accept that West New Guinea would ultimately be transferred to Indonesia. Though the
Attorney General eventually did not press this point, his visit to the Hague was the furthest the United
States had yet gone. With Luns’ due in Washington, the administration was presented with a new
opportunity to “move” the Dutch Foreign Minister towards a settlement. Kennedy’s meeting with Luns,
on March 2, became the moment of a stand-down. When Luns informed the President that he was about
to send troops and through the Panama Canal to strengthen the Dutch position in West New Guinea, the
latter replied: “oh, Mr. Minister, I will have to see Mr. McNamara about that.” Kennedy then pointed out
that the situation in West New Guinea could negatively affect “the extensive effort the United States is
making in Viet Nam to prevent the Communists from taking over.” “If Indonesia goes to war,” he stated,
“the chances of a Communist takeover in that country are greatly improved.” This would be “a disaster
for the free world position in Asia and would force us out of Viet Nam.” At the end of the meeting, the
Dutch finally seemed to understand where Washington’s preference lay. “The most important thing to
do” now, Dutch Ambassador Van Roijen concluded, “is to get the talks started.”179
The West New Guinea peace talks started at a private estate in Middleburg, Virginia, on March 20,.
Ellsworth Bunker was appointed as the third-party mediator and acted on behalf of U.N. Secretary
General U Thant. The Netherlands was represented by Van Roijen, and Indonesia by its Ambassador in
Washington, Adam Malik. The talks started amicable, but quickly turned sour as both parties stuck
stubbornly to their original position. After a week of talks, Bunker nevertheless presented a formula,
which held the Netherlands would transfer the administration over West New Guinea to a “temporary
executive authority” under the U.N. Secretary General, and then to Indonesia within one to two years.
With assistance from the U.N., Indonesia would then organize a referendum for Papuan selfdetermination. The Indonesians were seemed to be willing to accept the formula. But the Dutch rejected
it because they found it unacceptable that a plebiscite would be held only after the area was transferred
to Indonesia. Meanwhile, the fighting in West New Guinea continued. Following a series of naval clashes
in the second half of March, the Indonesians attempted to land a group of paratroopers on the mainland,
to which The Dutch responded by building up a Papuan resistance movement.180
Ibid., 573; Maga, “The New Frontier vs. Guided Democracy,” 96-97.
Memorandum of Conversation, March 2, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 244.
180
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 52-53.
178
179
50
As the talks reached an impasse, U.S. officials increased their efforts further to “twist the Dutch
arm.”181 With a NATO Council meeting in Athens on the agenda in early May, Rusk was instructed by
Kennedy to tell Luns firmly that the United States would withdraw Bunker’s services if the Netherlands
continued to procrastinate the negotiations. The Dutch Foreign Minister conceded that the talks could be
resumed if there was an understanding that other issues could be raised if desired. The Indonesians,
however, were only willing to resume talks if the Dutch accepted the Bunker formula as a starting point.
Shortly after, Bunker himself grew so impatient and stated that Luns “is playing us for suckers,” after
which Harriman and Komer concluded that the only way forward was to make the Bunker formula public.
This would increase domestic political pressure on the Dutch cabinet and its foreign minister to resume
negotiations. On May 26, Luns finally agreed to resume peace talks solely around Bunker’s earlier
proposal. A final attempt at this this stage from Herman van Roijen to convince Kennedy that selfdetermination was as sacred in West New Guinea as it was in Berlin made no impression. “Oh,” he
remembered Kennedy replying, “that is entirely different.” Whereas the Berliners were “highly civilized
and highly cultured,” the “backward” Papuans still lived “in the Stone Age.” In addition, “there are
something like two and a quarter million West Berliners whereas there are only seven hundred thousand
of those Papuans.”182
By the time that the final round of peace talks finally started in mid-July, Jakarta had further stiffened
its position. It now argued that a U.N. administration of West New Guinea should take no longer than
until the end of 1962. Indonesia had also increased its military pressure on the Netherlands by dropping
hundreds of Indonesian troops at the mainland, where they engaged in numerous but ineffective clashes
with Dutch forces.183 The fact that Indonesia was using U.S. supplied Hercules troop transports, must
have played a role in American eagerness to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. When Kennedy met
Subandrio at the end of July, the President warned that Washington’s support for Indonesia would have
to be transferred to the Dutch if Jakarta continued its military actions with a peaceful resolution in sight.184
In the face of such a threat, the Indonesians ultimately re-entered negotiations. Shortly after, on July 30,
both parties reached a final agreement. The agreement held that the Netherlands would transfer the
administration of West Guinea to a “temporary authority” under the U.N. Secretary General on October
1, 1962, and then to Indonesia, on May 1, 1963. With U.N. advice and assistance, Indonesia would make
arrangements for a self-determination exercise no later than 1969.185
Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) and the
Under Secretary of State (Ball), February 15, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 234.
182
Herman van Roijen quoted in Webster, “Regimes in Motion,” 121.
183
J.A.C. Mackie, Konfrontasi: the Indonesia-Malaysia Dispute, 1963-1966 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1974), 83 and
101.
184
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, August 3, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 285.
185
Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 379-80.
181
51
The formal peace arrangement, signed in New York on August 15, 1962, was a huge relief as well as
a diplomatic victory for both Indonesia and the United States.186 Indonesia was finally able to complete
its national “geo-body,” a prospect that made Sukarno announce that more resources could now be
devoted to Indonesian development.187 The United States now had the opportunity to move forward with
a “positive program” aimed at stabilizing Indonesia and aligning it more firmly to the West. But
Washington was also a step closer to realizing its larger, regional goals: safeguarding stability in
Southeast Asia. As Dutch and Indonesian officials signed the New York agreement, Thailand, the
Philippines and South Vietnam represented a group of states firmly aligned with the United States. A
month earlier, U.S. officials had also reached an agreement in Geneva that neutralized the conflict in
Laos. Admittedly, the situation in Cambodia was still problematic, and also the communist insurgency in
Vietnam was far from under control. The West New Guinea settlement nevertheless contributed to
regional stabilization, at least for a short period of time, which made Kennedy decide to place Indonesia
at the center of his regional policy.188
It later turned out that the final peace agreement was signed right on time. While Dutch and Indonesian
diplomats were making the final arrangements for a settlement in New York, Sukarno was preparing for
a large-scale attack, with ships, submarines, bombers, airplanes, and 30,000 soldiers. Declassified
documents have revealed that Soviet-manned submarines and bombers were ready to join Indonesia’s
large-scale invasion, a remarkable piece of “what-if” history in light of the Cuban Missile Crisis only two
months later.189 However, a few hours before the planned invasion the final agreement was signed, hence
the operation was eventually called off. But if an agreement was not reached that day, it is likely that
Sukarno would have proceeded with the mission. This would unquestionably have led to a full escalation
and perhaps a “hot” regional war. As Robert Kennedy recalled, “it would have been white men against
the Africans, the Asians, and the Communists. It would have been a very bad, a very dangerous
situation.”190
For both parties, the settlement did not come without a price. For the Indonesians, the whole campaign
had been a tremendously costly undertaking and this brought the country even further into economic
problems.191 Moreover, the conflict had been beneficial to both the PKI and the Indonesian military and
this further polarized Indonesian politics. West New Guinea also confirmed Sukarno in his belief that
military confrontation could pay dividends. Within a year, this belief proved disastrous, when he
This was not the case for the Papuans, however. West New Guinea’s “act of free choice” in 1969 would leave the Papuans eventually
with no choice at all. See, Webster, “Regimes in Motion,” 95-123, and Michel Maas, “Dag van de gestolen onafhankelijkheid,” De
Volkskrant, January 14, 2012.
187
Webster, “Regimes in Motion,” 96; Jones, Confrontation and Confrontation, 55.
188
In July 1962, Rusk nevertheless believed that in Vietnam “we have made tremendous progress to date.” See Record of the Sixth
Secretary of Defense Conference, July 23, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 2, 248; David Webster, Fire and the Full Moon: Canada and
Indonesia in a Decolonizing World (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), 140.
189
Pieter Giesen, “‘Russen stonden op punt Nederland aan te vallen in N.-Guinea-Conflict,’” De Volkskrant, August 15, 2012,
http://www.volkskrant.nl/dossier-archief/rusland-stond-op-punt-nederland-aan-te-vallen-in-n-guinea-conflict~a3301258/
(accessed
March 28, 2014); Matthijs Ooms, “Geheime Sovjetsteun in Nieuw-Guinea,” Marineblad 122, no. 5 (August 2012), 23-28.
190
Robert Kennedy quoted in Webster, “Regimes in Motion,” 117.
191
Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 382-383.
186
52
embarked on a new military adventure to block British plans for the formation of Malaysia. For the
Americans, in particular those who had worked tirelessly for a settlement, the agreement also came with
a cost. During and after the crisis, U.S. relations with the Netherlands reached an absolute low-point,
though this would only be a temporary state of affairs as the Hague quickly learned to live with its new
status. More significant was that settlement angered an already Indonesia-sceptic Congress and American
press.
Apparently, not everyone in the United States saw the New York Agreement as a diplomatic victory.
Arthur Krock of the New York Times denounced Indonesia’s annexation of West New Guinea as “a
triumph of annexation by aggression.” Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut complained that
Washington was handing over a “strategic island” to a government, which of all the governments in the
non-communist world ran perhaps “the greatest chance of falling to communism before the decade is
out.” Michigan Senator William Broomfield was unquestionably the most extreme reaction in his
reaction. Before the final agreement was signed, Broomfield had denounced Sukarno as an “Asian Hitler”
and a transfer of West New Guinea to Indonesia as an “Asian Anschluss.”192 Soon after the settlement,
Broomfield and other congressional leaders began calling for hearings over the administration’s
Indonesia-policy.193 Tis severely complicated the implementation of the Indonesian “Action Plan,” which
was developed in the wake of the West New Guinea crisis, and to which I will turn now.
Moving forward: an “Action Plan” for Indonesia
On the day that Dutch and Indonesian diplomats gathered in New York to sign a final agreement on the
transfer of West New Guinea to Jakarta, Komer prepared a memo for the President, stating that the
“capital of the sort we’ve gained is a transitory asset to be used while it’s still good.” According to Komer,
Indonesia “is one of the truly big areas of East-West competition; having invested so much in
maneuvering a WNG settlement for the express purpose of giving us leverage in this competition, we’d
be foolish not to follow through.”194 The next day, Kennedy followed through by issuing National
Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 179. In this document he called for new and better relations with
Indonesia, and a review of “expanded civic action, military aid, and economic and stabilization and
development programs” in the archipelago state. With his request to the State Department “to pull
together all relevant agency proposals in a plan of action” no later than mid-September, the President
signaled that he wanted to make serious work of stabilizing and aligning Indonesia more firmly to the
United States and the “Free World.”195
The Joint Chiefs of Staff were the first to respond and by early September it presented its findings to
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The Chiefs were eager to stress the anti-communist potential of
192
Arthur Krock, Thomas Dodd and William Broomfield quoted Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 376.
“G.O.P. Attacks Kennedy on His Indonesia Policy,” New York Times, October 18, 1962.
194
Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, August 15, 1962, FRUS, 19611963, vol. 23, 286.
195
National Security Action Memorandum No. 179, August 16, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 287.
193
53
civic action activities, whereby the Pentagon would offer training, equipment, and advice to assist the
Indonesian armed forces in a variety of rural projects, such as modernizing irrigation and transportation.
The Chiefs also stressed the importance of continuing and expanding the existing officer training
program, which had seen already a large number of the Indonesian military’s upper cadre receiving
instructions from the Pentagon and attending courses at American military colleges. But the Chiefs also
underlined that “Indonesia must face the reality of the problems involved in achieving economic recovery,
along with the problem of maintaining internal tranquility.” This, they believed, would deny the
communists in their efforts to exploit “existing conditions of widespread poverty.”196
Other agencies and departments followed with their assessments in the following weeks, and by
October 10, 1962, a full set of suggestions was delivered to the President. The Indonesian “Plan of
Action” proposal, prepared by Undersecretary of State George Ball and enclosed with additional
background information from the State Department, linked the objectives in Indonesia to Washington’s
priorities elsewhere in the region. Reflecting the familiar domino considerations, it stated that U.S.
“commitments on the Indo-China peninsula could be lost if the bottom of Southeast Asia fell out to
Communism.” It therefore remained the objective “(1) to keep Indonesia independent and out of the SinoSoviet camp, (2) to help Indonesia become a politically and economically viable nation, and (3) to help
solve Indonesia’s stabilization and recovery problems and eventually launch a national development
plan.”197 To realize these objectives, the plan suggested a three-pronged approach:
a. We should seek to convince Sukarno that (1) his position in Indonesian history as a revolutionary leader
can best be reinforced through actions which will further economic development, (2) he should delegate
major authority in economic matters to competent subordinates, and (3) he should add to the government
individuals with knowledge and ability needed to formulate and administer development programs.
b. We should collaborate with those civilian Indonesian leaders who are interested in the modernization
and development of Indonesia.
c. We should strengthen the army’s role in economic and social development activities.
The “Action Plan” proposal also recommended a number of immediate measures, including the
provision of $60 million to $70 million of PLA-480 aid, $17 million of technical education and public
administration assistance, an enlarged Military Assistance Program (MAP) with an emphasis on civic
action, more Peace Corps activities, and a $15 million to $20 million grant to facilitate purchases of spare
parts and raw materials for the Indonesia’s industry. To increase the prospect of a “politically and
economically viable” Indonesia, Sukarno had to be convinced to adopt a stabilization plan, approved by
the IMF and backed by a multilateral group of donors, who would help relieve Indonesia’s heavy burden
of foreign debt. With regard to development aid, the proposal included the recommendations of the
196
Memorandum from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense McNamara, September 5, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 288.
On the military’s and civic action, see also Bryan Evans, “The Influence of the United States Army on the Development of the Indonesian
Army (1954-1964).” Indonesia 47 (April 1989), 25-48.
197
Memorandum From the Under Secretary of State (Ball) to President Kennedy (hereafter cited as “Plan of Action for Indonesia”),
October 10, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 291.
54
Humphrey Team, which involved grants totaling $52 million to $62 million and loans of $105 million to
$110 million over a three-to-five year period aimed at “strengthening the nation’s infrastructure and
making full utilization of existing industrial capacity.” Finally, the plan underlined that the Indonesians
“must show an awareness of their economic needs and express a desire to receive Free World
assistance.”198 The level of U.S. assistance, in other words, should be related to Indonesian actions, a
classical carrot-and-stick approach.
The next day, President Kennedy met with NSC staffer Michael Forrestal and Ambassador Howard
Jones to discuss the proposal. Jones, who had returned to Washington to present his view on the situation
in Indonesia, agreed with the recommendations entirely and stressed that “time was of the essence” if the
United States was to “effectively exploit the favorable position we had in Indonesia.” But Forrestal was
more careful and stated that a long-range program, which suggested that “we push Indonesia into an IMF
stabilization program, persuade other countries to join us in financing it, and persuade Free World
creditors to postpone Indonesia’s debt,” was still “very fuzzy.” According to the NSC staffer, it was better
to apply a slow and modest approach for it would take “something of a political revolution” to get a
meaningful program through Congress.199 After all, it was only recently that the Subcommittee on Foreign
Operations of the House Appropriations Committee had managed to secure cuts in the administration’s
overall aid request of about twenty percent for FY 1963.200 As Forrestal stressed, it still remained to be
seen “whether Indonesia presently has the kind of Government with whom we could fruitfully cooperate
in achieving fiscal stability and economic reform.” In his view, it was better that Sukarno first proved his
commitment to a “far-reaching” stabilization program, before the United States could look forward to
long-term development assistance as outlined by the Humphrey Team.201
On October 22, the day that the attention of the entire world was focused ninety miles of the coast of
Florida, President Kennedy made a decision on the “Action Plan” proposal. With the recent cuts in the
overall foreign aid budget, Kennedy viewed Forrestal’s slow and steady approach the best way to proceed.
The President approved the recommendations for emergency aid, but deferred the question of what should
be Washington’s role in the archipelago state’s long-term development.202 It was now to Sukarno to
demonstrate that he was willing to adopt an IMF-stabilization plan. As Komer remembered Kennedy
saying: “Go ahead with the emergency actions, but let’s hold off on the largest investment till will see.”203
“Plan of Action for Indonesia.”
Memorandum of Conversation, October 11, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 293; Memorandum From Michael V. Forrestal of the
National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, October 11, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 292; Memorandum From Michael
V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to the Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Harriman), September 25, 1962,
FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 290.
200
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 57.
201
Memorandum From Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to the Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs
(Harriman), September 25, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 290.
202
National Security Action Memorandum No. 195, October 22, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, vol. 23, 294.
203
Komer quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 57.
198
199
55
Modernization Theory Meets the Politics-of-Order Approach: the “Action Plan” in Perspective
While it was the Humphrey Team that laid the foundation for the Kennedy administration’s “Action Plan”
for Indonesia, its economic recommendations ultimately formed only one part of a broader strategy for
Indonesia. The other side of the coin was the Military Assistance Program (MAP), which provided the
Indonesian police and armed forces with weapons, training, and civic action equipment. As Bradley
Simpson noted, the “increased U.S. commitment to military assistance, aimed at encouraging a greater
role for the Indonesian armed forces in economic development and internal security, marked a conceptual
and doctrinal turn for the Kennedy administration that went far beyond the mere preference voiced by
Kennedy’s predecessors for military regimes as bastions of anti-Communism and stability.”204 It is only
by paying attention to these shifts, which by the late 1950s culminated in an intermingling of
modernization theory and what Samuel Huntington later labeled the “politics-of-order approach,” or
“military modernization theory,” that we can fully appreciate the Kennedy and Johnson administration’s
efforts in Indonesia in the wake of West New Guinea.205
Washington’s embrace of a politics-of-order approach arose in tandem with an increased amount of
American social science research that dealt with the thorny questions of how to combat modern guerrilla
movements, thwart the appeal of communism, win the “hearts and minds” of indigenous leaders and
populations, and create, as Walt Rostow and Max Millikan put it, environments “in which societies which
directly or indirectly menace ours will not evolve.”206 The emergence of military modernization theory
was in large part a response to the Soviet aid offensive in the Third World, Fidel Castro’s revolution in
Cuba, a series of military takeovers in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and the central role that the
armed forces began to claim for themselves throughout the Third World. It should be stressed that until
the late 1950s, much of the political science literature presented military regimes as bulwarks of
stagnation and reaction. This view was consistent with a general optimism in Washington about the
prospects of democratization, but inconsistent with the Eisenhower administration’s often warm relations
with right-wing dictators. However, from 1959 onwards, scholars and policymakers began to view
indigenous armed forces in a more positive way, as agents of economic and political development with
whom they could do business with.207
204
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 67.
See Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), passim. See also Mark
T. Berger, The Battle For Asia: From Decolonization to Globalization (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004), 102-105.
206
Milikan and Rostow believed that “in the short run, communism must be contained militarily,” but that, in the long run, the United
States ought to “rely on the development, in partnership with others, of an environment in which societies which directly or indirectly
menace ours will not evolve.” To them, the threat of communism was mainly “ideological,” with the risk that China and/or the USSR
“can prove to Asians by progress in China that Communist methods are better and faster than democratic methods.” See Max F. Millikan
and Walt W. Rostow, “Notes on Foreign Economic Policy,” Memorandum to Allen Dulles, May 21, 1954, as printed in: Christopher
Simpson ed., Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War, (New York: The New Press,
1998), 39–55. See also Walt W. Rostow and R.W. Hatch, An American Policy in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Press, 1955), 7.
207
Henry Bienen, “The Background of Contemporary Study of Militaries and Modernization” in: Henry Bienen ed., The Military and
Modernization (Chicago: Aldine Atherton, 1971), 1-34; Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy,
1945-1980 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 132-134; Berger, The Battle For Asia, 102-105; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 68;
Mark T. Berger, “Decolonisation, Modernisation and Nation-Building: Political Development Theory and the Appeal of Communism
in Southeast Asia, 1945-1975,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (2003), 441.
205
56
While Rostow and Millikan were the first who called for an expanded and much more ambitious
foreign aid program to thwart the appeal of communism in the Third World, it was the Draper Committee
that presented the first official report on military-led development, whereby economic and military aid
were closely interlinked.208 In the fall of 1958, the committee, chaired by William H. Draper Jr., was
requested by the Eisenhower administration to offer a broad assessment of the U.S. MAP “in the light of
continuing change in military technology and strategy and in economic and political conditions, and with
consideration of new Communist techniques in waging the cold war.”209 In its first report, presented in
March 1959, it called for a drastic reorganization of the U.S. aid program to create possibilities for longrange planning and find ways to avoid Congressional oversight. In its second report, delivered in August,
it urged the U.S. government to use military assistance to “encourage the use of the armed forces of
underdeveloped countries as a major transmission belt of socioeconomic reform and development.” The
committee also suggested the use of indigenous armed forces to perform non-military tasks in the fields
of public works and social services, under the rubric of what was called civic action. It clearly implied
that the United States ought to look at Third World militaries as a modernizing force.210
The Draper Committee’s conclusions were quickly picked up, discussed and developed further by
other individuals, in both the academic realm and policymaking circles. In May 1959, following military
takeovers in Burma, Iraq, Pakistan, and Thailand, the NSC presented a report which stated that
cooperation with authoritarian regimes, which throughout the Third World presented “the norm…for a
long period” to come, offered “certain short-run advantages to the United States,” such as the possibility
to lead “backward societies through their socio-economic revolutions.”211 At a NSC meeting in June,
where Eisenhower praised the report as the “finest” he had ever seen presented to the council, Admiral
Arleigh Burke and CIA Director Allen Dulles argued that Washington ought to expand its military
training programs in the Far East to include a wide range of civilian responsibilities and to encourage
Military Assistance Advisory Groups to “develop useful and appropriate relationships with the rising
military leaders and factions in the underdeveloped countries to which they were assigned.” During the
same meeting, General Nasution was cited as the kind of leader whom the United States should support.212
Two months later, the RAND Corporation organized a conference, where Lucian Pye, Guy Pauker, and
others explored the role of Third World militaries as vehicles for advancing modernization through a
number of historical case studies.213 In the spring of 1960, the conclusions of the scholars at the RAND
Millikan and Rostow, “Notes on Foreign Economic Policy,” 39-55; Michael McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla
Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), available at
http://www.statecraft.org/ (accessed March 1, 2014).
209
The President’s Committee To Study the United States Military Assistance Program, Interim Report (hereafter cited as “Draper
Report”), March 17, 1959, 1. Report available at http://edocs.nps.edu/2012/December/PNABI423.pdf.
210
The President’s Committee To Study the U.S. Military Assistance Program, Composite Report (hereafter cited as “Draper Report”),
August 17, 1959, 1. See also McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, chapter 5.
211
“Political Implications of Afro-Asian Military Takeovers,” May 1959, cited in David F. Schmitz, The United States and Right-Wing
Dictatorships, 1965-1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 15-17.
212
Memorandum of Discussion at the 410th Meeting of the National Security Council, June 18, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, v. 16, 36.
213
Two years later, a number of the papers presented at the conference were published in a book edited by John H. Johnson, The Role
of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962).
208
57
seminar were echoed by a Senate Foreign Relations Committee commissioned report of CENIS, which
suggested that the United States considered military dictatorships as partners for advancing modernization
in the Third World.214
The same ideas guided the policies of the Kennedy administration. Two months after his ascendancy,
President Kennedy told a group of diplomats from Latin America that “the new generation of military
leaders has shown an increasing awareness that armies cannot only defend their countries – they
can…help to build them.”215 Kennedy referred to the armed forces in Latin America, but his statement
also held important implications for Washington’s relations with militaries elsewhere in the developing
world. In a May 1962 draft report from the Policy Planning Council it was stated that “all developing
nations are susceptible to Communist subversion and insurgency to varying degrees…until each nation
develops firm national unity and regular progress.” Prepared under the guidance of Walt Rostow, who
had earlier denounced communists as the “scavengers of the modernization process” and their ideology
as a “disease of the transition to modernization,” the paper stressed that although the ultimate goal of the
United States was still to “promote the evolution of social and political systems which are increasingly
based on the consent of the governed, capable of providing an environment of regular material progress
and expanding social justice,” there was currently “no simple formula…[that] will apply.” Hence, to
avoid the loss of any additional real estate to the communists and guarantee the stability and independence
of Third World nations, the military had to play a decisive role.216
In another report, “The Role of the Military in the Underdeveloped Areas,” drafted in December 1962,
it was outlined what this meant for U.S. foreign policy. “Sometimes,” it stated, the United States had to
accommodate to “less desirable situations,” by which it implied that Washington should cooperate with
indigenous armed forces as the “ultimate guarantors of international security.” This nevertheless had
certain advantages. The officer corps, the paper explained, were “the best organized pro-Western, nonCommunist groups.” They were “capable of leadership” and held “wide support within an
underdeveloped society.” Moreover, they formed “a powerful potential group of ‘modernizers,’” and a
“conduit of contemporary Western thought and values.” The report explained that in the Third World the
armed forces provided “the best insurance against revolutions or political stagnation and the emergence
of a counter-elite” hostile to the United States. Therefore, the report concluded, the United States ought
to “support military regimes which push forward with development” as they “advance U.S. interests by
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “Economic, Social, and Political Change in Underdeveloped Countries and Its
Implications for United States Policy,” a study prepared by the Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(Washington DC: Government Press Office, 1960).
215
Address at a White House Reception for Members of Congress and for the Diplomatic Corps of the Latin American Republics, March
13, 1961 in: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington DC: Office of the Federal
Register, National Archives and Records Service, 1962), 174.
216
Walt Whitman Rostow, “Guerrilla Warfare in the Underdeveloped Areas,” Department of State Bulletin, August 7, 1961, 234-247;
Basic National Security Policy Planning Tasks,”” Draft, May 7, 1962, cited in Schmitz, The United States and Right-Wing
Dictatorships,18-19.
214
58
maintaining stability, possibly introducing reforms which civilians might shirk, and symbolizing national
unity through times of crisis and hardship – all essential to the development process.”217
From Theory to Policy: Military Assistance and Civic Action in Indonesia
Within months of his entrance at the White House, President Kennedy concluded that Washington’s Cold
War approach had to shift from conventional military tactics to a more dynamic and flexible strategy
consisting of “unconventional warfare and paramilitary operations” aimed at preventing and halting
domestic turmoil that could be beneficial to communists.218 To realize this shift, Kennedy undertook
various initiatives, of which two deserve special mention since they were particularly significant for U.S.
Indonesia-policy. In September 1961, the President ratified a comprehensive plan from the State
Department’s Western Hemispheric Division to redirect the armed forces in Latin America away from
their traditional focus on external defense and towards internal security and military modernization. The
aim of MAP aid was now to “encourage military involvement in both internal security and economic
development,” initially throughout the Western hemisphere, but eventually also throughout other
continents.219 The other important policy decision took place in January 1962, when Kennedy created a
new, high-level “Special Group” for counterinsurgency (CI) to “assure unity of effort and the use of all
available resources with maximum effectiveness in preventing and resisting subversive insurgency and
related forms of indirect aggression in friendly countries.”220 Urged upon by General Maxwell D. Taylor
in the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Special Group’s main function was to develop and review
counterinsurgency programs, monitor CIA activities, and raise the profile of counterinsurgency in the
U.S. government and in those of Washington’s allies.221 Initially chaired by Taylor himself, it consisted
of the Attorney General, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, the Deputy Secretary of
Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Special
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and the chiefs of AID and the USIA. NSC staff
officials, including Robert Komer, also regularly joined the group’s meetings. The group met each
Thursday at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, one short tunnel away from the White House.
One historian has noted that the Special Group even became “the most important foreign policy entity in
the Kennedy administration.”222
“The Role of the Military in the Underdeveloped Areas,” December 1, 1962, cited in Ibid.
National Security Action Memorandum No. 56, June 28, 1961, available at http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/ex2GImrvWUZ9Zqyga7ryQ.aspx (accessed June 3, 2014).
219
U. S. Department of State, Policy Planning Staff, “A New Concept for Hemispheric Defense and Development,” January 15, 1961,
cited in McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, chapter 5. See also National Security Action Memorandum No. 114, November 22, 1961,
FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 8, 59.
220
National Security Action Memorandum No. 124, January 18, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 8, 68.
221
See: Jeffrey H. Michaels, “Managing Counterinsurgency: the Special Group (CI) 1962-1966, The Journal of Strategic Studies v. 35,
no. 1 (February 2012), 33-61; William Rosenau, “The Kennedy Administration, US Foreign Internal Security Assistance and the
Challenge of ‘Subterranean War,’” Small Wars and Insurgencies v. 14, no. 3 (Autumn 2003), 65-99; Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Modernizing
Repression: Police Training, Political Violence, and Nation Building in the American Century,” Diplomatic History 33, no. 2 (April
2009), 199.
222
Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (London: HarperCollins, 1997), 278.
217
218
59
Despite the Special Group’s formation, developing a counterinsurgency doctrine was not an easy
process.223 U.S. strategists agreed on the need to make modernization dependent upon enhanced security.
However, they held different views on the purpose of one of counterinsurgency’s mains aspects: civic
action. By the end of 1961, two distinct views on civic action had been developed. Military planners and
those affiliated with the RAND Corporation, such as Guy Pauker, believed that civic action could play
only a limited role in countries such as Vietnam and Laos, where short-term military goals predominated
and economic development could never be more than an “incidental by-product.” But non-military
planners within the State Department and USAID, like Roger Hilsman, stressed the “the hearts-andminds” potential of civic action programs and viewed them as an important tool for realizing long-term
socio-economic development.224 In NSAM 119, drafted in December 1961, the competing visions on
civic action were split. It was stated that civic action could serve different aims in countries “fighting
active campaigns against internal subversion,” countries “threatened by external aggression,” and
countries “where subversion or attack is less imminent.” Indonesia, a nation where “selected military
forces” could “contribute substantially to economic and social development” and the United States
“should make such a contribution a major function of these forces,” fell into the third category.225
As historians have pointed out, U.S. officials viewed Indonesia as “a crucial testing ground” for the
following version of civic action: as a nation-building exercise, as a counterinsurgency strategy, and as a
cover for psychological warfare and clandestine operations aimed at undermining the Indonesian Left.226
This vision was translated in various initiatives. In July 1961, the State Department started to enhance
traditional military training for Indonesian officers with “specialized instruction designed [to] improve
their ability [to] discharge civil administrative responsibilities,” such as training in “legal [affairs], public
safety, public health, welfare, finance, and education, economics, property control, supply, management,
[and] public communications.”227 Six months later, the Special Group agreed to spend more money in
Indonesia “to assist in covert training of selected personnel and civilians, who will be placed in key
positions in the [deleted] civic action program,” and “support…anti-Communist activities.”228 The exact
amount is not declassified in the above cited document, but a December 1961 letter from AID
administrator David Bell to ambassador Howard Jones reveals that the Pentagon planned to include $4
million in 1963-1964 for civic action out of a proposed total of $53.3 million in military aid for
Indonesia.229 Due to the West New Guinea conflict and opposition from Congress, where few saw the
McGeorge Bundy recalled that it was even one of “the most divisive issue[s]” in the Kennedy administration. See Hilsman, To Move
a Nation, 413.
224
Ron Robin, The Making of the Cold War Enemy. Culture and Politics in the Military-Intellectual Complex (New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 2001), 188-189; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 75;
225
National Security Action Memorandum No. 119, December 18, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 8, 65.
226
Peter Dale Scott noted that civic action “provided cover in Indonesia, as in the Philippines and Vietnam, for psy-war,” which included
the spread of propaganda and disinformation, and relied on terror tactics of a demonstrative nature, techniques that were largely
developed in Greece and the Philippines during the 1950s. See Peter Dale Scott, “Two Indonesias, Two Americas,” Lobster no. 35
(Summer 1978), 2-7. Simpson, Economists with Guns, 75.
227
Telegram 3439 from State to Jakarta, July 14, 1961, cited in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 70.
228
Memorandum Prepared for the 303 Committee, February 23, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 110.
229
Letter from Bell to Jones, December 28, 1961, cited in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 77.
223
60
developmental logic behind the initiative, the civic action program for 1962 was largely derailed.
However, on Jones urging and with a peace agreement in sight in the summer, Kennedy authorized a
reversal of an earlier freeze on $4.3 million in MAP funds for Indonesia in June 1962. The President’s
approval included the installment of an archipelago-wide communication system for the military.
Moreover, it was considered by those in favor of a CAP for Indonesia as a signal that they could proceed
with their plans to send a civic action team to Indonesia and lay the foundation for a larger program to be
launched at a later stage. After the Pentagon’s approval in December, a full-fledged CAP went eventually
into full-swing in early 1963.230
SESKOAD and Mobrig: Focal Points of U.S. MAP Aid and Civic Action
U.S. military support to Indonesia began in 1949 with a modest aid effort to the Indonesian Mobile Police
Brigade (Mobrig), and in early 1950, with the dispatch of $5 million in military assistance to assist the
archipelago state in maintaining internal security “against communist encroachment.” 231 During the
1950s, the level of U.S. military assistance to Indonesia remained modest because Jakarta’s refused to
align itself exclusively with the United States. Meanwhile, U.S. military training programs were
expanded, however, because “communist aggression” in Asia, then-Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern
Affairs Dean Rusk explained, required not only required that Americans were to be trained to combat it
there, but also that “we must open our training facilities for increasing numbers of our friends from across
the Pacific.”232 It was only after the dramatic intervention of 1957-1958 that the United States expanded
its military assistance to the order of $16.9 million per year – three times the amount of the annual
assistance until 1958 – to strengthen ties with the Indonesian military and reduce the latter’s dependency
on the “Communist Bloc.” However, the increased flow of aid ended already in December 1960, when
Sukarno broke diplomatic ties with the Netherlands, pledged to conquer West New Guinea, moves that
prompted an outcry in Congress.233
We have seen earlier that, on the urging of Ambassador Jones and the NSC staff, plans for a
comprehensive Military Assistance Program were laid out during Kennedy’s first two years in office. As
the Kennedy administration expanded its MAP aid and counterinsurgency efforts in Indonesia, it was
SESKOAD, the Indonesian Staff and Command School, that became a “focal point of attention.”234
Situated seventy miles southeast of Jakarta in the city of Bandung, the school was not only the “army’s
nerve center,” where “generals decided organizational and political matters,” but also the one institute
where senior officers were “upgraded” with manuals and methods picked up during training at Fort
Jones stressed that Indonesia was a “major test case for civic action in a relatively peaceful environment.” See ibid., 76; Evans, “The
Influence of the United States Army,” 32-34.
231
Memorandum by the Secretary of State to President Truman, January 9, 1950, FRUS, 1950, v. 6, p. 964.
232
Dean Rusk, “Foreign Policy Problems in the Pacific,” Department of State Bulletin, November 19, 1951, 824-825. Available at:
https://archive.org/stream/departmentofstatx2551unit#page/824/mode/2up.
233
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 47.
234
Peter Dale Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno, 1965-1967,” Pacific Affairs 58, no. 2 (Summer 1985), 248.
230
61
Leavenworth in the United States.235 Moreover, it was at SESKOAD that army leaders began to develop
plans for expanding their political and economic power, particularly in 1957, when Sukarno had
introduced martial law and many officers became businessmen after the nationalization of Dutch
businesses.236 In doing so, the officers were helped by a group of Indonesian economists, who had studied
in the United States on Ford and Rockefeller grants in the 1950s. This group, which included Sumitro
Djojohadikusumo, Widjojo Nitisastro, and Mohammed Sadli, later became the so-called “Berkeley
Mafia” or technocrats of the Suharto regime. By 1962, the technocrats returned to Indonesia to teach at
the Faculty of Economics at the University of Indonesia (UI) in Jakarta. From there, they began to make
regular trips to SESKOAD, where they teached business administration, statistics, and “economic aspects
of defense.”237 Clearly, the technocrats were preparing themselves and the Indonesian officer corps for
assuming state power in the event Sukarno died or was removed from the scene. “We consider[ed] that
we were training ourselves for this,” Sadli later told a Fortune magazine reporter, “a historic opportunity
to fix the course of events.”238
It was also at SESKOAD that the Indonesian Army officers developed their own counterinsurgency
doctrines. One doctrine, the doctrine of “territorial warfare and territorial management,” developed by
Colonel Suwarto, SESKOAD’s U.S.-trained Deputy Commander, even predated the U.S. government’s
embrace of military modernization. Developed during the Outer Island Rebellion of 1957-1958, the
doctrine stressed the need for the army to develop greater grassroots support and a larger political
throughout the archipelago so that it could guarantee the nation’s protection against both external and
internal threats.239 But Suwarto’s doctrine also built on General Nasution’s “Middle Way” approach,
according to which the armed forces would neither seek to overthrow the government nor remain
politically inactive. The Indonesian military’s dwi-fungsi, or dual function, as protector of the nation and
active player in the national economy was in large part a response to the PKI’s turn towards the
countryside.240 Preventing the PKI from becoming the most powerful political force in Indonesia was
thus a particular aim of army’s counterinsurgency doctrines. As Colonel Willis G. Ethel, a Defense
Attaché at the Embassy in Jakarta and a close confident of General Yani, later explained, the army officers
“weren’t about to let the Communists take over the country.”241
Although some of the Indonesian army’s counterinsurgency doctrines predated U.S. influence, they
were, as historian Bryan Evans noted, “significantly reinforced in its development” by the U.S. Military
David Ransom, “Ford Country: Building an Elite for Indonesia.” In The Trojan Horse: A Radical Look At Foreign Aid, edited by
Steve Weissman, 93-116. Palo Alto, CA: Ramparts Press, 1975.
236
Political scientists Daniel S. Lev noted that “martial law was to become the army’s political charter.” It allowed the army extraordinary
powers to intervene in politics, including arresting politicians, restricting the press, and imposing their own unwritten laws. Daniel S.
Lev, “Political Role of the Army in Indonesia,” Pacific Affairs 36, no. 4 (Winter 1963-1964), 351.
237
Ransom, “Ford Country.”
238
Mohammed Sadli cited in Robert Lubar, “Indonesia's Potholed Road Back,” Fortune, June 1, 1968, 130.
239
See Evans, “Influence of the United States Army,” 38-43; Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno,” 248.
240
Guy Pauker, “Indonesian Doctrine of Territorial Warfare and Territorial Management,” RAND memorandum RM-3312-PR (Santa
Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, November 1963), 21-25.
241
Colonel Willis G. Ethel cited in Ransom, “Ford Country.”
235
62
Assistance Program.242 A leading role in this process was played by Guy Pauker. Characterized by
historian Ron Robin as an important figure in the so-called “Military-Intellectual Complex,” Pauker first
traveled to Indonesia in 1954 on behalf of the MIT’s CENIS to study the causes of Indonesia’s economic
stagnation.243 Through his research, Pauker became, as he would later claim himself, “the first who got
interested in the role of the military in economic development,” and by 1959, he had developed close ties
with high-ranking Indonesian officers, CIA, and Pentagon officials, to whom he pointed out that General
Nasution was following his own strategy “in making the Indonesian Army an organization which could
eventually stabilize and develop the country.”244 Though Pauker was not particularly optimistic about the
chances for success of Nasution’s long-term strategy because both Sukarno and PKI could still frustrate
it, he believed that the Indonesian army deserved American support. He explained that the PSI and
Masjumi – the political parties that the CIA had supported throughout the 1950s – were “unfit for vigorous
competition.” Like Rostow, Pauker believed that only military was able to defeat the communists and
lead Indonesia on a path towards modernization. He pressed this point clearly in his case study on the
Indonesia military, conducted for the earlier mentioned CENIS conference in August 1959. During that
seminar he also called upon his contacts in the Indonesian military to assume “full responsibility” for
their nation’s leadership, “fulfill a mission,” and “to strike, sweep their house clean,” obvious “buzzwords for counterinsurgency and massacre,” as Peter Dale Scott noted.245
Another focal point of attention for U.S. policymakers was the Indonesian mobile police brigade
(Mobrig).246 To understand the reason behind Washington’s focus on the police, one has to bear in mind
that in the early 1960s Indonesia posed a different counterinsurgency challenge than, for example, Laos
and Vietnam. Whereas the latter two had to deal with active insurgencies or guerrilla movements, received
massive U.S. military assistance, and little or no aid from Moscow, Indonesia faced no significant internal
threat – the PKI was indeed large in number, but unarmed –, received comparatively little military
assistance from Washington, and was the largest non-bloc receiver of Soviet economic and military aid.
Moreover, Indonesia was home to the largest communist party outside the “Communist Bloc,” a party
that grew as rapidly as the Indonesian economy deteriorated.247 To halt and reverse this trend, U.S.
officials believed that strengthening and training the Indonesian police was the answer. Police assistance
fitted well in the administration’s embrace of counterinsurgency and military modernization. It was
believed that a strong and modern police force provided “the first line of defense” against internal
subversion, and that without it, as the State Department’s International Cooperation Administration (ICA)
assessed, “much of the development effort may be dissipated in disorder, confusion and frustration.”248
Evans, “Influence of the United States Army,” 42.
Robin, The Making of the Cold War Enemy, 189.
244
Ransom, “Ford Country;” Guy Pauker, “The Role of the Military in Indonesia” in: John H. Johnson ed., The Role of the Military in
Underdeveloped Countries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 226.
245
Pauker, “The Role of the Military in Indonesia,” 224; Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno,” 247.
246
See Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream, 324; Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 400-401.
247
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 79.
248
Ibid, 80.
242
243
63
Like military assistance, U.S. police assistance in Indonesia had a history. As early as 1949,
Washington had offered limited support to Mobrig, and in 1955 it began with formal police training in
Indonesia through the ICA’s Public Safety Program (PSP).249 In Indonesia, the PSP helped to shape the
organization and the activities of the police by providing riot control training, supplying jeeps, patrol
boats, and aircraft, and setting up training academies, where CIA and FBI manuals were used. It also send
a number of advisors with experience in Greece, Korea, and the Philippines to Jakarta, where they
constructed a communications center, a radio teletype system, and a code room to organize the flow of
information on the PKI. Through the PSP, the first Indonesian policemen were also invited to the United
States, where they received training in fingerprinting, espionage, and explosives at FBI headquarters, and
were shown “more about the American way of life.” Some policemen also participated in criminal
investigation training in “third countries,” such as the Philippines and Malaya.250 By 1960, the Indonesian
police was formally incorporated into the Indonesian military and institutionalized to concentrate on
domestic security. Meanwhile, the Pentagon and the CIA still continued their own role in assisting
paramilitary police forces in Indonesia. As it was stated in a secret 1962 report on police training, the
CIA “financed and directed police assistance programs in Turkey, Thailand and Indonesia which had
over as well as covert aspects,” and which concentrated on “neutralizing…subversive individuals and
organizations.” As historian Jeremy Kuzmarov noted, it was through these programs that the United
States had funneled weapons to the dissident generals and Islamic fundamentalist during the Outer Island
Rebellion of 1957-1958.251
The administration’s emphasis on police assistance was in large part a result of the efforts of the
Special Group and NSC staffer Robert Komer.252 According to the latter, the police offered a number of
advantages in comparison to the military. “In many cases,” they are “a far more effective and immediately
useful counter-subversive instrument.” In addition, they offer more “in terms of preventative medicine
than…any [other] single U.S. program,” by which Komer meant that “they provide the first line of defense
against demonstrations, riots, and local insurrections.” He also believed that the police were better trained
and equipped than the military, and that they were “cost effective” and, unlike the military, did not go for
“fancy military hardware.” Komer thought that “only when the situation gets out of hand (as in South
Vietnam), does the military have to be called in.” In this regard, he cited Indonesia as “a great example.”
As he explained to the Special Group, “the mobile brigade that we support is more like a paramilitary
force.” By expanding U.S. police assistance to Indonesia’s 23,000 strong Mobrig force, he argued, “we
See Kuzmarov, “Modernizing Repression,” 201.
Simpson, Economists with Guns; Jeremy Kuzmarov, Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation Building in the American
Century (University of Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, 2012), 100-102; Evans, “Influence of the United States Army,” 40;
Arthur M. Thurston, “Survey of Training Activities of the A.I.D. Police Assistance Program,” Department of State, Agency of
International Development, Office of Public Safety, November 1962, 39.
251
McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, see chapter 7; Kuzmarov, Modernizing Repression, 103.
252
Ibid., 104; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 82; Rosenau, “The Kennedy Administration,” 79-82.
249
250
64
could lay the groundwork for our returning and expanding influence in Indonesia in the years and decades
to come.”253
The Special Group agreed and similarly stressed that police assistance was “a vital part of our effort
to help less developed countries achieve internal security” and realize economic development.254 In 1962,
it urged the Kennedy administration to make police assistance an important tool in the administration’s
counterinsurgency effort. The Overseas Internal Defense Policy (OIDP), approved by Kennedy in August
1962, became, as U. Alexis Johnson recalled, the Special Group’s counterinsurgency “bible.”255 The
OIDP prescribed “mission assignments” for the different agencies and departments of the U.S.
government, which were to be integrated into a coherent “country internal defense plan,” drafted by the
U.S. Embassy and approved in Washington.256 In the language of the day, the document argued that
support of “friendly” Third World governments threatened by “left-wing revolutionary movements” was
to be the “main thrust of U.S. action” for the foreseeable future, that the failures of local governments to
create stability and progress were the causes of insurgencies, and that, in addition to strengthening
indigenous military and police capabilities, the United States ought to promote economic development
and support non-communist forces, including labor unions, youth groups, and political parties, through a
wide range of development or civic action projects. The OIDP stressed that “the major counter-insurgency
effort must be indigenous,” an emphasis that had to “minimize the likelihood of direct U.S. military
involvement.” However, despite this emphasisthe OIDP was, as former Special Group Staff Director
Charles Maechling put it, “the most interventionist statement of American policy ever promulgated” in
the twentieth century. There was no any mention of human rights and democracy in the document, and
neither of the often barbaric human rights record of Third World security forces. Moreover, because the
OIDP was applicable to both “communist-inspired insurgencies and others that might be inimical to U.S.
national interests” it gave the United States and “client governments” nothing less than a “blank check
for repression.”257
By the end of the Eisenhower era, the United States had 115 public safety advisors and 24 police
programs at an average budget of $14.2 million. The Kennedy administration escalated the scale and
numbers of these programs to new heights, a trend that continued under Johnson and Nixon. By the end
of 1962, Washington already had 171 advisors in 30 countries. In 1965, it employed some 300 advisors
in 34 different programs, and at the peak in 1969, it had public safety advisers in 41 countries at an budget
Kuzmarov, Modernizing Repression, 104; Kuzmarov, “Modernizing Repression,” 199-200; Frank L. Jones, “The Guerrilla Warfare
Problem: Revolutionary War and the Kennedy Administration Response, 1961-1963” (chapter 27) in: J. Boone Bartholomees Jr. ed.,
U.S. Army War College Guide to National Security Issues. Volume II: National Security Policy and Strategy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic
Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, June 2012), 381-395.
254
Kuzmarov, “Modernizing Repression,” 191.
255
National Security Action Memorandum No. 182, August 24, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 8, 105; Michaels, “Managing Global
Counterinsurgency,” 44, 50. See also National Security Action Memorandum No. 177, approved by President Kennedy on August 7,
1962. This document called upon AID to increase its emphasis on police assistance programs, which then led to AID’s creation of the
Office of Public Safety (OPS) in November 1962.
256
Michaels, “Managing Global Counterinsurgency,” 45; Maechling, “Camelot, Robert Kennedy, and Counter-Insurgency.”
257
Editorial Note, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 8, 106; Maechling, “Camelot, Robert Kennedy, and Counter-Insurgency.
253
65
of $40 million.258 After that, the OIDP ran into trouble at home. Indonesia occupied a central place in
these efforts. Under Kennedy, the budget for the Indonesian police program was expanded to $10 million
in 1962 – second only to the program for South Vietnam, and twice the size of the budget for Thailand.
As it expanded its police assistance to Indonesia, Washington also invited the chiefs of the Indonesian
State Police and Mobrig to the United States for training at the International Policy Academy and
consultations with their American counterparts. That police assistance was an anchor of the Kennedy
administration’s development counterinsurgency strategy for Indonesia is further illustrated by the fact
that the projected PSP budget for the archipelago state in 1964 would have been the world’s largest, more
than twice the size of the program for South Vietnam as well as twice the size of the programs for Pakistan
and Thailand – the next two leading recipients – combined, had it not been for the curtailment of the
program because of Konfrontasi. The program had nonetheless a decisive impact on events in Indonesia.
As Robert Armory Jr., the CIA’s Deputy Director from 1952 to 1962, said of internal defense assistance
in Indonesia: “in some respects, the groundwork done there, in Indonesia, may have been responsible for
the speed with which [the elimination of the PKI in 1965-1966] was wrapped up.”259
Kuzmarov, “Modernizing Repression,” 199, 203; Michaels, “Managing Global Counterinsurgency,” 50; Maechling, “Camelot,
Robert Kennedy, and Counter-Insurgency.” Police advisors regularly had the rank of detective or above, and were recruited from the
FBI, CIA, and the Special Forces, viewing themselves, as “missionaries of modernization.” See Robert H. Holden, Armies Without
Nations: Public Violence and Sate Formation in Latin America (New York: University of Oxford Press, 2004), 155.
259
Michaels, “Managing Global Counterinsurgency,” 55; Memorandum From the Director of Intelligence and Research (Hilsman) to
the Secretary of State, November 16, 1961, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 1, 259; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 82; Amory cited in
Kuzmarov, “Modernizing Repression,” 105.
258
66
2
New Challenges on the Horizon: Oil, Aid, and Konfrontasi
Now that Washington had decisively supported Indonesia in the West New Guinea issue, U.S. officials
hoped that Sukarno would be far more susceptible to Western aid and influence and “turn his attention
inward and concentrate on improving his nation's shattered economy.”260 By late 1962, most officials
were cautiously optimistic about the road ahead, with Ambassador Jones stating to President Kennedy
that “we [have] an opportunity today we had not had since 1950 to cement relations between the United
States and Indonesia.”261 Admittedly, there were also critics in the administration who believed that it
was too late to exploit any goodwill in Jakarta, that America’s popularity of the early 1950s was long
gone, and that the Soviet Union and PKI had exploited Washington’s previous hesitation and failures
beyond short-term repair. Still, all critics agreed that the chance had to be taken to strengthen U.S.
relations with the archipelago state. As Robert Komer noted, Indonesia’s “internal weakness makes it a
tempting prize for Communist penetration or even parliamentary takeover” and “we can’t afford not to
compete [with Moscow] for such a prize.”262
The “Action Plan” for Indonesia, developed in the wake of the New York Agreement, reiterated the
short-term goal of keeping the country independent and out of the Sino-Soviet bloc and the long-term
objective of helping it becoming a “viable” nation, both politically and economically. The plan envisioned
a three-pronged approach: committing Sukarno to economic stabilization, cooperating with “those
Indonesian civilian leaders who are most interested in the modernization and development of Indonesia,”
and supporting the Indonesian military’s role in “economic and social development activities” to counter
the rise of the PKI on the countryside. It was of course still crucial to maintain a “foothold” in the
archipelago state and to that end U.S. officials worked closely with army leaders and mobrig through the
Indonesian Civic Action Program that eventually went into full swing in early 1963. To make Jakarta
more susceptible to Western ideas of development, U.S. officials looked at possibilities for increasing aid
and expanding existing participant and educational training programs. Given the fact that the Indonesian
economy was now a “shambles,” as Hilsman later put it, the administration decided that it would
260
Schmitz, The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 39.
Memorandum of Conversation, October 11, 1962, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 293.
262
Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, August 15, 1962, FRUS, 19611963, vol. 23, 286.
261
67
concentrate on a stabilization effort first before continuing with the more ambitious modernization plans
that were outlined in the Humphrey report.263
The immediate task in late 1962 and early 1963 was thus threefold: to convince Sukarno to adopt an
IMF-approved stabilization program, to mobilize U.S. allies and the IMF in support of that program, and
to get a meaningful aid package through Congress. That this strategy was vulnerable to congressional
opposition and dependent on Sukarno’s actions and the strength of pro-American Indonesians, however,
became clear in the final months of 1962 and in 1963. In this period, the Kennedy administration was
first confronted with an aid-sceptic, if not outright aid-hostile, Congress. Meanwhile, another challenge
emerged when negotiations between Jakarta and foreign oil companies on the latter’s production
operation in Indonesia collapsed in March 1963. The petroleum problems were eventually resolved due
to successful U.S. diplomatic maneuver, right at the time when Sukarno finally approved plans for a
stabilization plan, designed by a group of American-trained Indonesian economists around First Minister
Djuanda. However, these important steps could not prevent that the United States would run into new
trouble again thereafter. In the fall of 1963, Sukarno launched a policy of confrontation against Malaysia,
a newly created federation of Britain’s former Southeast Asian colonies. This move not only accelerated
Indonesia’s economic decline, but also worsened the country’s domestic political crisis. In addition, it
alienated it from the United States and the West. The most shocking and significant event took place
shortly after, on November 22, 1993, when President John F. Kennedy fell victim to an assassination’s
bullet. As we will see at the end of this chapter, this tragic event shattered the administration’s ambitious
plans for Indonesia it had worked on for years.
Action Implementation and Stabilization Efforts
Like the U.S. military and police assistance programs, Washington’s plan to work with the IMF on a
stabilization plan for Indonesia predated the Kennedy administration’s “Action Plan” for Indonesia. U.S.
officials began working along this track in September 1959, shortly after Jakarta had announced a series
of drastic monetary reforms to “curb Indonesia’s drastic inflation.”264 Due to the West New Guinea crisis
it was impossible to make much progress in the years thereafter until in May 1962 an IMF study team
traveled again to Indonesia to explore the possibilities for a later stabilization effort. The team suggested
a number of fiscal austerity measures, including an end to state subsidies for domestic consumption,
increased production of raw materials for Indonesia’s export, devaluation of the rupiah (Indonesia’s
national currency), and tight credit policies to control looming inflation. That U.S. officials agreed with
the IMF team’s structural adjustment package is illustrated by the fact that the recommendations were
attached to George Ball’s “Action Plan” memorandum of October 10, 1962.265
“Plan of Action for Indonesia;” Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 382-383.
Memorandum from the Director of the Office of Southwest Pacific Affairs (Mein) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far
Eastern Affairs (Parsons), September 10, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, v. 17, 224.
265
“Plan of Action for Indonesia.”
263
264
68
The West New Guinea settlement provided an opportunity to move forward with the actions the IMF
suggested. U.S. officials, like their allies in Europe, Japan and the IMF, had little confidence that Sukarno
would take the lead in a stabilization effort, hence they decided to work with a “small but important group
of non-leftist officials seriously interested in economic development.”266 This group included First
Minister Djuanda, Indonesian IMF representative Sutikno Slamet, Minister of Mines Chaerul Saleh, and
a number of individuals who had followed education in the United States in the 1950s on Ford Foundation
grants or via exchange programs at U.S. elite universities such as Berkeley, Cornell, Harvard, and MIT.
In late September, the team presented a proposal with stabilization measures, necessary to secure a first
American standby loan and to improve Indonesia’s relations with foreign creditors. The program,
developed with the help of IMF and U.S. officials, included a reduce of budget deficits, maximums on
bank credit, redirection of state capital towards basic production, elimination of direct controls on prices
and production, and initiatives to secure foreign aid to finance general imports of food, raw materials,
and spare parts. It must have been music in the ears of American policymakers that the team rejected
heavy state control of the economy and strongly condemned attacks on foreign investors.267
Meanwhile, the Kennedy administration undertook a number of initiatives to back the Djuanda’s
efforts and demonstrate its seriousness about helping Indonesia to achieve economic stabilization. In
October 1962, it created an interagency advisory group on stabilization and encouraged Indonesian
officials to meet with corporate leaders, banks, and business associations in the United States to promote
private investment in the archipelago state and explain the group’s plans for economic reform. A month
later, an IMF study team traveled to Indonesia to examine the possibilities for a “Program of Economic
Action for Indonesia,” developed by the economist Bernard Bell to offer advice to the Indonesians and a
counter-narrative to the conclusions of the Passman report.268 In December, U.S. officials travelled to
Paris, where they persuaded members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OEC) to finance stabilization measures in the
archipelago state “on the condition that [it] put its own financial house in order” and reach an agreement
on debt rescheduling with the USSR. Shortly after, when the Pentagon authorized the launch of a fullfledged Civic Action Program, Kennedy approved a $17 million “emergency assistance” loan for Jakarta
so that it could buy raw materials and spare parts to jumpstart its industry.269
The next step was to convince Sukarno and the Indonesian military to put their weight behind the
stabilization measures. In January 1963, Roger Hilsman and Michael Forrestal traveled to Jakarta, where
they told the Indonesian President and high-ranking civilian and military officers that they had to “to
266
Ibid.
See Simpson, Economists with Guns, 89-90.
268
The Passman report, conducted for the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations of the House Appropriations Committee, heavily
criticized the administration’s aid efforts as well as Indonesia and other non-aligned countries that had participated in the Belgrade
Conference in September 1961. See Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 57.
269
Memorandum From Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, December 17, 1963 and
Memorandum From Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to Secretary of State Rusk, December 18, 1963, both
in FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 297 and 298; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 91.
267
69
make a political act of faith in support of sound economic policies” before Washington could send more
substantial aid.270 A few days later, Djuandi made his case for economic reform during a meeting of the
Indonesian military’s Supreme Operational Command (KOTI). That Djuanda’s reforms would also
provoke public outcry and opposition became clear shortly after, when PKI-leader Aidit held a speech in
which he argued that “the real way out of Indonesia’s economic difficulties is not by begging for loans
from abroad or making the Indonesian people the servants of foreign capital in Indonesia, but by the
development of a national economy that can stand on its own feet.”271 Luckily for Djuanda’s team and
for U.S. officials, Sukarno reacted more positive by forming a cabinet-level committee to study Djuanda’s
proposals. With a tentative approval for stabilization of the Indonesian President, Slamet travelled to
Washington to negotiate an agreement with the IMF. To avoid a harsh public response at home, the
Indonesian IMF-representative drove the hardest bargain possible. What he hoped to secure was a $82.5
million stabilization loan, in return for a balanced budget in two to three years, a lift of price controls on
rice and other basic goods, and a system that increased exchange rates of export. The IMF eventually
gave its approval to Slamet’s suggestions, after which it send a team of experts to Indonesia to supervise
the formula of the new regulations. What might have helped in this regard is that Sukarno had promised
at this stage that the budget for 1963 would “reflect efforts towards stabilizing the nation’s economy and
finance.”272
In the spring of 1963, U.S. officials must have felt ambivalence as both favorable and unfavorable
developments took place. Two weeks after Slamet’s trip to Washington, Sukarno declared that Indonesia
was still in the first phase of its revolution during which it aspired to wipe out the remnants of colonialism
and “create an economic structure that is national and democratic in character.”273 The declaration was of
course harshly an endorsement of the IMF’s suggestions, yet U.S. policymakers were optimistic that “if
Indonesia can survive [the] short run we should be able to assure ourselves a neutral, independent, and
non-Communist nation.”274 By the end of March, this optimism was tempered, however, as first Soviet
Defense Minister Marshal Malinovsky, and then Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Liu Shaoqi
and Foreign Minister Chen Yi traveled to Jakarta to meet with Sukarno. The Russian Defense Minister
came to offer a new aid package, while Chinese officials, as the New York Times noted, were making “a
big effort to woo the third world in an effort to offset the damaging impact of the Sino-Indian border war”
of late 1962.275
But both visits should also be seen in light of the growing tension within the non-aligned movement,
and in particular in light of the Sino-Soviet split, which had begun in the mid-1950s and culminated by
270
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 301.
Rex Alfred Mortimer, Indonesian Communism under Sukarno: Ideology and Politics, 1959-1965 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1974), 264.
272
See Simpson, Economists with Guns, 92.
273
Ibid., 93.
274
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, March 1, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 302.
275
Max Frankel, “The Soviet and Sukarno: U.S. Gets Some Comfort from Signs Indonesia Is Cooling to Russian Aid,” New York
Times, April 4, 1963; Robert Trumbull, “Chinese Reds Head of State in Indonesia for Nine-Day Visit,” New York Times, April 13,
1963.
271
70
the early 1960s as a result of the increasingly opposing views that Mao and Khrushchev had on ideology
and strategy.276 To strengthen their geostrategic position and reinforce their claim for international
leadership, the USSR and China aimed at strengthening ties with Indonesia, which was home to the largest
non-bloc communist party, at that time with an estimated membership of two million. Both countries
offered Indonesia assistance and publically endorsed Sukarno’s anti-Malaysia stance, which became more
pronounced in the course of 1963 as we will see in more detail later. However, when Soviet officials
hinted that they were not going to back Indonesia as vigorously as they had done during the West New
Guinea conflict, Sukarno began to move closer towards the PRC, a trend that would accelerate over the
next two years. As Subandrio explained to Jones, Indonesian policy “would be continued to be directed
at maintaining correct, friendly relations with China since Indonesia could not afford to antagonize this
great power.”277 Nevertheless, Jakarta would still continue its policy of non-alignment in order to gain
the maximum from the rivalry of the great powers. This became clear at the end of April, when Sukarno
authorized Djuanda to draft a plan for stabilization measures that the IMF and Washington urged upon.
As Komer argued, Sukarno’s decision illustrated that he “now sees no real alternative to reliance on U.S.
and Western aid and has become reconciled in doing what is necessary to get it.”278
The Congressional Aid Debate
Congressional opponents, however, were less convinced that there was no alternative to a foreign aid
program for Indonesia. In the first half of 1963, this belief would spark an intense congressional foreign
aid debate. Congressional aid battles were of course no new phenomenon. During the 1950s, both the
Truman and the Eisenhower administrations had fought severe battles on the hill over the scope and scale
of U.S. foreign aid programs. But the aid debate of 1963 would certainly become “one hell of a fight,” as
William Broomfield stated to Komer a few days before the administration’s foreign aid bill hit the floor.
Those with an attentive mind could have seen this coming. Only a few months earlier, the Passman
Committee had managed to secure cuts in the administration’s overall aid request of about 20 percent.279
Another indicator that some in Congress would oppose the administration’s foreign bill, especially with
regard to neutral countries like Indonesia, were the reactions to the New York Agreement in August 1962.
Curiously, it was the Clay Committee that made it particularly difficult to get a meaningful aid
program through Congress. The committee, headed by General Lucius Clay, was assembled by Kennedy
in early 1963 as an attempt to bolster the case for his administration’s worldwide expansion of economic
An important aspect of Beijing’s strategy was to create distrust within the non-aligned movement, particularly between two of its
frontrunners: India and Indonesia. In 1961, Mao had insinuated to Sukarno that Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru wanted “to
snatch the leadership of the anti-imperialist movement from him.” Now, Liu Shaoqi denounced India as a “chauvinist country,” and
hence as longer able to represent the Afro-Asian bloc. Therefore, Beijing encouraged Sukarno, whom it praised as “the vanguard of
anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism,” to assume a leading role in the movement. See Taomo Zhou, “Ambivalent Alliance: Chinese
Policy towards Indonesia, 1960-1965,” CWIHP Working Paper No. 67 (August 2013), 8.
277
David Mozingo, Chinese Policy Toward Indonesia 1949-1967 (Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur: Equinox Publishing, 2004) 192-205;
Zhou, “Ambivalent Alliance.”
278
Robert Komer quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 94.
279
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 57.
276
71
and military aid to developing countries. The expectation was that the Clay Committee would look at the
foreign aid programs in a non-critical way, and then draw the conclusion that they were necessary to
enhance U.S. national security and prosperity, which in turn would help to moderate congressional critics
and ease the passage of the 1963 foreign aid bill. However, in its final report, presented in late March, the
committee expressed sharp criticism on the programs’ inefficient and over-bureaucratic aspects. Among
other things, it urged the government to set stronger standards and conditions for foreign aid, focus more
on “self-help and self-discipline,” promote private enterprise, and increase the emphasis on
multilateralism. The committee called for a $500 million cut to the administration’s requested $4.9 billion
in the 1963 aid bill. Indonesia was singled out for particular harsh criticism. Although the committee
stressed that Indonesia, “because of its population, resources, and geographical position” is “of special
concern to the free world,” it did “not see how external assistance can be granted to this nation by free
world countries until it puts its internal house in order, provides fair treatment to foreign creditors and
enterprises, and refrain from international adventures.”280
The Clay Committee’s alarming conclusions received wide media coverage and clearly set the tone
for the House of Foreign Affairs Committee hearings, which took place in the spring and early summer
of 1963. On the first day of the hearings, Congressman J.L. Pilcher of Georgia said to Robert McNamara
that “I just don’t see how you can justify American taxpayers’ money going to a Communist country.”
Two weeks later, Business Week compared Indonesia with Cuba and observed that the former “may well
become a focal point in the Congressional battle over the reshaping of American foreign aid policies.”
Most congressmen, such as Clement Zablocki of Wisconsin, opposed aid for Indonesia because they
disliked Sukarno and his government in Jakarta. Together with a number of other congressmen, Zablocki
denounced the Indonesian leader as an “junior grade Hitler,” a “lower case bum,” and an “international
juvenile delinquent,” and his government as “Communist” or “Communist-leaning socialist.”281 Others,
like Connecticut Senator Thomas J. Dodd, were against aid for Indonesia because of the future political
prospect of that country. Earlier, Dodd had complained that the United States was helping a government
“which, of all the governments in the non-communist world, risks, perhaps, the greatest chance of falling
to communism before the decade is out.”282
The leader of what historian Frederick Bunnell described as a “tantamount to a revolt” on Capitol Hill
was Congressman William Broomfield.283 In one address before the House on May 13, Broomfield
criticized Sukarno and U.S. Indonesia-policy for nearly an hour. In his view, Washington was helping a
leader who not only squandered Indonesia’s resources and destroyed its economy, but also ignored
development in favor of a Soviet-backed arms build-up that had earlier led to attacks against the
Netherlands and now threatened the Malayans and the Brits. Broomfield then offered what would become
the biggest challenge to the implementation of the administration’s Indonesian “Action Plan” in 1963: an
280
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 95-96; Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 518-522; Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 150-151.
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 96-97;
282
Thomas J. Dodd quoted in Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 376.
283
Bunnell, “The Kennedy Initiatives in Indonesia,” 317-321.
281
72
amendment that banned all military and economic aid to the archipelago state without a presidential
declaration stating that such assistance was in the U.S. national interest. The Broomfield amendment was
supported by many others Congress, who pointed to Sukarno’s recent meetings with Liu Shaoqi and Chen
Yi as an illustration of where Jakarta’s true commitment lay.284
In the weeks and months that followed, administration officials did everything they could to “bury”
the Broomfield amendment. In a State Department position paper it was stressed that the Military
Assistance Program (MAP) for Indonesia was “a major weapon not only in the fight for continued
Indonesian independence but also in the fight to increase Indonesian receptivity to Western political and
economic institutions and practices.” Other officials explained the importance of police training and civic
action as a crucial means to “maintain a foothold” in the archipelago state and to assist the Indonesian
military in developing “grass roots political power.” Even General Clay made a point for continued
military assistance. Although he advocated a reduction in economic aid, he stressed the anti-communist
orientation of the Indonesian military and the need for a continuation of civic action assistance as well as
other programs of military assistance and training.285
The larger, regional imperative behind Washington’s Indonesia-policy was outlined by Roger
Hilsman, who in April 1963 was appointed as Assistant Secretary of State for the Far East (Harriman
became Ambassador at Large). Before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Hilsman said that the
United States had to continue the struggle for influence in Indonesia, no matter how one felt about
Sukarno. If it would give up, it risked “losing” the largest and strategically most significant country of
Southeast Asia to the Soviet Union or the PRC. “Look at a big map of Asia,” Hilsman said. “Visualize it.
You can look at it over there – Korea, Japan and in the north, the great arc down in the corner, Southeast
Asia is a salient projecting through all this, and over the salient are the islands of Indonesia which are at
the crossroads of the Pacific.”286 Admiral Harry Felt, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command,
agreed and added that whoever controlled the archipelago, controlled the entrance to the Indian Ocean
from the Pacific and the Near East. “If Indonesia should fall into Communist hands,” he warned, it would
threaten the entire U.S. position in the Far East, “a catastrophe to the free world.” 287 Most members of
Congress remained nevertheless unimpressed. As Ohio Representative Wayne Hays said to AID Director
Frank Coffin: “I think anything you give to this dictator out there, Sukarno, is just [money] down the
drain.”288
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 97; Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 151; Aandstad, “Surrendering to Symbols,” 128.
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 97.
286
Ibid.
287
Admiral Harry Felt quoted in Aandstad, “Surrendering to Symbols,” 5-6.
288
House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Foreign Assistance Act of 1963: Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 88th
Congress, 1st session, April 30, May 1, 2, 6, and 7, 1963 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1963), 606.
284
285
73
The Indonesian Oil Crisis of 1963
As the congressional battle over aid reached its high water-mark, Indonesian officials complicated matters
further by bringing to a head the long-smoldering issue of the operation of foreign oil companies in the
archipelago state. Together, the three biggest oil companies in Indonesia, Shell, Stanvac, and Caltex,
produced ninety percent of the country’s oil. Annually, they brought in $250 million of foreign exchange
for the Indonesian government under an agreement providing for a straightforward 50/50 split. Since
early 1961, the companies had been engaged in negotiations for new contracts, with Jakarta attempting
to secure a 60/40 split and the eventual transfer of all domestic marketing, refining and processing
facilities to the Indonesian state. Although the oil companies were concerned about the possible impact
of a new oil agreement in Indonesia on their investments and markets in the Middle East, they were ready
to accept a 60/40 split and most other demands. However, they disputed Indonesia’s valuation of the
facilities the companies were preparing to sell, the way to finance them, and a clause that forced the
companies to spend domestically acquired rupiah in Indonesia. As a result, the negotiations kept dragging
on without resolution, leading to a stalemate in the spring of 1963.289
There was clearly a lot at stake for the United States. Kennedy administration officials worried that
with the new oil law, Indonesia would adopt statist policies that were more favorable to the Soviet Union
and the PRC. In addition, they assessed that “the failure [of] negotiations could result [in a] dangerous
strategic setback for [for] the U.S. as well as [a] disastrous blow to possible Indonesian economic
recovery.” If Jakarta would impose a settlement on the oil companies, the latter would most likely be
driven out. This, in turn, would end any opportunity for Western support for a stabilization program. On
the other hand, if the Indonesian government and the oil companies would reach an agreement, this could
strengthen the confidence of other foreign investors and creditors and demonstrate Sukarno’s willingness
to work with the IMF and the United States on a stabilization plan. By March 1963, however, this scenario
seemed further away than ever, leading Ambassador Jones to warn the State Department that a “real crisis
is approaching.”290
Jones’ warning could not have been more accurate. In the weeks thereafter, the Indonesian government
quickly ran out of patience, and on April 26, Jakarta introduced Regulation 18, which allowed it to draw
up unilateral conditions for the operation of companies if an agreement was not reached by June 15. As
a result, Harriman called oil consultant Walter Levy to tell that “things are going to hell there on the
account of the Indonesians.” According to Harriman, it was “due to the stupidity of the Indonesian
government and the rigidity perhaps of the oil companies…[that] they have about four weeks to negotiate
or else whole things collapses and Indonesia falls into the hands of the Chinese and the Russians.”291
Meanwhile, Forrestal informed Kennedy that “there is already sentiment [in Congress] for barring all aid
289
American oil investments were approximately $300 million. See Memorandum From the Department of State Executive Secretary
(Brubeck) to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy), May 21, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 308;
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 151-152; Aandstad, “Surrendering to Symbols,” 87-96.
290
See Simpson, Economists with Guns, 104-105.
291
Harriman-Levy telephone conversation, May 17, 1963, cited in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 153.
74
to Indonesia and news of this might pull down the house of cards.” Shortly after, Jones received a memo
from Harriman in which the latter stated that “we believe that with [the] publication [of] Regulation 18
US-Indonesian relations have reached [their] most serious turn since Indonesian independence” and that
“we are dangerously close to the end of the road.”292
Over the course of May, U.S. officials met numerous times with British officials and oil
representatives to develop a coherent strategy for talks with Sukarno. Eventually, they decided to send a
special presidential envoy, headed by Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky Wilson Wyatt, to meet with
Sukarno and persuade him of the need to accept a 60/40 settlement and resolve all remaining issues. With
the already tough negotiations on the foreign aid programs going on in Congress, the oil crisis in Indonesia
could not have come at a worse moment. Harriman wrote Jones in an attempt “to convoy to you the
atmosphere that exists in Washington.” He stated that “these oil negotiations are a crossroads in our
relations with Indonesia, either to achieve a sound basis for moving forward, or a disastrous breakdown.
I feel that this is not a question of whether a contract is achieved…An agreement must be reached.” 293
The American press saw Sukarno’s treatment of the companies as “a major test of his intentions” towards
economic stabilization, Malaysia, and Western influence in the area in general.294 But Jones worried that
presenting Sukarno a larger-than-life outlook could be dangerous because it would “indicate a power of
life and death over Indonesia that would…confirm his suspicion that we are both imperialistic and out to
topple him.”295
On May 29, 1963, the Wyatt mission met with President Sukarno in Tokyo. Wyatt began with
explaining the influence of American public opinion on U.S. foreign policy, the need to reach an
agreement as soon as possible, and the likely effect in Congress on aid for Indonesia if the negotiations
failed. Levy, also part of the mission, stated that the Indonesian oil industry had an important place in the
world oil economy and an enormous potential, after which he added that the country still needed technical
expertise from the West as well as private investments if it wanted to avoid an otherwise bleak petroleum
future. Sukarno recognized that he had no choice but to reach an accommodation with the oil companies,
for without it the Indonesian economy would almost certainly collapse. On June 1, after three tough days
of negotiations, Sukarno and Wyatt reached a preliminary “Heads of Agreement.” The deal included a
60/40 split on realized profits, an agreement for the reduction of foreign currency after profits had been
deducted, a schedule for the sale of the companies’ marketing and refining assets, and an assurance from
Caltex and Stanvac to provide crude oil for Indonesian domestic consumption. Royal Dutch Shell, as a
British-Dutch owned corporation not represented by the Wilson mission, was equally satisfied with the
outcome of the talks and signed a similar agreement with Sukarno the same day.296
292
Memorandum From Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, undated, FRUS, 1961-1963,
v. 23, 306.
293
Harriman to Jones, May 25, 1963, cited in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 153-154.
294
Max Frankel, “U.S. Urges Sukarno to End Threat on Oil,” New York Times, May 29, 1963.
295
Howard Jones quoted in Simpson, Economist with Guns, 107-108.
296
See Memorandum From Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, June 10, 1963, FRUS,
1961-1963, v. 23, 309. See also Simpson, Economist with Guns, 108; Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 155-156.
75
The end of the Indonesian oil crisis was greeted with relieve. Hilsman recalled that “Caltex alone took
230,000 barrels a day from Sumatran oil fields, which are large even by the standards set by the fields of
the Middle East” and that “the total investment of the American oil companies since the war amounted
to almost 500 million dollar.” Moreover, without the foreign exchange earned by oil exports, economic
stabilization and development in Indonesia would be impossible for years because the country “could not
sell in the non-Communist world without the help of the companies and their sales organization and
distributing facilities.”297 In a memo to President Kennedy, NSC staffer Forrestal praised the Wyatt
mission as “one of the smoothest and most efficient bits of preventive diplomacy which the United States
has undertaken in some time.”298 From Jakarta, Howard Jones concluded that “with the oil issue
settled…a meaningful stabilization program, based on Western cooperation, now seems really possible.”
The press was equally satisfied. A dangerous attempt by an important commodity-producing third world
country to exercise greater control over its resources had been resolved on terms acceptable to U.S.
corporations. Fortune magazine even spoke of an end to a stalemate that “might have turned out to be
more serious than a crisis in Berlin!”299
From May 26 Regulations to Stabilization Breakdown
The spring of 1963 was a good season for United States-Indonesia relations. While the Wyatt mission
and Sukarno began oil negotiations in Tokyo, Djuanda announced a series of measures along the lines
laid down by the IMF and Western creditors. The purpose of the May 26 Regulations was to demonstrate
Indonesia’s commitment to economic reform and realize a number of tasks: dismantling of subsidies and
price controls, elimination of export duties, a simplification of exchange rates, devotion to a crash
program of imports for industry, and fiscal austerity measures, including large budget cuts. Indonesian
officials believed that with such measures, an infusion of $300 to $350 million in loans and external aid,
and the rescheduling of the Indonesia’s external debt, the country could achieve fiscal and monetary
stability within one year. Although the measures provoked widespread criticism and opposition in
Indonesia and did not meet all IMF-demands, they were certainly promising, in particular for the Kennedy
administration, which believed that its strategy in Indonesia was finally beginning to work out.300
This belief was further strengthened in July 1963, when Sukarno reached an agreement with Soviet
leader Nikita Khrushchev to reschedule Indonesia’s mammoth debt to the Soviet Union. The deal with
Moscow was seen as an important breakthrough by U.S. officials and their allies because without a
Soviet-Indonesian agreement they would not offer new loans to Jakarta out of fear that the latter would
use them to pay off debts to Moscow.301 Instead, the road was now clear for the United States and
297
Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 388-389.
Memorandum From Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, June 10, 1963, FRUS, 19611963, v. 23, 309.
299
See Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 390, and Simpson, Economists with Guns, 108-109.
300
Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, July 23, 1963, FRUS, 19611963, v. 23, 312; Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 156; Simpson, Economists with Guns,111-112.
301
See “Plan of Action for Indonesia.”
298
76
international creditors to offer Indonesia a stabilization loan and a comprehensive aid package. As Komer
told Kennedy, “the Indo[nesian]s have complied sufficiently with our pressure for stabilization and Bloc
debt rollover” and “our Indo[nesia] policy is gathering speed in [the] right direction.” Sukarno’s
“continued antics, especially on Malaysia,” and the “fuel this adds to Congressional anti-Indo[nesia]
mood,” could still cause problems, yet Komer was optimistic enough that the administration would be
able to “beat down [the] Hill amendments unless Sukarno makes it impossible.”302 Even the American
press was enthusiastic at this stage. The New York Times believed that Jakarta’s actions “were new
signs…that Indonesia was turning toward the West again.”303
But Komer and other optimists in the United States overlooked the strength of the hard-liners in the
administration that opposed an accommodating approach to Indonesia. This painful reality was
demonstrated in the last week of July. The week still started positive as the IMF approved a standby
arrangement which allowed Jakarta a $50 million standby loan. However, when two days later, the DAC
listened to the arguments of IMF and U.S. officials in favor of the projected $250 million package of
financial assistance that Washington had earlier anticipated, it disapproved such a large commitment
because it was unimpressed with Indonesia’s economic performance. Instead, the DAC deferred the
proposal for further consideration in September.304 On July 26, the administration experienced another
blow when the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the Broomfield amendment. Both decisions
were a dramatic setback for the Kennedy administration, which, as historian Matthew Jones observed,
had hoped that large-scale Western financial backing would help stabilizing the Indonesian economy and
make the country more “western-minded.”305
Various commentators have referred to a “right turn” in Indonesian politics during the spring and
early summer of 1963. Hilsman recalled that “we felt that Indonesia was teetering on the verge of a
fundamental decision whether to turn toward co-operation with the Communist nations or toward more
peaceable channels for achieving the goals of nationalism, and the evidence at that time was that the
decision was in the direction of the peaceable.”306 Instead, Washington was now faced with the task of
avoiding further cuts in its assistance programs and convincing its allies to provide aid for Jakarta that
Congress had just rejected. In previous months, Ambassador Jones, and NSC staffers Hilsman and
Forrestal had repeatedly urged Kennedy to visit to Indonesia to “make sure that [Sukarno] understands
that we are beginning to march down the road toward a firm dollar commitment to Indonesian
stabilization,” but a presidential trip to Jakarta was now out of the question, at least on the short term. 307
At least as significant was that the Broomfield amendment also provoked outrage in Indonesia. Those
302
Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, July 23, 1963, FRUS, 19611963, v. 23, 312.
303
Seth S. King, “Indonesia Is Seen Turning To West,” New York Times, July 7, 1963.
304
Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, July 23, 1963, and
Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Kennedy, undated, both in FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 312.
305
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 170.
306
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 156; Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 406.
307
Memorandum From Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to Robert W. Komer of the Staff, July 19, 1963
and Editorial Note, both in FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 311 and 310; Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 405-406.
77
who opposed a stabilization effort, the PKI in particular, viewed the amendment as another indication
that the United States and the West could not be trusted. As a result, they pushed Sukarno to continue and
expand his confrontation-policy against Malaysia.308 Sukarno’s willingness to react to these calls
ultimately offered the last blow to the Kennedy administration’s stabilization effort in Indonesia.
The Onset and Escalation of Konfrontasi
As the Kennedy administration worked hard in the spring and summer of 1963 to mobilize support for an
expansion of American and multilateral aid to Indonesia, various observers in the West worried that
“Sukarno’s territorial ambitions were not yet satisfied with West New Guinea.” Some commentators
believed that the Indonesian leader and the armed forces were harboring ambitions of regional dominance
and that they would now focus their attention on Papua New Guinea, Portuguese Timor, or North Borneo,
areas that, as U.S. strategists noted, seemed “ripe for the plucking at any time.”309 Ultimately, this
observation proved to be awkwardly accurate, when Sukarno, with enthusiastic support of the PKI and
cautious backing of the Indonesian military, embarked on a campaign of confrontation with Great Britain
and Malaya over the formation of Malaysia. As scholars have noted, Konfrontasi dramatically
transformed Indonesia’s foreign policy outlook as well as the regional strategies of the United States and
Great Britain, processes that were each inseparably linked to the widening war in Vietnam. 310
Notwithstanding its ultimately large impact on regional developments and U.S. Indonesia policy,
during the first half of 1963, Konfrontasi was only of secondary interest to the United States. Preoccupied
with the Indonesian stabilization effort, U.S. officials believed that being dragged into a tussle over
colonial remnants would be disastrous to their broader objectives in Indonesia as well as elsewhere in the
region. At an ANZUS council meeting in June 1963 in Canberra, it were Indonesian stabilization and oil
negotiations that topped the Washington’s agenda, not Sukarno’s anti-Malaysia campaign. It the State
Department argued, “the loss of Indonesia to the bloc would be an infinitely more grave threat to our
mutual security than any development we now anticipate as likely to arise from Indonesia’s position in
the Malaysia dispute.”311 But the conflict was initially also seen as primarily a British responsibility. After
all, it stemmed from Jakarta’s opposition to London’s plan for the formation of Malaysia, and that
country, Hilsman explained, “is not our baby.”312 Nevertheless, when Konfrontasi reached a “point of no
return” in the fall of 1963, U.S. officials had no choice but to play a more active role in defusing it. A
further escalation of the conflict could negatively affect America’s priorities elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
This counted in particular for U.S. policies in Vietnam, where a major political crisis was provoked in
308
Memorandum From the Assistant Administrator for the Far East, Agency for International Development (Janow) to Michael
Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff, August 29, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 313.
309
Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs (Bundy), January 16, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 300; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 113.
310
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 114-125; Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, passim; Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno, passim;
Sodhy, “Malaysian-American Relations,” 111-136.
311
See Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno, 61-62.
312
Komer quoted in Sodhy, “Malaysian-American Relations,” 119.
78
May 1963 by the South Vietnamese government’s brutal repression of Buddhist demonstrators, a crisis
that six months later culminated into the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem, and eventually into
even more chaos and an escalation of the U.S. war effort in that country.
The Origins of “Konfrontasi”
As stressed earlier, Konfrontasi stemmed from Indonesia’s opposition to Britain’s plan for the creation
of Malaysia, a federation of Malaya, Singapore, and the British protectorates of Sabah and Sarawak.
British officials were since long exploring the opportunities for a merger, but only by the early 1960s
they felt that the time was right to make work of such plans. At a gathering of the Foreign Affairs
Correspondence Association in Singapore in May 1961, Malayan Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman
spoke about the need for a “closer understanding” between the peoples of Malaya, Singapore, and the
North Borneo territories. In the Tunku’s view, it was “inevitable that we should look ahead to this
objective and think of a plan whereby these territories could be brought closer together in political and
economic cooperation.”313 A month later, a commission of inquiry in Sabah and Sarawak concluded that,
despite widespread local opposition, the majority of the population supported a merger with Malaysia.
The commission’s findings led to an agreement in November 1961 that paved the way for a federation.314
For Britain, the merger would mark the end of its imperial role in Southeast Asia. The country’s
gradual retreat from the region began in 1947, when it granted independence to India, a year later followed
by Burma. Malaya was granted independence only nine years later, when the “Malaysian Emergency,” a
guerrilla war between Commonwealth forces and Malaysian communists, was largely under control.
Initially, London aimed at a decolonization process that would meet both the demands of the local
population and its ambition to maintain dominance over remaining British territories in the Far East. By
the early 1960s, it believed that the time was ripe to grant independence to its remaining Southeast Asian
colonies. Already overcommitted around the world, British officials saw Malaysia as the best way to
unburden their country of its remaining colonial responsibilities, in particular “east of Suez,” and to
protect British economic interests in the Far East. They also believed that a federation offered the best
guarantees for the Borneo territories to defend themselves against Indonesian irredentism and other
possible threats.315 As it was argued in a July 1962 Foreign Office report:
In the long run the most likely alternative to Greater Malaysia is Greater Indonesia. No Asian Government
would consider that either independence or continued colonial rule could offer a lasting third choice for the
Borneo territories in their present form. If these are not absorbed by Malaysia, they are likely to be
swallowed up, sooner or later, by Indonesia or the Philippines or, just possibly, to be turned into outposts
of Communist China.316
313
Tunku Abdul Rahman quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 61.
Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno, 28 and 41
315
Sodhy, “Malaysian-American Relations,” 112-113.
316
South East Asia Department brief on Indonesian and Philippine claims to Borneo territories, July 4, 1962, cited in Jones, Conflict
and Confrontation, 102.
314
79
Apparently, British officials were just as concerned about Indonesian expansionism as about Chinese
aggression. Although Britain had withdrawn its support to the Netherlands in the struggle with Indonesia
over West New Guinea in 1961, it believed that Jakarta’s annexation of the area was merely a forerunner
of more “stormy waters” to come. Most British officials were as suspicious of Sukarno as their American
counterparts were of Fidel Castro.317 But Lord Selkirk, the British Commissioner General for Southeast
Asia, even compared the Indonesian leader with a much worse historical figure. In December 1962, he
wrote that “we are up against a man with much of the instability and lust for power of Hitler and military
forces, if not so efficient, at least comparable in size for the area.” Recalling the political faults Britain
had made in the late 1930s, Selkirk believed that “the longer we appease him, the more extensive the war
will be which will ensue.”318
Preoccupied with West New Guinea, Indonesian officials initially expressed no objections to the
creation of Malaysia. As late as November 1961, Subandrio had stated in the U.N. General Assembly that
Malaysia was really a matter for the peoples concerned and that his country had nothing against Britain’s
plans for a merger. A year later, however, Indonesian officials began to openly criticize the federation’s
formation. Most historians have argued that Jakarta’s shift towards an anti-Malaysia stance stemmed from
a combination of ideology, domestic politics, and strategic calculations. Moreover, Sukarno’s radical
nationalism, hatred of colonialism, gigantic ego, and belief that Indonesia had a legitimate right to shape
events in Southeast Asia are often pointed to as the central drivers behind the campaign, in addition to
the Indonesian leader’s ambition to make Jakarta the capital of what he called the “newly emerging
forces.”319 But some of Indonesia’s critics believed that Sukarno had no clear territorial ambitions and
that he merely launched Konfrontasi to distract his people from the “real problem” of “economic chaos
and popular disillusionment at home,” and perhaps for fear that Malaya – by 1962 Southeast Asia’s most
prosperous country – would become “a rival attraction for Sumatrans.”320
Most Indonesians unquestionably saw Malaysia as a neocolonialist project. This perspective was
reinforced by the Brunei Revolt of December 1962, London’s harsh diplomatic tactics in mid-1963, and
the Tunku’s subsequent insistence of moving ahead with the federation regardless the wishes of the people
of Sabah and Sarawak.321 But the Indonesian armed forces and the PKI also had their own reasons for
supporting Konfrontasi. The armed forces were particularly concerned about “the perpetuation of alien
military bases,” with whom they referred to the British naval base in Singapore.322 Moreover, they used
the conflict to delay the end of martial law, postpone the national elections scheduled for 1964, and resist
317
Johnson administration officials would completely share British concerns, however, as we will see in chapter 3 and 4.
British Embassy in the Hague to the Foreign Office, August 17, 1962, and Lord Selkirk to the Foreign Office, December 19, 1962,
both cited in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 102-103, 115.
319
Jones, Indonesia, 270-271; Frederick Bunnell, “The Kennedy Initiatives in Indonesia,” 13-14; Green, Indonesia: Crisis and
Transformation, 8, 12.
320
James Cable and Foreign Office report, both quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 106-107.
321
Ibid., 146.
322
James F. O’Connor Jr. (First Secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia) quoted in Sodhy, “Malaysian-American Relations,” 112.
318
80
a number of budget cuts that Djuanda’s reforms demanded. The PKI, which had denounced Malaysia as
“a form of neo-colonialism” already at an earlier stage, supported Konfrontasi so that it could enhance its
domestic popularity and strengthen its position vis-à-vis Sukarno and the military. Another motivation
for the PKI was to disturb the Djuanda’s reforms and turn Indonesian foreign policy away from the West
and towards China.323
Jakarta’s belief that Beijing aimed at a greater role in Southeast Asia also shaped its anti-Malaysia
policy. As historian Ang Cheng Guan noted, the Indonesians were “genuinely concerned about the
Chinese threat in Malaysia and wanted to bring Malaysia under Indonesian control in order to avert that
threat,” a concern reinforced by the Sino-Indian border war and Mao’s struggle with Khrushchev for the
leadership in the communist bloc.324 Indonesian leaders believed that China was “naturally expansionist,”
not because of its communist ideology, but because it was a country of more than 700 million people,
with many of its large overseas population occupying central positions in Southeast Asian economies.325
General Nasution feared that Malaysia could become the springboard of enhanced Chinese influence in
Southeast Asia’s lower arc and explained to Forrestal, “just as [the Americans] were concerned about red
menace, Indonesia was concerned about yellow peril,” which in his view “would remain [an] indigestible
element in Southeast Asian countries.” Foreign Minister Subandrio was reported to have said that “in five
years Communist China would be the chief enemy of Indonesia.” He stated that “the continuing buildup
of Indonesia’s military capability is designed specifically to face that threat.”326
The Brunei Revolt of December 8, 1962 can be seen as the beginning of Konfrontasi. The revolt started
when 2,000 poorly trained and ill-equipped members of the North Borneo National Army (TNKU), the
militant wing of the Party Rakyat, launched an uprising against the Sultan of Brunei and proclaimed the
Unitary State of Kalimantan. The ill-fated operation was crushed within a few hours by local police and
British troops, which were flown in from Singapore. Despite the abundance of clear evidence, the Tunku
directly accused Sukarno of financing, arming, and training the rebellions. British officials similarly
believed that the Indonesian leader had a hand in the revolt, with Prime Minister Macmillan noting in his
diary that he had “always feared that once the West New Guinea question was settled, and the Dutch
‘ousted’ [Sukarno] w[oul]d start in Borneo.”327 One week later, the Indonesians hit back. On December
15, 1962, Subandrio stated that if Kuala Lumpur was determined to be hostile to Indonesia, Jakarta was
ready to meet the challenge. Shortly after, on January 20, 1963, the Foreign Minister proclaimed that
Indonesia “cannot but adopt a policy of confrontation against Malaya,” because its leaders represented
themselves “as accomplices of the neo-colonialists and neo-imperialists pursuing a hostile policy towards
323
Jones, Indonesia, 270-271; Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 99.
Ang Cheng Guan, “The Johnson Administration and ‘Confrontation,’” Cold War History 2, no. 3 (April 2002), 120.
325
See Simpson, Economists with Guns, 117.
326
Nasution also feared that the Singaporean Chinese “would continue to dominate economics of [the] area which meant they would
exert political power even though perhaps from behind [the] scenes and ultimately, as Chinese began southward expansion, would
constitute [a] military fifth column.” Nasution quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 133. Subandrio’s quote can be found in the
same book on p. 109.
327
Macmillan quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 113.
324
81
Indonesia.”328 Confrontation had described Indonesia’s policy towards the Netherlands over West New
Guinea; now it was deployed against another neighbor. A new military conflict in Southeast Asia was
about to begin.
The United States, Indonesia and “Konfrontasi:” from De-escalation to Re-escalation
From the start, U.S. officials were determined to not become involved in the dispute. They believed that it
could derail the stabilization effort in Indonesia and problematize Washington’s policies in Laos and Vietnam,
where it was already shouldering heavy burdens. But U.S. officials also stood under pressure of their British
counterparts. In a “hard hitting brief,” prepared for quadripartite talks in Washington in early February 1963,
London warned that Sukarno “wishes to turn the Malayan seas into an Indonesian ocean,” just as Mussolini
had done in the Mediterranean. Moreover, the Brits asserted that Jakarta was opening a “second front” to join
the push initiated by North Vietnam.”329 The Kennedy administration did not share this alarming assessment,
with Harriman telling the British Ambassador in Washington that the United States was not going to
subordinate its regional priorities to Britain’s imperial interests. However, it was still important for the United
States that Britain maintained a military presence in the region and that it supported Washington – at least
politically – in Vietnam. The task was thus to find a way to keep Britain satisfied, but to avoid as much as
possible the impression that Washington was siding with London against Jakarta. The latter was of course
particularly crucial now that it was asking the Indonesians to implement painful economic reforms and turn
towards the West for aid.330
In mid-January 1963, Konfrontasi was discussed in the NSC. Following the familiar calls from hard-liners
in the administration for a tougher stance towards Indonesia, Komer angrily argued that “all these guys who
advocate ‘though’ policies toward neutralists like Nasser and Sukarno blink at the fact that it was precisely
such policies which helped influence these countries to accept Moscow offers in the first place.” In his view,
“the best way to keep Nasser and Sukarno from becoming prisoners of the USSR is to compete for them, not
thrust them into Soviet hands.” Bundy and Harriman agreed, with the latter stating that we have to “sweat out
Sukarno,” alternately using the carrot and the stick.331 Kennedy shared the view of his NSC staff. During the
council’s meeting on January 23, the President stated that “we cannot permit all those who call themselves
neutrals to join the Communist bloc.” Hence, “we must keep our ties to… neutralists even if we do not like
many things they do because if we lose them, the balance of power could swing against us.”332
There was a clear agreement among the NSC staff that being dragged in Konfrontasi, which in turn could
lead to a direct clash with Sukarno, would be disastrous, both to the stabilization effort in Indonesia and to
U.S. priorities elsewhere in the region. As Jones argued from Jakarta, it was best that the United States
maintained a detached posture since “our position in Asia, whether we like it or not, must be based on India,
328
Subandrio quoted in Nicholas Tarling, Regionalism in Southeast Asia: to Foster the Political Will (New York: Routledge, 2006),
116.
329
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 132-137.
330
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 116.
331
Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security
Affairs (Bundy), January 16, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 300.
332
Record of the 508th Meeting of the National Security Council, January 22, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 8, 125.
82
Indonesia and Japan.” Moreover, “caught between the pincers of an aggressive Indonesia lost to the Free World
and an expansionist communist China, the rest of Southeast Asia would, I am afraid, ultimately be doomed.”333
Komer opined that “at a time when we are spending hundreds of millions to hold SEA mainland, it is [a] sheer
folly not to protect its seaward flank.” The best policy, he believed, was to continue pushing Indonesia on a
stable path to economic modernization. Komer was backed by Harriman, who ultimately proposed the
following approach: “we must turn Sukarno off Malaysia by (1) working harder to get the Phil[ippine]s to stop
serving as a talking horse for Indo[nesian]s in Borneo; and (2) making more of a political demonstration of
our interest in Malaysia.” As Hilsman had noted earlier, Washington’s interest in Malaysia was that it “would
complete a wide anti-communist arc enclosing the entire South China Sea since both Taiwan and the
Philippines are strongly anti-Communist.”334
In the following weeks and months, in accordance with Harriman’s proposal, U.S. officials repeatedly
stressed their support for the formation of Malaysia. When Forrestal and Hilsman travelled to Jakarta,
Harriman suggested that they emphasized to Sukarno that Mao posed an aggressive danger to both U.S. and
Indonesian interests, and that Malaysia could serve as an important military buffer to the north. As Harriman
noted, the United States was “convinced that [the] only feasible way to build [a] strong opposition to ChiComs
[sic] and their expansionist tendencies is through development of a Greater Malaysia.” Hence, “we believe
[Sukarno] should not attempt to block Malaysia which we intend to support vigorously.”335 During a press
conference in mid-February, Kennedy similarly stated that “we have supported the Malaysia Confederation,
and it’s under pressure from several areas. But I’m hopeful it will sustain itself, because it’s the best hope of
security for that very vital part of the world.”336
However, that the United States openly supported the
merger, did not mean that it had abandoned its policy of non-involvement. When Malaysian Foreign Minister
Tun Razak visited Washington in April 1963, Kennedy refused to respond to Kuala Lumpur’s request for
defense and development assistance. In his view, it was to other countries to shoulder the burden of the $600
million in aid that Malaysia claimed it needed.337 During an earlier conversation with British officials,
Harriman had stressed that U.S. influence in Indonesia “would be used solely to keep Indonesia out of the
Communist bloc and as a means of forcing him to support Malaysia” as long as Jakarta’s actions behavior
stayed within tolerable limits. A cross-border raid by sixty Indonesian uniformed irregulars in the region of
Sarawak on the eve of tripartite talks between Malaysian, Indonesian and Philippine officials, an event which
according to Matthew Jones marked the first “significant escalation in confrontation,” showed that the United
States could be very tolerant.338
Historian J.A.C. Mackie noted that Indonesia’s Konfrontasi posture involved a “combination of threats,
brinkmanship and play-acting, which could be modulated at will to a pitch of fierce hostility at one extreme
333
Howard Jones quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 135.
Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security
Affairs (Bundy), January 16, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 300; Roger Hilsman quoted in Sodhy, “Malaysian-American Relations,”
114.
335
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, January 16, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 301.
336
The President’s News Conference of February 14, 1963 in: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy,
1961 (Washington DC: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Service, 1962), 180.
337
Memorandum of Conversation, April 24, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 331; Sodhy, “Malaysian-American Relations,” 119.
338
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 118; Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 144; Jones, Indonesia, 277.
334
83
or, at the other, of patient acquiescence while waiting for favorable opportunities to resume the long-term
struggle, whatever its objectives may be.”339 Nevertheless, in the spring and summer of 1963, on Washington’s
urging, the country also made a number of efforts to de-escalate the conflict. In March, Subandrio traveled to
Manila, where he met with Tun Razak and Diosdado Macapagal, the Philippine President, to pave the way for
ministerial talks. These talks took eventually place in Manila in early June. The Indonesian Foreign Minister,
Philippine Foreign Minister Emmanual Palaez, and Razak negotiated what came to be known as the Manila
Agreement, an accord that stressed the need for regional stability and security and endorsed Macapagal’s
proposal for “Maphilindo,” a loose confederation of the Malay nations. Philippine and Indonesian diplomats
also stated that they would “welcome” Malaysia, on the condition that the U.N. could ascertain that the
populations of Sabah and Sarawak also supported a merger.340 British officials immediately dismissed the plan
for Maphilindo as a “complete sham,” particularly because it criticized the continuation of British military
bases. In their view, Indonesia’s border incursions were a better illustration of Sukarno’s real intensions.341
But the Kennedy administration saw the Manila Accord as an important breakthrough at an important moment.
Only a few days earlier, Sukarno had given his approval for Djuanda’s regulations. Moreover, the Indonesian
leader had just reached an agreement with American and British oil companies over their future concession
rights with Indonesia. For U.S. officials, the Manila Accord was yet another demonstration that Indonesia was
making significant steps towards the West.342
Unfortunately, the “spirit of Manila” lasted all of a month. On July 9, 1963, British officials met with the
Tunku, Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, and the leaders of the North Borneo territories to sign an
agreement that would establish Malaysia on August 31. This showed that they intended to move forward with
the merger regardless the outcome of the U.N. survey. Sukarno reacted furiously to the agreement and accused
the Tunku of breaking his word. On July 11, the Indonesian leader angrily announced the resumption of
Konfrontasi, despite warnings from the U.S. officials that such a move would foreclose all further U.S.
assistance.343 The announcement was followed by two other dramatic developments that, as we have seen
earlier, shattered the Kennedy administration’s stabilization effort. These were the DAC’s refusal to approve
a large aid commitment of $250 million to Indonesia, and the passing of the Broomfield amendment, which
banned all further aid to Indonesia without a presidential determination that such aid was in the U.S. national
interest. Obviously, more presidential credibility would have to be staked if Washington’s “Action Plan” was
to be carried forward into the next year.
As Congress slashed the Kennedy administration’s foreign aid budget, a U.N. team traveled to Sabah and
Sarawak to study the political wishes of the local population with regard to Malaysia. The team’s conclusions,
made public by Secretary General U Thant on September 14, stated that “there is no doubt about the wishes
of a sizeable majority of the peoples of [Sabah and Sarawak] to join the Federation of Malaysia.” Both
339
J.A.C. Mackie, Konfrontasi: the Indonesia-Malaysia Dispute, 1963-1966 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1974), 126.
Ibid, 149; Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 157-159; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 118.
341
Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno, 57-62, 65-66.
342
Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 406; Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President
Kennedy, July 23, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 312.
343
Telegram From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, July 23, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963,
v. 23, 312.
340
84
Indonesia and the Philippines refused to recognize U Thant’s findings. The next morning, Jones was
summoned to meet with Sukarno. The Indonesian leader was furious and stated that “we specified certain
procedures which were not carried out.” He specifically mentioned that the survey team should have consisted
of twenty officials and ten assistants of each country instead of only nine “neutral” observers as had been the
case. Moreover, the U.N. team had failed to give sufficient attention to the issue of detainees, of which only
four were interviewed. “I know this game,” Sukarno complained, “I have seen the Dutch play it. Interview
head men of tribes. Interview local officials. Interview people while soldiers with bayonets stand by. What do
you expect? No, no, no. I will not accept it. I will accept a real test but not this.”344
The following days, Konfrontasi went from bad to worse. On September 16, the Tunku proclaimed
Malaysia Day, after which over 10,000 Indonesian demonstrators marched towards the Malayan Embassy in
Jakarta to present resolutions that objected the U.N. team’s conclusions. A few hours later, Kuala Lumpur
recalled its ambassador and announced a break of relations with Indonesia. The Indonesian demonstrators then
sacked and burned the British embassy and destroyed British residences throughout the Indonesian capital. In
turn, a group of 300 Malaysians marched on to assault the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. The next
day, Sukarno repeated in a way what he did in 1957 with the Dutch: announcing the administrative takeover
of all British companies and cutting off trade with Malaysia, as well as with Singapore, through which half of
Indonesia’s imports and exports passed.345 Shortly after, Konfrontasi seemed to turn into a real “hot” war,
when a group 200 Indonesian troops overwhelmed an outpost at Long Jawai, fifty miles inside the territory’s
Third Division.346 As J.A.C. Mackie wrote, the escalation of the conflict signaled that “a point of no return
[had been] passed.” It marked the end of Indonesia’s stabilization attempts, deepened Jakarta’s economic
problems, and increased the political and social polarization in the country. In addition, it pushed the
archipelago state towards Beijing and away from other non-aligned countries, such as Pakistan, which saw
Konfrontasi as “an entirely different matter from the colonial issue of West New Guinea since it involved two
Afro-Asian states.”347
Washington’s “Konfrontasi” Diplomacy in Late 1963
As historian Frederick Bunnell noted, Sukarno’s decision to resume Konfrontasi and break off diplomatic
and economic ties with Kuala Lumpur “shattered the keystone” of the Kennedy administration’s “Action
Plan” for Indonesia. On September 23, an interagency working group met at the White House for a
“where-do-we-go-from-here” session. Many officials now favored a significant reduction in assistance
or even a total cut-off given the angry reactions to Sukarno’s actions. However, Kennedy’s “strong, clear
stand for restraint” eventually prevented a total cut-off, for he believed that “this was a card that could
only be played out once.”348 As Forrestal recalled, “no one person felt strong enough to want to buck [the
344
U Thant quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 120; Sukarno quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 195-6.
Ibid., 196-198; Sodhy, “Malaysian-American Relations,” 121; Mackie, Konfrontasi, 191-193.
346
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 200.
347
Mackie, Konfrontasi, 179; Pakistani official quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 121.
348
Bunnell, “The Kennedy Initiatives in Indonesia,” 688; Memorandum of Conversation, 4 October 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23,
339.
345
85
President].” But Congress, where Broomfield and other congressional leaders immediately called for a
suspension of aid, was a different story. The next morning, the White House announced that it would halt
all new economic aid to Jakarta and temporarily hold up shipments of weapons and ammunition. Other
forms of aid, such as rice (PL 480 aid), technical assistance, MAP aid, and civic action assistance to the
army and mobrig, would continue. The administration’s cuts in aid were followed by the IMF’s decision
to suspend $30 million of its standby arrangement with Jakarta. As the IMF went, so did the DAC. Shortly
after, it announced that it would cancel its upcoming meeting on Indonesia.349
By the fall of 1963, it had become clear that the United States had to set more modest goals in
Indonesia. In late September, the State Department cabled all ambassadors in the region that
Washington’s goal was now to maintain crucial ties to the Indonesian army and the police, continue with
a scaled-back program of assistance, and facilitate a way for Sukarno to end Konfrontasi.350 The wide
media coverage of Sukarno’s latest speech in Jogjakarta worsened the already anti-Indonesian
atmosphere in Washington. The Indonesian leader strongly denounced the Tunku’s actions and called for
an intensification of confrontation. In his speech, he used the PKI’s slogan of “gangjang (crush)
Malaysia.” The Tunku replied by saying that Sukarno was a “helpless sex maniac…incapable of rational
thought on politics.”351 Following these verbal fireworks, U.S. officials worried that Konfrontasi was
escalating to a level that it might overshadow American priorities elsewhere in the region. On October 9,
Komer told Harriman that “we may be thinking too small on Malaysia and it might become another Laos
or Viet Nam situation and there would be three serious problems to carry out there.” The NSC staffer also
told Bundy that “we must support Malaysia. But if we let things drift to the point where Sukarno’s
continued subversive build-up forces us to enter the lists against him, we may practically push him into
Communist hands.” The outlook was not bright, Komer stressed. “At a minimum we’d end up with a
major anti-Indonesian effort on our hands, on top of Laos and Vietnam. At a maximum we’d lose
Indonesia to the Bloc.”352
The only way to avoid such grim scenarios, U.S. policymakers believed, was to push the fighting
parties back to the negotiation table, preferably as quickly as possible. In a memorandum for Bundy,
Komer explained the essence of a negotiating effort: “to work out some face-saving compromise to give
Sukarno, [the] Tunku and Macapagal a way out” through a another summit meeting on neutral ground.
Three days later, Kennedy wrote a letter to Sukarno in which he proposed a halt to any further provocative
actions by all sides. After reading the letter, Sukarno told Jones that he was willing to order a “temporary
349
Michael Forrestal cited in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 121; Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in
Indonesia, September 24, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 316; Seth S. King, “Stabilization Plan Halted,” New York Times, September
25, 1963.
350
Telegram 773 from Djakarta to State, September 28, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 316, footnote 1.
351
Tunku Abdul Rahman quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 214.
352
Harriman-Komer telephone conversation, October 9, 1963, quoted in Jones, “U.S. Relations with Indonesia, the Kennedy-Johnson
Transition, and the Vietnam Connection, 1963-1965,” Diplomatic History 26, no. 2 (Spring 2002), 257; Memorandum From Robert
W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy), October
9, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 341. On December 3, 1963, Komer warned Bundy again that “Malaysia/Indo[nesia] could easily
become more critical to our interests than [the] Vietnam war.” See Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 206.
86
standstill” and attend another Manila-style summit without preconditions.353 But Sukarno was at this stage
no longer Washington’s only concern at this stage. “Our main problems,” Forrestal told Kennedy, “now
seems to be with British.”354 At quadripartite talks in mid-October, it became clear how Washington’s
aims and priorities had come to conflict with those of London. Harriman started the meeting by saying
that Sukarno had no “concrete long-range plan for expansion” in Southeast Asia, that Indonesia the
Indonesian leader was not vulnerable to outside pressure, and that he was unlikely to change his stance
towards Malaysia if aid would be cut off completely. Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies and New
Zealand prime minister Keith Whitehall were caught in the middle between Washington and London,
with the latter pressuring Canberra and Wellington to send troops to Borneo in support of the British
presence and invoke U.S. commitments under the ANZUS treaty. But Washington’s goal, like in West
New Guinea, was to avoid a “white man’s war” and “establish mechanisms by which [it] would maintain
a degree of control over Australasian military involvement in confrontation.” Despite their opposing
views on the threat that Indonesia posed, all four countries agreed that the “time was not yet ripe” for
direct tripartite talks and that it was best to support the efforts of Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman
to get all parties back to the negotiation table.355
As Konfrontasi escalated to new heights in the fall of 1963, Howard Jones remained, as one British
official put it, “unalterably convinced that all Sukarno desired was to be treated as an important Asian
leader and that, provided his vanity was continuously flattered, he would ultimately act in the interests of
the West.”356 In talks with British politicians, the ambassador continued defending American relations
with Sukarno and the Indonesian military, because he believed that the latter was not the primary threat
to London’s interest in the region. Congressional leaders did not share this view, however. When at the
end of October William Broomfield and Clement Zablocki, the chairman of the Far East and Pacific
Subcommittee of the House of Foreign Affairs Committee, came back in Washington from a two-week
trip to Southeast Asia, they denounced Sukarno’s confrontation-policy. One week later, Senator William
Proxmire from Michigan introduced an amendment to cut off all remaining aid to Indonesia, after which
Kentucky Senator John Sherman branded Sukarno “the most irresponsible leader of a Government in
Asia today.” The amendment passed Congress on November 7, as did an amendment, proposed by
Senator Earnest Gruening from Alaska, which halted assistance to countries “engaging in or preparing
Memorandum From Clifford L. Alexander of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs (Bundy), September 25, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 335; Telegram 745 from Djakarta to State, September 27,
1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 336, footnote 3.
354
Forestall quoted in Aandstad, “Surrendering to Symbols,” 129. British officials, in turn, complained about U.S. patience with
Sukarno, with officials at the Washington Embassy stating there were ,“in the State Department, and elsewhere, “nigger lovers” who
believe that you can make a silk purse out of Sukarno’s ear.” See Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 208.
355
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 124; Harriman-Komer telephone conversation, October 9, 1963, quoted in Jones, Conflict and
Confrontation, 217; Memorandum of Conversation, October 18, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 345.
356
Maurice Peterson quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 202.
353
87
for aggressive military efforts” against the United States or any of its allies. The administration was now
faced with a confrontation with Capitol Hill over aid to Indonesia that it had hoped to avoid.357
At this gray hour, Ambassador Jones returned to Washington to propose, together with Assistant
Secretary of State Roger Hilsman and Averill Harriman, a last “package deal” to President Kennedy. The
proposal drove home to the following: Sukarno would have to withdraw Indonesian forces from
Kalimantan and commit himself to tripartite negotiations. In return, he would receive multilateral aid and
a visit from Kennedy to Indonesia as part of a broader tour through Southeast Asia. The expectation was
that Sukarno would welcome such a proposal. In early November, he had told Jones enthusiastically that
if the American President ever visited Jakarta he would get “the grandest reception anyone ever received
[there].” Kennedy, convinced of Indonesia's mighty importance, approved the plan immediately, and as
a demonstration of American goodwill ratified the sale of 40,000 tons of rice and a visit by General
Nasution to the White House.358
Three days later, the President was assassinated in Dallas, an event that magnified the impact of First
Minister Djuanda’s death only two weeks earlier. The death of Djuanda, the only pro-Western Indonesian
politician whom seem to have an impact on Sukarno’s policies, and of Kennedy in particular, ended the
hopes of the accommodationists in Washington for a diplomatic breakthrough in Konfrontasi. But this
was not all: it also generated a fresh degree of uncertainty over U.S. foreign policy towards Indonesia, in
particular with regard to the stabilization effort that the administration had worked on for years. Michael
Forrestal recalled that Kennedy “used to say quite brutally, ‘Indonesia is a nation of 100 million with
perhaps more resources than any other nation in Asia…It doesn’t make any sense for U.S. to go out of
way permanently to alienate this large group of people sitting on these resources, unless there is some
very, very persuasive reason for doing it.’” For Kennedy, the archipelago state was “the most significant
nation in Southeast Asia” and for this reason he placed it at the center of his regional policy, in particular
after the “neutralization” of Laos in July 1962. It remained to be seen whether Kennedy’s successor,
Lyndon B. Johnson, would be just as willing to expend political capital to Indonesia, especially now that
the situation on mainland Southeast Asia turn more problematic by the day.359
Felix Belair Jr., “Aid to Indonesia and U.A.R. Curbed,” New York Times, November 7, 1963, and “Conferees Kill Ban on U.S. Aid
To Red Countries,” New York Times, November 28, 1963; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 124.
358
Memorandum of Conversation, November 19, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 320; Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to
the Department of State, November 4, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 319.
359
Michael Forrestal quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 125; President Kennedy quoted in Webster, Fire and the Full Moon,
140; Seth Jacobs, ‘“No Place to Fight a War.” Laos and the Evolution of U.S. Policy toward Vietnam, 1954-1963’ in: Mark Philip
Bradley and Marilyn B. Young, eds., Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars. Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives (New
York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008) 45-66.
357
88
3
Big Trouble in the Archipelago State: the Johnson
Administration Shifts Policy
In the days following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson talked extensively with
heads of state, members of Congress, and U.S. business leaders to stress that he was firmly in control and
intended to continue the policies of his predecessor. If there was one area where such continuity was
really needed, it was Southeast Asia. Only three weeks earlier, South Vietnamese generals, with approval
of Hilsman, Harriman and Forrestal, toppled the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem. The aim of the
mission was to “bring this medieval country into the 20th century” and create more stability.360 The result,
however, was even more chaos, which painfully demonstrated how much Vietnam depended on U.S.
economic and military support. Johnson was deeply concerned about the growing American military
presence in Vietnam, but even more about the consequences, particularly domestically, if the United
States withdrew or lost the war. When he met with his advisors for the first time, Johnson stressed that
Washington had to accomplish its objectives in Indochina, no matter the costs. To the U.S. ambassador
in South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, he pledged: “I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to
be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the same way China went.”361
When General Nasution arrived in Washington two days after Kennedy’s death, Indonesia was not the
first topic on Johnson’s mind. State Department officials stressed the importance of meeting Nasution.
The President was informed that the Indonesian General was “the closest thing we have to a friend in
Sukarno’s court” and “by far the most likely successor” should Sukarno pass away or be removed from
power.362 When Johnson met Nasution on November 29, 1963, he assured the continuity of U.S.
Indonesia-policy. Two weeks later, the President also met with Howard Jones, who was still in
Washington for consultations. The ambassador underlined Sukarno’s frequent reference to “international
relations being personal relations” and urged the President to travel to Jakarta at his earliest convenience.
But Johnson was not so sure about that and answered that he sometimes “wondered whether the closer
we get to Sukarno the more difficult he becomes.”363
360
Henry Cabot Lodge quoted in McMahon, The Limits of Empire, 111.
Memorandum for the Record of Meeting, November 24, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 4, 330; Lyndon B. Johnson quoted in Arthur
Meier Schlesinger Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 726.
362
Editorial Note, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 322.
363
Memorandum of Conversation,” December 18, 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 326.
361
89
One of the central questions that preoccupies scholars until this day is whether the assassination of
John F. Kennedy altered the direction of the Vietnam War. That question is probably impossible to
answer. It is certain, however, that Kennedy’s death changed the course of Washington’s policy in
Indonesia. As Michael Forrestal once explained, “an Indonesian policy requires a positive effort by the
President because there are not that many people in the government who care and there are many who
oppose.” The former NSC staffer recalled that Kennedy cared and that he was therefore willing to expend
political capital to the archipelago state.364 But Johnson was not very interested in Indonesia – in fact, he
was not very interested in foreign policy in general – and decided almost immediately that “he was not
going to bear any political burdens on behalf of Indonesia.”365 In a telephone conversation with Secretary
of Defense Robert McNamara, Johnson referred to a speech he once gave in the 1950s in which he stated
that “when you let a bully come in and start raiding you in your front yard, if you run, he’ll come in and
run you out of your bedroom the next night.” The President did not think that “we ought to encourage
this guy [Sukarno] to do what he’s doing down there,” and that giving the Indonesian leader “any
assistance just shows weakness on our part.” McNamara felt “exactly the same way.” When Johnson was
asked in early January 1963 to sign a determination to keep aid to Indonesia flowing, he hesitated and
deferred it. “I just feel that I ought to be impeached if I approve it,” he told McNamara, “that's just how
deeply I feel.”366
Johnson’s refusal to sign even a limited determination on U.S. aid to Indonesia was a huge
disappointment for those officials who had worked tirelessly to improve United States-Indonesia relations
during the past few years. Hilsman recalled that “everyone down the line” knew that “Kennedy would
have signed the determination routinely.”367 Two weeks later, against the backdrop of continued
Indonesian infiltrations into Malaysia, the presidential determination was on the NSC staff’s agenda.
Those in favor of an accommodationist policy were now facing a difficult challenge: avoiding further
cuts in aid because that would almost certainly harm important links to the Indonesian military. “Nobody
likes Sukarno, and with good reason,” Bundy stated, and that justified cutting off aid. But “the programs
we have planned are there now because we think them ‘essential to our national interest.’ They are not
there because we like Sukarno, but because we are contending for the long-range future of a country of
100 million with great resources in a strategic location.” A cut-off today, he explained, “could trigger a
violent reaction from Sukarno...[and] cost us half a billion of private investment.” Dean Rusk agreed and
364
Forrestal quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 126.
One British official at the time observed that Johnson was “not at home in international affairs” and that he would give Secretary of
State Dean Rusk “a much freer hand.” Moreover, “President Johnson’s own approach is a simple one. If he dislikes a man he is against
him. He dislikes Soekarno.” Oliver Wright quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 262. NSC staffer Chester Cooper recalled that
Johnson did not want to expend political capital to Indonesia because he was “swallowed up by Vietnam.” See Frederick Bunnell,
“American “Low Posture” Policy toward Indonesia in the Months Leading up to the 1965 “Coup,”’ Indonesia 50 (October 1990), 46,
and chapter 4. Again other commentators, however, have stressed that it was the “Great Society,” a grandiose domestic social welfare
project, what really mattered to Johnson. The President once called the Vietnam War that “bitch of a war,” which helped to destroy his
Great Society, “the woman I really love.” See Herring, From Colony to Superpower, 736.
366
Telephone Conversation Between President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara, January 2, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v.
26, 1.
367
Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 407.
365
90
added that “more is involved in Indonesia…than is at stake at Viet Nam.” Instead of cutting all aid,
Harriman argued, it was better to continue with a limited aid program “for keeping a foot in the door.”
After all, “if the Indonesians turn against us and seize U.S. investments, the Chinese Communists might
get the U.S. oil companies, thereby altering the strategic balance in the area.”368
After the meeting, Johnson decided to defer the presidential determination until all fighting parties
returned to the negotiation table. To convince Congress of the need “to stay at the table and play a little
longer rather,” as Rusk put it, and to show that the new administration was taking its concerns seriously,
something had to be done to improve the situation in Malaysia.369 Bundy then suggested to send Attorney
General Robert Kennedy to Jakarta to “tell Sukarno the hard and brutal truth,” which ambassador Jones
seemed incapable of doing. Johnson initially had his doubts whether dispatching Robert Kennedy was a
good idea. The President deeply disliked the Attorney General and he complained that the latter had not
been “so tough last time he saw Sukarno” because “he took [West New Guinea] away from the Dutch
and gave it to Sukarno.” But eventually he gave his approval. As he explained to Senator Richard Russell
from Georgia, “I am going to send Bobby Kennedy to Indonesia and just let them put in his lap...let him
go out there and have whatever row there is with Sukarno.”370
The task of the Kennedy mission was two-fold: to make clear to Sukarno “the consequences for USIndonesian relations if Sukarno continued his policies toward Malaysia” and to encourage the leaders of
all fighting parties to seek a negotiated settlement. On January 17, Kennedy arrived in Jakarta, where he
persuaded Sukarno to stop military activities in Kalimantan as a preparatory step for a tripartite meeting.
Michael Forrestal, who accompanied Robert Kennedy during his trip, informed Bundy that the meeting
“went off surprisingly well” and that Sukarno seemed serious in wanting to avoid a further escalation.
“This form of personal diplomacy is the key to doing business with Sukarno,” Forrestal said, “but it has
to be seen to be really understood.”371 In the following days, Kennedy also convinced the Tunku and
President Macapagal to re-enter negotiations. It seemed that the Attorney General had finally gotten the
conflict “out of the jungle and onto the conference table,” Komer enthusiastically informed Johnson.” 372
But the hope for a settlement disappeared rapidly thereafter as all parties continued to have different
views on whether a cease-fire required Indonesian forces to withdraw from Malaysia entirely.
After the first tripartite meetings in early February, U.S. officials were still cautiously optimistic that
although the net impact of all communication with Sukarno “has been disappointing,” the “present
368
Memorandum Prepared by the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy), January 7, 1964, FRUS, 19641968, v. 26, 6; Summary Record of the 521st National Security Council Meeting,” January 7, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 8.
369
Summary Record of the 521st National Security Council Meeting,” January 7, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 8.
370
McGeorge Bundy quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 240; Telephone Conversation Between President Johnson and Senator
Richard Russell, January 10, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 10.
371
Telegram From the Embassy in Japan to the Department of State, January 17, 1964 and Telegram from Michael V. Forrestal of the
National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy), January 18, 1964, both in
FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 17 and 18.
372
Memorandum from Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Johnson, January 22, 1964, FRUS, 19641968, v. 26, 22.
91
situation would be worse” if there had not been any contact at all.373 But the second ministerial meeting
in Bangkok, one month later, already broke down after two hours, after which tensions remained. As
Jones concluded later, the value of the Kennedy mission was still “not entirely clear.”374 It might have
helped if Britain, which had a large influence on Malaysia’s diplomatic efforts, had supported
negotiations, but this was not case. In fact, British officials opposed any diplomatic effort because they
believed that talks would only raise for them non-negotiable issues, such as Britain’s access to
Singapore’s naval base and the Anglo-Malaysian defense agreement. In addition, London thought that
Sukarno’s goal was to conquer Malaysia and push Britain out of Asia altogether, a concern shared by
Canberra and Wellington.
At quadripartite talks in October 1963, Australian Minister for External Affairs Sir Garfield Barwick
had accused the United States of “encouraging Sukarno to demand on concession after another,” and New
Zealand prime minister Keith Whitehall had denounced U.S. foreign policy towards Indonesia as “leading
to a Far Eastern Munich.”375 At quadripartite talks in February 1964, Canberra, Wellington and London
were still as critical of U.S. Indonesia-policy in October 1963, with British officials assessing that close
links with the Indonesian army, had blinded the United States to the threat the military posed to “Free
World” interests in Southeast Asia. Edward Peck, head of the Foreign Office’s Far Eastern Department,
stated that Washington’s conciliatory approach only allowed Sukarno to continue Konfrontasi and
pressure the Tunku to make unrealistic concessions. A better strategy, the Australian ambassador to
Indonesia argued, was to isolate Indonesia and let things “deteriorate to a point where internal difficulties
will either force the overthrow or naturalization of Sukarno.” U.S. officials stressed that they still found
it “important to minimize rather than stress Sukarno’s differences with the West.” Their goal was to avoid
the country from going communist and they “just did not want to be dragged into a ten year jungle war
to support a country like Malaysia against a country like Indonesia.” For the meantime, Harriman argued,
the United States had no choice but to maintain relations with Sukarno, “unless, of course, some of our
friends wished to try to overthrow him.”376
The Revival of the Hard-line Approach
Whereas the Johnson administration continued to stress to Congress and allies that its policy towards
Indonesia remained unchanged, the reality was that many officials in Washington were beginning to
question the effectiveness of what historians have called the “Jonesian” way of doing business with
Sukarno.377 Within months after Kennedy’s death, most advocates of the accommodationist approach to
Indonesia were forced into the defensive, a result of the growing frustration in Washington over Sukarno’s
373
Telegram from Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, Washington, 3 March 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 33.
Memorandum From Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs (Bundy), March 5, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 35; Jones quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 128.
375
Sir Garfield Barwick and Keith Whitehall quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 220.
376
Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno, 97-102; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 129.
377
Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy, 31-32; Gardner, Shared Hopes, Separate Fears, 186.
374
92
anti-Malaysia stance, the widening war in Vietnam, and bureaucratic changes within the Johnson
administration. Some of the accommodationists were replaced or resigned, others just lost their influence
or were simply ignored. The most important casualties of Johnson’s bureaucratic changes were Roger
Hilsman, Averill Harriman, and Michael Forrestal, individuals that had played a central role in the
Kennedy administration’s strategy of integrated economic and military assistance aimed at Indonesia’s
long-term development. Instead, Johnson would rely more on the earlier heavily criticized Dean Rusk,
McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara. That Johnson put a lot of responsibility in the hands of the
Secretary of Defense was to Hilsman a sign that the President “was just not going to listen to the
Harriman-Forrestal-Hilsman-Ball group.”378 The Assistant Secretary of State himself was replaced in
March 1964 by McGeorge’s older brother William Bundy, who until then had served as Assistant
Secretary for International Security Affairs. Harriman’s role became also increasingly marginalized, a
hard reality for those who favored working with Sukarno and still believed that the Indonesian leader
could turn his attention towards stabilization. Harriman continued to serve Johnson loyally, but he
suffered through his close links with Robert Kennedy. By early 1964 he found himself handling African
issues like the Congo and Zanzibar instead of Asian trouble spots like Indonesia. As Harriman became
isolated, NSC staffer Michael Forrestal also found his access to Johnson limited. In July 1964, he was
moved to head a Vietnam taskforce, after which he left the government service in early 1965.379
It is here that events in Indonesia and Vietnam became closely intertwined, with significant
consequences. As Matthew Jones noted, the background to the bureaucratic changes in the Johnson
administration are to be found in the clashes that had taken place within the Kennedy administration over
Vietnam-policy throughout 1963. In the spring of that year, Harriman and Hilsman had become
increasingly dissatisfied with the inability and unwillingness of Ngo Dinh Diem’s government to reform
itself and gather more domestic support. In particular after Saigon’s brutal repression of Buddhist monks,
in June 1963, both officials, with support of Forrestal, began to explore possibilities for Diem’s
replacement. In late August, they gave ambassador Cabot Lodge the authority to approach generals in the
South Vietnamese Army in order to make preparations for a coup attempt. On November 1, 1963,
following months of discussions, confusion and indecisiveness, Diem was finally overthrown and then
brutally murdered. This event, and the fact that Washington immediately recognized the new military
junta, generated deep animosities within the bureaucracy. Diem’s supporters in Washington, led by
President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, believed that the initiative
had lacked interagency approval and were furious that Hilsman decided to carry through with it. Already
suspicious of the Assistant Secretary of State’s skepticism over the conduct of the war fighting in
Vietnam, Johnson and McNamara were determined to counter and replace the Harriman-Hilsman axis in
378
Roger Hilsman, Oral History Interview by Paige E. Mulhollan, May 15, 1969, 23, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas. See
also Herring, From Colony to Superpower, 730.
379
See Jones, “U.S. Relations with Indonesia,” 259-261.
93
the State Department, a decision, as we will see, with far-reaching consequences for U.S. Indonesiapolicy.380
As the accommodationists found themselves either removed or isolated, hard-liners in the
administration began pushing for a more confrontationist approach. During a White House Staff meeting
on March 4, 1964, McGeorge Bundy commented that it was “about time we took some action against
Sukarno, and that we should initiate steps to cut off our economic aid from him.”381 One day earlier, when
peace talks in Bangkok broke down after two hours, David Cuthell of the State Department wrote to Jones
that the “essence of the problem seems to be that Sukarno recognizes our refusal to support
confrontation…and is willing to face possible loss of both current and potential U.S. aid.” Moreover, the
Indonesian military seemed to “lack [an] understanding of where Indo[nesian] policy is leading, and fails
to recognize that present combination of confrontation and increasing coldness toward West plays only
into hands of PKI and other extremists.” He then referred to George Ball’s suggestion that the “time has
come to draw on relationship we have built up with Indonesian military in effort head off GOI before it
[is] too late.” Too late, Cuthell explained, is when “our capital with them will be completely expended in
any event should Indo[nesian] actions force us side openly against them.”382
The next day, the Embassy replied that it agreed with Ball’s proposal and that ambassador Jones and
Defense Attaché Colonel George Benson already had made appointments for the coming weeks with
members of the Army High Command. Both officials would tell the Indonesian military leaders that a
continuation of Konfrontasi would lead to further aid reductions, and that moving against Sukarno would
have various important advantages.383 On March 6, when Jones met with Nasution, he was told that the
Indonesian military was determined to continue Konfrontasi, but that it had no intention of escalating it.
The General explained that the armed forces were well aware of the threat of the PKI, but not yet fully
prepared to deal with the country’s economic problems. Moreover, they reluctant to unleash a showdown
with Sukarno for fear that such a move would create an inter-army split or even provoke civil war. Jones
stressed that the United States would back a move against the Indonesian President, but Nasution
“avoided like the plague any discussion of possible military takeover, even though this hovered in the air
throughout the talk, and at no time did he pick up obvious hints of US support in time of crisis.” 384
Nasution was more outspoken two weeks later. If the PKI made a bid for power, he assured Jones, the
Army was ready for action, and “Madiun,” where the Indonesian military crushed a PKI coup attempt in
1948, “would be mild compared with an army crackdown today.” In Jones view, Nasution “appeared to
be saying that the time would come when the situation might be different.” However, until that moment
380
Ibid., 259-260.
Memorandum for the Record, March 4, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 34; Telegram 787 from Kuala Lumpur to State, March 3,
1964, FRUS, 1964-1968. 26, 33, footnote 3.
382
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, March 3, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 33.
383
Ibid.
384
Telegram 1854 from Djakarta to State, 6 March 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 33, footnote 4.
381
94
came, the General stressed, it was vital to maintain existing links via training and civic action to avoid
the Indonesian army’s political isolation.385
Sukarno Turns on the Heat: “To Hell With Your Aid!”
In late March, the topic of continued U.S. aid to Indonesia once again generated heated debates in
Washington. Although most officials were now nowhere as enthusiastic in defending aid as Hilsman,
Harriman and Forrestal had been the year before, they continued to stress before Congress the importance
of proceeding with a limited aid program. On March 25, Rusk guaranteed the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee that the administration had “initiated no new aid programs in Indonesia” and that it neither
considered doing so as long as Konfrontasi continued. Other officials stressed in private conversations
with aid opponents that Washington’s remaining aid to Indonesia would not strengthen the armed forces
and thus neither threaten Malaysia. In the press, the image was created that “all United States aid to
Indonesia was stopped,” but the reality was different. The number of MAP personnel in Jakarta actually
increased and military and counterinsurgency training was expanded, “with some categories of training
now going on, and some starting soon,” Forrestal told McGeorge Bundy, “which would make British hair
stand on.”386
As Rusk held his testimony, a leading American magazine published an article in which it stated that
Indonesia was on the brink of economic collapse and called for a cessation of all aid unless Jakarta ended
Konfrontasi. The next day, Sukarno reacted furiously. At a massive ceremony in front of 2,000 people
and officials from numerous countries, the Indonesian President shouted that any country that attached
strings to its foreign assistance could go “To hell with your aid!”387 The following days, he encouraged a
PKI-organized boycott of American films and made no attempt when PKI-members assaulted the U.S.
Information Service library in Jakarta.388 Sukarno’s outburst and the PKI’s moves were widely reported
in the American press, provoking the usual outrage in Congress. Both houses proposed amendments to
completely ban U.S. aid to Indonesia. Jones argued against an emotional American reaction to what
happened in Indonesia, but Bundy now recognized that it was perhaps “inevitable that we would have to
cut off aid.”389 Shortly after, the NSC advisor expressed his opposition to a presidential determination for
Indonesia, which was repeatedly deferred in previous months. Other officials still insisted that
Washington’s long-term interests in the archipelago state demanded continued aid and close links with
Indonesian military and other anti-communist forces, despite a general feeling of frustration with the
army’s unwillingness to halt Sukarno’s leftwards drift.390
385
Telegram from the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, 19 March 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 40.
Lloyd Garrison, “Indonesia Seeks U.S. Radio Gear,” New York Times, August 5, 1965; Memo from Forrestal to Bundy, February 6,
1964, cited in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 131. See also Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno,” 253-257.
387
“Sukarno’s Tells U.S., ‘To Hell With Your Aid,’” New York Times, March 26, 1964; Jones, Indonesia, 321.
388
Brands, The Wages of Globalism, 165.
389
Jones, Indonesia, 321; Memorandum for the Record, March 4, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 34
390
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 132.
386
95
In the spring of 1964, it became increasingly difficult to defend U.S. assistance to Indonesia as
Konfrontasi escalated further. In early April, Sukarno expanded military incursions in Kalimantan and
Borneo, after which the Tunku called up thousands of volunteers and stressed that he refused to resume
talks unless Jakarta withdrew its forces. Sukarno then announced the formation of a “Volunteers
Command” with over twenty million members to “crush” Malaysia.391 As these events unfolded, British
officials were beginning to get increasingly impatient with Washington’s continued emphasis on
diplomacy, after which they argued that the “Indos should be given [a] “bloody nose.”” But the United
States, Rusk explained to Australian Minister for Extern Affairs Sir Garfield Barwick, already had its
“hands full in South Vietnam” and was therefore “not going to put in boys from Nebraska and Kansas
just because the Tunku won’t go to a meeting.” U.S. officials stressed that it was still “extremely
important that British do not initiate any cross-border actions at this time which would ruin chances for
summit.”392 President Johnson explained the dilemma the United States faced at this stage to
congressional leaders: “if we cut off all assistance, Sukarno will probably turn to the Russians.”393
By mid-1964, it appeared that Sukarno “had gone too far in confrontation to pull back without
substantial loss of domestic prestige, even had he wished to do so.” The U.S. Embassy in Malaysia
assessed that the President had desired a peaceful settlement with Kuala Lumpur, but that he was “being
inhibited by the PKI and the Indonesian military.”394 Whatever Sukarno’s exact situation was, it is clear
that he continued to participate in negotiations at this stage, but probably with no real expectation of a
successful outcome. When Sukarno and the Tunku met in Tokyo in June, both leaders stubbornly stuck
to their earlier positions. Meanwhile, Konfrontasi continued on the battlefield. In late April, Sukarno
created a military command headed by Air Force Commander Air Marshal Omar Dhani, to oversee the
anti-Malaysia campaign, after he had formed the “Dwikora,” the Two Commands of the People.395 In
mid-June, while Sukarno and the Tunku met in Tokyo, a group of Indonesian guerrillas passed through a
checkpoint at Tebedu in Sarawak. Following these events, the CIA observed that the “road ahead for
Indonesia is a troubled one of domestic deterioration, external aggression, and overall Communist profit.”
Moreover, the “prospect will not brighten until and unless Indonesia’s energies are turned from foreign
ambitions…are devoted to the development of this potentially rich country.”396
As Konfrontasi continued and Sukarno turned increasingly hostile towards the United States, more
and more officials in Washington advocated a further shift in policy towards Indonesia. In a conversation
with Johnson, Bundy opined that “it’s better for us to have [Sukarno] sounding off at a safe distance,”
and that “the only question is how gradually we disengage.”397 Johnson agreed, and in early July, he
391
Mackie, Konfrontasi, 229-230.
Telegram From the Embassy in the Philippines to the Department of State, April 17, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 43.
393
President Johnson quoted in Schmitz, The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 41.
394
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 265; Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, March 3, 1964, FRUS,
1964-1968, v. 26, 33, note 3.
395
Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 61 and 70
396
National Intelligence Estimate, July 22, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 56.
397
Telephone Conversation Between President Johnson and the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy),
May 1, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 46.
392
96
signed off NSAM 309, stating that “no public determination with respect to aid to Indonesia should be
made at this time, in view of the unsettled conditions in the South Pacific area.”398 Other officials now
began to press for closer ties with Malaysia. By inviting the Tunku to Washington, Ball wrote Johnson,
the United States could demonstrate “friendship and support for Malaysia” and “probably have a healthy
impact in Kuala Lumpur and possibly in Manila and Djakarta.” Komer agreed and added that it made
sense to deepen ties with the Malaysian leader so that Washington could “massage this man” and “have
a little more influence on him.”399 Shortly after, Johnson invited the Tunku to the White House, where
they met on July 22 and 23. After their talks, both leaders gave a joint press conference in which they
announced that the United States had offered Malaysia military assistance and condemned the violation
of Malaysia’s territorial integrity by its neighbors, which was of course a clear reference to Indonesia.400
President Johnson’s meeting with the Tunku was a demonstration of the slow but steady shift towards
a hard-line approach. In addition, it highlighted an important turning point in U.S. relations with Malaysia
and Britain. Five months earlier, Prime Minister Douglas Home and President Johnson had reached an
agreement that reflected, to phrase Matthew Jones, “a new degree of understanding” between Washington
and London. The deal was that in exchange for British support for the American war in Vietnam, the
United States would gave its political backing to Britain on Malaysia. The meeting between Johnson and
the Tunku in Washington, which also revealed that the “special relationship” between the United States
and Britain was to some extent revitalized, must have confirmed Sukarno in his belief that the United
States was shifting its support to Kuala Lumpur and away from Jakarta. Shortly after, Indonesia moved
its military attention from Sarawak and Borneo to mainland Malaysia. When Sukarno announced
Indonesia’s “Year of Living Dangerously” (Vivere Pericoloso) on August 17, Jakarta landed a group of
hundred well-armed guerrillas in Southwest Johore, just north of Singapore. The guerrillas were quickly
defeated because they failed to gather support among local Indonesian immigrants. But the attack
illustrated what Indonesia was capable of, especially now that the Johnson administration had shifted its
policy in favor of Malaysia.401
U.S. Reactions to Sukarno’s Speech
As Indonesian guerrillas landed on the Malaysian mainland on August 17, 1964, Sukarno held a speech
in Jakarta in which he proclaimed that the coming year would be Indonesia’s “Year of Living
Dangerously.” The Indonesian President argued that all non-Asians must leave Asia, that South Korea
and South Vietnam are “not yet free,” and that Laos will only be “truly neutral, united, and democratic”
once the imperialists withdrew their troops from the area. Throughout his speech, Sukarno castigated
Malaysia as a “barking dog,” a “watchdog,” and a “puppet” of imperialism, and with regard to the United
398
National Security Action Memorandum No. 309, July 6, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 53.
Memo from George Ball to the President, May 12, 1964, and Memo from R.W. Komer to the President, May 14, 1964, both cited in
Sodhy, “Malaysian-American Relations,” 127.
400
Memorandum of Conversation, July 23, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 57; Sodhy, “Malaysian-American Relations,” 129.
401
Jones, “U.S. Relations with Indonesia,” 275; Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno, 94-117.
399
97
States he stated that he had tried to remain friendly relations, but that Washington’s support for Kuala
Lumpur was “too much.”402 Sukarno’s speech took place one week after Indonesia had formally
established diplomatic relations with North Vietnam, a move that made Saigon directly decide to break
relations with Jakarta. In a conversation with Howard Jones, the Indonesian leader expressed his
opposition to the American war in Vietnam. “I think your Asian policy is wrong,” he stated, “it is not
popular with Asian people generally. It looks to them as though you are interfering with the internal
affairs of Asian Nations. Why should you become involved?”403 In Sukarno’s view, the Vietnamese were
in the first place fighting for national liberation; the establishment of a communist state was only of
secondary importance. Moreover, he believed that, Vietnamese communism, like Indonesian
communism, was considerably different than that of the Soviet Union and China. This all took place right
at a time when Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, following alleged attacks against the
USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. This authorized the White House to start “retaliatory” strikes against
North Vietnam.404
Sukarno’s actions provoked predictable outrage in Congress, where Representative Birch Bayh and
Senator John Tower introduced amendments that barred all further aid to Indonesia and immediately
ceased U.S military training.405 Meanwhile in Jogjakarta, hundreds of youth members of Sukarno’s
National Front occupied a U.S. Information Service library. Various officials, including Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Marshall Green, believed that the time had come to terminate
most of the remaining assistance to Indonesia, including “aid to [the] Indonesian military and paramilitary
organizations,” but excluding support for “educational exchange” programs and “Indonesian educational
institutions” such as the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. McGeorge Bundy outlined the limited policy
options the United States had: “with Vietnam and Laos already on our Southeast Asian plate,” he wrote
Johnson, “we can ill afford a major crisis with Indonesia right now.” Komer complained particularly
about the Senate’s interference in the administration’s policymaking process. The Tower amendment, he
warned the President, “moves us dangerously close to a final break with Indonesia,” which he described
as “the third largest country in Asia – whose strategic location and 100 million people make it a far greater
prize than Vietnam” - neither the first nor last time that a high-level U.S. official underlined the
importance of Indonesia by making a comparison with Vietnam.406
402
Current Intelligence Memorandum, August 20, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 62.
Sukarno quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 134.
404
John Prados, ed., “Tonking Gulf Intelligence ‘Skewed’ According to Official History and Intercepts,” George Washington University,
National
Security
Archive
Briefing
Book
132.
Available
at
https://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/press20051201.htm.
405
For reactions in Congress to Sukarno’s speech, see McMahon, Limits of Empire, 123.
406
Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Green) to Secretary of State Rusk, August 19,
1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 60; Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to
President Johnson, August 30, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 67.; Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security
Council Staff to President Johnson, August 19, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 61.
403
98
Despite intensive lobbying from administration officials for modification or deletion of the
amendment, it eventually passed the Senate by a nearly two to one margin.407 As Bradley Simpson noted,
the passage of the Tower amendment “decisively undermined advocates of accommodation and
strengthened the hand of administration hard-liners.”408 In addition, it encouraged officials at the Embassy
in Jakarta who had lost their patience with Jones’ approach of working with Sukarno to speak out their
views more vigorously. The most prominent of this group was Deputy Chief of Mission Francis Galbraith,
who observed that Sukarno’s speech “cannot be shrugged off as more of the same” because it declared
“Indonesia in the camp of Asian Communists and opposed to US—opposed not only on issues of the day
like Vietnam and Malaysia, but fundamentally opposed to our thought, our influence and our leadership”
in the Asia-Pacific. According to Galbraith, “it would be fatuous to pretend that this speech is other
principally than a declaration of enmity for us.”409
But although many officials now advocated a tougher stance, most of them, including Galbraith, still
strongly opposed a complete termination of U.S. military aid to Indonesia. In a memo to President
Johnson, Rusk explained that “our aid to Indonesia…is not helping Indonesia militarily,” but that it is
“permitting us to maintain some contact with key elements in Indonesia which are interested in and
capable of resisting [a] Communist takeover.” Robert Komer and James Thomson of the NSC similarly
stressed that it was “meaningful” to continue cultivating close training and personnel ties with the
Indonesian military and Mobrig to “keep our foot in the door for the long term stakes.” In a partially
declassified memo to Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of State stressed the importance of keeping
close intelligence links with the armed forces “for possible future influence upon key Indonesian leaders.”
Galbraith believed that continued U.S. assistance was essential for the maintenance of “civic action and
military and police assistance programs,” for keeping “contact open with NU and other elements [that]
opposed to Sukarno's anti-US policies,” and for increasing the “volume and effectiveness” of covert
operations and contingency planning. In Galbraith’s view, the United States should “continued to play
the game” with Sukarno, knowing “the match is over 72 holes and were only on the first 18.”410
In the fall of 1964, the Johnson administration eventually managed to calm criticism of its Indonesiapolicy and derail the Tower amendment in a congressional conference.411 However, following the
President’s approval of an interdepartmental policy proposal in late August, the installation of an earlier
proposed archipelago-wide military communications system was halted and the delivery of remaining
407
Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Johnson, August 19, 1964, FRUS, 19641968, v. 26, 61.
408
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 135.
409
Current Intelligence Memorandum, August 20, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 62.
410
Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Johnson, July 20, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 264; Memorandum From
Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Johnson, August 19, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 61;
Memorandum From the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense McNamara, August 26, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 65;
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, August 24, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 63; Galbraith to
Department of State, August 18, 1964, cited in Brands, “The Limits of Manipulation,” 796.
411
See Brands, “The Limits of Manipulation,” 798, and By Bloody Good Luck, 167; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 136.
99
military equipment for the police and Mobrig suspended.412 Thompson then suggested to organize a
“where-the-hell-do-we-go-from-here” session to discuss with “our military people in Djakarta” and the
Generals Nasution and Yani the reductions in military training to Indonesia. Galbraith advised to
“repatriate personnel with [the] least possible fanfare and publicity,” but Bundy warned the President that
“the very fact that we're on a slippery slope makes it all the more important not to burn all our bridges to
Indonesia.” As Bundy stressed, “we do not want to be the ones who trigger a major attack on U.S.
investments there.” Moreover, “there's still a slim chance of Sukarno drawing back from a full-fledged
push on Malaysia,” and the “dangling the prospect of renewed aid” would then be a useful tool. Shortly
after, it was decided that “nonmilitary” training and equipment deliveries for police and Mobrig forces
would continue as well as a limited Civic Action Program.413
In early September, the dangling prospect, of which Bundy spoke, turned increasingly grim as more
Indonesian paratroopers landed at various points along the Malaysian coast with the aim of setting up a
guerrilla base on the mainland. Matthew Jones argued that the Indonesian September attack can be seen
as “the high-water mark of confrontation.” The Tunku probably saw it the same way. When the
paratroopers landed, the Malaysian leader immediately declared the state of emergency. British officials
then encouraged Kuala Lumpur to take its case to the U.N. Security Council, where the United States
would back Malaysia but could not “give [the British] a blank check and pick up the tab for escalation by
the use of US forces without the fullest and most precise understanding between [the] Heads of
Government.”414 Shortly after, the British military came into action itself, with London’s Far East
Command sending a full aircraft carrier battle group towards Singapore, and the British Chiefs of Staff
authorizing troops in the Far East to begin strikes against Indonesian forces along the Kalimantan border.
Australia and New Zealand officials pledged their support to Britain and Malaysia and quickly offered
troops, but U.S. policymakers feared that London “would like to provoke a nice mess, into which we'd
necessarily be sucked.”415
The problem for the United States in September 1964 was that it was kept in the dark about British
military plans. “We don't really know what Brits have in mind,” Komer noted, and “since our oil and
other assets in Indonesia are inevitably at stake, we ought to buy a seat at this table.”416 Two weeks later,
William Bundy flew to London, where he demanded that British officials kept the Johnson administration
informed about its military plans. After all, British actions could not only invoke U.S. obligations under
Brands, “The Limits of Manipulation,” 797-98.
Memorandum From James C. Thomson Jr. of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs (Bundy), August 25, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 64; Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department
of State, August 24, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 63; Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security
Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson, August 31, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 67.
414
Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 272; Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in the United Kingdom, September
2, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 68.
415
Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno, 119-120; Note From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s
Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy), August 25, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 71; Special National Intelligence
Estimate, September 1, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 75.
416
Note From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs
(Bundy), August 25, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 71.
412
413
100
the ANZUS treaty, but also provoke assaults on American interests in Indonesia, including the
abovementioned oil assets. Given the uncertainty over London’s regional agenda, Washington welcomed
the U.N. Security Council debate over Indonesia’s military actions in the hope that it would restrain both
Indonesian and British officials. The Security Council vote, developed after a week of meetings, pleased
none of the members and led Sukarno to conclude that the U.N. was merely a tool of what he called the
“old established forces.” Nevertheless, it was due to Britain’s military deterrence that a further escalation
of Konfrontasi was deflected. Anxious to avoid a clash with London’s superior forces, and unsatisfied
with the failure of the raids carried out by Indonesia’s troops, General Yani appointed General Suharto
as the new deputy commander of what was now called the Kolaga Command.417 At that time, Indonesian
military leaders and Sukarno also began to engage in secret talks with Malaysian officials to discuss
possibilities for reducing tensions, while Subandrio informed Jones that Indonesia would seek no further
escalation “unless the British start something.”418
Although a further escalation of Konfrontasi had been avoided, U.S. strategists assessed that the
conflict will “almost certainly continue” on the short term and that Sukarno’s main objective – building
up a revolutionary potential sufficient to overthrow the Tunku’s regime – would remain unchanged. The
prospect of the conflict remained grim. “Should there be an escalation of overt hostilities,” it was stated
in a National Intelligence Estimate, “the Soviets and the Chinese Communists would of course support
Indonesia,” probably with “extensive propaganda and diplomatic activity.”419 A few weeks later, the State
Department concluded similarly that Konfrontasi was “essentially without solution” and that at the
moment there was “no useful role the USG might play.” Recent developments suggested that Indonesia
was “switching from [a] narrow confrontation of Malaysia to [a] more diffuse political confrontation of
entire West.”420 Internally, a similar trend was expected to take place. Only two months earlier, Sukarno
had endorsed a land reform program and proclaimed the ultimate end of “imperialist capital” in Indonesia,
a long-time objective of the PKI. Also, he had made steps to increase the number of PKI members in the
cabinet and announced that anyone who opposed “Nasakom” – a political concept according to which
Nationalist, religious, and communist streams would be represented in the Indonesian government –
opposed the Indonesian revolution. The CIA assessed that although Sukarno was not a communist
himself, his “emotional bias toward Marxism” and his need for mass support had led to a relationship of
“mutual exploitation” with the communists. It was believed that as long as the Indonesian President
remained in power, the army would be forced in the defensive and the PKI would be allowed to grow in
strength until at some point Indonesia would turn to communism entirely.421
417
Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno, 121; Crouch, The Army and Politics, 67.
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, September 12, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 74, note 3.
419
Special National Intelligence Estimate, September 16, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 75.
420
Circular Telegram From the Department of State to Certain Posts, October 22, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 79; 420 Circular
Telegram From the Department of State to Certain Posts, October 22, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 78.
421
CIA intelligence report “Sukarno and the Communists,” cited in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 138.
418
101
Towards a “Low-Posture” Rollback Approach
In mid-September, shortly after the second Indonesian paratrooper landing on the Malaysian coastline,
the CIA prepared a proposal for “a program of covert action aimed at affecting the current trend of
events.” The proposal stated that despite “a steady increasing strain in relations between Indonesia and
the U.S.” in the past two months, the United States still had relations with “good men in government, the
armed services and the private sector, who are willing to work for the things they believe in.” These men
had “demonstrated a capability for limited but effective clandestine political action” and recently
approached the U.S. Embassy for assistance “to fight communism in Indonesia.” The report summarized
that “U.S. policy toward Indonesia has been essentially constructive and forward-looking, predicated on
the concept of contributing to Indonesia's economic development.” Accordingly, the CIA’s covert
program had been limited to contacting and training “potential leader types” and engaging in “limited
harassment” of the Indonesian communist party. But to influence Indonesia’s domestic politics and
protect U.S. interests, the CIA believed that the time had come to intensify covert operations to “build up
strength among non-communist and anti-communist groups and organizations,” and to encourage “direct
action against the PKI.” The proposal stressed that “the purpose of the entire exercise is agitation and the
instigation of internal strife between communist and non-communist elements” and that later stages of
the action program were likely to move beyond “the framework of the existing policy” of outlasting
Sukarno instead of overthrowing him. The CIA recognized that the launch of such a program was “an
obvious risk,” but believed that “this risk must be taken.” Although some parts of the CIA paper have
been deleted, it is highly likely that the original source text contains the word coup. After all, as historian
Frederick Bunnell has noted, if the military wanted to move against the PKI, this “necessarily involve[ed]
some form of coup d’état whether with or without Sukarno's acquiescence.” 422
The CIA’s adoption of a rollback approach in Indonesia was hardly new, nor unique. Six years earlier,
during the Outer Island Rebellion, the Eisenhower administration had launched a covert operation against
Sukarno, as we now, with disastrous consequences. In NSC 5901 of January 1959 it was emphasized that
the United States, in providing military aid, should “give priority to requests for assistance in programs
and projects which offer opportunities to isolate the PKI, drive it into positions of open opposition to the
Indonesian government, thereby creating grounds for repressive measures politically justifiable in terms
of Indonesian national self-interest.” We have seen earlier that the exact same words were used in NSC
6023, prepared for the incoming Kennedy administration in December 1960.423 As John Prados observed,
“the number of military covert operations carried out by the United States reached its all-time high in
1964,” with the CIA’s Far East Division undertaking more of these operations than any of the of the five
422
Memorandum Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency for the Department of State, September 18, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v.
26, 76; Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 34. In fact, the word ‘coup’ is barely mentioned at all in the documents on U.S.
Indonesia-policy that have been released so far.
423
U.S. Policy on Indonesia,” NSC 5901, February 3, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, v. 17, 177; “U.S. Policy on Indonesia,” NSC 6023,
December 19, 1960, FRUS, 1958-1960, v. 17, 293. Kahin & Kahin correctly noted that this prescription “was to remain the hallmark of
American policy toward Indonesia for the next six years.” See Kahin & Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy, 211; “
102
other area divisions.424 But Washington’s covert operations were not limited to Asia alone. At the end of
March 1964, the CIA executed a similar operation in Brazil, where it assisted a group of right-wing
military officers in toppling the regime of João Goulart. Like Sukarno, Goulart advocated a policy of nonalignment and independent nationalist development to improve the lives of the poor, and like Sukarno’s
regime, Goulart’s regime challenged the position of foreign corporations, in particular those in the oil
branch, and that was of course a thorn in the flesh for the United States and its allies. Just as in Indonesia,
the United States cultivated close ties with the Brazilian military to destabilize the political center. It was
therefore not surprising that the Johnson administration recognized new military junta in Brazil within a
month of Goulart’s ouster.425
By the fall of 1964, the question was, as State Department analyst Thomas Hughes wondered, whether
“there [was] anything that would make [a] clash [between the Indonesian military and the PKI]
inevitable.”426 In previous months, Jones and other officials had repeatedly indicated to Indonesian
military officers that a move against Sukarno, the PKI, or both, would be backed by the United States.
Such hints were continuously replied with the story that the Indonesian military would not take half
measures if the PKI was going to make a bid for power continuously. However, the army stressed that it
“would always react, not act,” and that it would only do so when “its interests were acutely and obviously
threatened.”427 In the fall of 1964, NSC, CIA and State Department officials met numerous times to
discuss what the United States could do to provoke an army reaction. Komer and Jones continued
stressing the need of “preventative diplomacy” and argued that engagement with Sukarno and repeated
efforts to mediate in Konfrontasi would be far more effective than embarking on another risky covert
operation in the archipelago state, which, if it failed, could lead to a PKI victory and a break in relations.
But their opponents in the CIA and State Department, such as William Bundy, Marshall Green, and David
Cuthell, had ran out of patience with this strategy, hence they believed that action should be taken to halt
the PKI’s steady progress and change Indonesia’s political outlook decisively.428
After two months of meetings, U.S. policymakers ultimately agreed on a “Political Action” program
that entailed two important objectives. The first objective relied on the use of black propaganda and aimed
at creating “an image of the PKI as an increasingly ambitious, dangerous opponent of Sukarno and
legitimate nationalism.” To realize this goal, Washington would help anti-communist forces in the
“development of a broad-gauge ideological common denominator, preferably within the framework of
Sukarno's enunciated concepts, to which practically all political groupings in Indonesia except the PKI
424
CIA funds for political action and propaganda projects mushroomed sixty percent between 1964 and 1967. Roughly a third of the
fund were for the purpose of influencing foreign elections, about thirty percent were for media and propaganda projects, and about
twenty-three percent were to create or run secret armies or carry out covert weapons shipments. At that time, the Far East Division
employed approximately 6,000 officers. See Prados, Lost Crusader, 157-158.
425
See the South and Central American sections of FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 31, especially 181-244. See also Peter Kornbluh, ed., “Brazil
Marks 40th Anniversary of Military Coup. Declassified Documents Shed Light on U.S. Role,” George Washington University, National
Security Archive Briefing Book 118. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB118/.
426
Thomas Hughes quoted in Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder, 191.
427
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 141.
428
Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 31-41.
103
(and possibly outright dissidents) can adhere.” The second objective was to “encourage, coordinate, and
to the extent securely possible, covert assistance to, individuals and organizations prepared to take
obstructive action against the PKI.” This goal implied the need to identify, assess and monitor “antiregime elements” and other potential future leaders. The paper was approved by William Bundy at an
interagency meeting on November 19, two weeks after President Johnson’s landslide reelection victory
over Republican nominee Barry Goldwater.429 Even Komer, until then one of the strongest advocates of
an accommodationist approach towards Indonesia, commented that he was “thoroughly in favor,”
provided that local intelligence officers could assure that the program would be “launched discreetly and
with reasonably low risk of a backlash.”430
The endorsement of the “Political Action” paper marks the end of the accommodationist approach to
Indonesia and the start of what scholars have called a “low posture,” or “low silhouette,” rollback
strategy.431 Admittedly, in the months that followed, Jones and other officials still continued their efforts
to mediate an agreement that would diffuse Konfrontasi. However, such efforts were now largely
articulated in light of their possible impact on the covert action program. This is illustrated by a midNovember cable from Rusk to the Embassy in Jakarta in in which he asked whether the Indonesians
would “interpret U.S. initiatives to reopen talks at this point as proving validity [to] their thesis, and thus
harm rather than assist [the] anti-communist movement.”432 But the approval of the covert action program
also reflected an awareness of the limits of American power in the archipelago state and a willingness to
act regardless these limits. As William Bundy recalled, although U.S. policymakers realized that they had
to play with an “eight-high hand,” they were just as anxious to undertake action in order to halt what they
perceived as the PKI’s steady progress and Indonesia’s rapid leftwards drift. The trick was to play with
the eight-high hand effectively. The “Political Action” proposal, and the emphasis on a low posture
rollback approach, policymakers believed, offered the blueprint for that.433
It is worth stressing that Washington’s increased emphasis on covert action was mirrored by a similar
acceleration of British clandestine operations. As David Easter has observed, British officials began
discussing the option of increased covert action as early as 1963 “with the short term objective of
dissipating Indonesia’s military effort against Malaysia.” Towards the end of that year, the British
Overseas Policy Committee (DOPC) endorsed a clandestine operation effort which involved aid for rebels
in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, military action against Indonesian troops in Borneo, and a
propaganda and psychological warfare campaign directed from Malaysia and Singapore. As the CIA’s
covert action program, London’s propaganda efforts, initiated by the Foreign Office’s Information
Research Department (IRD) and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), or MI-6, aimed at “stirring up
429
Political Action Paper, November 19, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 86.
Note Prepared by Robert W. Komer of the National Security Staff, November 19, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 87.
431
Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 30; David Easter, “‘Keep the Indonesian Pot Boiling’: Western Covert Intervention in
Indonesia, October 1965–March 1966,” Cold War History 5, no. 1 (February 2005), 58; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 142.
432
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, November 19, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 84.
433
William Bundy quoted in Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 32.
430
104
dissension between different factions inside Indonesia” and eventually to “encourage anti-Communist
Indonesians to more vigorous action in the hope of crushing Communism in Indonesia altogether.”434
Curiously, the question of how to provoke a clash in Indonesia was also discussed with officials from
other countries. Britain’s Assistant Secretary of State Edward Peck suggested in November 1964 that
“there might be much to be said for encouraging a premature PKI coup during Sukarno’s lifetime.”
Responding to Peck a month later, New Zealand’s High Commissioner in Britain suggested that a
premature PKI coup “might be the most helpful solution for the West – provided the coup failed.” The
ideas reached as far as Pakistan, where a Dutch NATO intelligence officer was reported to have said that
the best strategy to provoke a clash in Indonesia was to stimulate a “premature communist coup…[which
would be] foredoomed to fail, providing a legitimate and welcome opportunity for the army to crush the
Communists and make Soekarno a prisoner of the army’s good will.” If that strategy worked out as
planned, he added, Indonesia would “fall into the Western lap like a rotten apple.”435
Surviving Indonesia’s “Year of Living Dangerously”
After Sukarno’s “Vivere Pericoloso” speech on August 17, 1964, United States-Indonesia relations
deteriorated to an historic low. As it was stated in an Intelligence Memorandum, the speech “charts a
course – both international and domestic – which is close to the immediate objectives of the Indonesian
Communist Party” of “get[ting] the US out of Southeast Asia.” Moreover, the Indonesian leader had
“deliberately chosen, on his own, to stand internationally with the anti-Western Asian world” and it
“appeared that Sukarno was no longer able to keep the communists in check.”436 Two months later, U.S.
strategists observed that Sukarno was moving “towards leftist totalitarianism” and that he was “likely to
ultimately bring Indonesia under Communist control.” Sukarno, they believed, was also working towards
limiting the power of the military, while the communists still needed the Indonesian leader in power for
the time being “to protect it while it consolidates its gains.”437 In late January 1965, the CIA assessed that
“the interests of the U.S. and Sukarno now conflict in nearly every quarter.” This was two weeks after
Secretary of State Dean Rusk had alarmed that “Sukarno dominates all others in [the] country” and that
the United States was facing the “cold possibility that before long Indonesia may be for all practical
purposes a Communist dictatorship.” As Rusk thought, “when events have progressed that far they will
be irreversible.”438
David Easter, “British and Malaysian covert support for rebel movements in Indonesia during the ‘confrontation’, 1963-1966,”
Intelligence and National Security 14, no. 4 (1999), 202; and “British Intelligence and Propaganda during the ‘Confrontation’, 19631966,” Intelligence and National Security 16, no. 2 (Summer 2001), 92-95.
435
Memo from Edward Peck on November 27, 1964, and Memo M.J.C. Templeton to Edward Peck, December 19, 1964, both quoted
in Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder, 190; Neville Maxwell, “CIA Involvement in the 1965 Military Coup: New Evidence from Neville
Maxwell,” letter to the editors, Journal of Contemporary Asia 9, no. 2 (January 1979), 252.
436
Current Intelligence Memorandum, August 20, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 62..
437
Political Action Paper, November 19, 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 86.
438
Dean Rusk quoted in McMahon, The Limits of Empire, 120.
434
105
The thorny question for U.S. policymakers in early 1965 was what they could do to halt or reverse
these alarming trends. The challenge was a huge one. As President Johnson massively escalated the war
effort in Vietnam, the administration was left with an increasingly limited number of policy options in
Indonesia. On March 8, the first American combat troops, two marine battalions consisting of 3,500 men,
landed on the beach of Danang. More marine units arrived in April and at the end of that month Johnson
officially declared Vietnam a “combat zone” for U.S. forces. In early May, the 173rd Airborne Brigade
came the first U.S. Army combat unit to be deployed in South Vietnam. On July 25, Johnson announced
that Washington would increase troop levels in South Vietnam up to 125.000 men, and at the end of July,
the 101st Airborne Division arrived in the country. Meanwhile, the number of air strikes against the North
increased, with Operation Rolling Thunder, Washington’s graduated bombing campaign that targeted
military installations in the North Vietnam and infiltration routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, starting
in March 1965.439 As the United States reached a “point of no return” in Vietnam, senior officials were
increasingly “swallowed up” by that conflict, leading to what Chester Cooper called a “benign neglect”
of Indonesia. However, for the United States to watch Indonesia turn to communism without making an
effort to stop it was unthinkable, and so they explored their final options.440
William Bundy once described U.S. Indonesia-policy in early 1965 as “no more than a sum of
decisions to act or not act in the face of unpredictable developments.”441 Many historians have simply
reiterated this characterization and then concluded that the Johnson administration’s policy towards
Indonesia was basically “reactive,” reflecting the role of passive bystander that battened down its hatches
to weather the storm while “waiting for the eventual dawning of a post-Sukarno era.”442 But this is a
wrong conclusion. The United States did batten down the hatches, but it was by no means a passive
bystander, even though its policy options were limited by the situations in Malaysia and Vietnam. As we
will see in the second part of this chapter, during the first half of 1965, the United States continued its
efforts to increase and exploit the social and political polarization in Indonesia and to provoke a violent
clash between the armed forces and the PKI or a military move against Sukarno. It did so by expanding
its program of covert action, while simultaneously reducing American visibility in the country. Although
Johnson at one point hinted to British officials that “should it become necessary, he would be ready for
major war against Indonesia, if she raises the stakes too high,” U.S. policymakers recognized that open
439
By the end of 1965, there were approximately 184,300 American ground troops in South Vietnam, a total that would grow to almost
half a million within two years. By the end of the Rolling Thunder Campaign in December 1967, there were some 864,00 tons of
American bombs dropped in North Vietnam, but this was only a fraction of what was been dropped on Cambodia and Laos, with the
latter, per capita, still being the most heavily bomb country on earth. See Mark Philip Bradley, Vietnam At War (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2009), 111; Ang Cheng Guan, Southeast Asia and the Vietnam War (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 24;
Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Bomb After Bomb: US Air Power and Crimes From World War II to the Present,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol.
10, issue 47, no. 3 (November 19, 2012), available at http://www.japanfocus.org/-Jeremy-Kuzmarov/3855/article.pdf.
440
Chester Cooper cited in Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 31. For an interesting treatment of the remaining policy options
in Indonesia in early 196, see the 1976 article “Gestapu: The CIA’s “Track Two” in Indonesia” from David Johnson of the Center for
Defense Information. The article, written to encourage Congressional investigation of the CIA’s activities in Indonesia in 1965-1966 by
the Church Committee, was circulated privately but never published. Available at: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/54b/033.html
(accessed January 20, 2014).
441
William Bundy’s foreword in Green, Crisis and Transformation, xii.
442
McMahon, The Limits of Empire, 123.
106
military intervention in Indonesia to prevent a communist victory was no option given the rapidly
expanding military commitment in Indochina.443 Instead, they believed that by assuming a low profile
and scaling up clandestine operations they could still achieve their minimum objective of halting
Indonesia’s steady turn towards the left, after which the tide could perhaps be turned to Washington’s
favor.
Indonesia’s Political Polarization
During 1965, as political scientists Harold Crouch has observed, Indonesian politics became “more
polarized than ever before as President Sukarno aligned himself more openly with the PKI against the
army leadership, while the PKI’s moves were increasingly directed against the army itself.” Meanwhile,
the Indonesian President continued to sever relations with the West, all against the backdrop of an
accelerated economic decline caused by Konfrontasi and bitter political struggles within Indonesia.444
While they explored their limited options, the West and U.S. officials were also posed with a number of
other challenges: on top of the above mentioned developments, Indonesia broadened its confrontation
with the West, withdrew from the United Nations and aligned itself tacitly with China and North Vietnam.
Since the early 1960s, the PKI’s strength and activities had grown considerably. In 1963, the PKI had
launched a Unilateral Action campaign, involving the mass mobilization of peasants to implement land
reform legislation. PKI chairman Aidit anticipated intense opposition to the program, in particular from
the armed forces and Muslim organizations, which would both lose real estate if the law was successfully
implemented, but nevertheless continued with what historian Rex Mortimer called a communist attempt
“for command of the villages.”445 A year later, the PKI also demanded an intensification of Konfrontasi,
greater political representation, and suppression of the party’s opponents. In August 1964, Aidit suggested
that Sukarno’s ideology of Pancasila – a political philosophy that comprised the principle of religion,
civilization, unity, democracy, and social justice – was no longer necessary after Indonesia achieved its
unity. This upset important sections of the Indonesian National Party, the small Murba Party, various
Muslim groups, and anti-communist media outlets, who then decided to form the “Body to Promote
Sukarnoism” (BPS). The purpose of BPS, Adam Malik explained, was to spread Sukarno’s political
philosophy, but the organization quickly became a vehicle for anti-communist rhetoric. In late 1964, BPS
had a student movement and the support of the largest legal Muslim party, the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU),
the National Party, the army-affiliated SOKSI union, and numerous army leaders and civilian officials,
including Foreign Minister Subandrio. The PKI denounced the BPS as a mortal threat to the nation
because it believed that the movement’s intension was to divide the Indonesian people.446
U.S. Embassy officials saw the BPS as a useful ally and as one of the few organized attempts by
civilian moderates to halt the PKI’s advance. Unfortunately, the movement collapsed in December 1964.
443
See Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 278.
Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 94.
445
Mortimer, Indonesian Communism Under Sukarno, 277.
446
Pauker, “Indonesia in 1964: Toward a “People’s Democracy”?,” Asian Survey 5, no. 2 (February 1964), 88-97.
444
107
Subandrio and the PNI had always felt doubts about the BPS’s intentions and after they withdrew their
support they urged Sukarno to disband the organization. The Indonesian leader did so on December 17,
after he had received “secret information that reveals that the CIA was using the Body for the promotion
of Sukarnoism op kill Sukarnoism and Sukarno.”447 A few days later, Sukarno also banned the small
Murba Party and a number of anti-PKI newspapers. Most significant, however, was his dramatic and
sudden decision at the end of 1964 to leave the United Nations. The immediate reason for Sukarno’s
withdrawal was that Malaysia was allowed to take a seat on the U.N. Security Council. But earlier events
had already convinced him that the U.N. was merely presenting the interests of the “Old Established
Forces.” Sukarno called instead for the creation of a “Conference of the New Emerging Forces”
(CONEFO). But this was not the only demonstration that he was serious in his ambition to abandon
traditional and established Western principles of international relations. Earlier, in November 1963,
Jakarta had hosted the “Games of the Newly Emerging Forces” (GANEFO), an alternative for the
Olympic Games.448
For years, Jakarta cultivated close relations with Moscow, but by 1963 it began to move closer to
Beijing. This tilt away from the Soviet Union reflected Indonesia’s growing confrontation with the West
and marked a turning point in the Sino-Soviet split. The rapidly deepening relationship was demonstrated
by an exchange of numerous visits. In early November, shortly after China exploded its first atomic
device, Sukarno visited Beijing, where Mao and Zhou urged him to intensify Konfrontasi, endorsed his
CONEFO plans, and offered him limited military support.449 A few weeks later, Chinese foreign minister
Chen Yi visited Jakarta, after which Subandrio returned to Beijing in January 1965. British officials
observed that Subandrio was accompanied by more than thirty economic experts and military advisers
and that over sixty Chinese economic advisers made the reverse trip to Indonesia. At the end of these
talks, the countries issued a joint statement expressing “a mutual desire to strengthen friendly contacts in
the military field.”450 Beijing’s interest in deepening relations with Jakarta also reflected a growing
Chinese self-confidence. Chinese officials recognized early on that Southeast Asian leaders viewed
“China’s today” as “Southeast Asia’s tomorrow,” and this surely counted for Sukarno, who aspired
China’s unique experience in establishing a policy of self-reliance and economic recovery.451 But as U.S.
strategists assessed, Sukarno’s turn towards Beijing was also motivated by his belief that the United States
“Sukarno Rules Out Freedom for Press; Bars Anti-Red Voice,” New York Times, February 24, 1965.
Justus M. van der Kroef, “Indonesian Communism and the Changing Balance of Power,” Pacific Affairs 37, no. 4 (Winter 19641965), 357-383; Iain Adams, “Pancasila: Sport and the Building of Indonesia – Ambitions and Obstacles,” The International Journal of
the History of Sport, 19, no. 2 (June-September 2002), 295-318.
449
Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno, 132.
450
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 149; Zhou, “Chinese Policy Toward Indonesia,” 19; Seymour Topping, On The Front Lines of the
Cold War: An American Correspondent’s Journal from the Chinese Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 2010), 282.
451
Chen Yi quoted in Hong Liu, “The Historicity of China’s Soft Power: The PRC and the Cultural Politics of Indonesia, 1945-1965”
(chapter 7) in: Zheng Yangwen, Hong Liu and Michael Szonyi, eds., The Cold War in Asia: The Battle for Hearts and Minds (Leiden:
Brill, 2010), 156.
447
448
108
and China would soon be at war, after which Washington would probably be willing to pay a much higher
price to keep Indonesia neutral.452
It is worth stressing that China’s Indonesia-policy was driven more by the geopolitical imperatives of
the Sino-Soviet split and the American war in Vietnam than by Sukarno’s increasingly leftwards drift.
When Subandrio met with Zhou Enlai in Guangzhou in May 1965, he was told by the latter that Beijing
believed that the Vietnam War would extend to China and that it was therefore preparing itself for this
event.453 For this reason, P.R.C. leaders also expressed their support for PKI militants, who distanced
themselves from Moscow and began calling for an armed “Fifth Force” of workers and peasants. Soviet
officials viewed the increasingly close Sino-Indonesian alliance with distress. Moscow responded to the
Indonesia’s turn towards the P.R.C. by offering aid to the Indonesian army, which it viewed as an
important counterweight to the Beijing-oriented PKI. In early 1964, the Soviet embassy in Indonesia
approvingly quoted Muslim leaders, who had stated that the “PKI is working against the Soviet Union
and the Soviet Union is a friend of Indonesia. Therefore [the] PKI should be taken care of.”454
If we take a look at U.S. strategic assessments of the 1950s and 1960s, we get different impressions
of whether it was the Soviet Union or China that was posing the greatest threat to American interests, but
by late 1964, American policymakers unquestionably viewed Mao as their most dangerous geopolitical
rival. In October that year, Beijing had managed to explode its first nuclear bomb, after which Sukarno
hinted that Indonesia might explode an atomic device itself within a year, though presumably with
Chinese assistance.455 One month later, Forrestal wrote to William Bundy that “Communist China shares
the same political necessity for ideological expansion today that the Soviet Union did during the time of
the Comintern and the period just following the Second World War.” Forrestal suggested that the United
States should “contain China for the longest possible period” and “delay China’s swallowing up [of]
Southeast Asia…until she develops better table manners and…the food is somewhat more
indigestible.”456 The press also did its part in creating the impression that China was a dangerous rival. In
early 1965, the New York Times published numerous articles on Beijing’s “nightmare alliance” with
Jakarta, whereby Sukarno was described as “the other Asian problem” and the Indonesia – not North
Vietnam – as “the most dangerous threat to the peace and stability of Southeast Asia outside of China
itself.”457
Brands, “The Limits of Manipulation,” 798.
Memo of Conversation between Zhou Enlai and the Indonesian First Prime Minister Subandrio, May 28, 1965, CWIHP Virtual
Archive, available at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113062. See also Jian Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 217.
454
See Westad, The Global Cold War, 187-188.
455
Robert M. Cornejo, “When Sukarno Sought the Bomb: Indonesian Nuclear Aspirations in the Mid-1960s,” The Nonproliferation
Review (Summer 2000), 31-43. See also Zhou, “Chinese Policy Toward Indonesia,” 19-20.
456
Michael Forrestal quoted in Leslie H. Gelb and Richard K. Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (Washington DC: The
Brookings Institution, 1979), 107.
457
Seth S. King, “Sukarno Moves to Peking,” New York Times, January 17, 1965; “Bond with Red China Cited by Sukarno,” New York
Times, February 3, 1965; Neil Sheehan, “Indonesia: Looking Toward China,” New York Times, February 7, 1965.
452
453
109
Sukarno’s rapidly deteriorating and widely published health problems and the uncertainty this created
with regard to his succession added further to the grim political atmosphere in Indonesia. By early 1965,
the CIA observed that an intense “scramble for succession” among possible contenders was beginning to
take place. Within the armed forces, Nasution and Yani were often mentioned as likely successors, yet
they were unable to unite an increasingly fractured military. Within the civilian realm, Chaerul Saleh,
Adam Malik, and Subandrio were seen as important candidates, but they relied on either the PKI or the
military for support. Neither of the candidates thus seemed strong enough to make a bid for power at this
stage, but U.S. officials assessed that “should Sukarno leave the scene in the near future, we believe that
the initial struggle to replace him would be won by Army and non-Communist elements.” It was
nevertheless expected that the communists would “continue to play an important role” and that a new
anti-communist government “would probably continue to be anti-U.S., xenophobic, and a threat to
peace.”458
Johnson administration officials continued discussing ways to turn the tide to their favor, but the range
of available options narrowed by the day as the steady cutoff of U.S. aid and the deterioration of the
situation in Vietnam continued. For some officials, this increased the appeal of covert action in Indonesia.
As the U.S. ambassador to Malaysia James Bell reasoned, “if [a] showdown over Communist influence
in Indo[nesia] is really imminent as [it] appears may be [the] case…[and] if we still believe [the] army
[is the] best bet to keep Indo[nesia] out of Communist hands,” then why not “reach completely reliable
Indo[nesian] military with assurances that GOM and Commonwealth would refrain from interference at
least unless it becomes apparent PKI going to come out on top?” According to Bell, it was the fear of a
British attack that made the military hesitant to move against Sukarno.459 But Jones did not agree with
this assessment, arguing that the military’s reluctance to act stemmed from a lack of internal unity.
“Unless we [are] certain [the] army would be receptive to our initiative,” Jones believed, the United States
should refrain from such moves as it could be seen as an “unwarranted attempt [to] interfere internally.”
Moreover, “there are other things we can and should try first.” A few days later, the U.S. ambassador to
Indonesia nevertheless telegrammed the State Department that high-ranking military officers had
informed him that the army was preparing “specific plans for the takeover of the government” for the
moment “Sukarno steps off stage.” In fact, there was already “strong sentiment [among an] important
segment of [the] top military command” that favored moving sooner rather than later, and perhaps even
before Sukarno’s demise.460
Jones must have felt acutely ambivalent in early 1965 as it seemed more and more that his efforts to
strengthen relations with Sukarno were culminating into the opposite of what he had always intended: a
virtual cold war and freeze in relations. To avoid this outcome, he continued to push for options that could
possibly turn the tide, one of which was an eleventh-hour meeting between President Johnson and
458
Special Memorandum Prepared by the Director of the Office of National Estimates of the Central Intelligence Agency (Kent), January
26, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 103.
459
George Bell quoted in Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 34-35.
460
Howard Jones quoted in ibid., 35.
110
President Sukarno. Personal diplomacy had worked during the Kennedy years, Jones thought, and he now
saw it as the only way to halt Indonesia’s anti-Americanism and reverse the country’s steady turn towards
the left.461 Surprisingly, the ambassador got the support of Dean Rusk. In a letter to President Johnson
and British Prime Minister Wilson, the Secretary of State proposed a presidential meeting with Sukarno
in addition to Japanese mediation of an Afro-Asian conference to ease Konfrontasi. Rusk was aware of
the sensitivity of his suggestions and recognized that they might be as fruitless as all other efforts that had
been made so far, but he believed that “Sukarno is today Indonesia” and that the West “should explore
every possible avenue to reach him and influence him as a man.”462 Rusk’s attempt was indeed in vain.
Wilson immediately replied that he saw nothing in a meeting with Sukarno, whom he hated as much as
Johnson did.463 Hard-liners in Washington were equally cynical about a presidential meeting. As Marshall
Green wrote to William Bundy, who strongly supported the approach proposed by Bell, a presidential
meeting with Sukarno would be “sheer folly” and an “open invitation for others to the emulate [Sukarno’s
actions].”464
Battening Down the Hedges: the Bunker Mission and the Anti-American Period
As U.S. officials discussed the issue of a presidential meeting, NSC staffer James C. Thomson suggested
to McGeorge Bundy to send Michael Forrestal to Jakarta to “test the climate” for a “lower visibility” of
Washington’s presence.465 Bundy agreed and asked Forrestal to stop in Indonesia as part of a wider trip
through Southeast Asia. Within weeks of Forrestal’s arrival, the anti-American atmosphere in Indonesia
worsened to new levels. On February 15, 1965, thousands of PKI demonstrators occupied and seized the
USIA library in Jakarta. The following days, leftist protesters entered and damaged the U.S. consulate in
Medan as well as USIA facilities in Jogjakarta and Surabaya, while one group of students even forced
their way into the ambassador’s residence. Following these events, Rusk assessed that the United States
had reached a “critical watershed” in its relations with Indonesia. Carl Rowan, the Director of the U.S.
Information Agency (USIA), now pushed for a cut off of all remaining aid and the ambassador’s recall. 466
But Jones wondered whether a harsh reaction would work. In his view, the United States lacked the
“capacity for retaliation against Indo[nesia],” and even if it had that capability and decided to use it, it
would probably only worsen the situation, “perhaps to the breaking point.”467
461
Telegram 1358 from Jakarta to State, January 14, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 99, footnote 3. McGeorge Bundy replied that the
proposal “is interesting,” but not wholly persuasive. He opined that it would be better to send Vice President Herbert Humphrey to
Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Manila.
462
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy of the United Kingdom, January 25, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 102.
463
Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson, January 30, 1965,
FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 104.
464
Note From the Deputy Assistant of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Green) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs
(Bundy), January 20, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 100.
465
Memorandum From James C. Thomson, Jr., of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs (Bundy), January 16, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 99.
466
Memorandum From Director of the United States Information Agency Rowan to Secretary of State Rusk, February 18, 1965, FRUS,
1964-1968, v. 26, 106.
467
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, February 20, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 108; Telegram
From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, February 22, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 109.
111
Shortly after, Jones spoke with Sukarno, but this could not prevent that the latter ordered the closure
of all remaining USIA libraries and reading rooms and banned Time, Life, and Newsweek magazines from
Indonesia. Forrestal also met with the Indonesian leader after which he made the conclusion that it was
perhaps best to “reduce our presence temporarily” to avoid further harassments of American interests in
Indonesia. As Forrestal noted, “one of the prices we have to pay for our actions in Viet-Nam is a certain
amount of flak in Djakarta.” The war in Vietnam, he believed, had “had a very salutary effect on
confrontation in both K.L. and Indonesia.” Jones agreed with Forrestal’s observation, including the
latter’s assessment that “most Indonesian leaders wanted a resolution of the Malaysian problem.”
However, Jones believed that it was primarily due to internal pressures from the PKI that it was “difficult
for Sukarno to follow through on his desire for détente.”468
As stated earlier, the Indonesian military had its own reasons for Konfrontasi, hence it continued to
infiltrate and launch attacks on the Malaysian mainland, albeit in a way that would not prove a fierce
British response. Despite these relatively limited actions, the Johnson administration now viewed
Indonesia as a threat to Southeast Asia and America’s interests region-wide. When Rusk met with British
Foreign Minister Patrick Gordon Walker in early March, he said that President Johnson had come to the
conclusion that “at the end of the day, should it become necessary, he would be ready for major war
against Indonesia, if she raises the stakes too high.” Moreover, the Secretary of State also assured his
British counterpart that the United States would “back you to the hilt if necessary and hope[s] for your
support on Vietnam,” because of the ANZUS treaty and “because of our relationship with you.”469 This
all took place two days before the first American combat troops landed at Danang, in South Vietnam.
Meanwhile, anti-American actions in Indonesia continued. When the United States pulled its USIA
installations out of Indonesia, the PKI shifted its attention to U.S. private installations. At the end of
February, it made an attempt to seize U.S. Rubber plantations in North Sumatra, an event that invoked
efforts in Washington to halt all further rubber imports from the archipelago state. Shortly after, the PKI
covered the headquarters of Caltex with graffiti. That the Indonesian communists decided to stop at this
point had probably to do with the fact that if anything happened to the oil installations, this would inflict
a heavy reaction of the Indonesian military. But U.S. officials still feared that the seizure of American oil
companies would be a matter of time. As George Ball told McGeorge Bundy by telephone on March 15,
“Indonesia was moving very rapidly in the wrong direction and picking up a certain amount of
momentum,” which, “in the long run, may be more important to us than S[outh]-V[ietnam].”470
Due to the deterioration of United States-Indonesia relations, the State Department indicated to the
Embassy in Jakarta that the United States must “reduce [the] American presence in Indonesia beyond
cutting the USIS program.” It suggested “quiet and undramatic” reductions, including a prompt close-out
468
Letter From Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to the Ambassador to Indonesia (Jones), February 19, 1965,
FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 107.
469
Dean Rusk quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 278 (including footnote 29).
470
Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between the Under Secretary of State (Ball) and Director of Central Intelligence (McCone),
March 14, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 117.
112
of AID, the Peace Corps, and the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG). Jones agreed, but
stressed that it was important to maintain a small defense liaison staff and a residual civic action liaison
to keep the U.S. mission in Indonesia “more water tight and storm worthy.”471 Ball explained to Johnson
that a “reduction or even removal of our presence would not mean turning the country over to the
communists.” Instead, “it is more likely to mean a sharpened confrontation between the Communist Party
and anti-Communists in the country.” In addition, he suggested to send the future U.S. ambassador to
South Vietnam, Ellsworth Bunker, as a special missionary to Jakarta for “a fresh and objective reading
of the situation” and perhaps as one last attempt at repairing relations with Sukarno.472
Bunker, who had earned the respect of many Indonesians due to his mediation efforts in the West New
Guinea peace talks, traveled to Jakarta at the end of March. Accompanied by hard-liner David Cuthell,
Bunker’s mission was to assess Sukarno’s intentions, the state of the Indonesian political power balance,
and what Washington could do to avoid further harassment and improve relations.473 During two weeks,
Bunker spoke with numerous Indonesian leaders and officials of the U.S. Embassy. Bunker also met
several times with Nasution and with Sukarno, who stressed that he was still willing to repair relations
and make an to end Konfrontasi, but also added that the Indonesian revolution would continue regardless
the situation in Malaysia. Within days of Bunker’s arrival, the Indonesian leader reshuffled his cabinet,
elevating the influence of Subandrio at the costs of Chaerul Saleh and Adam Malik.474 In addition, he
signed a decree ordering the nationalization of the National Cash Register Company, one of the oldest
American firms in Indonesia. But this was not all: when Bunker returned to Washington, Sukarno
announced the management takeover of all foreign enterprise in Indonesia. Shortly after, workers seized
the headquarters of Singer Sewing Machine Company, while the Indonesian Peace Corps decided to
withdraw after months of repeated provocations.475
At the end of his trip, Bunker had come to the conclusion that U.S. relations with Indonesia were
“unlikely to improve in the near future.” Apart from the Indonesian leader’s dissatisfaction with U.S.
support for Malaysia and the American intervention in Vietnam, Bunker listed a number of other
“ostensibly reasons advanced by Sukarno for the deterioration Indo[nesia]-U.S. relations,” including:
(a) Sukarno's ambition to solidify the Afro-Asian nations in a struggle of the NEFOS (New Emerging
Forces) against the OLDEFOS (Old Established Forces) and to occupy himself a dominant position in the
struggle;
(b) Characterization of the West as representative of neo-colonialism and imperialism (NEKOLIM),
therefore as the enemy of the newly independent countries. The U.S. as the most powerful leader of the
developed countries is identified as enemy No. 1;
471
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, March 8, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 115; Simpson,
Economists with Guns, 153-154.
472
Ball quoted Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 40; Memorandum From the Undersecretary of State (Ball) to President
Johnson, March 18, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 118.
473
Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) and James C. Thomson, Jr., of the
National Security Council Staff to President Johnson, March 24, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 119.
474
Neil Sheehan, “Sukarno Demotes 2 Anti-Red Aides,” New York Times, April 1, 1965.
475
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 155.
113
(c) The influence of the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia), which looks to Peking for inspiration and
whose avowed purpose is to drive the U.S. out of Indonesia;
(d) Sukarno's proclaimed Marxism and his avowed intention of doing away with capitalism in the process
of socializing Indonesia;
(e) Sukarno's view that creation of national unity and a sense of national identity are more important than
economic development; hence his emphasis on the “romanticism of revolution”, and external issues to
involve the emotional response of his people;
(f) Sukarno's confidence that he can bend the PKI to his will; hence his emphasis on NASOKOM, the
unification of the national, the religious and the communist elements into a national consensus;
(g) Sukarno's mystical belief in his own destiny, hence his conviction that it is his mission to lead his
country to unity and power; and because of doubts about his health, to accelerate the process.
In Bunker’s view, it was obvious that Indonesia “has undertaken a policy to identify the United States
as its principal enemy.” In his report for President Johnson, he recommended to phase out the programs
that had become the target or protests, but to maintain a small AID staff and military advisory group, of
course to maintain relations with the army. In addition, he urged for the completion of army’s fixed
communication system to demonstrate Washington’s commitment to the Indonesian military. Bunker
believed that the United States should still continue playing for the “long-term stakes” and thus maintain
relations with elements of strength, including the armed forces, the police and other anti-communist
organizations. It was best, Bunker believed, if Washington reduced its “visibility” so that “those opposed
to the communists…may be free to handle a confrontation…without being attacked as defenders [of] the
neo-colonialists and imperialists,” that is the United States and its allies. The bottom-line of Bunker’s
report was the following: although “Indonesia essentially have to safe itself,” the United States could still
help the country by “creating conditions which will give the elements of potential strength the most
favorable conditions for confrontation.”476
A Spring Full of Coup Rumors and Washington’s Final preparations for Rollback
Bunker’s mission to Jakarta was followed with some ease in relations, during which the Johnson
administration had the time to find a replacement for Howard Jones, who was retiring to become the dean
of the East West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. Jones successor became Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
for Far Eastern Affairs Marshall Green, who also happened to be one of Jones’ strongest criticizers.
Frederick Bunnell noted that Green’s appointment “marked the final consolidation of the low posture
coalition’s ascendancy in the Indonesia policy group.”477 After all, Green was known for being an Asian
“trouble shooter” and “coup master,” a reputation he had earned in the early 1960s, when he was U.S.
ambassador to South Korea and Park Chung Hee assumed power there through a military coup.478 Many
Report From Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker to President Johnson, undated, and Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant
for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson, April 26, 1965, both in FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 121 and 122.
477
Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 51.
478
In 1969, Green would become President Richard Nixon’s Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern and Pacific Affairs, and in that
capacity he was involved in the 1970 military coup against Prince Sihanouk in Cambodia. Green would later also set out the basic
parameters for the “Vietnamization” of the U.S. war in Vietnam, and play a key role in Nixon’s historical visit to Beijing. After that he
helped to ease relations between China and Washington’s Asian allies in the Asia-Pacific. See James Curran, “Marshall Green:
476
114
Indonesians must have viewed Green’s appointment as a sign that Washington had given up its belief of
improving relations with Sukarno. Green’s arrival in Jakarta in July 1965 was accompanied with signs of
“Green Go Home.” In his first memos, Green argued that United States “should prepare for a break in
diplomatic relations with Indonesia” because “Sukarno is deliberately promoting Communism’s cause in
Indonesia” and “clearly identified [the] U.S. as enemy.” The new ambassador gave credence to his
reputation by stating that “to leave [Indonesia] without having a real showdown with Sukarno, would, in
my opinion, be a mistake.”479
In the months until Green’s arrival in early July, Deputy Chief of Mission Francis Galbraith was
leading the Embassy, where he concentrated on dismantling American assistance programs and reducing
the size of the American community in Indonesia from 400 in April to only 35 in August.480 Meanwhile,
U.S. intelligence officers continued their covert activities aimed at provoking a clash between the PKI
and Indonesian military. At the end of February 1965, the 303 Committee discussed the progress that had
been made with regard to the “Political Action” program, which it had adopted in November 1964. The
conclusion was that things were going into the right direction: “some funds” had already been given
“through secure mechanisms” to key persons to bolster their abilities and firmness. It was also stated,
however, that a number of additional activities could be meaningful, such as “covert liaison with and
support to existing anti-Communist groups…black letter operations, media operations, including [the]
possibly [of] black radio, and political action within existing Indonesian organizations and institutions”
to exploit “factionalism within the PKI.” One CIA officer, whose name is unknown, stressed that it was
important to continue the covert program because “the loss of 105 million to the “Communist Camp”
would make a victory in Vietnam of little meaning.” On March 4, the updated proposal was approved by
McGeorge Bundy.481 Five days later, at the Chiefs of Mission Conference in Baguio, even Jones pondered
the need for covert action in Indonesia. “From our viewpoint,” he stated, “an unsuccessful coup attempt
by the PKI might be the most effective development to start a reversal of political trend in Indonesia.”482
As the United States scaled-up its clandestine operations in Indonesia, Sukarno became increasingly
convinced that the CIA was “out of control.” Forrestal believed that the Indonesian leader exaggerated
his concerns and told him that he was “reading the wrong books,” with which he probably referred to the
America’s Mr. Asia,” American Review 12 (November 2013), 56; John Pilger, “The British-American Coup that ended Australian
independence,” The Guardian, October 23, 2014.
479
Memorandum From the Director, Far East Region (Blouin) to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs
(McNaughton), August 3, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 129; Memorandum From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of
State, August 23, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 135; Green, Indonesia: Crisis and Transformation, 35.
480
In these months, the Embassy became essentially a “listening post.” The core elements of the country team savvied the drastic
reduction. The CIA maintained its staff of twelve, including its full complement of eight clandestine operatives responsible for
intelligence collection and covert action. The top person in the Embassy’s political section and the military attaches remained as well.
Under Marshall Green and Deputy Chief of Mission Francis Galbraith, Edward Masters was the political counselor, responsible for
managing the political section of the Embassy. Colonel Benson, who served the ambassador as special assistant for Civic Action and,
like Guy Pauker, cultivated close ties with key figures in the Indonesian military, left Jakarta in June 1965. Bunnell, “American “Low
Posture” Policy,” 48, 50-51.
481
Memorandum Prepared for the 303 Committee, February 23, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 110.
482
Howard Jones quoted in Kahin and Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy, 225. Shortly after, Jones wrote William Bundy that he was
“privy to plans for a coup” in Indonesia. Editorial Note, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 120. See also Prados, Lost Crusader, 148-149.
115
provocative 1964 bestseller The Invisible Government by David Wise and Thomas B. Ross.483 The
Johnson administration took Sukarno’s concerns more seriously and, on Jones urging, it issued a public
denial that it was trying to overthrow or kill the Indonesian president. But this did not take away Sukarno’s
concerns. On the contrary, more and more rumors on an upcoming coup swept through the streets of
Jakarta in the spring of 1965. Clashes between anti-communist forces and PKI sympathizers throughout
Java, Sumatra and Bali seemed to confirm Sukarno’s concerns. The clashes were sparked by disputes
over land, but turned increasingly religious-toned when various Muslim activists accused the PKI of
opposing and attacking Islam. Reports on the formation of an army “council of generals,” spread by the
PKI in mid-April, added yet further to the rumor-filled climate in the archipelago state.484
Sukarno’s concerns and suspicions were eminently justified. As the United States accelerated its
covert action in Indonesia, army leaders in the country were making preparations for a coup against
Sukarno, an end to which they quietly formed an “advisory commission on PKI activity.”485 U.S. officials
were being informed about the army’s plans, despite the fact that the Office of Public Safety program as
well as Colonel George Benson, who had headed the Indonesian Civic Action program, had to pick up
and leave in the summer of 1965.486 Meanwhile, Britain also stepped up its military and covert operations
in the country. In March, the British ambassador to Indonesia, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, called for the
appointment of a “political warfare coordinator” at the Information Research Department in Singapore.
The post was approved three months later and it was Norman Reddaway who was selected for the
position. Reddaway’s task was to coordinate British propaganda and political and psychological warfare
aimed creating even more unrest in Indonesia.487 In that he was successful. As Galbraith later summarized
this period, “we had rumors and reports almost every day of some kind of coup and this became such a
flood of things that it was very hard to separate the truth from fiction.”488
Throughout the spring and summer of 1965, the steady continuation of Indonesian military actions in
Malaysia and Kalimantan, and British eagerness to react forcefully to these actions, created new problems
for the United States in its relation with Britain. Only a year earlier, the Johnson administration had
expressed little to no objections when London stepped up its military actions against Indonesia, but now
it strongly opposed a military attack by Britain, which hoped to end the conflict decisively. In late July,
Green and other officials urged their British counterparts to “resist confrontation only to [the] minimum
extent necessary [to] prevent escalation.” Gilchrist even suggested “to encourage the break-up of
Indonesia as perhaps the only means of securing a respite from Confrontation.”489
483
David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, The Invisible Government (New York: Random, 1964).
“U.S. Denies It Supports Any Anti-Sukarno Group,” New York Times, February 24, 1965; Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia
to the Department of State, February 24, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 111; Mortimer, Indonesian Communism Under Sukarno, 317;
Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy, 33.
485
Mortimer, Indonesian Communism Under Sukarno, 386; Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno,” 260
486
See Editorial Note, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 120.
487
Easter, “British Intelligence and Propaganda during the ‘Confrontation’,” 94.
488
Galbraith quoted in Brands, “The Limits of Manipulation,” 801.
489
Green and Galbraith, both quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 160.
484
116
Gilchrist’s proposal brought an old option, disremembering Indonesia, back into the spotlights. In
February 1963, Lord Douglas Home had already expressed that “it would be pretty easy to stir up revolt
against Sukarno” in Sulawesi and Sumatra, a region that “could be pinched off quite easily.” In
Washington, it was Rusk who mentioned the option of Indonesia’s break-up. At Kennedy’s funeral, he
said to British Prime Minister that “it would be much better to avoid getting entangled in an area of
Sukarno’s own choosing” and wondered “why could not something be done in Sumatra?” A few months
later, he suggested to British Foreign Minister Butler that “a little war planning for other areas might
usefully be done behind the scenes.”490 But Rusk was not the first American official who suggested the
break-up of Indonesia. Already in the early 1950s, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles broached the
subject of dismembering Indonesia to avoid the country becoming “the greatest loss since the fall of
China.”491
As the hopes of working with Sukarno evaporated and as it became increasingly certain that
Konfrontasi and Indonesia’s steady turn towards the left would continue, officials in Washington and
London paid considerable attention to contingency planning aimed at disintegrating Indonesia. Sumatra,
with its wealth of oil, tin and other resources, was thereby seen as the greatest prize. Dismembering
Indonesia was an important back-up option in case the covert action program failed. To this end,
Washington closely monitored the increasing unrest in Indonesia’s outer islands, Sumatra, Celebes, and
Kalimantan, where British and Malaysian officials were secretly offering assistance to regional rebels
since the summer of 1964.492 Given the mutual interests in preventing a communist takeover in Indonesia,
it is highly likely that British and American policymakers were discussing contingency plans together.
British officials, David Easter noted, considered to make “a determined effort to break up Indonesia
because, however chaotic and unstable the consequences, this would be preferable to a strong and
menacing communist state of 100 million people.”493 At the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, it was particularly
Francis Galbraith who advocated the break-up of Indonesia in the event of a PKI takeover or a further
escalation of Konfrontasi. Galbraith recommended the White House to “be alert to development [of]
potential for meaning dissidents,” particularly in Java and the outer islands, and to “be prepared [to] move
rapidly in support [of the] army should Sukarno-PKI pressures on army leaders or other occurrences
precipitate [an] army revolt against Sukarno.” In this regard, Galbraith ignored an important conclusion
490
Douglas Home quoted in Easter, Britain and Confrontation, 33; Rusk quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 227 and 263.
When Hugh Cumming travelled to Jakarta in October 1953 to become the new U.S. ambassador there, he was told by Dulles: “don’t
tie yourself irrevocably to a policy of preserving the unity of Indonesia. The territorial integrity of China became a shibboleth. We finally
got a territorially integrated China – for whose benefit? The Communists.” If he could choose between “a territorially united Indonesia
which is leaning and progressing toward Communism and a breakup of that country into racial and geographical units,” Dulles said, “I
would prefer the latter.” See Kahin and Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy, 75; Aandstad, “Surrendering to Symbols,” I. The topic of
supporting the dissolution of Indonesia was also brought up in May 1957, when the Outer Island Rebellion took place. See Memorandum
From the Deputy Director of the Office of Southwest Pacific Affairs (Mein) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs
(Robertson), FRUS, 1955-1957, v. 22, 230.
492
Memorandum From Chester L. Cooper of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs (Bundy), March 13, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 116, footnote 4; Easter, “British and Malaysian Covert Support,”
195.
493
Easter, “British and Malaysian Covert Support,” 205.
491
117
of the Bunker mission, which had stressed in his report for President Johnson that “because the ideal of
national unity is an overriding obsession with practically all Indonesians, stronger by far than any real
divisive regional feeling, we should avoid becoming involved in efforts to split off Sumatra or other areas
from Indonesia.”494
The Escalating Tensions in the Summer of 1965
Throughout the summer, Indonesia’s steady turn towards the left continued. In May, Chaerul Saleh
announced that the archipelago state would no longer permit foreign investments and that it would
replace all foreign managers with Indonesian ones, of which some were so unqualified that this only
further accelerated the country’s economic problems. Meanwhile, the PKI continued demanding the
“Nasakomization” of all levels of government and the creation of a “Fifth Force” of armed peasants and
workers. Sukarno’s flirt with Beijing continued too, a fact underlined by numerous visits of Indonesian
officials and delegations to China. The public debate also radicalized. In July, Jakarta suspended all
further participant training for Indonesian students at American universities, ending yet another
possibility of the United States to influence Indonesian youngsters. On top of that, Jakarta’s police chief
banned the possession of Western records, such as those of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.495
Following these developments, Galbraith wrote the State Department that it should prepare for the
possibility that Indonesia “could pass under institutionalized Communist control in the not too distant
future.” However, to keep the possibility “for change or possibly even reversal of policies” open, he
advised to “energetically though quietly…tool up for effective counter-propaganda effort and other
counter-actions against Sukarno's policies.”496
As Indonesia’s economic situation deteriorated further, communist and Muslim organizations in
various parts of the archipelago, backed in several cases by the army and the police, turned increasingly
hostile towards each other. This made Sukarno realize that his country was becoming too destabilized
and that efforts were needed to restore the domestic balance of power. In May, he allowed the reformation of the Murba Party and ordered General Nasution to travel to Moscow to talk with Soviet
premier Kosygin about discuss ways to counter the growing Chinese influence in Indonesian society and
the armed forces. Shortly after, he also stated that his cabinet needed another reshuffle which would
include the return of “moderates” like Chaerul Saleh and Adam Malik.497 Meanwhile, military leaders
met with U.S. Embassy officials to reassure them that the PKI would never be allowed to assume power.
This all took place at a time that the Embassy got notion of numerous coup rumors and of a “good deal
of maneuvering going on beneath [the] surface.”498 On July 1, the CIA presented its view on the
494
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 63; Report From Ambassador
Ellsworth Bunker to President Johnson, undated, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 121.
495
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 163-164.
496
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, June 5, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 124.
497
Mortimer, Indonesian Communism under Sukarno, 327-328.
498
Galbraith quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 165.
118
Indonesian situation. It assessed that the PKI “has only limited potential for armed insurgency,” because
it had no weapons, thin support outside Java, and that it would “almost certainly not wish to provoke the
military into open opposition.” But it also observed that the military was unwilling “to risk a civil war by
initiating rollback of the Communists.” Noting that the PKI’s opponents “are discouraged and
intimidated” and even “the military has all but lost the will to resist,” the CIA concluded that “the longer
Sukarno lives, the better will be the PKI chances of maintaining or improving its position following his
death.”499
In early July 1965, when Marshall Green arrived in Jakarta, disagreements between Washington and
Jakarta grew even more tense. When the new U.S. ambassador presented his credentials to Sukarno, the
latter “delivered an unprecedented undiplomatic diatribe against the United States and its policies.” The
Indonesian leader bitterly criticized Washington’s foreign policy in Southeast Asia, which for Green was
a “clear signal to Indonesians that [a] change [in] U.S. ambassadors does not mean any change in
Indo[nesian] opposition [to] U.S. policies.”500 Within days of Green’s arrival, the PKI and other leftist
groups expanded their protests around the Embassy and other American installations, prompting the new
U.S. ambassador to question whether the low-posture policy the United States had adopted in the wake
of the Bunker mission was low enough. Demonstrations were not limited to Jakarta. In Medan, an angry
mob threw stones at the U.S. consulate, after which it engaged in various protests throughout the city. In
early August, tensions mounted further when Subandrio rejected a request by the American research
vessel Atlantis II to conduct a survey in the Banda Sea. Green saw Subandrio’s decision as a challenge to
the right of American ships to transit international waters around Indonesia and as a sign that Indonesia
might be preparing to break diplomatic relations, inflicting a heavy debate in Washington about possible
retaliatory actions. Chester Cooper and James Thomson warned McGeorge Bundy about the “disturbing
views that are circulating on the seventh floor at State regarding U.S. relations with Indonesia” and the
need “to move gently some feet away from the panic button.” They then called in Lambertus Palar, the
Indonesian ambassador in Washington, whom they urged that Indonesia should take some quick measures
to show that it disapproved such actions, otherwise Congress might push for a break in relations.501
Shortly after Green’s arrival in Jakarta, Sukarno reinforced the perception that Indonesia was
“deliberately promoting communism’s cause in Indonesia.”502 In his Independence Day Speech on
August 17, he strongly criticized U.S. foreign policy in Asia and the American war in Vietnam in
particular. “It would be…well for the U.S.A. to be aware that the one and only thing for them to do is to
get out of the whole of Southeast Asia altogether,” he stated. Sukarno also spoke for the first time of
Indonesia as part of a “Jakarta-Phnom Penh-Hanoi-Peiping-Pyongyang axis,” which he described a
499
National Intelligence Estimate 54/55-65, Prospects for Indonesia and Malaysia, July 1, 1965 (available at
http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000012243.pdf).
500
Green quoted in Schmitz, The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 45, and Simpson, Economists with Guns, 166.
501
Memorandum From Chester L. Cooper and James C. Thomson, Jr., of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special
Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy), August 3, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 130.
502
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, August 8, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 131.
119
“natural axis forged by the course of history.” Moreover, he denounced the opponents of the PKI as
traitors and warned that “yesterday’s revolutionaries could be today’s counter-revolutionaries,” a clear
reference to the Indonesian military. As Green summarized, the speech indicated that Sukarno “has
clearly identified [the] US as [the] enemy.”503 Six days later, Ball, Cooper, Thomson and Komer met to
discuss the speech and review Washington’s policy options. As William Bundy recalled, Ball asked the
group whether it was true that given its size and location “Indonesia was objectively at least on a par with
the whole of Indochina,” and whether “a far-left, if not a totally communist, takeover there, on existing
trends, only a matter of time, with immense pincer effects on the position of the non-communist countries
of Southeast Asia?” The group answered yes. Then Ball asked “was there not something, then, that could
be done to slow or counter these trends?” In Bundy’s account, the group’s consensus was the CIA “did
not have good assets in Indonesia,” after which it left without a resolution.504
But in Jakarta, Green was still optimistic that the tide could be turned to Washington’s favor. Despite
the grim outlook, he stated that “there is very useful role for USG to play in Indonesia.” In his view, the
United States should continue to maintain ties with the military and keep as much of a diplomatic presence
as possible. Moreover, it should continue its intelligence reporting, covert operations, and propaganda
activities.505 A week later, the CIA produced a National Intelligence Estimate on the implications of a
communist takeover in Indonesia. Ironically, it concluded that although the threat of a communist
Indonesia would be felt most immediately by countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines, and Australia,
given its limited military capabilities, “a Communist Indonesia would pose only a potential threat to the
western position in Indonesia and to important sea and air lanes.” In fact, it was believed that it would be
even “more liability than asset” to China and the Soviet Union as a communist cabinet was expected to
focus first on “consolidating political control and resuscitating the Indonesian economy.”506
On September 1, 1965, Sukarno received Green for the first time at the presidential palace. The U.S.
ambassador telegrammed that Sukarno was “on his good behavior” and that he did not mention Vietnam,
nor Malaysia, or any other “political problem.” Though Green left the palace with a smile, he wondered
whether “anything was accomplished beyond establishing some rapport” and “when the next blow would
come.”507 The two would not meet again. In the following days, Indonesia’s leftwards turn continued. At
Sukarno’s urging, PNI Chairmain Ali Sastroamidjojo continued a massive purge of “anti-Communist”
party leaders down the provincial level throughout Java. In Medan, despite army-backed protests, a PKIsupported mayor was installed. PKI-led protests at the Embassy and U.S. consulates in Medan and
Surabaya also continued. Green saw the protests as the “culmination [of a] concerted campaign by [the]
PKI…to bring about [the] closing of our consulates, with collusion or tacit approval by Central
503
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, August 23, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 135; Seymour
Topping, “Jakarta Joining A Leftist Axis,” New York Times, August 17, 1965; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 167.
504
See William Bundy’s foreword in Green, Indonesia: Crisis and Transformation, xi; Editorial Note, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 136.
505
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, August 23, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 135.
506
Special National Intelligence Estimate, September 1, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 137.
507
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, September 1, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 138.
120
Gov[ernmen]t.”508 In Washington, Dean Rusk began to think of exactly that option, but NSC and CIA
officials reminded him of the importance of the consulates’ function as “listening posts.” As Bunnell
noted, if a coup by the “Council of Generals” was indeed being planned, or if the PKI was indeed invoked
into a risky preemptive strike, it was crucial not to withdraw the cover that the U.S. Embassy and
consulates provided to the CIA station.509
Renewed uncertainties about Sukarno’s declining health fueled rumors in Jakarta of subversion and
plotting by both communist and anti-communist forces. At the end of August, the PKI warned all its
divisions and sub-organizations about a looming coup d’état by the earlier formed “Council of Generals.”
Another warning for an alleged coup set for September 21 was issued in mid-September.510 Shortly after,
the Indonesian army massed thousands of troops towards the capital in preparation for the Armed Forces
Day celebration on October 5, which further fueled speculations of a coup. On the night of September 30,
after having received reports that the Indonesian President was very sick, the chiefs of the Indonesian
General Staff met to discuss “what to do in the event President Sukarno was incapacitated.”511 The group,
which included Generals Yani, and Parman, left without making a decision. Only a few hours later
something happened that no one expected: they were assassinated by a group that called itself the
September 30 Movement. This event, as we will see in the next and final chapter, provoked a chain of
events that not only dramatically altered Washington’s fortunes in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, but also
culminated into one of the worst and most neglected mass killings of the twentieth century.
508
Telegrams 598 and 609 from Djakarta to State, September 10, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 139, footnote 2.
Memorandum of Conversation, September 10, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 140; Bunnell, “American “Low Posture,” 57.
510
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 170.
511
Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 58.
509
121
4
The Great Bonus of 1965
In the early morning of October 1, 1965, President Johnson received a CIA situation report, which stated
that a group that called itself the “30 September Movement” had claimed to have forestalled a “Generals’
coup” against President Sukarno in Indonesia. The movement had arrested a number of unnamed generals
and politicians and put the homes of Defense Minister General Nasution and Army Commander General
Yani under guard. In addition, it had issued a decree that the government would be administered by an
Indonesian Revolutionary Council. According to the decree, the council would continue “already
established government policies” and announce its members shortly.512 The September 30th Movement,
in Indonesia also often referred to as the Gestupu movement, had begun the night before under the alleged
leadership of Commander of the Presidential Bodyguard Lieutenant Colonel Untung with the kidnapping
and killing of six generals of the Army High Command. By the time that U.S. officials discussed the CIA
memo in Washington, the movement was already unraveling. The relatively small movement had planned
its actions so poorly that it was almost predestined to fail. Within a few hours, Commander of the Army’s
Strategic Reserve Command (KOSTRAD) General Suharto managed to crush the movement, after which
he took control of the army and blamed the PKI for what he called a “coup attempt.”513 After that, Suharto
formed a much stronger movement, the American- and British-backed “Action Front for Crushing the
September 30th Movement,” or Kap-Gestapu, to go after the PKI and its suspected sympathizers. Over
the next five months, with assistance of Muslim organizations, student groups, and other anti-communist
factions, Kap-Gestapu slaughtered hundreds of thousands of unarmed alleged PKI-members. The
Indonesian “Killing Fields” cleared the road for the Sukarno’s ouster in March 1966, the army’s rise to
state-power, and a dramatic change in political outlook in Indonesia that had a huge impact on the Asian
Cold War and the further politico-economic development of Southeast Asia.514
512
Memorandum for President Johnson, October 1, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 142.
In the rest of this chapter I will use the phrase coup attempt without quotes. I would like to stress, however, that it is still not
entirely sure whether the September 30 Movement was indeed planning a coup or not. It is equally assumable that the movement’s
action was meant to protect President Sukarno from a supposed coup. For a treatment of the most important interpretations, see Roosa,
Pretext for Mass Murder, especially chapters 2 and 7.
514
For a representative treatment of the 30 September Movement, see Coen Holtzappel, “The 30 September Movement: A Political
Movement of the Armed Forces or an Intelligence Operation?,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 9, no. 2 (January 1979), 216-240; W.F.
Wertheim, “Whose Plot? – New Light on the 1965 Events,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 9, no. 2 (January 1979), 197-215; Justus
M. van der Kroef, “Interpretations of the 1965 Coup: A Review of the Literature,” Daniel S. Lev, “Indonesia 1965: The Year of the
Coup,” Asian Survey 6, no. 2 (February 1966), 103-110; Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno;” and of course
Roosa’s Pretext for Mass Murder.
513
122
As mentioned at the beginning of this dissertation, the impact of the Indonesian regime change and
massacre that followed was different on each nation involved. For the Soviet Union and China it was
“perhaps the greatest setback…in the Third World in the 1960s.” It undermined their geopolitical strength
and credibility as revolutionary powers, and the stakes that both countries had in Vietnam. 515 For Britain,
the PKI’s demise and Sukarno’s ouster were an important step forward with regard to the ending of
Konfrontasi, after which London could gradual retreat its troops from Southeast Asia.516 For the United
States, the events significantly eased concerns of a communist takeover of Southeast Asia, allowing it to
focus its attention entirely on Vietnam. It also shifted the balance of power in the Far East in Washington’s
favor and realized a scenario that it had long envisioned: defeat for Sukarno and the PKI, and a swing to
the right of the Indonesian government under a pro-American military-technocratic elite. Ironically, the
extermination of the PKI dramatically decreased the possible regional consequences of a North
Vietnamese victory. However, the event came too late to affect the decision of the Johnson administration
to escalate the war.517
For Indonesia, the consequences of the regime change were mixed. On the one hand, it paved the road
for the country’s embrace of a free market economy, which brought about a period of rapid economic
development, during which millions and millions of Indonesians were able to escape poverty.518 On the
other hand, the event marked the beginning of Suharto’s dictatorial New Order regime, during which
freedom of speech was continuously curtailed, human rights were routinely violated, and political
opponents brutally suppressed. The Indonesian turnaround and destruction of the PKI also terminated the
political power balance that had existed since the late 1950. This dramatically undermined the position
of Sukarno and removed the only mass-based alternative to army-led state-control. But as the armed
forces emerged as the dominant political force in Indonesia and the military had to address the country’s
deep-rooted economic ills, Indonesia also become increasingly dependent on American and Western aid
and advice. This gave the United States and its allies an unprecedented level of influence to shape the
political and economic climate in Indonesia to their favor. As U.S. officials concluded at the end of
October, although the outcome of the struggle for power in Indonesia was “not clear” yet, the “next few
days, weeks or months may offer unprecedented opportunities for us to begin to influence people and
events, as the military begin[s] to understand [the] problems and dilemmas in which they find
themselves.”519
The September 30th Movement and subsequent Indonesian mass killings are key events in
contemporary Indonesian history, and many different interpretations of their origins, importance, and
515
Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: The Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 185.
516
Andrea Benvenuti, “The British Military Withdrawal from Southeast Asia and its impact on Australia’s Cold War Strategic
Interests,” Cold War History 5, no. 2 (May 2005), 199.
517
Robert McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), 214-215; Morris, “The
Murders of Gonzago.”
518
John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World (London: Verso, 2002), 17; Van der Veen, Waarom Azië Rijk en Machtig Wordt, 339.
519
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, October 29, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 163.
123
legacy have been formulated.520 (For the reasons outlined in the introduction of this thesis, the events can
also be seen as pivotal moments in the history of the Cold War and the politic-economic development of
Southeast Asia, but this point is largely overlooked by many historians, with the exception of Odd Arne
Westad.) Much of the scholarship has dealt with the exact role of the Indonesian communists, the level
of Sukarno’s and/or Suharto’s foreknowledge of the movement’s actions, and the local circumstances in
which the mass killings took place. The question of American and Western complicity in the movement
and massacre has been discussed predominately by American and British historians, with the latter of
course focusing largely on London’s involvement. Until 1998, the year of Suharto’s downfall, most
scholars either blamed the PKI and rejected or downplayed the American role in the events, an
interpretation in line with the dominant version of events in Indonesia until this day. In the past fifteen
years or so, a much more critical discourse developed, with more and more scholars charging Washington
and London with varying degrees of complicity in the September 30th Movement and its bloody
aftermath.521 In recent years, various non-American scholars, such as Australian researcher Robert Cribb,
downplayed America’s role to focus instead on local stories of the movement and the killings.522 The
most recent and accurate study of the movement is John Roosa’s Pretext for Mass Murder. On the basis
of numerous Indonesian sources, Roosa concluded that the two leaders of the movement, PKI Chairman
Aidit and Head of the Special Bureau Sjam, did not organize the movement as a coup attempt against
Sukarno, but as “a putsch against the army high command” to forestall an anticipated coup attempt by
the “Council of Generals.”523
According to Joshua Oppenheimer, director of the 2013 award-winning documentary The Act of
Killing, the focus on those who killed the army generals in the early morning of October 1, 1965 has
“functioned as a fetish, displacing all attention from the murder of over one million alleged communists
in the months that followed. Like Roosa, Oppenheimer compares the movement with the Reichstag fire
in early 1933, which functioned as an excuse for Hitler’s crackdown on the German Communist Party.
But as Oppenheimer rightfully stressed, the question of who started the Reichstag fire is irrelevant to
understand the Holocaust.524 The same can be said of the Indonesian killings of 1965-1966: whoever
See the special edition of Asian Survey 41, no. 4, “The Legacy of Violence in Indonesia” (July-August 2002).
Anderson and McVey, Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965 Coup (Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1971);
Brands, “The Limits of Manipulation” and chapter 6, “Bloody Good Luck,” in The Wages of Globalism; Gardner, Shared Hopes,
Separate Fears, chapter 9, “The Brink of Chaos;” Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 29-60; B. Hugh Tovar and J. Foster
Collins, “Sukarno’s Apologists Write Again,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 9 (Fall 1996), 337-357;
Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno,” 339-264; Ralph McGehee, “The Indonesian Massacres and the CIA,”
Covert Action 35 (1990), 56-58; Geoffrey Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1995), 282-286; David Easter, “‘Keep the Indonesian Pot Boiling’: Western Covert Intervention in Indonesia,
October 1965–March 1966,” Cold War History 5, no. 1 (February 2005), 55-73; John Gittings, “The Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66.
Image and Reality” in Mark Levene and Penny Roberts, eds., The Massacre in History (New York: Bergbahn Books, 1999), 247-262;
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 171-206; Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder, 176-201.
522
See Robert Cribb, “Unresolved Problems in the Indonesian Killings of 1965-1966,” Asian Survey 42, no. 4 (July/August 2002),
550-563; Benedict R. Anderson, “Impunity and Impunity and Reenactment: Reflections on the 1965 Massacre in Indonesia and its
Legacy,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 11, no 4 (April 15, 2013).
523
Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder, 224.
524
Ibid., 31-32; Joshua Oppenheimer, Press Notes The Act of Killing, 18, available at
http://ff.hrw.org/sites/default/files/THE%20ACT%20OF%20KILLING%20press%20notes.pdf.
520
521
124
killed the generals is irrelevant to understand the massacre. Instead, it is much more important to look at
how Suharto, the armed forces, the United States, and other international accomplices have used the
movement as a pretext for the destruction of the PKI and subsequent reconfiguration of Indonesia’s
political and economic outlook. Based on American and British primary sources that have been
declassified thus far, two general conclusions can be drawn. First, although the available materials suggest
that Washington did not had a direct hand in the September 30th Movement, it is beyond doubt that the
United States played an important role in creating the climate in which the event took place, in the
crackdown on the PKI, and in Sukarno’s ouster thereafter. The Johnson administration and the CIA may
have been surprised by the movement’s actions, but they were well prepared to deal with its aftermath.
As we have seen in previous chapters, as early as mid-1964, and to some extent already in 1961, if not in
1959, the United States and Britain embarked on a strategy, consisting of covert operations and
propaganda efforts, aimed at provoking a violent clash in Indonesia. They thereby did everything they
could to make sure that Indonesia’s anti-communist forces would emerge victorious. Second,
Washington’s encouragement of and support for the extermination of the PKI and its alleged sympathizers
was far more extensive than scholars have long acknowledged. This also counts for the encouragement
and support of numerous other countries, especially Great Britain. But the American role during the
massacre tell us only one part of the story of U.S. complicity in the Indonesian turnaround. At least as
illustrative is Washington’s long-term strategy of military modernization, developed by the Kennedy
administration and continued under Johnson, which aimed at making sure that Indonesia, which as
Richard Nixon argued “with its 100 million people, and its 3,000-mile arc of islands containing the
region’s richest hoard of natural resources constitutes by far the greatest prize in the Southeast Asian
area,” would be saved for the “Free World.”525
The United States, the September 30th Movement and the Indonesian “Killing Fields”
In light of the preceding months, during which the PKI, the military, and other anti-communist forces
engaged in a numerous battles to change the political fate of their country, the events of October 1, 1965
were no surprise. The September 30th Movement began with the kidnapping of six generals of the Army
High Command, after which they were taken to Halim Air Force Base outside Jakarta. Once they arrived
at the base, those who were not killed immediately were dumped in a well near the village of Lubang
Buaya. The soldiers of the movement also attempted to kidnap General Nasution, but he miraculously
escaped by jumping over the wall of his backyard into the yard of the residence of his neighbor, the Iraqi
ambassador. In the heat of the moment, Nasution’s daughter was mortally wounded and the general’s
aide seized instead and later killed. Among those not targeted was General Suharto, the commander of
the strategic reserves (KOSTRAD), possibly because he was informed of the movement’s plans in
advance. Colonel Untung’s small group of forces managed to seize a number of strategic check points in
525
Nixon, “Asia After Viet Nam,” 111.
125
and around Jakarta, after which they placed two battalions on Merdeka Square. They failed to pay
attention to the headquarters of KOSTRAD, located along the Merdeka Square and on the opposite side
of the presidential palace, a crucial mistake.526
Later in the morning, Radio Indonesia broadcasted a statement prepared by Untung, announcing that
the September 30th Movement had “saved President Sukarno and the Republic of Indonesia from a coup
by the Generals Council.” Untung also stated that several generals had been arrested, media and
government other facilities were under the movement’s control, and the President was under its
protection. Shortly after, Vice Marshall Omar Dhani flew to East Java, and Sukarno went to Halim Air
Force Base, where PKI chairman Aidat had also spent the night and members of the Pemuda Rakjat and
Gerwani had been receiving paramilitary training throughout the summer. In the afternoon, the movement
proclaimed the formation of a “Revolutionary Council,” consisting of forty-five people from the
Indonesian military and the country’s major political parties, including the PKI. The council did not
include Sukarno, probably because he refused to publically approve the movement. At that time, General
Suharto’s reaction was already into full-swing, and within a few hours he managed to rout the movement.
Suharto then ignored Sukarno’s orders to place General Pranoto in command and took control of the
army. Once the evening struck, Colonel Sarwo Edhie’s paramilitary RPKAD troops surrounded Halim
Air Base and issued an ultimate for Omar Dhani to surrender. Sukarno then left the air force base in his
helicopter for Bogor Palace, and Untung, Dhani, and Aidit managed to escape to Central Java. The next
morning, Edhie took over the command of the base, while in Jakarta the September 30th Movement largely
collapsed. In the afternoon, Suharto was firmly in control of all strategic points in the capital, after which
he and the army ordered all media outlets in Jakarta to cease publishing. It would take only several more
weeks to establish army control in East and Central Java, the areas where sections of the army’s
Diponegoro division had supported the September 30th Movement and where Sukarno and the PKI had
significant support.527
As these events unfolded, American, British and other Western embassies in Jakarta initially reacted
with surprise and confusion. But despite the fact that by the late afternoon the situation was “very murky
still,” Western officials quickly pointed in the direction of the Indonesian communists as those
responsible for the movement. At that time, neither the U.S. Embassy, nor the CIA seemed to know who
Suharto was, and the story goes that it took almost a full day to come up with a biographic summary on
the General, a surprising fact given his leading role in KOSTRAD and in the military campaigns for West
New Guinea and Malaysia.528 Sukarno’s status was also “unknown.” On October 2, George Ball received
a memo from Ambassador Green that the Indonesian President was “either dead, incapacitated, in
custody, waiting for the dust to settle.” That Sukarno had masterminded the whole affair seemed to Green
526
Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder, 34-41.
Ibid.; Gardner, Shared Hopes, Seperate Fears, 214; Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 97-101.
528
Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between Acting Secretary of State Ball and Secretary of State Rusk, FRUS, 1964-1968,
v. 26, 145; Prados, Lost Crusader, 152.
527
126
“highly unlikely.”529 Officials in Washington were also uncertain whether the United States was involved
in the events. To get more information on the first reports that just came in from Jakarta, Ball called
McGeorge Bundy, Dean Rusk, and CIA director Richard Helms. To the latter, he asked “if we were in a
position where we can categorically deny this involvement of CIA operations in the Indonesia situation.”
Helms answered that he had asked around and that he could be recorded with the statement that the CIA
“had had absolutely nothing to do with it. Ball also called McNamara, saying that “it looks more and
more as though this is a PKI operation,” after which he suggested to send ships and talk to the British and
Australians in case it would be necessary to evacuate American nationals or intervene militarily. The next
day, McNamara ordered American naval vessels to steam towards Indonesia. Two days later, when
Suharto seemed to be in firmly control, William Bundy convinced the Secretary of Defense to move the
ships back to the 8th parallel, approximately 2,000 miles from Jakarta.530
When the bodies of the six murdered army generals were discovered on October 3, the speed of events
accelerated. The discovery became a major public event as army-controlled newspapers directly reported
on the shocking condition of the bodies, publishing photos that showed that several of the victims had
been tortured brutally, slashed with razor blades, and their eyes gouged out and genitals cut off. The army
and the newspapers directly put the blame for these barbarous acts on “bloodthirsty” members of the
Pemuda Rakjat and the PKI’s Woman’s Front Gerwani. In the United States, similar stories were
published. John Hughes of the Christian Science Monitor, reported for example that the generals “were
murdered in a scene of savage, revolting, and bloody frenzy.”531 But it later turned out that the alleged
torture and mutilation of the generals were a well-organized joint Indonesian-Western propaganda
campaign to scare and anger the Indonesian public and build a case for the army’s attacks on the PKI. A
CIA study on the killings, published in 1968, concluded that the photos were deliberate fabrications. On
the basis of an autopsy report, it claimed that there was no evidence of torture and mutilation except
perhaps in the case of Nasution’s aide.532
Meanwhile, Sukarno began to realize that the events of early October were posing a greater threat to
his rule than any other event since the Outer Island Rebellion of the late 1950s. Therefore, he directly
sought to bring the army under his command and prevent a possible crackdown on the PKI that could
destroy the political balance of power that had existed for years. Sukarno presented the events after
September 30 as a “political problem” which could only be solved in a calm climate. In addition, he
stressed that the country must be on guard to avoid further polarization, both politically and within the
529
Memorandum for President Johnson, October 1, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 142; Memorandum of Telephone Conversation
Between Acting Secretary of State Ball and Secretary of State Rusk, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 145.
530
Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between Acting Secretary of State Ball and Secretary of Defense McNamara, FRUS,
1964-1968, v. 26, 143, n. 2; Gardner, Shared Hopes, Separate Fears, 215.
531
John Hughes, Indonesian Upheaval (New York: David McKay, 1967), 50; C.L. Sulzberger, “Foreign Affairs: When a Nation Runs
Amok,” New York Times, April 13, 1966.
532
Central Intelligence Agency, Research Study: Indonesia – 1965: The Coup that Backfired (Washington, DC: The Agency, 1968);
Gardner, Shared Hopes, Separate Fears, 221; Ben Anderson, “How Did the Generals Die?,” Indonesia 43 (April 1987), 109-134.
127
military.533 But Suharto and the army were eager to use the murder of the generals to go after the PKI and
assume power. They knew that they would have the support of forces both at home and abroad, in
particular of the United States, to realize these ambitions. Revealing in this sense is a CIA intelligence
memorandum of November 1965, which praised as a “strong, efficient and decisive officer” and an
“effective anti-Communist” leader, who had a “reputation for skill and determination.” Also, the report
stated that although Suharto had paid “lip service to Sukarno’s efforts to arrange a political settlement,”
he had ignored them, blamed the PKI for the September 30th Movement’s actions, and expanded the
army’s anti-communist campaign. “Regardless of whether the army really believed that the PKI was
solely responsible,” the CIA concluded, “it is presenting this as the case and is acting accordingly,” and
that was a good thing.534
To make work of its aims, the military laid contact with anti-communist groups, including Muslim
organizations that during previous months had already fought severe battles with the PKI in various parts
of Indonesia. Some of the groups had also participated in civic action programs funded by the United
States, and now they were urged into action. On October 2, Suharto formed the Action Front to Crush the
Thirtieth September Movement, or KAP-Gestapu. When two days later the movement held its first rally,
it blamed the PKI and Chairman Aidit for the general’s deaths. On October 5, when Armed Forces Day
was supposed to take place, a massive remembrance march for the murdered generals was organized
instead, during which various Indonesians called for revenge against the communists. Meanwhile, the
army also laid contact with the U.S. Embassy staff, with whom it communicated frequently, sometimes
daily, in the weeks and months thereafter. In Washington, U.S. policymakers did not sit still either. As
soon as the September 30th Movement was crushed, the White House assembled an Indonesia working
group, which recognized that a unique opportunity to move against the PKI was at hand.535
On October 5, Green wrote the State Department that the “agony of ridding Indonesia of the effects
of Sukarno and NASAKOM has begun…it’s now or never.” Ball had the feeling that the army might
“keep going and clean up the PKI.” At the same time, he worried that the army might “be letting this
opportunity slip through their fingers as Sukarno attempts to exercise restraint.”536 The “key problem,”
Green noted, was how to encourage the army to go after the PKI and “help shape developments to our
advantage.” Ball urged the Embassy to “exercise extreme caution in our contacts with the Army” to avoid
disclosure of “our well-meaning efforts to offer assistance” and play into the hands of Sukarno and the
PKI. Green agreed and suggested that the United States hold off on aid for the meantime, but “indicate
clearly to key people in army such as Nasution and Suharto our desire to be of assistance” when needed.
533
Gardner, Shared Hopes, Separate Fears, 224; Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between Acting Secretary of State Ball
and Senator William Fulbright, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 144.
534
Schmitz, The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 49-50.
535
Gardner, Shared Hopes, Separate Fears, 221; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 177.
536
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, October 5, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 147, n. 2;
Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between Acting Secretary of State Ball and Senator Fulbright, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26,
144; British Embassy official quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 178.
128
The “most needed immediate assistance we can give [the] army,” the ambassador added, were clandestine
propaganda activities to “spread the story of PKI's guilt, treachery and brutality.”537
To this end, the United States made use of the “Mighty Wurlitzer,” a world-wide network of press
“assets,” set up in the mid-1950s by Director Allen Dulles, through which his own CIA, MI6 and other
sister agencies could spread “unattributable” disinformation to create confusion.538 The CIA’s assets in
Southeast Asia included the Singapore Straits Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Observer, and the Daily
Mail, as well as various Western journalists that were kicked out of Indonesia and now reported from
Bangkok, Hong Kong or Singapore. The journalists often cited “sources in Bangkok” or “Western
sources” that were presented as the only ones with accurate information on what was going on in
Indonesia. In some instances, press materials appeared in Malaysian newspapers, citing Thai sources that
in turn relied on Hong Kong sources. In other cases, press materials were fabricated to make them appear
as if they originated in countries such as India, Pakistan or the Philippines.539 Sometimes, information
from radio broadcasts of military units and army-controlled newspapers was also used. In one memo, it
was stated that he State Department and the Voice of America broadcast institution planned to spread
stories “pointing [the] finger at PKI and playing up brutality of September 30 rebels” from armycontrolled newspapers and radio stations, such as Radio Jakarta.540
Another important tool in spreading propaganda was the British Foreign Office’s IRD unit in
Singapore. Directly after the coup, London instructed the unit to “spread alarm and despondency in
Indonesia” to encourage the anti-PKI campaign. It thereby added a list with “suitable propaganda themes”
identical to those recommended by Green.541 A theme of specific interest to U.S. officials was the linking
of the September 30th Movement to Beijing and the spreading of false stories that a Chinese arms shipment
for the PKI was at hand. This would certainly make the PKI’s demands for the creation of a “Fifth Force”
even more sinister. As Green assessed on October 19, Washington had “bonanza chance to nail chicoms
on disastrous events in Indonesia,” with a “continuation [of] covert propaganda” as the “best means of
spreading [the] idea of chicom complicity.” But the Indonesian army was more careful and urged the U.S.
to avoid emphasizing too overly that Indonesia was seeking revenge. As one Indonesian general
explained, “we already have enough enemies. We can’t take on Communist China as well.” It was much
more important for the army to get assurances that Britain “would not stab [the] Army in back while
dealing with PKI.”542
537
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, October 5, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 147; Telegram
From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, October 6, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 148.
538
Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno,” 260-264; McGehee, “The Indonesian Massacres and the CIA,” 56-58.
539
The Singapore-based journalist Ian Stewart, for example, cited “Western sources” who claimed that Sukarno “not only knew about
the coup but was one of its prime movers,” while Seth King cited “informed sources in Bangkok” that reached them “through private
channels” in Jakarta. See Ian Stewart, “Sukarno Seen Behind Coup,” New York Times, October 5, 1965, and Seth King, “Indonesian
Army Battles Rebels in Key Java City,” New York Times, October 7, 1965.
540
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, October 6, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 148.
541
Easter, “British Intelligence and Propaganda during the ‘Confrontation,’” 95.
542
Green quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 180; Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State,
October 17, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 156; Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, October 10,
1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 151.
129
U.S. officials were initially reluctant to offer such guarantees, but after consultations with the British
Embassy, they prepared a message for the army leaders, stating that neither the United States nor its allies
had the “intention of interfering Indonesian internal affairs” or taking “any offensive action against
Indonesia.”543 The army then moved a large fraction of its combat forces from Borneo and North Sumatra
to Java, after which it encouraged anti-communist and religious groups to strike against the PKI and build
a public case that communism represented a mortal threat to the nation. On October 8, KAP-Gestapu
organized a second rally in Jakarta, this time even drawing tens of thousands of Indonesians. After the
rally, protestors sacked an burned the PKI’s headquarters and spread anti-PKI signs and graffiti around
the city. Two days later, Suharto announced the formation of the Operations Command for the Restoration
of Order and Security, which he used for a massive purge of the Indonesian government and the arrests
of thousands of PKI activists in the capital. Meanwhile, the army also expanded its own propaganda
operations by circulating stories and photos of the generals’ mutilated bodies, and spreading newspapers
with reports of the discovery of PKI death lists, mass graves and documents with details on the party’s
alleged plans for the wiping out its political opponents.544
Though some historians have claimed that the propaganda only played a “secondary, supporting role”
in the killings, based on the explanations that ordinary Indonesians later gave for the massacres we can
conclude that the anti-PKI propaganda campaign was certainly highly effective. When Western
journalists returned to Indonesia and the spring and summer of 1966 they observed that many Indonesians
repeatedly justified the killings as self-defense against an enemy of larger-than-life proportions. “Many
Indonesians say bluntly, ‘it was them or us,’” Seymour Topping wrote in the New York Times. Stanley
Karnow of the Washington Post observed that “everywhere, people sought to justify the destruction of
the Communists with the same phrase: ‘If we hadn't done it to them they would have done it to us.’” He
argued that this pervasive attitude was largely the result of the “the brutal fashion in which the
Communists murdered [the] six army generals.” Whatever its exact impact, the idea behind the army’s
campaign was clearly to dehumanize the communists and make it easier for common people to murder
them, and in that it succeeded. As one Indonesian civilian, who executed eighteen communists, put it to
a reporter of the Australian in 1966: “I did not kill people. I killed wild animals.”545
Initially, with the exception in the North Sumatran city of Medan in North Sumatra, where
KOSTRAD forces under Brigadier General Kemal Idris directly began killing PKI members and
suspected sympathizers, Suharto appears to have given few direct orders for the army to attack the PKI
in the provinces.546 The main reason for this was that the military was far from united. In various parts of
the country, such as in Central and East Java, commanders remained loyal to Sukarno, with some even
543
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, October 10, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 151, n. 4.
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 181.
545
Seymour Topping, “Slaughter of Reds Gives Indonesia a Grim Legacy,” New York Times, August 24, 1966; Stanley Karnow, “First
Report on Horror in Indonesia,” Washington Post, April 17, 1966; Dennis Warner, “’Bloody Liquidation’ of Indonesia’s PKI,”
Sydney Morning Herald, June 15, 1966. These three writers are also quoted in Easter, “‘Keep the Indonesian Pot Boiling’,” 68-69.
546
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 181-182.
544
130
being enthusiastic about the September 30th Movement. The army’s propaganda campaign nevertheless
encouraged many officers to strike, and there where it was not effective enough Suharto sent RPKAD
units to purge hesitant officers and organize the killings themselves. Not seldom the army operated in
cooperation with local civilians. In East Java, the first mass killings were reported in mid-October, with
members of Ansor, the youth wing of the Nahdlatul Ulama, leading the attacks, against PKI members
and often Chinese merchants and their extended families. In the strong Islamic province of Aceh, in early
October, Muslim leaders took the lead in what political scientist Harold Crouch described as a “holy war
of extermination,” whereby sometimes entire villages were massacred, resulting in the death of thousands
in the following months.547
As the first mass killings took place, Dean Rusk cabled the Embassy in Jakarta that it was time “to
give some indication to [the] military of our attitudes toward recent and current developments” and show
that the United States was on the army’s side. The Secretary of State stressed that although the United
States did “not wish to give [the] army [the] impression that we are trying to inject ourselves into
Indo[nesia’s] internal situation,” it also did not want to miss the opportunity to consider action “if army's
willingness to follow through against PKI is in any way contingent on or subject to influence by US.”
Nasution’s request for portable voice communications gear for the Army High Command provided an
opportunity to show the army that Washington no longer considered Sukarno as the legitimate leader of
Indonesia. On October 22, the State Department assumed that the military wanted to “avoid anything”
that looked “like overt GOI turn toward U.S” and that “for [the] short run our assistance to them would
probably have to be on covert or semi-covert basis related specific, small, ad hoc needs.” But the sort of
request such as Nasution’s could be met easily and discreetly.548 Meanwhile, other countries, including
Japan and West Germany, also began to make preparations to covertly channel rice and textile aid to the
army. “An army dominated government,” the Japanese ambassador later explained to British officials,
“is so much better than any other prospect that we cannot allow it to be ruined in public esteem by an
accumulation of public misery in the form of a rice famine.”549
Encouraging Massacre
Two weeks after the collapse of the September 30th Movement, U.S. officials worried that the army’s
struggle against Sukarno and the PKI would move toward a “political settlement.” On October 17, Green
telegrammed the State Department that Sukarno and the army may already have reached a deal which
could include a “hush up [of] any indications of Sukarno's involvement in Sept[ember] 30 affair.” Three
days later, he send another telegram, stressing that the army’s destruction “will not be successful unless
it is willing to attack communism as such,” which meant going after both Sukarno and the PKI, including
unarmed affiliates and sympathizers. Green nevertheless also observed that the military had “been
547
Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 142-152.
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, October 13, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 153; Telegram
From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, October 22, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 159.
549
Ambassador Saito quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 183.
548
131
working hard at destroying [the] PKI and I, for one, have increasing respect for its determination an
organization in carrying out this crucial assignment.”550 Green’s worries quickly disappeared shortly
after, when it became obvious that military army intended to continue its struggle against the PKI and
Sukarno. In the provinces, local army officers were making efforts to ban the PKI and its affiliates
completely, while weak party branches were dissolved after hopeless attempts to avoid annihilation. By
early November, the PKI had been banned or dissolved in large parts of Java and Sulawesi, despite efforts
from Sukarno to prevent this. Because the army could not challenge the still immensely popular
Indonesian President directly, it pointed its arrows first at Subandrio. Towards the end of October, army
leaders succeeded in convincing Sukarno to remove Indonesia’s Foreign Minister from his position.
Subandrio was later placed under house arrest, when he attempted to fled to another country.551
With the army’s anti-PKI campaign back on track, Green urged the State Department to explore the
possibility of a “short-term one shot aid on covert, non-attributable basis” to demonstrate American
support.552 Two days later, Foggy Bottoms responded with a lengthy assessment stating that the PKI was
“in headlong retreat in [the] face of mass attacks encouraged by the Army.” The State Department
assessed that the Army was “already making top decisions independently of Sukarno and is more and
more acting as the de facto government.” Also, it anticipated that when Indonesia’s politico-economic
situation worsened, the army would probably turn to the United States, Japan and other Western countries
for help. To influence people and events, the State Department recommended to send food, raw materials,
credit, and “small weapons and equipment…to deal with the PKI,” provided that army leaders indicated
that were willing to halt the anti-Malaysia campaign, cease the harassment of American private interests,
and end political attacks against U.S. policies in the region.553
Meanwhile, the White House created an interagency working group to discuss plans for covert
assistance to the Indonesian army. The group instructed the embassy to investigate what the military
needed for waging war against the PKI. It appeared that for the moment that the army “has most of the
equipment it needs to deal effectively with [the] PKI insurgency,” but that the United States might be
requested to supply communication equipment for the army’s headquarters and field units. Such
equipment, U.S. officials suggested, could be channeled through a third country, “such as Thailand or the
Philippines,” to make sure that it would remain untraceable.554 A CIA specialist then traveled to Jakarta
to discuss the army’s needs with the Embassy and the Indonesian army. Shortly after, the American
trained General Sukendro – a high-level CIA contact in the Indonesian military – made the first approach
to the Embassy to request rice, small arms, communications equipment, and “medicines.” Ambassador
550
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, October 17, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 156; Telegram
From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, October 20, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 158.
551
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, October 29, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 163.
552
Telegram 1236 from Jakarta to State, October 27, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 159, n. 5.
553
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, October 29, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 163.
554
Memorandum From the Assistant for Indonesia (Nuechterlein) to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International
Security Affairs (Friedman), October 30, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 164.
132
Green recommended the State Department to approve Sukendro’s request because the army was “moving
relentlessly to exterminate the PKI.”555
U.S. officials in Washington agreed on sending aid to the army, but they had different views whether
such assistance was to be provided with string attached. Officials of the White House and Department of
Defense believed that the United States “should not attach conditions initially because they feel it is
important to assure the Army of our full support of its efforts to crush the PKI.” State Department officials
argued that it was important to start a broader dialogue with Suharto and Nasution first to make sure that
Indonesia reversed course on policies hostile to the United States as a condition for new assistance. When
Deputy Chief of Mission Francis Galbraith met with the aide of Nasution on November 4, he stated that
the Johnson administration was “generally sympathetic with and admiring of what army doing,” but
added that serious disagreements between the two countries still existed, with the position of the
American oil companies as the most important problem. Galbraith stressed that these issued had to be
resolved first, before the United States could resume send more aid. Clearly, Galbraith’s view was more
in line with that of the State Department.556
Although U.S. officials worried about the risks of exposure, they agreed to send aid. On November 5,
when the 303 Committee approved the provision of “medicines,” the White House approved its CIA
liaison in Bangkok to give Sukendro “communications equipment and small arms to arm Moslem and
nationalist youths in Central Java for use against the PKI.”557 Although the CIA was not convinced of the
military’s need for weapons, nor sure whether the distribution of such arms could be controlled properly,
for it was given to poorly trained militias and student groups, it believed that such risks “must be weighed
against the greater risks that failure to provide such aid which the Army claims it needs” could weaken
U.S. leverage in Indonesia at a later stage.558 When the 303 Committee met again in mid-November to
discuss Sukendro’s “urgent need for communications equipment,” the Embassy urged the committee to
approve the general’s request on the grounds that it was “critical in current, delicately balanced struggle
between Army and Sukarno and cohorts” and because it “far outweighed its “relatively minor costs.” The
committee approved the request on November 17, but stressed that “extreme care” had to be taken in
order to prevent disclosure.559 The radio equipment was eventually delivered in such a way that even
Congress would not be able to notice the shipment.560
555
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, November 1, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 165. It is not
entirely clear whether the request for medicines was indeed a request for medicines. It is possible that the request for medicines was in
fact a request for money.
556
Memorandum From the Assistant for Indonesia (Nuechterlein) to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International
Security Affairs (Friedman), November 4, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 168.
557
In interviews with Frederick Bunnell in 1981-1982, Sukendro confirmed that the United States had provided medicines,
communications equipment, and small arms through the CIA station in Bangkok. See Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 59,
n. 152.
558
Memorandum Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency, November 9, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 172.
559
Telegram 1427 from Jakarta to State, November 12, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 172, n. 7; Memorandum Prepared for the 303
Committee, November 17, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 175.
560
Kathy Kadane, letter to the Editor, New York Review of Books, April 10, 1997; “Ex-Agents Say CIA Compiled Death Lists for
Indonesians,” San Francisco Examiner, May 19, 1990, available at http://www.namebase.org/kadane.html.
133
It should be stressed here that the decision of the Johnson administration to send aid was thus made
only after it had become certain that such assistance would support and accelerate the efforts of the army,
Muslim organizations, student groups, and other anti-communist forces to exterminate the PKI and its
unarmed sympathizers. It was provided at a time that the U.S. Embassy received “multiple reports of
increasing insecurity and mounting bloodshed” in Central Java, particularly around Solo, Semarang and
Jogjakarta. The Embassy could not determine whether these events were caused by the PKI “moving
towards terrorism and sabotage” or by the army “purposely moving to wipe out questionable elements
and gain control.” But it is beyond doubt that the events were the result of army moves because it was the
army who held the guns and not the PKI.561 On October 18, Suharto gave his approval for the deployment
of Edhie’s paramilitary RPKAD to Central Java, after which the mass killings continued pace. On October
29, a U.S. military advisor received reports in Bandung that villagers were “clearing out PKI members
and affiliates and turning them over to the Army.” On the same day, Green reported that “Moslem fervor
in Atjeh apparently put all but few PKI [members[ out of action,” that the “Atjehnese have decapitated
PKI [members] and placed their heads on stakes along the road,” and that “bodies were thrown into rivers
or sea as Atjehnese refuse [to] ‘contaminate’ Atjeh soil.”562
The day before the 303 Committee approved the shipments of “medical supplies” to the army, the
Embassy also noted that Edhie’s RPKAD forces in Central Java were “training Moslem youth and
supplying them with weapons and will keep them out in front against PKI.” High-level PKI leaders, of
which most were in the capital, were arrested for interrogation, but “smaller fry” were “being
systematically arrested and jailed or executed.”563 A few days later, it observed that the army, with
assistance of youth organizations and “other anti-Com[munist] elements,” continued its “systematic drive
to PKI…with wholesale killings reported” in North Sumatra and Aceh. Five days later, Green received a
report from the local police chief stating that “from 50-100 PKI members are begin killed every night in
east and central Java by civilian anti-Communist groups with blessing of Army.”564 On November 16, the
U.S. Consulate in Medan was informed by leaders of the “bloodthirsty” paramilitary organization Pemuda
Pancasila that their organization “intends [to] kill every PKI member they can catch,” while other sources
indicated to the consulate that “much indiscriminate killing is taking place.” The consulate stated that
even if the reports of wholesale killings were exaggerated, a “real reign of terror against the PKI is taking
place,” with the Indonesian military “officially adopting extreme measures against [the] PKI with plans
561
Telegram 1215 from Jakarta to State, October 27, 1965, cited in Editorial Note, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 162; W.F. Wertheim,
“Indonesia Before and After the Coup,” Pacific Affairs 39, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1966), 117.
562
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 188; Telegram 1269 from Jakarta to State, October 29, 1965, cited in Editorial Note, FRUS, 19641968, v. 26, 162
563
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, November 4, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 169. Sarwo
Edhie later confirmed that the army gave training to local youth groups: “we decided to encourage the anti-Communist civilians to
help with the job. In Solo we gathered together the youth, the nationalist groups, the religious (Muslim) organizations. We gave them
two or three days training, then sent them out to kill the Communists.” Edhie quoted in Ransom, “Ford Country.”
564
Telegram 1374 from Jakarta to State, November 8, 1965 and Telegram 1438 from Jakarta to State, November 13, 1965, both cited
in Editorial Note, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 162.
134
to put many thousands in concentration camps.”565 Six days later, PKI Chairman Aidit was captured and
killed near Solo and the CIA reported that PKI supporters were being “shot on sight by the army.” An
Indonesian intelligence officer in East Java reported “peasant farmers are afraid to go to the rice fields”
and “many do not want to work on the [tea and sugar] Plantations” because “corpses are spread
everywhere.”566 It was note even December yet.
The Indonesian Killings of 1965-1966: an American Act of Killing, Too?
On December 1, 1965, a delegation from Suharto’s headquarters visited the U.S. Embassy to tell
ambassador Green that “the right horse was winning now and the U.S. should bet heavily on it.”567 As we
have seen above, Washington did exactly that, almost as soon as as the killings began. Various officials
and historians have later claimed that when the United States decided extended aid to Indonesia, it was
either unaware of or “taken aback…by the violence of the purge” and “refused to put a price tag on the
Communists’ heads.”568 Others completely denied any American role in the massacre. CIA Director
William Colby said in his memoirs, in which he wrote much on Vietnam but only one sentence on
Indonesia, that the United States “did not have any role in the course of events.” 569 CIA station chief
Bernardo Hugh Tovar declared that he “was stunned” and “did not know what happened” as the massacre
unfolded.570 But these claims are not only false, they also neglect the abundance of evidence showing that
the United States, Britain and other Western countries were not only fully aware of what was taking place
in Indonesia, but also made efforts to make sure that the anti-PKI massacre continued.
American officials barely expressed concern about the massacre, neither in public nor in private. As
NSC advisor Walt Rostow later explained to Johnson, “our major policy on developments in Indonesia
was silence,” a sound policy “in the light of the wholesale killings that accompanied the transition” from
Sukarno to Suharto.571 The CIA stated early on that “we should avoid being too cynical about [the army’s]
motives and its self-interests, or too hesitant about the propriety of extending…assistance provided we
can do so covertly, in a manner which will not embarrass them or embarrass our government.”572 “No
one cared,” Howard Federspiel, the State Department’s INR staffer for Indonesia, recalled, “as long as
565
Telegram From the Consulate in Medan to the Department of State, November 16, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 174.
Intelligence Memorandum, November 22, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 178; Anonymous reporter, “Report from East Java,”
Indonesia 41 (April 1986), 145.
567
Brands, “The Limits of Manipulation,” 803.
568
Ibid., 803. McMahon similarly stated that “neither the coup itself nor the army’s prompt response were influenced to any
significant degree by the United States.” Gardner even calls U.S. aid to the army during the killings a “myth.” See McMahon, The
Limits of Empire, 123, and Gardner, Shared Hopes. Separate Fears, 233.
569
William Colby quoted in Prados, Lost Crusader, 157. Colby committed, however, that the United States provided name-lists to
hunt down communists.“Without such a list,” he said, “you’re fighting blind.” Kadane, “Ex-Agents Say CIA Compiled Death Lists for
Indonesians.” See also Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno,” 263; McGehee, “The Indonesian Massacres.”
570
Tovar quoted in McMahon, The Limits of Empire, 123. As late as 2001, Tovar still insisted that “the US did not in any way help the
army suppress the communists. The communists attempted to launch a coup against the government by using the military and the
Army reacted. But there was no way that the US had a hand in that. The CIA did not do it…We did not know anything about the
communist attempt to overthrow the Indonesian government. That was a surprise to everyone.” Interview of Hugh Tovar by Purwani
Diyah Prabandri, Tempo Magazine, October 2-8, 2001.
571
Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson, June 8, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 210.
572
Memorandum Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency, November 9, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 172.
566
135
they were Communists, that they were being butchered.”573 The impression that no one cared remains
since the CIA refuses to declassify the majority of its operational documents for Indonesia in 1965. There
is also not a single document which suggests that US officials at any time considered influencing the
military to moderate its anti-PKI repression. Robert Kennedy is the exception that confirms the rule. In
January 1966, he stated: “we have spoken out against inhuman slaughters perpetrated by the Nazis and
the Communists. But will we speak out also against the inhuman slaughter in Indonesia, where over
100,000 alleged Communists have been not perpetrators, but victims?”574
The United States was not the only country that appreciated and supported the slaughter. British
officials stressed that they did not want to “miss the opportunity to use the situation to our advantage”
and did everything in their power to surreptitiously “blacken the PKI in the eyes of the army and the
people of Indonesia.”575 Peter Dale Scott claimed that West Germany assisted the Indonesian secret
service in suppressing left-wing protestors in Jakarta by delivering machine guns, radio equipment and
money to the value of 300,000 German marks, while Osman Jusuf Helmi, an Indonesian refugee, reported
that Sweden had signed a contract with Suharto and Nasution “for an emergency purchase of $10,000,000
worth of small arms and ammunition” in December 1965. It has been said that Thailand offered rice, but
only if the military would neutralize both the PKI and Sukarno. The Soviet Union criticized the killings,
but continued to ship arms in an attempt to strengthen its relations with the Indonesian military and
counter Chinese and American influence in the armed forces. Soviets officials told the New Zealand
Embassy in Jakarta however that “if it comes down to a choice between the PKI or no PKI, the USSR
would prefer the latter.”576 If the account of the notorious Dutch journalist Willem Oltmans can be
believed, the Netherlands also made a contribution by providing the Indonesian army 250,000 guilders
for the organization of anti-Sukarno demonstrations in Jakarta. Another Dutch scholar stated that, given
the Hague’s painful loss of West New Guinea only a few years earlier and its large economic interests in
Indonesia, it is “not entirely impossible that the Netherlands, even before the failed coup attempt on
September 30, 1965, played an active role behind the scenes in Indonesia with the aim of helping to
eliminate the PKI and to topple Sukarno.”577
As Edhie’s RKPAD forces moved from Central to East Java and eventually Bali, where the massacres
reached “an intensity that was second only to what happened in Aceh,” a high-level KOTI official told
military attaché Willis Ethel that probably more than 100,000 people had been killed already in Java and
Howard Federspiel cited in Kadane, “Ex-Agents Say CIA Compiled Death Lists for Indonesians.”
Robert Kennedy quoted in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 790. Curiously, the CIA recently admitted that it had a
hand in the 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq. Saeed Kamali Deghan and
Richard Norton-Taylor, “CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup,” The Guardian, August 19, 2013.
575
Mark Curtis, “Covert support of violence will continue to haunt us,” The Guardian, October 5, 2005.
576
Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno,” 245, n. 27; Gerlach, Extremely Violent Societies, 83; Simpson,
Economists with Guns, 189.
577
Willem Oltmans, Bon Voyage, Majesteit! (Breda: Papieren Tijger, 1995), 25; Joep Creyghton, “De Ontwikkelingshulp aan
Indonesië: Mythe en Werkelijkheid,” Tijdschrift voor Politieke Ekonomie 2 (1978), 82. Given the long and troublesome history that
the Netherlands and Indonesia share, the question whether the Netherlands indeed offered assistance to the Indonesian army during the
killings is a topic worthy of further study.
573
574
136
Sumatra alone. If this estimate was accurate, Ethel wrote the State Department, then “far more
communists have been killed in Indonesia over [the] past two months than even in Vietnam.”578 This was
still in December. Meanwhile, the Johnson administration continued sending covert assistance so that the
military could carry out the killings. Green later claimed that the United States “only supplied walkietalkies, not money,” but also this is a false claim.579 U.S. assistance included small arms, which were
delivered to the army through the CIA station in Bangkok. Moreover, in early December, Green
personally approved a secret payment of “fifty million rupiah [roughly $10 million] to support the
activities of the Kap-Gestapu movement,” whose activities he considered an “important factor in the
army's program” and “highly successful.” As Green concluded his memo, “the chances of detection or
subsequent revelation of our support are as minimal as any black bag operation can be.”580
The declassification of U.S. foreign policy materials has not been very kind to Green. Thanks to the
work of investigative journalist Kathy Kadane in the early 1990s, we know that the embassy also
compiled lists with the names and whereabouts of thousands of PKI members and suspected
sympathizers. Embassy staffer Robert Martens had been working on those lists with CIA analysts since
1963, thereby using newspaper sources, to create a detailed database of PKI members and alleged
communists. In 1965, the name-lists were given to Adam Malik’s aide, who in turn gave handed them
over to Suharto, who used them to track down communists. Martens told Kadane that the lists were a “big
help to the army” and a “big part of the reason the PKI has never come back.” “They probably killed a
lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad.” However, “there's a
time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment,” he said. Joseph Lazarsky, the CIA’s deputy
station chief in Indonesia, added that “the army had a ‘shooting list’ of about 4,000 or 5,000 people” and
that Washington was “getting a good account in Jakarta of who was being picked up.”581 Ralph McGehee,
a former CIA officer who later revealed that the CIA was “extremely proud” of its operation in Indonesia
and used it as “a model for future operations” in countries such as Iraq, Guatemala, Chile, Thailand, and
Vietnam, also confirmed that name-lists were provided to Indonesian army officers.582 But Green, though
admitting that “we had a lot more information” about the PKI “than the Indonesians themselves,” still
denied as late as 2001 that the United States had anything to do with the name-lists, despite the fact that
578
Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 152; Willis Ethel quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 190. Curiously, British
officials were given lower, though still shocking estimations. A British intelligence report in mid-December stated that “according to
the [Indonesian] Army estimates 17,000 PKI members had been killed up to 9th December, the average daily total deaths was 300,
and 45,000 people would be eliminated before the anti-coup purge is completed. 5,000 Gestapu suspects have been killed in one area
of Sumatra. Suspects who cannot be accommodated in over crowded prisons are frequently handed over to Moslem mobs and
murdered.” See Easter, Britain and Confrontation, 167.
579
Seno Joko Suyono, Gita W. Laksmini, and Ahmad Fuadi, “The Sensor and the CIA,” Tempo Magazine, August 7-13, 2001.
580
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, December 2, 1965, FRUS, 1968-1968, v. 26, 179.
581
Kadane, “Ex-Agents Say CIA Compiled Death Lists for Indonesians.”, “
582
McGehee stated that the “watch lists [were] and effective and deadly political tool…so deadly that the Agency cannot allow them
to become public knowledge.” McGehee, “The Indonesian Massacres” and “The CIA and The White Paper On El Salvador,” The
Nation, April 11, 1981, and Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno,” 258-264. In the early 1950s, similar lists were
compiled of communists in Sweden, see Prados, Lost Crusader, 156.
137
the FRUS series similarly revealed that the Embassy indeed had send name-lists embodied in messages
called “air grams” to Washington.583
The Anatomy, Scale and Coverage of the Massacre
Although much research on the Indonesian “Killing Fields” killings remains to be done, the studies that
have been conducted thus far teach us that the killings varied widely according to local and regional
circumstances. In some areas, the military did most of the killing, while in others, local men of violence
initiated the massacre. In still other areas, the killing was truly collective.584 In East Java and the strongly
Islamic province of Aceh, the available evidence suggests that local Muslim groups launched the first
attacks against the PKI, with assistance and encouragement of local army units. Initially, these units
moved cautiously, but when reinforcements arrived from Jakarta, they stepped up their activities. In
Central Java and Bali, it were particularly Edhie’s RPKAD forces that initiated the killings. As soon as
the Red Berets arrived in early December, the troops began arming and training Muslim youths and other
anti-communist forces, after which they moved systematically from village to village to arrest or execute
local communists and suspected sympathizers. In some cases, the perpetrators killed or captured only
those who were identified as “guilty.” In other cases, whole villages were wiped out. It has been said the
massacre involved a lot of close killing: often the perpetrators murdered their own neighbors, teachers,
intellectuals, and village headmen, thereby using bamboo spears, machetes, or army-supplied weapons.
In some cases, victims were beaten to death, and not seldom were they forced to dig their own grave after
which they were shot. In secluded places, bodies were thrown in mass graves, rivers or the sea. Bodies or
body parts were also regularly put on display to send a message to the people that no communist’s life
was safe. This fact, Peter Dale Scott rightfully observed, “is one of the sure signs that the mayhem was
not spontaneous and unpredictable,” but “elaborately prepared” by the army.585
The regions that were most affected by the killings were also the regions where the PKI and its
affiliates were strongest and where communist activities, for example in the domain of labor activism and
land reform, posed the greatest threat to existing social structures. Australian researcher Robert Cribb has
stated that the PKI was attacked because it advocated “a full-scale restructuring of Indonesian society”
through which it had “created its own victims amongst those it saw as the beneficiaries and upholders of
the established social order.”586 CIA analysts concluded that although the army’s anti-PKI campaign
stemmed from factors “far more complicated than simple anti-communism,” nearly all commanders
Kadane, “Letter to the Editor;” Prados, Lost Crusader, 156.
Cribb, “Genocide in Indonesia,” 237; Kenneth R. Young, “Local and National Influences in the Violence of 1965,” in Robert
Cribb, ed., Problems in the historiography of the killings in Indonesia (Clayton, Victory: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies Monash
University, 1990) 65-100; Gittings, “The Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66;” on Bali, see Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise; on
Sumatra, see Farid, “Indonesia’s Original Sin.”
585
The display of corpses or body parts was also a feature of other U.S. counterinsurgency campaign in the Philippines in the 1950s
and of the Indonesian army’s war against the Darul Islam in the late 1950s. See Peter Dale Scott, “Using Atrocities: U.S.
Responsibility for the Slaughters in Indonesia and East Timor,” unpublished article (1998), available at
http://www.ardeshirmehta.com/usresponsibilitiyfortheslaughtersinindonesiaandeasttimor.html (accessed March 1, 2015).
586
Cribb, “The Indonesian Killings,” 6.
583
584
138
viewed the PKI as their immediate rival for power. The campaign, the CIA argued, was thus primarily “a
power struggle, not an ideological struggle.” Hilmar Farid, an Indonesia writer-activist, similarly stated
that the anti-PKI campaign was an integral part of the army’s “economic strategy” to take control of what
has been called the “commanding heights of the Indonesian economy,” the key to assuming state power.
The workers at the rubber and tin estates in Northern Sumatra were therefore specifically targeted.587
The twentieth century has seen numerous horrific episodes of mass murder and genocide, but the
savagery and scale of the Indonesian killings of 1965-1966 was certainly one of a kind. Green recalled
that “there was no way to estimate the magnitude of the slaughter,” but various officials at the time did
attempt to do so. The approximations of the death toll varied widely, from 78,000 cited by the Indonesian
government in December 1965, to two million, the estimation of Dutch historian W.F. Wertheim in
October 1966.588 By the end of 1965, well before the massacre had ended, U.S. officials were certainly
aware that at least hundred thousand of Indonesians had been murdered. On December 4, Green cabled
Washington that over hundred thousand but not more than two hundred thousand had been killed in North
Sumatra and Central and East Java alone. Two months later, the Embassy reported estimates of the death
toll in Bali alone at eighty thousand – roughly five percent of Bali’s population – with “no end in sight.”
In late April, a CIA memorandum dismissed Jakarta’s claim of 78,000 dead, noting that two hundred fifty
thousand or five hundred thousand was closer to reality. But all estimates were uncertain, hence the
Embassy stated that “we frankly do not know whether the real figure is closer to 100,000 or 1,000,000
but believe it is wiser to err on the side of the lower estimates, especially when questioned by the press.”
In his briefing for President Johnson in June 1966, Walt Rostow thus cited the low figure of three hundred
thousand dead.589 It will probably never be known exactly how many PKI members and sympathizers
have been killed. Certain, however, is that this figure is closer to one million than to one hundred
thousand. Also certain is that the campaign led to the arrest of at least seven hundred fifty thousand more,
with many tens of thousands kept in prison until the late 1970s.590
Many commentators at the time presented the killings as the effect of a country “running amok,” with
the result that the massacre is often treated as if it fell into “an anomalous category of ‘accidental’ mass
death.”591 But this classification is unjustified. Indeed, many killings drew “on traditions of violence in
Indonesian society,” and not seldom were they motivated by personal and clan vendettas. In many
Intelligence Memorandum, November 22, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 178; Farid, “Indonesia’s Original Sin,” 11.
Green, Indonesia, 57; for a list of estimations, see Cribb, “The Indonesian Killings,” 12. In 1968, Green told a secret session of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee that nobody knew the exact death toll of the massacre, and that “we merely judge it by whole
villages that have been depopulated.” Green quoted in Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes. The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday,
2007), 261.
589
Kolko, Confronting the Third World, 181-182; Editorial Note, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 162; Memorandum From the President’s
Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson, June 8, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 210. Curiously, Green felt this was still an
exaggeration. In 1995 he wrote Paul Gardner that “it seems to me that a lot of people fled their homes to escape the killers – and their
absence was taken as evidence of their being killed. U.S. reporters wanted higher figures. They made a better story.” See Gardner,
Shared Hopes. Separate Fears, 232.
590
Cribb, “The Indonesian Killings,” 12, and 1-45 for a detailed treatment of the historiography of the killings.
591
Ibid., 16, and 33-34, for a treatment of the definition of “amok.” Two contemporary examples reflecting this view is C.L
Sulzberger’s article “Foreign Affairs: When a Nation Runs Amok,” New York Times, April 13, 1966, and John Hughes, The End of
Sukarno (New York: David McKay, 1967). On p. 175, Hughes wrote that the killings erupted “in a frenzy of savagery.”
587
588
139
occasions, ordinary Indonesians participated in the massacre for religious or political reasons or simply
for survival, with perpetrators explaining later that “the “killings were the will of God” and that “you
either kill or be killed.”592 But the extermination of the PKI and its unarmed supporters was above all a
military campaign, an essential part of the army’s strategy to assume power. As Harold Crouch and others
concluded, “the huge scale of the massacre was possible only because of the encouragement given by the
army.” General Suharto and the Indonesian armed forces, in addition to various anti-communist groups,
including Muslim organizations, local gangsters, and paramilitary organizations, including the Pemuda
Pancasila, are thus to be held primarily responsible for the massacre.593
The perpetrators were in turn encouraged and assisted by the United States, Britain and numerous
other countries. In this sense, the Indonesian killings were not different from other twentieth century mass
atrocities, whereby the passive or active support for violence from external powers often were important
factors. The Indonesian army’s foreign accomplices could have pressured it to halt or limit the scope and
scale of the killings, but that was not in their interest. On the contrary, as the carnage unfolded, they
maneuvered for advantage and did what they could to make sure that the violence continued. For the
United States, the annihilation of the PKI and its supporters was crucial to secure the island defense chain
and destroy the chances for communist or independent development in Southeast Asia’s largest and most
important country. The continuation of the anti-PKI campaign was also an important prerequisite for the
country’s reentry into the global economy, the neutralization of Sukarno, and the ascendancy of a military
regime that would modernize Indonesia along the lines laid out by the Kennedy administration in the
early 1960s. By the mid-1960s, keeping the archipelago state “quiet,” as some officials put it, was also
important so that the Johnson administration could focus its attention entirely on “loud” Vietnam, where
U.S. credibility was at stake.594
As stressed earlier, there were various officials who denied that Washington offered meaningful
assistance. Many historians, lacking access to significant sources on U.S. Indonesia-policy, have largely
accepted and copied these false statements.595 However, as Bradley Simpson noted, by looking at only a
fraction of the documents that have been declassified thus far, one has to conclude that, Washington’s
“covert operations in Indonesia were more widespread and insidious than previously acknowledged” and
that the Johnson administration was a “direct and willing accomplice to one of the greatest bloodbaths of
twentieth-century history.”596 Having said this, it should be stressed that the media, who always offer the
Scott, “Using Atrocities;” Editorial Note, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 162; Topping, On the Front Lines, 290-291. Farid noted that in
some cases, “those who did not join the violence against the PKI were considered PKI supporters themselves and thus became victims
themselves. Farid, “Indonesia’s Original Sin,” 8.
593
Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 156. See also Sundhaussen, The Road, 219; Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder, 81.
594
Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 361; Brands, The Wages of Globalism, 157; Frederik Logevall, ““There Ain’t No Daylight.” Lyndon
Johnson and the Politics of Escalation” in: Mark Philip Bradley and Marilyn B. Young, Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars. Local,
National, and Transnational Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 103.
595
Brands, Wages of Globalism, 176; McMahon, The Limits of Empire, 123-124; Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 277; Subritzky,
Confronting Sukarno, 176. Exceptions are Bunnell, “American “Low Posture” Policy,” 58-60; Simpson, Economists with Guns,
passim; Bird, The Color of Truth, 352-354; Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno,” 239-264; Roosa, Pretext for
Mass Murder, passim.
596
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 194.
592
140
first rough draft of history, did their part as well. As soon as the anti-PKI campaign began, the press was
pleased, sometimes even euphoric. Downplaying the terrible fate of the unarmed communists, they
cheered and presented the massacre solely in terms of new economic advantages and as a victory for the
“Free World” over communism. James Reston of the New York Times reported the political turnaround
and “staggering mass slaughter of Communists and pro-Communists” in June 1966 as a “gleam of light
in Asia.” Time, in a cover story under the heading “Vengeance with a Smile,” cheered Suharto’s rise
ascendancy and the “boiling bloodbath that almost unnoticed took 400,000 lives” as “the West’s best
news for years in Asia.” Time also noted that the “army was responsible” for much of the slaughter, which
”took more lives than the U.S. has lost in all wars in this century.” It nevertheless praised Suharto’s
ascendancy as a “triumph for democracy.” C.L. Sulzberger of the New York Times wrote the most
disgraceful report. In an editorial entitled “When a Nation Runs Amok,” he stated that the killings had
confirmed his belief that the Indonesians possessed a “strange Malay streak, that inner frenzied bloodlust which has given to other languages one of their few Malay words: amok.” But in the end, the
bloodshed hardly surprised Sulzburger, for they took place in “violent Asia, where life is cheap.”597
Suharto’s Creeping Coup D’état
Now that the PKI was being literally wiped out throughout the entire archipelago state, the United States
wanted the Indonesian army to move against President Sukarno and start making efforts to reorganize the
national economy.598 Sukarno’s repeated rallies against the army’s anti-PKI campaign could not make an
end to the bloodshed, but he was still a force to be reckoned with. As long as the Indonesian President
remained in power, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the Johnson administration to resume
sending more substantial aid. In early November 1966, U.S. officials evaluated the situation. Ambassador
Marshall Green noted that the United States “was now dealing with two Indonesian governments,”
Sukarno’s cabinet and the Indonesian military. Director of the Office of Southwest Pacific Affairs David
Cuthell added that despite the current campaign against the PKI, there were still serious disagreements
between the two countries. It seemed that the army wanted to continue Konfrontasi and that it opposed a
Western military presence in Southeast Asia, particularly in Vietnam. Another problem was that it looked
as if the army wished to continue relations with Moscow. But the biggest problem, Cuthell noted, was
that it was still “strongly nationalistic in economic orientation, and favors the takeover of western
economic interests,” including American oil companies.599
Although Cuthell recognized that for the time being the United States had only “a minor role in
influencing the course of Indonesian events,” he believed that “with the passage of time a more truly nonaligned Indonesian Government may gradually come to recognize that American and Indonesian interests
James Reston, “Washington: A Gleam of Light in Asia,” New York Times, June 19, 1966; “Indonesia: Vengeance with a smile,”
Time Magazine, July 15, 1966; C.L. Sulzberger, “Foreign Affairs: When a Nation Runs Amok,” New York Times, April 13, 1966.
598
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 197.
599
Memorandum From the Director of the Office of Southwest Pacific Affairs (Cuthell) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far
Eastern Affairs (Bundy), November 3, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 167.
597
141
are in harmony.”600 Like other officials in the State Department, Cuthell recognized that the armed forces
desperately needed foreign aid, investment, and capital to consolidate power and solve the country’s
economic ills. This would give Washington and its allies a substantial leverage to influence the army’s
political thinking and affect Suharto’s “creeping” coup d’état.601 Earlier, we saw how the United States
and other countries were cautiously approached by the Indonesian army to provide medicines, small arms,
communications equipment, rice and cotton. Moreover, we saw that U.S. officials were eager to send
such aid to demonstrate which side the United States was on and to make sure that the army’s anti-PKI
campaign continued. As covert aid began to flow and the massacre continued, officials in Washington
began to discuss the conditions under which they might resume substantial assistance and the broader
policy aims to which such aid would be tied.
The White House and the CIA opined that the United States should proceed with aid, provided that
“we can do so covertly, in a manner which will not embarrass them or embarrass our government.” But
the State Department was more careful and argued that the United States “should be in no hurry to get
such aid and that when we do we should tie definite “strings” to it.” At quadripartite talks in London in
early December 1965, American, British, Australian and New Zealand officials agreed to refrain from
sending further aid to Jakarta until the army’s political agenda had become clearer. Curiously, not a single
word was said about the massacre. Shortly after, White House, CIA and Pentagon officials reached an
agreement on the conditions for further assistance: Konfrontasi would have to stop, attacks against U.S.
policy and interest would have to cease, and Sukarno would have to be removed from power. Once all
conditions were met, U.S. aid would be tied to the army’s willingness “to tackle some of the structural
problems which have prevented economic development” in Indonesia. In addition, it was also that
assistance would be directly linked to Indonesia’s U.S.- and IMF approved plans for economic reform,
and that aid would be provided on a multilateral basis, with Japan taking the lead in such an
undertaking.602
Showdown in Jakarta
U.S. officials were annoyed that Suharto and other military officers were not supportive of the American
war effort in Vietnam. However, it was, as historian Gabriel Kolko noted, the position of American oil
companies Indonesia that mattered most to them.603 Just before September 30, 1965, policymakers in
Washington received information that Sukarno had instructed Chaerul Saleh to proceed with the
management takeover of American oil companies and speed up the purchase of oil refining assets. While
the events of the following months dramatically changed Indonesia’s political setting, the situation
600
Ibid.
Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder, 200.
602
Memorandum Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency, November 9, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 172; Memorandum From
the Director of the Far East Region (Blouin) to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs
(Friedman), December 13, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 183; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 197.
603
Kolko, Confronting the Third World, 182-183.
601
142
regarding the operation of foreign companies had not changed one bit. In private, U.S. officials recognized
that “any concession in our direction would be politically damaging” for the Indonesian army.604 But
waiting and wishing that the situation would solve itself was of course no option. If the oil companies
were expropriated, this would bring the Hickenlooper amendment into effect, and that would fully destroy
the chance of further aid to the Indonesian military. The main problem, policymakers noted, was that
“even most anti-communist Army leadership are strongly imbued with [the] conviction that Indonesians
must control their own national resources” and “have control over [their] own affairs.”605
Through the fall of 1965, U.S. officials repeatedly warned the army leadership that American support
and their grip on power could be lost if the military failed to reach an agreement with the oil companies.
At the end of October, Galbraith outlined to army leaders the disastrous consequences of a move against
the oil companies, adding that if the military refrained from the nationalization of the oil industry this
would “permit companies to give all-out support to Army’s and the country’s needs.”606 Shortly after,
Caltex representative Julius Tahija told army leaders that Japan and Australia would likewise refrain from
sending further aid if the military would expropriate oil companies. The warnings had their desired effect.
When a group of high-level Indonesian officials met to discuss Saleh’s proposal for the takeover of the
American oil companies on December 16, Suharto personally intervened. The story goes that he
dramatically arrived by helicopter, entered the room and made it “crystal clear” that the military “would
not stand for precipitous moves against oil companies.”607 Suharto then turned around and left the room,
after which Saleh ended the meeting and withdrew his proposal. Admittedly, the oil companies would
continue their often difficult negotiations with the Indonesian government in the following months.
Nevertheless, a major crisis had been avoided at a crucial time. Another Indonesian attempt to take control
over its natural resources and follow a path of nationalist economic development had been thwarted at an
early stage.608
Right at the time that Suharto personally intervened to prevent the nationalization of American oil
companies, the Indonesian Army went after union leaders and alleged communist workers at the U.S. tin
and rubber estates in Northern Sumatra. On December 22, Green wrote summarized the Indonesian
situation for the State Department, stating that “Indo[nesian] politics has continued to move in [the]
“right” direction” since his assessment a month earlier. As Green concluded, the PKI was “no longer a
significant political force” and the Djakarta-Peking axis was “in tatters.” Moreover, the Indonesian
military had gained in “political experience” and “further consolidated its position.” The most important
change was the “further weakening of Sukarno's prestige,” marked by a failed attempt to nationalize the
604
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, November 1, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 165.
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 198.
606
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, October 29, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 163.
607
John Roosa and Joseph Nevins, “40 Years Later: The Mass Killings in Indonesia,” Counterpunch, November 5, 2005,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/11/05/the-mass-killings-in-indonesia/ (accessed March 28, 2014).
608
For example, in mid-February 1966, Green would complain again that “our ability to respond to Indonesian requests for aid when
they are made may be hampered by the simmering crisis between the Indonesian Government and U.S. oil companies.” Briefing Notes
for President Johnson, February 15, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 193; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 198-199.
605
143
oil companies. Green assessed that Sukarno’s tarnished image had opened the “real possibility of farreaching changes in local power structure during next few months,” but recommended the administration
to remain “as far in the background [of] the Indonesian scene as possible” on the short run. Indonesia, he
argued, was still “in [the] midst of [a] basic political revolution” and “many problems and hazards
remained,” a view shared by others in Washington, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff.609
Green’s assessment was accurate. But although Sukarno’s position had waned considerably since
September 30, he was still a formidable political opponent, enjoying extensive support throughout the
entire country, especially among those who had fought along his side during the Indonesian Revolution
of 1945-1949. Sensing the army’s reluctance to force a decisive confrontation, Sukarno embarked on a
final political offensive. Two days after Suharto’s cabinet intervention, Sukarno refused to ban the PKI
and made it clear to all military leaders that he was “not going to concede once inch.”610 Fearful of a fullblown conflict that could lead to civil war, the army backed down, after which it allowed Sukarno to
regain some strength in early 1966. Sukarno’s resurgence was a disillusion for his civilian opponents, in
particular for the Indonesian Student Action Front (KAMI), which immediately launched a series armybacked demonstrations against the president’s policies. On January 15, 1966, when KAMI held its largest
demonstration in front of the presidential palace in Bogor, Sukarno angrily denounced the protestors and
urged his supporters to defend him. This resulted in various rallies throughout Java, where the president
had always been most popular. When the army opened its first military tribunal against a PKI politburo
member in early February, Sukarno gave a speech in which he praised the PKI’s contributions to the
Indonesian revolution. Sukarno’s most dramatic effort to regain previous powers had taken place a day
earlier, when he announced a major cabinet reshuffle aimed at rolling back the army’s political gains.
This led to the replacement of Nasution and nine other anti-PKI cabinet members by Sukarno loyalists,
several of whom were known for having sympathy for the PKI.611
Whereas the CIA assessed in January 1966 that “the era of Sukarno’s dominance has ended,” a month
later it seemed that there were still two power centers in Indonesia and that neither Sukarno nor the armed
forces were able “to impose their will on the other.”612 This had important implications for U.S. Indonesiapolicy, and for Washington’s aid assurances in particular. On January 19, when Green was approached
by the North American head of the Indonesian Foreign Office with a request to send emergency shipments
of rice and cotton, he said that emergency aid would come “when the time was right.” One day later, Rusk
told the embassy that the United States could not resume its assistance to Indonesia as long as it was still
609
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, December 22, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 186;
Memorandum From the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense McNamara, December 30, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 187.
610
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, February 2, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 190.
611
Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 167-179; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 201; Memorandum From the President’s
Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) and Chester L. Cooper of the National Security Council Staff to President
Johnson, February 21, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 197.
612
See ibid., n. 3; Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, February 2, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26,
190, n. 2.
144
“publicly identified by highest GOI officials as arch enemy,” of course a clear reference to Sukarno. 613
Against the backdrop of this stagnation, Green returned to Washington in mid-February to discuss what
the United States could do to resolve the stalemate in the military’s favor. Komer suggested to give “a
little more discreet help” to Jakarta’s military leaders in an attempt to help them counter Sukarno’s
offensive. Harriman and Vice President Humphrey agreed, but Rusk was still unconvinced and
recommended to tie rice and other assistance to a broad package of political and economic reforms,
beginning with Konfrontasi. Johnson, despite warnings from Komer that the power struggle between
Sukarno and the Indonesian army was Washington’s “second biggest story in Southeast Asia,” was still
less interested in Indonesia than in Vietnam and ended the discussion by stating that he would leave it to
Green “to make specific recommendations as to the timing and conditions under which the United States
might extend assistance to Indonesia.”614
Sukarno’s comeback would not last long. Following his political offensive in early 1966, more and
more military leaders in Indonesia came to realize that “a more determined stance against Sukarno” was
needed. Harold Crouch noted that the army’s challenge was to find “a way to reject the cabinet changes
without taking action that would force members of the Armed forces to choose between Suharto and
Sukarno.”615 Suharto decided to send a group of anti-Sukarno officers, including RPKAD commander
Sarwo Edhie and KOSTRAD commander Kemal Idris, to the capital to encourage the Indonesian Student
Action Front to resume its protests and create an atmosphere of anarchy. The calculation was that Sukarno
would realize at some point that he was unable to control or halt the protests, and then turn to the army
to restore order. If that happened, McGeorge Bundy cleverly observed, the army would have “a pretext
for their re-imposition of martial law and the reversal of Sukarno’s decisions.”616
On February 23, KAMI resumed its protests and organized a large demonstration in Jakarta. It
demanded the banning of the PKI and a reduction of prices for basic commodities, which had risen skyhigh due to the deterioration of the Indonesian economy. The next day, KAMI demonstrators surrounded
the presidential palace to prevent the a cabinet meeting. The students deflated car tires throughout the
area, which forced the ministers to fly in by helicopter. Pro-Sukarno demonstrators responded by
attacking the U.S. embassy, where they broke windows and burned several cars. Meanwhile, KAMI
attempted to storm the palace, after which Sukarno’s presidential guard opened fire, killing two young
demonstrators in cold blood. The next day, a massive funeral procession took place for the killed students,
after which Sukarno banned all further demonstrations and dissolved The Indonesian Student Action
Front. This immediately resulted in the founding of two new student organizations, and the moving of
613
Telegram 2092 from Jakarta to State, January 19, 1966 FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 197, n. 3; Telegram From the Department of State
to the Embassy in Indonesia, January 20, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 189;
614
Briefing Notes for President Johnson, February 15, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 193; Memorandum of Conversation, February
15, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 194.
615
Robert Edward Elson, Suharto: A Political Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 133; Crouch, The Army
and Politics in Indonesia, 180.
616
Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) and Chester L. Cooper of the National
Security Council Staff to President Johnson, February 21, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 197.
145
KAMI’s offices to KOSTRAD’s headquarters, after which the demonstrations continued. The U.S.
Embassy expressed its admiration for students’ actions, but believed that they “will not bring about
change in regime in near future unless army joins in openly.”617
The moment of showdown arrived in early March. To solve the increasingly chaotic situation in
Jakarta, Sukarno called a series of meetings with all major political forces from March 9 to March 11.
U.S. officials, army leaders, and student organizations believed that this might be the moment to turn the
tide. The day before the first meeting began, thousands of student demonstrators stormed the Foreign
Ministry building to demand the removal and arrest of Subandrio. Three days later Sukarno convened a
full cabinet meeting at the presidential palace, student demonstrators again let the air out of the tires of
all cars, forcing the cabinet members again to arrive by helicopter. When the meeting started, KOSTRAD
troops under the command of Sarwo Edhie and Kemal Idris took up positions around the building. The
soldiers had removed their red berets and insignia so that they would remain incognito. A Sukarno aide
interrupted the meeting to inform the cabinet that unknown troops had surrounded the palace, after which
Sukarno, Subandrio, and Chaerul Sulah left the meeting to fly by helicopter to the presidential palace at
Bogor. Suharto then sent three loyal generals to Bogor to inform Sukarno that the General could bring
the situation under control, if only the President would empower him. After some tense discussions,
Sukarno signed a letter, the Supersemar, which ordered Suharto to restore order and “take all measures
considered necessary to guarantee security, calm, and stability of the government.”618
Suharto directly exploited his newly acquired powers. On March 12, he issued an order banning the
PKI and its affiliates in name of Sukarno, “a shattering blow” to the President’s authority. Two days later,
the General ordered the army to “step up their campaign to remove all traces” of the PKI that still existed.
Reports from Western newspaper sources in Jakarta described the “nightly execution” of PKI prisoners
and suspected communists in East Java, Bali and Lombok. Travelers passing through these areas reported
seeing bodies in several villages, with heads fixed on poles at one market place.619 U.S. Embassy officials
similarly stated that communists in Bali were still killed “like hell” by KOSTRAD forces.620 When
Sukarno refused to dismiss his new cabinet and students protested on March 18, the military simply
arrested a number of cabinet members. Sukarno remained president and continued to wield some
influence, but it was clear that power in Indonesia had decisively shifted from the Indonesian President
to Suharto and the Indonesian military.621
Johnson administration officials were delighted that Suharto and other so-called “moderates” had gone
through what Marshall Green called Indonesia’s “own peculiar form of military [a] coup.”622 That
617
Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 179-187; Elson, Suharto, 133; Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the
Department of State, March 4, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 198.
618
Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 189; Elson, Suharto, 135-138.
619
Seth King, “Indonesian Army Told To Wipe Out Communist Party,” New York Times, March 14, 1966, and “Indonesian Reds Still
Are Slain Despite Ouster of Nasution,” New York Times, March 5, 1966.
620
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 205.
621
Ibid.; Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, 196.
622
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, March 12, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 200.
146
Indonesia’s new rulers were still killing unarmed PKI members and suspected communists did not bother
them. “Things are so much brighter in almost every way that I can hardly believe it is the same country,”
Hugh Bernardo Tovar wrote to RAND analyst Guy Pauker at the end of March 1966. Komer told
President Johnson that “it is hard to overestimate the potential significance of the Army’s apparent victory
over Sukarno.” As Komer explained, “Indonesia has more people – and probably more resources – than
all of mainland Southeast Asia.” In addition, “it was well on the way to becoming another expansionist
Communist state, which would have critically menaced the rear of the whole Western position in
mainland Southeast Asia. Now, though the unforeseen can always happen, this trend has been sharply
reversed.”623
Securing the Anchor: from Old Order to New Order Indonesia
Now that the PKI was almost completely annihilated and Sukarno’s power significantly diminished, U.S.
officials shifted their attention from the short-term goal of rolling back communism and neutralizing the
Indonesian president to the long-term objective of helping the Indonesian army to consolidate power and
establish a responsible and economic-minded regime. The immediate priority was now to rescue, stabilize
and develop the Indonesian economy, which hovered on the brink of collapse. Also it was essential to
regain the confidence of foreign creditors and investors to help drawing Indonesia back “into the real
world,” as the State Department put it. With the escalated war in Vietnam as an increasingly large
constraining factor, the Johnson administration clearly favored to remain in the background. It looked
therefore instead at Japan, Indonesia’s largest trading partner, and multilateral organizations, such as the
IMF, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), to shoulder the burden of such an
undertaking.624 At the same time, it also realized that only the United States had the power and credibility
that was necessary to mobilize international support for Indonesia’s rehabilitation program. Years of
American assistance and training had after all not only generated close relationships and mutual
understanding, but also huge expectations among Indonesia’s military leaders towards Washington.
Consequently, it was the United States that had by far the greatest responsibility and leverage to pressure
the army to realize far-reaching reforms necessary for Indonesia’s political and economic recovery to “rejoin the world.”625
At the end of March 1966, as Sukarno announced the formation of a new cabinet in which the
triumvirate of Suharto (as defense minister, army chief of staff, and KOTI chief of staff), Adam Malik
(foreign minister) and the Sultan of Yogyakarta (minister of economic affairs) exerted effective control,
U.S. administration officials met again to discuss Indonesia-policy.626 Green informed that he had been
623
Letter from Hugh Tovar to Guy Pauker, March 28, 1966, cited in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 206; Memorandum From the
President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Komer) to President Johnson, March 12, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968,
v. 26, 201.
624
See Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, March 17, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 203;
Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Johnson, August 1, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 215.
625
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, March 22, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 204.
626
Ricklefs, History of Modern Indonesia, 289.
147
approached by Indonesian officials once again with an emergency request of rice to prevent looming
shortcomings and further destabilization in the country, and urged the administration to meet that request.
The White House and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who had earlier stressed that U.S. assistance
depended “on some showing that a constructive Indonesian government is establishing itself firmly in
power desiring to pull out [the] country of its economic shambles,” but now recognized that “the
Indonesian economy is in ruins and the central bank is bankrupt,” gave their approval, provided that the
Embassy moved cautiously and Jakarta demonstrated its commitment to economic reforms in the months
to come. Congressional, leaders pleased with the recent Indonesian turnaround, were also in support of
the deal, or at least expressed no clear objections to it, allowing the United States to move forward.627
Since the September 30, 1965, Indonesia’s top leaders had “wished to avoid anything that looks like
overt U.S. Government aid,” but now they recognized that international aid and support was necessary to
consolidate power and solve the country’s economic problems.628 The first signs of commitment to
economic reform were demonstrated in April 1966. In a widely reported speech, the Sultan of Yogyakarta
not only admitted the failures of Indonesia’s past economic policies, but also declared that the country
would make efforts to reschedule its debts, welcome back foreign investors, improve its infrastructure,
and reform state-owned enterprises. A few weeks later, a group of diplomats travelled to Japan, Europe
and the United States to request the rescheduling of Indonesia’s debt and arrange new credit deals with
the IMF and the World Bank. In late May, the embassies of Indonesia’s creditors began discussions in
Jakarta to define a common view regarding the country’s debt crisis.629 The IMF described Indonesia’s
foreign debt, which totaled a crippling amount of $2.5 billion, as “extremely unusual – debt probably
worse than any other case in recent history.” It is worth noting that over half of the debt was made up of
credits for military spending, which prompted various Indonesian civilian officials to complain that the
generals still had “no basic interests in economic affairs.”630
With rice shipments on the way, the administration’s attention shifted to cotton. In 1965, American
exports to Indonesia had declined dramatically, reaching an all-time low of $41.6 million. Since the
United States had a cotton surplus, U.S. officials believed that “it would be good for us and for them if
we were to unload some of it on the Indo[nesian]s.”631 Curiously, they had the backing of Texas Senator
John Tower. A year earlier Tower had introduced an amendment to ban all aid Indonesia; now he
complained that the administration did not do enough to finalize the sale of 75,000 bales of cotton to
Jakarta. As Simpson noted, the senator’s sudden shift was not so much a result of his sympathy for
627
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, March 17, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 203;
Memorandum From James C. Thomson, Jr., of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant (Moyers),
March 31, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 205, note 2; Brands, Wages of Globalism, 178.
628
See Memorandum From James C. Thomson, Jr., of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant
(Moyers), March 31, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 205, note 3.
629
Indonesia’s chief creditor nations were the United States, West Germany, France, the Netherlands, Japan, and the USSR. The latter
was not present during these discussions.
630
See Simpson, Economists with Guns, 214 and 218.
631
See Memorandum From James C. Thomson, Jr., of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant
(Rostow), May 4, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 207.
148
Indonesia’s new leaders, but more of the pressure of his constituents. These were independent midsize
oil firms and Texas and Louisiana-based cotton brokers with a keen interest to increase business with
Indonesia. Indonesian army leaders were similarly interest in a cotton deal.632 At the end of May, when
Green met with Suharto for the first with Suharto, the latter stated that Indonesia’s “main danger…is
economic,” and that he need more aid. Green weighed in and forwarded the request to Rusk. Two weeks
later the White House approved the sale of 75,000 bales of cotton “on generous terms of interest and
repayment,” a deal worth more than $10 million.633
Meanwhile, Indonesia’s new rulers also made efforts to change their country’s foreign policy. At the
beginning of April 1966, Malik announced that Jakarta would return to a policy of non-alignment, rejoin
the United Nations and other international bodies, and make efforts to find a peaceful resolution with
Malaysia. Following discussions behind the screens with British, Malaysian, and Philippine officials,
negotiations between Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur gathered pace in May. A big step forward was that
Indonesia was now willing to stop insisting on a referendum for Sabah and Sarawak and drop objections
to a continued military presence of Britain in Singapore. London, viewing Indonesia as a country offering
“great potential opportunities for British exporters,” was equally interested, with Prime Minister Harold
Wilson at the height of the Indonesian killings saying that “if there is going to be a deal in Indonesia, as
I think there will be, I think we ought to take an active part and try and secure a slice of the cake
ourselves.”634
But despite its interest in finding a peaceful solution, Jakarta could not simply abandon a policy that
it had pursued so vigorously for more than three years without a serious loss of credibility. Consequently,
it took until August 11, before Indonesia and Malaysia signed a final peace agreement. The Bangkok
Accord bound Kuala Lumpur to a “reaffirmation by the people of Sabah and Sarawak through general
elections,” called for the termination of hostile acts, and reestablished diplomatic ties between both
countries.635 The agreement, which would have never been reached if the Indonesian regime change had
not occurred, stabilized the Cold War in what the British Foreign Office called the “lower arc” of
Southeast Asia. Moreover, it paved the way for increased political and economic cooperation in the region
in the years and decades that followed. Almost exactly one year later, on August 8, 1967, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore formed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
a regional bulwark against the growing power of the People’s Republic of China. Today, ASEAN is seen
by scholars as the “most successful and enduring organization of its sort outside the established ‘Western’
democracies that dominate the landscape of international cooperation.”636
632
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 216.
Ibid, 217; Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Johnson, August 1, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 215.
634
Mackie, Konfrontasi, 318-320; Mark Curtis, “Complicity in a Million Deaths,” in: John Pilger, ed., Tell Me No Lies: Investigative
Journalism and its Triumphs (London: Random House, 2004), 512.
635
Intelligence Note From the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Hughes) to Secretary of State Rusk, August 12,
1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 218.
636
Mark Beeson, “Living with Giants: ASEAN and the Evolution of Regionalism,” Trans -Regional and –National Studies of
Southeast Asia 1, no. 2 (July 2013), 303.
633
149
Indonesia’s Stabilization Efforts and the Resumption of U.S. Aid
We have seen above that during the first half of 1966, the United States and its allies in Europe and Japan
slowly but surely publicly embraced Suharto’s New Order regime. Indonesia’s re-entry in the United
Nations and the cessation of Konfrontasi, in addition to the army’s commitment to economic reform,
were important factors in this development. But most significant was Jakarta’s announcement of a new
cabinet on July 25. In previous weeks, there had been worries that the new cabinet would exist of
numerous pro-Sukarno ministers. This would certainly prevent a resumption of foreign aid and assistance
in rescheduling the country’s foreign debt. Instead, the outcome was a cabinet consisting of ministers
committed to economic reform. It included Widjojo Nitisastro, Mohammed Sadli and Emil Salim,
individuals that had earlier followed training in the United States and with whom Washington had forged
close ties during the stabilization efforts of 1963. As the State Department happily observed, this “cabinet
of technicians” was a “major step in [the] campaign to ease President Sukarno out of effective power”
entirely.637
To demonstrate their perspectives and create a consensus among military leaders on Indonesia’s
policies, the cabinet’s technocrats convened a series of seminars. During the first seminar, in January
1966, they publically criticized Indonesia’s previous economic policies and stressed the need for a liberal
approach to the economy. “We must recognize,” one of the technocrats argued, “that we lack the capital
to improve the economy and develop the nation. We need capital, yet we cannot raise capital internally.
We must look for capital from abroad.”638 U.S. officials were extremely pleased to hear such statements,
and in the following months they repeatedly made it clear to Indonesian army officials “that Indonesia
would not get aid until they went the way the economists advised.”639 Another seminar was organized at
SESKOAD in Bandung in August 1966. It was at this seminar that the technocrats won Suharto over to
select their blueprint: an orthodox stabilization program, open to foreign capital and assistance. “This
particular seminar,” one cabinet technocrat remembered, “was the main source, if not the only source, of
inspiration for the New Order…The New Order originated in Bandung.” Suharto, who shortly after
seminar appointed the economists as his “Team of Experts in the Field of Economics and Finance,”
similarly recalled that the Bandung seminar had “formulated the New Order.”640
That the army seemed to fully embrace economic reform was for Ambassador Marshall Green yet
another indication that the “new political order” in Indonesia “will be army planned, army built and army
sponsored and that it is army which will remain dominant political force in Indonesia for a long time to
come.”641 Shortly after, he pushed the White House to launch a limited Civic Action Program, resume
637
Intelligence Note From the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Hughes) to Secretary of State Rusk, July 25, 1966,
FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 214.
638
Mohammed Sadli quoted in Gunawan Mohamad, Ford Foundation, Celebrating Indonesia: Fifty Years with the Ford Foundation,
1953-2003 (Washington, DC: Ford Foundation, 2003), 59.
639
Jeffrey A. Winters, Power in Motion: Capital Mobility and the Indonesian State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 82.
640
Elson, Suharto, 148. See also Simpson, Economists with Guns, 220.
641
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, October 27, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 225.
150
student and participating training, and send raw materials and spare parts assistance. Walt Rostow, who
had just replaced McGeorge Bundy as President Johnson’s National Security Advisor, noted that these
initiatives would “avoid involving us too deeply while laying the groundwork for subsequent
assistance.”642 On August 4, the NSC met to discuss Green’s recommendations. Rusk, who was just
approached by Adam Malik with a $500 million wish list of the army’s most urgent needs, stressed that
there had been “only modest progress in dealing with the root causes of Indonesia’s economic collapse,”
and proposed therefore to send only a limited aid program. But Rostow, particularly interested in
Indonesian economic recovery, stressed that the country offered “a pioneer case” to “establish a new
pattern of multilateral help in Asia,” whereby Washington’s experiences with the Alliance for Progress
in Latin America could serve as an important example.643
President Johnson happily observed that Indonesia had undergone a “dramatic change” and recalled
that only a year earlier it was “rapidly moving toward becoming an out-and-out Communist state.” He
therefore approved the resumption of U.S. aid as Green proposed it, provided that Congress was
supportive too. In the remainder of August, administration officials engaged in a series of talks with
congressional leaders to gather widespread support for their policy. When at the of the month it became
clear that they would have sufficient support, Johnson signed a presidential determination, authorizing
the resumption of American aid to Indonesia. On the same day, Washington also informed Jakarta that it
would consider another PL 480 agreement for 150,000 bales of cotton, a deal that was later expanded to
a $10 million loan for spare parts and raw materials. More good news followed two weeks later, when
the White House voted on the administration’s $3.09 billion foreign aid bill and removed the ban on
foreign aid to Jakarta. This action allowed the full resumption of foreign assistance: a significant turning
point in the Johnson administration’s policy towards Indonesia.644
Resuming the Military Assistance Program
As Washington resumed its aid and civic action programs in Indonesia, it saw “no workable alternatives
short of outright military dictatorship which Suharto hopes to avoid.” This meant, Ambassador Green
explained, “that USG must contemplate working with an army controlled government not only during
two year transition period but well into “new order.””645 Some officials, like Dean Rusk, complained in
private that Suharto and the Indonesian army had “no major commitment to democratic freedoms as we
know them.”646 However, during a meeting of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Secretary of State
explained that U.S. assistance to Indonesia would help to consolidate Indonesia as a “nonaligned bastion
Memorandum From Donald W. Ropa of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow), July 9
and 11, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 212 and 213.
643
Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Johnson, August 1, 1966, and Notes of the 563rd Meeting of the NSC,
August 4, 1966, both in FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 215 and 217.
644
Notes of the 563rd Meeting of the NSC, August 4, 1966, and Memorandum From William J. Jorden of the National Security
Council Staff to President Johnson, both in FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 217 and 220; Simpson, Economists with Guns, 222.
645
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, October 27, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 225.
646
Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Johnson, August 1, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 215.
642
151
of freedom in Asia.”647 Writing Sam Berger, the Deputy Assistant of State for East Asian and Pacific
Affairs, Green stated that “for the military to withdraw from a major and active role in political life would
be as disastrous for Indonesia as for the military to take over all power.”648 Meanwhile, the killings still
continued. As General Sumitro told New York Times journalist Seymour Topping in late August 1966,
“most local commanders did their utmost to kill as many cadres as possible” of the PKI. 649 Clearly, this
did not matter; what counted for the United States and its allies was the consolidation of a non-communist
regime that would dedicate itself to economic recovery and allow the West to regain access to Indonesia’s
rich natural resources and strategic location, while remain “silent” as Washington fought its war against
Hanoi. This approach was entirely in line with the ideas on military-led modernization, which I have
discussed in chapter 1.
In late September 1966, shortly before Indonesian officials met with IMF and the World Bank officials
to discuss plans for economic reform, Malik traveled to Washington to meet with numerous top CIA,
Pentagon and State Department officials, House and Senate leaders, Vice President Humphrey, Secretary
of State Rusk, and President Johnson to talk about U.S.-Indonesia relations. Malik’s visit, the first highlevel Indonesian visit since the turnaround in October, illustrated that the Johnson administration attached
high importance to doing business with Indonesia’s new anti-communist regime. Malik’s goal was to
secure more aid, which was crucial, he explained, “to keep the large numbers of troops in Indonesia
satisfied and occupied,” and to avoid a PKI comeback. To convince American policymakers, he
underlined that his country’s “fundamental task was improvement of the nation’s economy.” Malik did
not return empty-handed. Rusk approved the shipment of an additional 50,000 tons of rice and 150,000
bales of cotton. But he stressed that “external resources could play only a marginal part in the
development effort and that Indonesia itself must carry the main burden.”650
Now that President had finally signed a determination on U.S. assistance for Indonesia, the Johnson
administration also resumed planning for a resumption of the Military Assistance Program in Indonesia.
In earlier conversations with U.S. officials, Indonesian army leaders had hoped to obtain military
requirements “running into hundred millions of dollars.” During Malik’s visit, Suharto’s associate,
General Jusuf, met with Pentagon officials to discuss the resumption of the Indonesian Civic Action
Program. Most policymakers opposed anything but token aid to the Indonesian armed forces for fear that
more substantial aid would distract them from the most urgent task of reforming the economy. Pentagon
officials saw “no military justification” for the resumption of MAP aid and admitted that any aid offered
to the armed forces “would be largely for political and economic purposes.” Moreover, the United States
had “little to gain” by building up the Indonesian military, which was already the “best equipped…armed
Dean Rusk quoted in John H. Sullivan, “The United States and the ‘New Order’ in Indonesia” (PhD dis., American University,
1969), 350.
648
Letter From the Ambassador to Indonesia (Green) to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East and Pacific Affairs (Berger),
April 25, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 234.
649
Seymour Topping, “Slaughter of Reds Gives Indonesia a Grim Legacy,” New York Times, August 24, 1966.
650
Memorandum From Vice President Humphrey to President Johnson, September 25, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 222;
Memorandum of Conversation, September 27, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 223 and 224.
647
152
force in Southeast Asia.”651 They nevertheless agreed with Green to resume “a modest military assistance
program” of $6 million, so that the army could play a “constructive role” in the New Order it had just
established. Specifically suggested were the resumption of spare parts and non-combatant equipment
shipments, officer training and civic action programs, and a military sales program that would allow the
military “to buy certain additional items which are compatible with their present role.” As Green stated,
although Suharto still needed to “produce some early and visible progress towards improving people’s
lot,” the army’s dominate role in Indonesian politics offered “essentially [the] right mixture for Indonesia”
and hence deserved American support.652
The Johnson administration was particularly interested to resume military and participant training and
civic action programs. The goal of these programs was to continue forging close ties with the military
and support its efforts to replace Sukarno and assume administrative control of Indonesia’s government
and economic institutions.653 Military and participant training was, as we have seen earlier, certainly no
new phenomenon. On the contrary, it had been a crucial aspect of the U.S. military assistance to Indonesia
since the 1950s. During the 1953-1965 years, subsequent administrations allowed some 2,800 Indonesian
officers to train in the United States.654 Moreover, fifty-three senior officers attended the U.S. Army’s
Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, and an estimated 17 to 20 percent of the
Indonesian general staff received training in the United States. Hundreds of army officers took courses
on, for example, industrial enterprise management, business administration, and executive leadership.
They did so at American universities such as Harvard, Syracuse, and the University of Pittsburgh.655
Similar classes had been financed by the Ford Foundation since the mid-1950s, because “you can’t have
a modernizing country without a modernizing elite,” Frank Sutton, the former Deputy Vice President of
the Ford Foundation’s International Division, later explained. In March 1967, Robert McNamara told
President Johnson that “this training proved to be of great value when the Army assumed control of the
government” and that it had been a “very significant factor” in determining the orientation of Indonesia’s
new political elite. That U.S. military aid and training had “paid dividends” was further underlined by the
fact that, although “Suharto himself is not U.S.-trained…all thirteen members of his staff, the group that
now governs Indonesia, received training in the United States under the Military Assistance Program,”
while five of the six generals killed on October 1, 1965, had received training in the U.S. Army schools
and were “known friends of the United States.”656
651
Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Johnson, August 1, 1966, and Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary
of Defense for International Security Affairs (McNaughton) to Secretary of Defense McNamara, August 3, 1966, both in FRUS, 19641968, v. 26, 215 and 216.
652
Memorandum From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, October 27, 1966, and Memorandum From the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Wheeler) to Secretary of Defense McNamara, November 1, 1966, both in FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 225
and 226. See also Memorandum From Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Johnson, March 1, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v.
26, 232.
653
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 227.
654
Gardner, Shared Hopes, 198.
655
Ibid., 198; Evans, “The Influence of the United States Army,” passim.
656
Ransom, “Ford Country”; Memorandum From Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Johnson, March 1, 1967, FRUS, 19641968, v. 26, 232.
153
Indonesian leaders considered the Civic Action Program as an important tool to restore economic
stability, keep the army occupied, and maintain internal security. As political scientist Robert K. Paget
noted, army leaders believed that civic action would “build an image of public service, national
identification, managerial ability and heroic posture,” whereby economic development was viewed as “a
popular goal, with political symbolism appropriate to the army model.”657 U.S. officials looked at it in
the same way. The Pentagon stated that civic action “is essentially a political effort designed by the
Indonesian Army to improve its image with the public and to avoid large demobilization.” The U.S.
Embassy in Jakarta argued that it would “provide for [the] efficient and active participation of Indonesian
armed forces in the execution of GOI economic and development plans,” tasks for which they were
perfectly suited. RAND analyst Guy Pauker observed that civic action could help overcome “a deep moral
crisis” that had been generated chiefly by the impact of modernization, “which challenges traditional
ways and values.” Deputy Undersecretary of State for Military and Political Affairs Llewellyn Thompson
told Robert McNamara that the Civic Action Program in Indonesia “would have a politico-economic
impact far out of proportion to its size” and “help us influence government decisions in every aspect of
our relations.” In Thomson’s view, “there is probably no other place in Asia where such a small
investment can produce more significant long-range returns.”658
Indonesia and the Return of Private Investors
By the time that the United States resumed economic and military aid, including a limited civic action
program, Suharto and his ministers had already made numerous preliminary but important efforts to solve
the country’s economic problems, restore financial stability, and reassure creditors that they were
determined to address Indonesia’s fiscal and monetary crisis. At the beginning of October 1966, the
Indonesian Central Bank had significantly raised interest rates and slashed imports for all but essential
commodities, the first serious austerity measure aimed at halting inflation and increasing foreign
exchange. Meanwhile, Jakarta was also making progress on a stabilization plan, while Indonesia’s
creditors had met in Tokyo and in Paris to discuss the rescheduling of what was termed the “Sukarno
debt.” In early 1967, U.S. strategists estimated that “economic conditions will at least cease to deteriorate
and begin to improve within a year or two,” depending on the level of foreign aid and Indonesia’s
“progress in establishing an orderly state administration and a more stable environment for private
enterprise.”659
Ibid., n. 1; Roger K. Paget, “Indonesian Politics: The New Order Emerges,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (February 1968), 34.
Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (McNaughton) to Secretary of Defense
McNamara, August 3, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 216; Simpson, Economist with Guns, 228-229; Guy J. Pauker, “Toward a New
Order in Indonesia,” Foreign Affairs (April 1967), available at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/1967-04-01/toward-neworder-indonesia (accessed March 1, 2015.
659
National Intelligence Estimate, February 15, and Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President
Johnson, February 21, 1967, both in FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 228 and 231, n. 3.
657
658
154
The return of foreign investors was “a central feature” of the Johnson administration’s post-Sukarno
era strategy in Indonesia.660 As soon as Suharto assumed effective power in March 1966, U.S. officials
stressed the need to restore the confidence of both creditor nations and foreign investors. In his first
meeting with Suharto in May, Green outlined the limits of international aid and the “advantages of
assistance from foreign private capital in opening forest and other industries.” As Green stated, “support
might well come in larger amounts and more quickly from foreign private rather than foreign government
sources.”661 Given Indonesia’s near-bankruptcy, most officials in Jakarta recognized that they head few
other options than to push for market-friendly policies. The arrival in West New Guinea of the New
Orleans-based mining company Freeport Sulphur offers an interesting example of how the United States
exploited this situation. In 1959, Freeport geologists managed to get hold of old, but promising Dutch
reports of copper-rich deposits in West New Guinea, after which they hoped to reach an arrangement
with the Indonesian Ministry of Mining to explore the area. But Sukarno instead closed the door for
foreign investment, hence Freeport had to wait for better times. When these eventually came following
Suharto’s effective rise to power in March 1966, the company’s geologists hastily returned to explore the
jungles of the area, hoping to be the first to reach the Ertsberg, a 183 meters high “copper mountain.”662
In that they succeeded, after which they resumed their efforts to reach a concession agreement as soon as
possible.
Freeport offered a crucial test of the Suharto regime’s intentions: had it indeed a more positive attitude
towards foreign investment than its predecessor? It turned out that it had, but there was one big problem.
As Ali Budiardjo, an Indonesian official, who later headed Freeport for nearly two decades, recalled, “no
one had any idea of how to proceed” because “there was no foreign investment office and there was no
foreign investment law.” After two meetings, in July and October 1966, Indonesian officials and Freeport
nevertheless managed to close a deal. To cite Budjiardjo once again: “the signing of the contract with
Freeport was highly publicized. For the Indonesian government it meant that a big company had
confidence in the government. This was important so that others would follow.” 663 That is also what
happened. Following the agreement, a significant stream of potential American investors, including
Johnson’s political patron, the construction firm Brown and Root, and a number of mid-size independent
oil firms, began to travel to Indonesia to explore business opportunities there.664
As Freeport and Indonesian officials negotiated in Jakarta, the New Order regime also began
formulating the ground rules for a new foreign investment law. Green noted that this was an “excellent
opportunity, especially in light [of the] current visit by Freeport Sulphur rep[resentative]s…to influence
GOI thinking on foreign investment.”665 In the next two months, Indonesian officials worked on a new
660
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 230.
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, May 27, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 209.
662
Forbes Wilson, Conquest of Copper Mountain (New York: Atheneum, 1981), 1-157.
663
Winters, Power in Motion, 75-76.
664
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 234.
665
Marshall Green quoted in Simpson, Economists with Guns,, 234.
661
155
foreign investment law, one that was ultimately “heavily influenced” by U.S. consultants. Initially, the
latter complained that the legislation gave “too much discretionary authority” to Jakarta and that was
“discouraging to potential investors.” But after Indonesian revision “in accordance with U.S.
suggestions,” the outcome was a law that ensured “maximum liberalization” for foreign investors. On
December 12, 1966, Suharto reversed Sukarno’s April 1965 degree that had banned all foreign
investment, while ordering the return of all properties placed un government control the year before. Two
weeks later, on Christmas Eve, he signed the Foreign Investment Law, the first major piece of new
legislation. Again two weeks later, Jakarta and Washington reached an investment guarantee agreement.
The American draft for this agreement was accepted by the Indonesians without change.666
The New Order’s accomplishments of late 1966 immediately sparked the interest of a wide range of
corporations in the United States, Japan, and Western Europe. In the course of 1967, these companies
hastily returned to Indonesia to make secure a slice of the Indonesian cake, or as Richard Nixon put it, of
Southeast Asia’s “richest hoard of natural resources.” Most companies that descended upon Indonesia
were involved in materials extraction and production: independent oil, timber, mining, chemical and
fertilizer companies. The banks that financed them also returned. Meanwhile, Indonesian officials
travelled westwards to speak at business forums and promote the opportunities that their country now
offered.667 A key event in the whole process was a three-day conference in Geneva, in November 1967.
Sponsored by Time-Life Inc., it practically designed the corporate takeover of Indonesia. The Sultan of
Jogjakarta opened the gathering by saying that New Order Indonesia offered “political stability,” and
“abundance of cheap labor,” a “vast potential market,” and a “treasure house of resources.” Moreover,
the Indonesian universities had trained “a large number of trained individuals who will be happy to serve
in new economic enterprises.” President Johnson congratulated the organizers with “a magnificent story
of opportunity seen and promise awakened.” A World Bank official stated that “Indonesia is the best
thing that’s happened to Uncle Sam since World War Two.”668 But political scientist and globalization
expert Jeffrey Winters of Northwestern University described the conference as followed:
They divided up into five different sections: mining in one room, services in another, light industry in another,
banking and finance in another. And what Chase Manhattan did was sit with a delegation and hammer out
policies that were going to be acceptable to them and other investors. You had these big corporate people going
round the table, saying ‘this is what we need: this, this and this,’ and they basically designed the legal
infrastructure for investment in Indonesia.
As Winters commented, “I’ve never heard of a situation like this where global capital sits down with the
representatives of a supposedly sovereign state and hammers out the conditions of their own entry into
666
Ibid.; Winters, Power in Motion, 57-75.
Nixon, “Asia After Viet Nam,” 111; Simpson, Economist with Guns, 243.
668
Ransom, “Ford Country;” World Bank official cited in Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, 42.
667
156
that country.”669 It really seemed, as the Copley Corporation put it, as if “it is [in Indonesia] that the deeprooted American concepts of free enterprise and Yankee ingenuity are finding new forms of expression.
Moreover, the profit potential fairly staggers the imagination.” No one mentioned the bloodbath during
the conference. One of Suharto’s technocrats, Emil Salim, later explained why. “No, that was not on the
agenda…I didn’t know about it till later. Remember, we didn’t have television then and the telephones
were not working well.”670
Sukarno’s Ouster, the Vietnam-Indonesia Connection and the Embrace of Suharto’s Regime
In early 1967, the CIA assessed that “the of Sukarno would greatly improve the outlook for political
stability in Indonesia.”671 U.S. officials believed that as long as Sukarno was around, he could still pose
a direct threat to the realization of neutralization the New Order regime’s aims. Indonesian army and
civilian leaders had similar views, and Malik once even mentioned that killing him might be the only way
to ensure the president’s ouster. It did not have to come this far. Following repeated efforts in late 1966
and early 1967 to discredit the president, Sukarno quickly ran out of room to maneuver. Pressured by the
Provisional People’s Consultative Assembly (MPRS), Sukarno submitted a written explanation of his
actions during the events of October 1, 1965 on January 30, 1967. Shortly after, the MPRS demanded the
dismissal of Sukarno and the creation of a special court to try him for his alleged involvement in the
September 30th Movement. Unwilling to unleash a civil war and to make an effort that could further
tarnish his image, Sukarno gave in. On February 20, 1967, he formally handed over authority to Suharto,
who then became acting president. The final humiliating blow would take place on March 12, when the
Provisional DPR confirmed the transfer of power to Suharto and stripped Sukarno of his title. Once
praised as the “George Washington of Indonesia,” Sukarno was now no more than a “historical relic” and
“pathetic old man.” He would spend the remaining days of his live in internal exile in Bogor until he
passed away on June 21, 1970.672
The Johnson administration reacted euphoric to Sukarno’s final ouster and Suharto’s full consolidation
of power. Ambassador Green applauded Indonesia’s new president, whose deputies were still executing
and imprisoning alleged PKI members, for having shown an “uncommon political wisdom and
shrewdness” and a “sincere dedication to democratic means.”673 Sukarno’s ouster made it possible to fully
resume U.S. aid to Indonesia. Shortly after, Rostow urged Johnson to pay one-third of the estimated $210240 million in aid that Indonesia needed to finance the essential imports as part of the IMF-approved
stabilization program. The proposal consisted mostly of AID, PL 480, and commodity assistance, in
669
Lyndon B. Johnson and Jeffrey Winters quoted in Pilger, New Rulers of the World, 41.
Copley Corporation and Emil Salim, both quoted in ibid., 42 and 4.
671
National Intelligence Estimate, February 15, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 228.
672
Paper Prepared in the Department of State for the National Security Council, August 4, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 241. It was
President John F. Kennedy who once branded Sukarno the “George Washington of Indonesia.” See Green, Indonesia, 7.
673
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, March 15, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 233; Letter From
the Ambassador to Indonesia (Green) to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Far East Asian and Pacific Affairs (Berger), April 25,
1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 234.
670
157
addition to $10-20 million of additional support aid and a $10 million spare parts loan. Other officials,
including William Bundy and Marshall Green, endorsed the administration’s renewed commitment to
Indonesia and its emphasis on multilateral aid. The Indonesian government, Rostow wrote President
Johnson, was not only “working for the people,” but also “pursuing a pragmatic economic policy.” To
get the economic progress going, “we should [now] push economic assistance,” he added. Johnson gave
his approval, on the condition that the administration had the backing of Congress and that the other twothird of the program would be matched by Japan and Europe.674
A few days later, Rostow was able to deliver good news: House and Senate leaders supported the
effort. Meanwhile, Indonesia’s creditors, the Intergovernmental Group on Indonesia (IGGI), met in
Amsterdam to discuss Indonesia’s balance of payments. The fourteen IGGI donor countries agreed to
finance the IMF stabilization program for Indonesia, with Japan and Europe each matching Washington’s
third of the total. The deal was formalized in mid-June at a second IGGI meeting in the Dutch coastal city
of Scheveningen, where Indonesia also received a “resounding vote of confidence” from its creditors and
international bodies.675 With the stabilization effort fully on track and Western countries now stepping in
with credit, officials of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development traveled to Jakarta to
assess Indonesia’s long-range development needs. At that time, it seemed that Jakarta had achieved three
of its main goals for economic recovery: emergency assistance, debt rescheduling, and a resumption of
international credit. Meanwhile, the Suharto regime was steadily bringing the archipelago state under
Western influence, a development that as a National Intelligence Estimate happily noted, “virtually
assures continuation of Indonesia’s westward leading foreign policies.”676
A few weeks later, Green finally managed to arrange a second meeting with Suharto in order to “dispel
his concern over U.S. aid prospects during next two years.” Suharto outlined Indonesia’s continued need
for more aid and stressed that he “regarded US as potentially our greatest friend,” but also expressed his
doubts whether Washington attached “sufficiently high priority to Indonesia.” Green roughly reminded
him that in the past eighteen months Washington had already provided $160 million in assistance, credits,
and debt rescheduling, an extraordinary high amount in light of the drain that Vietnam represented for
the foreign aid budget. Nevertheless, to satisfy Suharto and the military, the ambassador offered “2,000
sets of uniforms and 32,000 jungle boots” for equipping all Indonesian soldiers involved in civic action
activities. Shortly after, tensions were eased further when the first shipment of MAP-spare parts for the
Indonesian navy arrived. A few days later, two members of Suharto’s economic team, General Sudjono
and Colonel Ali Murtopo, travelled to Washington to plead for additional aid.677
Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson, February 20 and 21, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968,
v. 26, 230, n. 4 and 231.
675
Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia, June 27, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 235.
676
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 239; National Intelligence Estimate, February 15, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 228.
677
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, July 7, 1967, and Memorandum From the President’s Special
Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson, July 22, 1967, both in FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 236 and 238, n. 3.
674
158
On August 8, 1967, the NSC met again to discuss U.S. foreign policy towards Indonesia. The meeting
took place two days after Johnson and his advisors had met to discuss the military deadlock in Vietnam.
Johnson was deeply frustrated by the failure of American bombing to turn the tide. Also, the continued
expansions of the war – General William Westmoreland had just requested an additional 200,000 troops
– severely limited the available options and funds to meet policy priorities elsewhere. The funding of the
Vietnam war constituted more than one-third of the projected Defense budgets for 1968 and 1969.
Moreover, Congress proposed to reduce the foreign aid budget by $800 million to $2.5 billion, with more
than one-third of the amount designated for Vietnam.678 The Indonesian turnaround, achieved with
relatively little American assistance and without a single American casualty, offers a striking contrast
with Washington’s dramatic show of force in Vietnam, which ultimately only deferred a defeat. But there
were nevertheless two important challenges the administration faced in the archipelago state. The first
was, as Rostow put it, that “Indonesian expectations of American aid vastly exceed anything we are going
to be able to come up with” and that the Johnson administration was not doing enough. The second and
related challenge, observed by AID Director William Gaud, was to find a way to use the limited amount
of U.S. aid “to help stimulate rapid enough developmental progress in Indonesia to sustain public and
army support.”679 Marshall Green believed that the answer to these challenges lay in identifying and
supporting “modernizing” elements in Jakarta, the so-called “cadre of young men trained in American
and Western European universities,” target U.S. aid in their direction, and reviewing the “restrained
approach we have taken thus far to Indonesia aid requests.”680
What becomes clear at this point is that the worse things got in Vietnam, where at the end of January
1968 approximately 84,000 NLF and NVA forces would launch the Tet Offensive, the more President
Johnson and other officials wanted to invest in the success of Indonesia and see the turnaround in that
country as a validation of the U.S. war effort in Vietnam.681 After he was informed by Rostow that Suharto
“is making a hard try at making something of Indonesia which could be very good for us and the world,”
Johnson told the NSC that Indonesia was “a country which has rejected communism and is pulling itself
up by its bootstraps.” Should the administration not lend more money and ask for an additional $100
million in this year’s request? The consensus was that Congress would not appropriate more funds for
foreign aid, but the President did not give up. He argued that the United States should make Indonesia a
“showcase,” because it had “great potential” and it was “one of the few places in the world that has moved
in our direction.” According to the notes of NSC staffer Tom Johnson, Johnson also stated “we should
take some of our ambitions plans,” by which he possibly referred to the Mekong Delta Development
678
Lloyd C. Gardner, Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars of Vietnam (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995), 435; Draft
Memorandum From Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Johnson, December 1, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 10, 195;
Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson, July 31, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 9, 67.
679
Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson, July 22, and Memorandum From the
Administrator, Agency for International Development (Gaud) and Secretary of Agriculture Freeman to President Johnson, August 8,
1967, both in FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 239 and 242.
680
Paper Prepared in the Department of State for National Security Council, August 4, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 241.
681
David F. Schmitz, The Tet Offensive: Politics, War, and Public Opinion (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 83;
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 241.
159
Authority, “and put them into action in Indonesia.”682 Other administration officials advised the President
to continue financing one-third of Indonesia’s stabilization program that would commit Washington to
$108 million in aid for 1968. But Suharto asked Green for even more fund and warned that without
additional support “Indonesia’s new order would be in serious trouble.” The Ambassador then returned
to Washington once again to stress the importance of America’s commitment to the archipelago state. 683
“This is Indonesia's critical hour of need,” he stated during a cabinet meeting on October 18, where Rusk
and Johnson were present as well. “The security of all Asia is affected…Our sacrifices in Vietnam avail
little if we do not take strong and swift steps to foster the growth and strength which the new Indonesia
can achieve.”684
President Johnson’s statements during the NSC meeting of August 1967 illustrated that there was a
widespread belief within Washington that U.S. war effort Vietnam had had a decisive impact on the
turnaround in Indonesia. This view was encouraged by Indonesian officials, who hoped to secure more
aid from the United States, and by administration officials, House and Senate leaders, and supporters of
the war, including Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt, Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman, and
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.685 Speaking to his troops in Korea in late 1966, President Johnson
explained that the American intervention in Vietnam had made possible that “in Indonesia there are 100
million people that enjoy a measure of freedom today that they didn’t enjoy yesterday.” In a November
1966 statement signed by “145 distinguished Americans,” the Washington-based think tank Freedom
House justified the war for having “provided a shield for the sharp reversal of Indonesia’s shift toward
Communism.” When he met with Vice President Hubert Humphrey in September 1966, Adam Malik
similarly suggested that “General Suharto’s success in defeating Indonesian Communist Forces was
directly influence by the U.S. determination in South Vietnam.”686 Curiously, these perceptions were
neither limited to administration officials nor to domestic and international supporters. As recent as 2006,
historian Mark Moyar argued that the Indonesian military would never have “resisted the Communists
during…had the United States abandoned Vietnam.”687
It was largely in self-justification that U.S. policymakers claimed that the communist reversal was an
unforeseen but welcome side effect of the American stance in Vietnam. It should be remembered that by
1966 the Vietnam War was becoming rapidly more expensive and larger, both in terms of money and
men. In addition, the rising number of troop levels to fight the war, of which the President had only
682
Walt Rostow quoted in Julian Go, Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), 127; Memorandum of the Record, August 9, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 244.
683
Memorandum From Marshall Wright of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow),
September 27, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 245.
684
Record of Cabinet Meeting, October 18, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 246.
685
Henry Raymont, “Holt Says U.S. Actions Protect All Non-Red Asia,” New York Times, July 18, 1966; Sullivan, “The United States
and the ‘New Order’ in Indonesia,” 206-207.
686
Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks to American and Korean Serviceman at Camp Stanley, Korea, November 1, 1966. Available at The
American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=27974; Chomsky, Year 501, 126; Memorandum From Vice
President Humphrey to President Johnson, September 25, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 222.
687
Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 382
160
recently said was for the South Vietnamese themselves to win, had significantly increased domestic
criticism of the administration’s Asian policy. The claim that Vietnam offered a shield behind which
Indonesian military had leaders had found the courage and capacity to crush the PKI and move against
Sukarno is unconvincing. As early as 1949, when the United States embarked on a “forward” policy in
Asia by moving the Seventh Fleet and Thirteenth Air Force to the Western Pacific, Indonesia was
“shielded.”688 Moreover, as the prominent war correspondent Bernard Fall pointed out, when Suharto’s
counter-coup began, there were only “two weak U.S. divisions in Vietnam, and there was not yet a
certitude of their survival, let alone a build-up.”689 CIA and NSC officials also failed to find evidence of
a link between Indonesian turnaround and the war effort in Vietnam. Deputy Director of Central
Intelligence Richard Helms told President Johnson that “we have searched in vain for evidence that the
U.S. display of determination in Vietnam directly influenced the outcome of the Indonesian crisis in any
significant way.” NSC staffer James C. Thomson similarly stated later that “the Indonesian allegation is
undoubtedly false.” Thomson had “tried to prove it, during six months of careful investigation at the
White House and had to confess failure.”690 It makes thus much more sense to accept the interpretation
of historian R.B. Smith. He argued that the U.S. war effort in Vietnam “may at least have had the effect
of ‘sharpening the contradictions’ in Jakarta, between the forces of radicalism and the more conservative
generals of the Indonesian army.”691
In early November 1967, Vice President Hubert Humphrey traveled to Indonesia as part of a wider
trip through Southeast Asia that also included a meeting with the newly inaugurated South Vietnamese
President Thieu. After he met with Suharto, Humphrey stressed the importance of additional aid for
Indonesia. “Suharto is an honest, hard-working man,” he wrote Johnson, and “the Indonesians really want
our friendship. They are enthusiastically trying to restore their economy” and bringing Indonesia, where
Washington’s stakes were “as high as those in Japan and India,” into the Western fold. When asked
whether the American “stand in Vietnam” had had impact on the Indonesian turnaround, Humphrey stated
that though the Indonesians were primarily responsible for the change themselves, “our presence in
Southeast Asia gave confidence to the Indonesians to destroy the Communist Party.” After receiving
memo’s from various officials that recommended approval of Washington’s continued contribution of
one-third of Indonesia’s aid requirements, Johnson then checked the “approve package” option and told
Walt Rostow: “I want to do everything I can for Indonesia – as quickly as I can. Send me a program.”692
In a way, it was the Seventh Fleet, not China, that was Indonesia’s “real military neighbor,” as Kennedy once stated to Subandrio.
Also, Beijing’s military was certainly not strong enough at that time to invade Indonesia, let alone defeat the U.S. Navy. See
Aandstad, “Surrendering to Symbols,” 71.
689
Bernard Fall, “The American Commitment in Vietnam,” The Saturday Review, February 4, 1967, 40.
690
James C. Thomson, “How Could Vietnam Happen? An Autopsy,” The Atlantic, April 1968, available at
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1968/04/how-could-vietnam-happen-an-autopsy/306462/ (accessed March 1, 2015).
691
Smith, An International History of the Vietnam War. Volume III, 189.
692
Editorial Note, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 248; Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson,
November 17, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 249.
688
161
Conclusion: A Far Greater Prize than Vietnam
This dissertation has explored the continuities and discontinuities of U.S. foreign policy towards
Indonesia in the era of Vietnam (1961-1967). It has tried to do so by investigating how it was possible
that Indonesia, since 1949 determined to follow a neutral path in Cold War, and by early 1965 in the
process of becoming “for all practical purposes a Communist dictatorship,” in less than two years
transformed into a right-wing military regime, or as Richard Nixon put it, America’s “greatest prize in
the Southeast Asian area.”693 More specifically, this dissertation has looked at the means and objectives
of U.S. Indonesia-policy, its imperatives and constraints, its continuities and discontinuities, and its links
with Washington’s priorities elsewhere in Southeast Asia, particularly in Vietnam, during the Kennedy
and Johnson years (1961-1967). The main justification for this study lays in the notion that whereas
scholars have recently placed the Vietnam War in a broader, international frame, the same cannot be said
about the events in Indonesia during the first half of the 1960s. This is a curious neglect, for these events
had not only a tremendous impact on the regional balance of power and the further politico-economic
development of Southeast Asia, but also on Washington’s policies in the region, and the course of the
Asian Cold War.
The main questions of this dissertation have been answered somehow implicitly throughout the four
largely chronologically ordered chapters; now it is time to answer them more explicitly. Let us begin by
taking a look at Washington’s objectives in Indonesia, the means it used to realize these objectives, and
the links between these objectives and U.S. priorities elsewhere in the region. Throughout the 1961-1967
years, U.S. policymakers focused essentially on two important objectives in Indonesia. The first objective,
a minimum and short-term one, was to avoid the country, or at least its richest parts, from falling under
control of the communists or other hostile forces, such as independent nationalists, who like the
communists could restrict “Free World” access to the country’s rich hoard of natural resources. The
second objective, a more ambitious and long-term one, was to establish a pro-American regime in Jakarta,
that is a regime that would be susceptible to Western aid and influence and to Western ideas of
development. Both aims were intimately bound to the larger regional objectives of defeating communism
in Southeast Asia, developing in the region a “stable group [of] independent Asian nations as [an] offset
and counter to Chinese Communist power” and fostering “increased cooperation among nations of the
693
McMahon, The Limits of Empire, 120; Nixon, “Asia After Vietnam,” 111.
162
region” along lines that “must follow the natural flow of economic utility.”694 In turn, these aims were
seen as inextricably linked to the goal of safeguarding the long-term security and prosperity of the United
States and what American policymakers used to call the “Free World.”
To realize their objectives in Indonesia, Kennedy administration officials developed a comprehensive
program of military and technical assistance, economic aid and stabilization support. This program, which
also formed the foundation of the Johnson administration’s approach towards Indonesia, was in large part
a response to the “Soviet aid offensive” of the late 1950s. But it also coincided with President Sukarno’s
own Eight Year Economic Development Plan, which was launched in early 1961 and analyzed by the
Donald D. Humphrey’s team of economic experts in the summer of that year. Initially described by
Ambassador Howard Jones as a “positive program” and in the wake of the post-West New Guinea era
serving as a basis for the Indonesian “Action Plan,” the comprehensive aid program consisted of two
parts: an offensive and a defensive strategy. The offensive strategy aimed at realizing the long-term
objective of making (future) Indonesian leaders, both civilian and military, more susceptible to Western
ideas of development. This was to be realized through top-level (government-to-government relations)
and professional-level (military-to-military relations and relations in the field of research) diplomacy, and
via existing and expanded research and training programs, through which a large number of Indonesia’s
civilian and military elite were able to study and follow training in the United States. Equally important
instruments were the U.S. development aid programs, which were outlined by the Humphrey Team’s
report and incorporated in the State Department’s “Action Plan” proposal of October 1962.
The defensive strategy focused on the short-term objective of containing and/or rolling back
Indonesian communism. An important aim of the defensive strategy was to strengthen Indonesia’s anticommunist forces, particularly in the military and the police, and a central tool in this effort was the
Military Assistance Program, which provided the Indonesian police and armed forces with weapons,
training, and civic action equipment. Also important initiatives in this regard were the officer training
program, through which a large number of the Indonesian military’s upper cadre received instructions
from the Pentagon and attended courses at U.S. military colleges, and of course the Civic Action Program,
through which U.S. military officials were able to forge close ties with key members of the Indonesian
officers corps and influence the latter’s idea on politics and economics. The defensive strategy was
certainly not new: avoiding Indonesia’s fall to communism had been the central objective of both the
Truman and Eisenhower administration during the 1950s. It also reflected continuity in another important
respect: the defense part of the program committed the United States once again to provoking a clash in
Indonesian politics. The difference with the Eisenhower administration’s covert rollback effort of the late
1950s, however, was that this time the United States would go all out on a victory of the Indonesian
military over the PKI, which by the 1960s became the largest communist party outside the communist
bloc.
694
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 11.
163
Reflecting Kennedy’s “New Frontier” ideology, the broad program of military and technical
assistance, economic aid and stabilization support was far more ambitious than what previous presidents
had attempted to achieve in Indonesia. Whereas the Truman administration and the Eisenhower
administrations had focused predominately on containing and eventually rolling back Indonesian
communism, Kennedy administration officials realized that they needed to be much more inventive in
developing a successful response to Moscow’s policies in the archipelago state, which was necessary to
win what historian Nick Cullather labeled a “tournament of modernization” in Southeast Asia’s largest
and most significant country.695 Throughout the 1961-1967 years, U.S. officials stressed that “actions to
defeat communism in Indonesia must be supplementary to long-range effective programs to improve the
living standards of the masses,” which showed, as Bradley Simpson noted, that their fears about
Indonesian communism were “intimately bound up with [their] commitment to Indonesian economic and
political development.”696 But the program was more than an practical approach designed to turn a
problematic situation to Washington’s favor. It was also a reflection of the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations’ belief that indigenous militaries, in this case the Indonesian armed forces, could be
efficient agents of economic and political development. It was this concept of military modernization, an
intermingling of Rostow’s economic growth theory and what Samuel Huntington later called a “politicsof-order” approach, that became the central imperative of U.S. foreign policy towards Indonesia during
the 1961-1967 years, more so than the familiar ideology of anti-communism.697
In this dissertation, I have focused on both the development and execution of U.S. Indonesia-policy
and what becomes clear is that developing, let alone implementing policy in Indonesia was never an easy
task. As soon as the Kennedy administration assumed office, policymakers where held back by various
factors. Four of these constraining factors deserve special mentioning here. The first constraining factor
was of course President Sukarno, who’s unpredictable behavior was not only continuously a thorn in the
flesh of U.S. officials, but also repeatedly fuelled misunderstandings and anger. The Indonesian
President’s actions constrained U.S. policy in Indonesia at certainly three important moments. In 19611962, when he embarked on political and then military confrontation with the Netherlands over West
New Guinea, which forced U.S. officials to focus first on resolving this conflict before they could move
forward with a stabilization and development effort in Indonesia. In the spring of 1963, when Sukarno
threatened to nationalize the American oil companies, which significantly increased the challenge for the
Kennedy administration to get Congress behind its aid program for Indonesia. This crisis was seen by
some officials as the “most serious turn since Indonesian independence,” and an event that brought United
States-Indonesia relations “dangerously close to the end of the road.”698 The final important moment
695
Cullather uses this phrase for the Cold War competition in Afghanistan, but it can be used for Indonesia as well. Nick Cullather,
The Hungry World. America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 2010), 126.
696
Simpson, Economists with Guns, 250-251; “U.S. Policy on Indonesia,” NSC 6023, December 19, 1960, FRUS, 1958-1960, v. 17,
293.
697
Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, passim.
698
Memorandum From Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, undated, FRUS, 1961-1963,
v. 23, 306.
164
when Sukarno constrained U.S. policy in Indonesia in a significant way was in the summer of 1963. In
that season, he embarked on a military and political campaign against Malaysia. The escalation of
Konfrontasi in the fall of 1963 ultimately derailed the Kennedy administration’s stabilization effort in
Indonesia. The continuation of Konfrontasi contributed significantly to the deterioration in United StatesIndonesia relations under Johnson.
The second constraining factor were Washington’s allies, Britain and the Netherlands, which both
attempted to realize their own ambitions in the Southeast Asian region and thereby problematized U.S.
policy in Indonesia. Dutch officials, particularly Foreign Minister Joseph Luns, constrained the Kennedy
administration’s ambitious efforts in Indonesia in 1961-1962 by insisting on holding on to West New
Guinea, which ultimately prompted Sukarno to launch a military campaign there. British officials
similarly stood in the way of the Kennedy and Johnson administration’s plans for Indonesia from 1963
onwards, when they agreed with the Tunku, Lee Kuan Yew, and the leaders of the North Borneo
territories to move forward with the Federation of Malaysia regardless the wishes of the people of Sabah
and Sarawak. U.S. Congress was the third important constraining factor. Eternally suspicious of foreign
aid, particularly to neutrals like Sukarno, Capitol Hill repeatedly stood in the way of the administration’s
efforts in Indonesia, particularly in mid-1963, when it refused to back the Kennedy administration’s
stabilization effort in Indonesia and instead gave its support for the Broomfield amendment, which
banned all economic and military aid to Indonesia without a presidential determination that such aid was
in the U.S. national interest and offered a decisive blow to the Kennedy administration’s stabilization
effort in Indonesia.
The fourth and final important constraining factor was of course the Vietnam War. As the United
States reached a “point of no return” in Indochina, senior officials were, as Chester Cooper noted,
increasingly “swallowed up” by that conflict, which led to some extent to a “benign neglect” of Indonesia.
But the war in Vietnam also had a huge impact on Indonesia-policy in other ways. The worse things got
in Vietnam, the more it gave Sukarno a justification to express his anti-American opinions. But this was
not all. Also, the more resources the war effort in Vietnam required, the fewer options and funds the
Johnson administration had to meet policy priorities elsewhere, not in the last part in Indonesia. In a way,
it can be stated that the Vietnam War prompted U.S. officials to adopt a “low posture” rollback approach
in Indonesia. But it is also worth repeating that once it became clear that the situation in Vietnam offered
no positive short-term solutions and that Suharto’s New Order would be “army planned, army built and
army sponsored…for a long time to come,” Johnson wanted to invest increasingly in Indonesia’s success.
In fact, by 1967, the President even believed that the United States should make Indonesia a “showcase,”
because it had “great potential” and because it was “one of the few places in the world that has moved in
our direction.”699
699
Telegram From the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, October 27, 1966, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 225;
Memorandum of the Record, August 9, 1967, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 244.
165
Overseeing U.S. Indonesia-policy throughout the 1961-1967, what continuities discontinuities can we
identify? Before answering this question, it has to be stressed that scholars have often treated the 1960s
as a period during which U.S. policymakers were forced to shift from an ambitious agenda (1961-1964)
to a more modest effort of halting Indonesia’s steady turn towards the left (1964-1965). This interpretation
is not wholly incorrect, but it tells us only part of the story. After all, as we addressed above, the goal of
preventing a communist takeover in Indonesia was not something to which the United States shifted its
attention only after a “point of no return” was reached in both the Vietnam War and in Konfrontasi. On
the contrary, it was, as we have seen above, a fundamental aspect of the comprehensive strategy of
military assistance, economic and technical aid, and stabilization support, developed by the Kennedy
administration during its first two years in office and continued by Johnson administration until early
1965. Hence, it makes more sense to say that by 1964, and especially in 1965, the United States decided
to focus primarily on the short-term objective of containing communism in the archipelago state, before
it would focus again on the long-term objective of making Indonesian leaders more susceptible to Western
aid and influence. Johnson administration officials realized after all that the destruction of the PKI and
the ouster of Sukarno would matter little without a fundamental political and economic reorientation in
Indonesia. It is for this reason, as we have seen in the final sections of chapter 4, that they shifted their
attention in the first half of 1966 from the short-term goal of rolling back communism to the long-term
task of helping the Indonesian army to consolidate power and establish a responsible and economicminded regime.
Whereas Washington’s objectives in Indonesia remained unchanged throughout the 1961-1967 years,
its tactics in, or approach towards, the archipelago state, did alter. In chapter 1, we saw that during the
1960s there were essentially two groups in the administration that both advocated a different approach
towards Indonesia. The first group, the confrontationists, or hard-liners, preferred a “coercive” strategy
aimed at isolating Sukarno, or even overthrowing and replacing him by a right-wing military regime. The
confrontationists were primarily in the State Department’s European Division, the Pentagon and the CIA.
The second group, the accommodationists, favored a more “constructive” approach, one that included
working with Sukarno, for they realized the United States, given its problematic history in Indonesia and
the Soviet “aid offensive,” had no other option than working with this neutral leader. The
accommodationists gathered predominately around Ambassador Howard Jones and officials in the State
Department’s Bureau for Far Eastern Affairs and the NSC. Whereas the confrontationists had dominated
the foreign policy domain during the Eisenhower years, the accommodationists gained the upper hand
when Kennedy assumed office. They consolidated their position when Averell Harriman was appointed
Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in late 1961. But they were later forced in the defense
again when the situation in Southeast Asia turned increasingly problematic and Lyndon B. Johnson
succeeded the assassinated John F. Kennedy. Speaking of the Kennedy-Johnson transition, there is much
to say for the argument that this transition represented the most important turning point in U.S. Indonesiapolicy during the 1960s: whereas Kennedy was willing to expend political capital to Indonesia because
166
he considered it a mighty important place, Johnson was less interested in that country and hence less
willing to expend political capital to it. As we have seen in chapter 3, when he assumed office, Johnson
refused to sign a presidential determination to keep aid to Indonesia flowing. Not much later, he replaced
or moved those officials – Harriman, Hilsman, Forrestal - that had played a key role in the Kennedy
administration’s accommodationist approach to Indonesia from their positions. Shortly after, Washington
shifted step by step towards a “low posture” rollback approach. This marked the beginning of the end of
the “Jonesian” approach of doing business with Sukarno, and the beginning of period in which the hardliners dominated the policymaking process.
How then were Washington’s policies in Indonesia linked to the priorities it pursued elsewhere in
Southeast Asia? As stressed above, the aims of the United States in Indonesia were inimitably bound to
the regional efforts of defeating communism in Southeast Asia, and of developing in the region a new
Pacific Community that would follow the natural flow of economic utility. Vietnam, again, deserves
special mentioning here. Throughout the 1960s, U.S. officials repeatedly stated that “the loss of
[Indonesia’s] 105 million [people] to the “Communist Camp” would make a victory in Vietnam of little
meaning.” Also, they believed that it would be a “sheer folly not to protect [Southeast Asia’s] seaward
flank,” by which they referred to Indonesia, at a time that the United States was spending “hundreds of
millions to hold SEA mainland.” Some officials, like NSC staffer Robert Komer, thought that the loss of
Indonesia could “dwarf the loss of Laos.” Undersecretary of State George Ball even stated that at some
point that such a scenario, in the long run, could be “more important” to the United States than the loss
of Vietnam.700 In other words, Washington’s policy in Indonesia was also inextricably linked to war effort
in Vietnam. But it would be incorrect to state Indonesia was subordinate Vietnam. On the contrary, U.S.
officials unanimously agreed that given to its size, strategic location and rich natural resources, Indonesia
was in fact “a far greater prize than Vietnam.”701
This brings me to the final set of main questions, which partly overlap with those addressed above:
how it was possible that the archipelago state, since its independence in 1949 determined to follow a
neutral path in the Cold War, and by early 1965 in the process of becoming, as Secretary of State Dean
Rusk described it, “for all practical purposes a Communist dictatorship,” in less than two years
transformed into a right-wing military dictatorship, or to use Richard Nixon’s phrase, America’s “greatest
prize in the Southeast Asian area.”702 To what extent can the United States be held responsible for the
dramatic and bloody political turnaround in Indonesia? Moreover, how deeply was the United States
involved in Indonesian politics during the 1960s, how did it develop over time, and in what way was it
700
Memorandum Prepared for the 303 Committee, February 23, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 110; Memorandum From Robert W.
Komer of the National Security Council to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy), January 16, 1963,
FRUS, 1961-1963, v. 23, 300; Komer quoted in Jones, Conflict and Confrontation, 50; Memorandum of Telephone Conversation
Between the Under Secretary of State (Ball) and Director of Central Intelligence (McCone), March 14, 1965, FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26,
117.
701
Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Johnson, August 19, 1964, FRUS, 19641968, v. 26, 61.
702
Dean Rusk cited in H.W. Brands, “The Limits of Manipulation: How the United States Didn’t Topple Sukarno,” The Journal of
American History 76, no.3 (December 1989), 798; Nixon, “Asia after Vietnam,” 111.
167
connected to Washington’s regional policies? First of all, it is important to stress once again that although
the large majority of scholars have focused merely on the 1964-1966 years, Washington’s policy in these
two years tells us only part of the story. As stated above, American policymakers were engaged in a
covert action activities in Indonesia since at least the late 1950s, activities that were geared towards
provoking exactly that kind of clash that took place in the fall of 1965. As the NSC suggested in December
1960, the United States should use “all feasible means, including…the use of U.S. armed force if
necessary and appropriate” to prevent Indonesia from falling to communism, whereby priority was to be
given to “programs and projects which offer opportunities to isolate the PKI, drive it into positions of
open opposition to the Indonesian Government.”703 But at least as important to assess and understand the
depth of U.S. involvement in Indonesian politics and the Indonesian regime change is Washington’s longterm strategy of military modernization, which aimed at making civilian and military leaders more
susceptible to Western ideas of development and helping them to gain influence and eventually assume
power. As we have seen throughout this dissertation, and particularly in chapter 4, this strategy proved
highly successful. U.S. officials were also aware of this fact. As McGeorge Bundy wrote President
Johnson in October 1965, the dramatic turnaround in Jakarta was “a striking vindication of our policy in
recent years: a policy of keeping our hand in the game for the long-term stakes despite recurrent pressures
to pull out for the long-term stakes despite recurrent pressures to pull out, break relations, recall our
Ambassador, etc.”704
To be sure, the United States, like Britain, and to a less account a number of other countries, can be
held responsible for what happened the archipelago state; it was an important and witting accomplice
throughout the 1960s, and it could have adopted policies, which may have avoided or limited the scale of
the Indonesian massacre. Nevertheless, it should also be stressed that, in the end, it is the Indonesian
military, in addition to various anti-communist groups, including Muslim organizations, local gangsters,
and paramilitary organizations, including the Pemuda Pancasila, that are to be held primarily responsible
for the dramatic and bloody events in Indonesia. The PKI was first and foremost destroyed in the villages
of Indonesia, and only partially by the policies developed in the White House, the Eisenhower Building
and the Pentagon. It should be remembered as well that the turnaround was no result of the American war
effort in Vietnam, as various top administration officials and supporters of the war within the United
States and abroad have eagerly claimed in 1966 and 1967.
Having answered this dissertation’s main questions, I would like to conclude with addressing one
general observation that might stress the significance of paying more scholastic attention towards U.S.
foreign policy towards Indonesia in the era of Vietnam. Whereas scholars have paid considerable
attention to the lessons of Vietnam, only limited attention has been paid the lessons which Indonesia
“U.S. Policy on Indonesia,” NSC 6023, December 19, 1960, FRUS, 1958-1960, v. 17, 293.
Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson, October 22, 1965,
FRUS, 1964-1968, v. 26, 160.
703
704
168
offered, despite the fact that U.S. policymakers quickly sought to apply these lessons in other countries.
Ralph Mcgehee, a senior CIA operations officer in the late 1960s, later wrote how this unfolded:
To conceal its role in the massacre of those innocent people the C.I.A., in 1968, concocted a false account
of what happened (later published by the Agency as a book, Indonesia-1965: The Coup That Backfired).
That book is the only study of Indonesia politics ever released to the public on the Agency's own initiative.
At the same time that the Agency wrote the book, it also composed a secret study of what really happened.
[one sentence deleted] The Agency was extremely proud of its successful [one word deleted] and
recommended it as a model for future operations [one-half sentence deleted].705
In a conversation with investigative journalist John Pilger, McGehee explained that the terror in Indonesia
from 1965-66 was used as model operation for the American-backed coup that toppled the regime of the
democratically elected leftist President Salvador Allende in Chile in 1972. “Disturbed at the Chilean
military's unwillingness to take action against Allende,” McGehee explained, “the CIA forged a document
purporting to reveal a leftist plot to murder Chilean military leaders. The discovery of this ‘plot’ was
headlined in the media, and Allende was deposed and murdered. There is a similarity with what happened
in Indonesia in 1965.” But the Indonesian model destabilization plan also served as a model for the
Phoenix Program in Vietnam, where American-trained death squads assassinated up to 50,000
Vietnamese communists from 1965 to 1972. “You can trace back all the major, bloody events run from
Washington to the way Suharto came to power,” McGehee continued. “The success of that meant that it
would be repeated, again and again,” from Cambodia to Thailand and from Nicaragua to El Salvador.706
A similar plan appears to have been followed in Laos in 1959-1961, where a CIA officer explained to a
reporter that the aim was to weaken the center and “polarize Laos.”707
Moreover, Indonesia served as an example of how the United States could work with allies in the
region. In a conversation he once had with the American writer Tad Szulc, Marshall Green told about a
1967 interview he had with Richard Nixon, who would be elected president in late 1968. Green said that
“the Indonesian experience had been one of particular interest to [Nixon] because things had gone well
in Indonesia. I think he was very interested in that whole experience as pointing to the way we should
handle our relationships on a wider basis in Southeast Asia generally, and maybe in the world.”708 Green
also observed that after the Indonesian turnaround, a much lighter American footprint in Asia was
required. He therefore became an early advocate of “Vietnamization.” In May 1969, the former U.S.
Ambassador to Indonesia became President Richard Nixon’s Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern
and Pacific Affairs. In that capacity, Green was involved in the 1970 military coup against Prince
Sihanouk in Cambodia, played a key role in Nixon’s historical visit to Beijing, and set out the basic
parameters for the “Vietnamization” of the U.S. war in Vietnam. As Richard Cabot Howland, a foreign
McGehee, “The CIA and The White Paper On El Salvador,” The Nation, April 11, 1981.
Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, 38-39.
707
Scott, “The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno,” 259
708
Ibid., 262-263.
705
706
169
service officer in the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia in the mid-1960s, explained, “in the larger context, the
Vietnamization idea and the “Guam Doctrine” can be seen as efforts to employ the lessons of September
30 affair in structuring an appropriate American posture for the region as a whole.” Howland also added
that what happened in Indonesia after the critical year of 1965 made clear that “American power can only
complement and augment indigenous resolve – the quality that the Indonesians call “national resiliency,”
which can be generated through local leadership and enhanced through regional cooperation but not
created or replaced by vast infusions of men and money from abroad.”709
Apparently, in certain political circles in the United States, the Indonesian model is still valuable today.
During a November 2011 republican presidential candidate debate, candidate Mitt Romney cited the
American role in Indonesia in the 1960s as a good example for dealing with countries like Pakistan, a
nuclear power to which the United States sends large sums of aid, but that also seems to work against the
so-called “war on terrorism.” After being asked how he would deal with that country if we would be
elected president, Romney answered that “we don’t want to just pull up stakes and get out of town after
the enormous output we’ve just made for the region. Look at Indonesia in the ’60s,” he said. “We helped
them move toward modernity. We need to help bring Pakistan into the 21st century, or the 20th for that
matter. Right now American approval in Pakistan is 12 percent. We’re not doing a very good job with
that investment. We could do better by encouraging the opportunities of the West.” 710 That in Indonesia
between a half million and a million people were brutally murdered with assistance and approval of the
United States and other countries was once again simply forgotten, if not wholly ignored.
Richard Cabot Howland, “The Lessons of the September 30 Affair,” Studies in Intelligence 14, no. 2 (Fall 1970), 29.
Dan Murphy, “In debate, Romney says handle Pakistan like Indonesia in the 1960s,” Christian Science Monitor, November 23,
2011, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/1123/In-debate-Romney-says-handle-Pakistan-like-Indonesia-in-the1960s (accessed March 1, 2015).
709
710
170
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Interviews
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