Year 501 Copyright © 1993 by Noam Chomsky. Published by South End Press.
Chapter 5: Human Rights: The Pragmatic Criterion Segment 2/9
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2. Securing the Anchor

"The problem of Indonesia" is "the most crucial issue of the moment in our struggle with the Kremlin," Kennan wrote in 1948. "Indonesia is the anchor in that chain of islands stretching from Hokkaido to Sumatra which we should develop as a politico-economic counter-force to communism" and a "base area" for possible military action beyond. A Communist Indonesia, he warned, would be an "infection" that "would sweep westward" through all of South Asia. Resource-rich Indonesia was also designated to be a critical part of the "Empire toward the South" that the US intended to recreate for Japan, now within the US-dominated system.

In accord with standard reasoning, "ultra-nationalism" in Indonesia would prevent Southeast Asia from "fulfilling its main function" as a service area for the core industrial powers. Accordingly, the US urged the former Dutch rulers to grant independence, but under Dutch tutelage, an outcome critical to "Western Europe's economic rehabilitation, and to America's strategic well-being," Leffler observes, and to Japan's reconstruction as well. The principled antagonism to independent nationalism that animates US foreign policy took on particular significance in this case.4

After its liberation from the Dutch, Indonesia was ruled by the nationalist leader Sukarno. At first, the United States was willing to tolerate this arrangement, particularly after Sukarno and the army suppressed a land reform movement supported by the Indonesian Communist Party [PKI] in the Madiun region in 1948, virtually destroying the party's leadership and jailing 36,000 people. But Sukarno's nationalist and neutralist commitments soon proved entirely unacceptable.

The two major power centers in Indonesia were the army and the PKI, the only mass-based political force. Internal politics were dominated by Sukarno's balancing of these two forces. Western aims were largely shared by the army, who therefore qualified as moderates. To achieve these aims, it was necessary somehow to overcome the anti-American extremists. Other methods having failed, mass extermination remained as a last resort.

In the early 1950s, the CIA tried covert support of right-wing parties, and in 1957-1958 the US backed and participated in armed insurrection against Sukarno, possibly including assassination attempts. After the rebellions were put down, the US turned to a program of military aid and training coupled with a cutback of economic aid, a classic mode of pre-coup planning, followed in Chile a few years later, and attempted in Iran with the dispatch of arms via Israel from shortly after the Khomeini takeover -- one of the many crucial elements of the Iran-contra affair suppressed in the subsequent cover-up.5 Universities and corporations also lent their willing hands.

In a RAND study published by Princeton University in 1962, Guy Pauker, closely involved with US policy-making through RAND and the CIA, urged his contacts in the Indonesian military to take "full responsibility" for their country, "fulfill a mission," and "strike, sweep their house clean." In 1963, former CIA staff officer William Kintner, then at a CIA-subsidized research institute at the University of Pennsylvania, warned that "If the PKI is able to maintain its legal existence and Soviet influence continues to grow, it is possible that Indonesia may be the first Southeast Asia country to be taken over by a popularly based, legally elected communist government... In the meantime, with Western help, free Asian political leaders -- together with the military -- must not only hold on and manage, but reform and advance while liquidating the enemy's political and guerrilla armies." The prospects for liquidation of the popularly based political forces were regarded as uncertain, however. In a 1964 RAND memorandum, Pauker expressed his concern that the groups backed by the US "would probably lack the ruthlessness that made it possible for the Nazis to suppress the Communist Party of Germany... [These right-wing and military elements] are weaker than the Nazis, not only in numbers and in mass support, but also in unity, discipline, and leadership."


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4 Leffler, Preponderance, 260, 165. See ch. 10.4, and for the background, ch. 2.1-2. On Japan-SEA, see RC, ch. 2.1. Below, unless otherwise indicated, see Peter Dale Scott, "Exporting Military-Economic Development," in Caldwell, Ten Years, and "The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno," Pacific Affairs, Summer 1985; PEHR, vol. I, ch. 4.1; Kolko, Confronting.

5 FTR, 457ff.; COT, ch. 8. Marshall, et al., Iran-Contra, chs. 7, 8.