The Foreign Service Journal, March 2009

M A R C H 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 69 Unintended Consequences Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968 Bradley R. Simpson, Stanford University Press, 2008, $48.00, hardcover, 376 pages. R EVIEWED BY E DMUND M C W ILLIAMS Dr. Bradley R. Simpson’s Econo- mists with Guns: Authoritarian De- velopment and U.S.-Indonesian Rela- tions, 1960-1968 should be important reading for those with foreign policy responsibilities in the new Obama ad- ministration. This exhaustively re- searched and richly documented his- tory of American engagement with Indonesia during a critical period is a cautionary tale about means and ends — and unintended consequences. Simpson, an assistant professor of history and international studies at Princeton University, draws on a hoard of recently declassified U.S. govern- ment documents to reconstruct this detailed history. He closely examines Washington’s policy from the perspec- tive of political, security and economic objectives during the turbulent years before and after the violent overthrow of President Sukarno by General Suharto. He makes especially effective use of Embassy Jakarta’s reporting and analy- sis during the period to illuminate pol- icymakers’ intentions and prejudices, placing them in the context of the diplomatic and budgetary challenges posed by the Vietnam War. As Simp- son explains, the growing costs of that conflict shaped attitudes and options for both the Kennedy and Johnson ad- ministrations. At the same time, American commitment to the eco- nomic “modernization” of Indonesia ultimately found expression in a deci- sion to support a corrupt and brutal military. The author sets the stage for his ac- count with a well-researched review of Washington’s efforts to dismember Indonesia in the late 1950s, an ex- traordinarily ill-conceived and poorly executed misadventure that few Americans remember — but few In- donesians have forgotten. He then reconstructs the policy considerations that led the Kennedy administration to support Sukarno’s demand that the Dutch turn over the western part of the island of New Guinea to Indone- sian control. This Cold War–driven calculation not only rebuffed a NATO ally, but betrayed the democratic aspirations of the local Papuan people. Their hope for self-rule was ignored and ul- timately dashed by means of a United Nations-approved, Indonesian-orga- nized referendum that was immedi- ately recognized as blatantly fraudu- lent. Washington would repeat this pattern in failing to support a British initiative to defeat Sukarno’s “Kon- frontasi,” a military policy aimed at blocking establishment of Malay- sia. Simpson then gives us a carefully documented but horrifyingly vivid ac- count of the massive 1965-1966 purge of Indonesians alleged to be members or supporters of the Communist Party. The U.S. role in this slaughter of hun- dreds of thousands, and the detention of as many or more people for years under life-threatening conditions, un- derscores Washington’s willingness throughout the Cold War to abandon principle and ignore international law in the service of geostrategic objectives. The Central Intelligence Agency’s pro- vision of small arms to the local mili- tary for the purpose of arming Mus- lim and nationalist youth engaged in killing alleged communists constitutes but one example of direct complicity in one of the greatest slaughters of the 20th century. The author makes a compelling case that Washington’s empowerment of the Indonesian military to assume control of economic and political insti- tutions led directly to its “dual func- tion” — a direct role in governance that the military remains reluctant to relinquish a decade after the 1998 col- lapse of Suharto’s “new order” had re- vealed the “myth of developmental success and poverty reduction.” As the author notes, Indonesians “still wrestle with the bitter legacy of B OOKS