Customer Reviews

Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968

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"Economists with Guns" (great title!) is an excellent reconstruction of U.S. policy toward Indonesia under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, with a focus on U.S. development aid and military assistance. Indonesia was a key battleground of the Cold War -- with 100 million people, vast natural riches, a powerful Communist Pary, and an erratic nationalist President, it was courted by the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China alike. So much was at stake that Washington wooed Indonesia to the point of alienating NATO allies the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, which were locked in late-colonial confrontations with Indonesia in West New Guinea and Malaysia.

The book shows how the U.S. tried to use foreign aid to build up Indonesian anti-Communist groups and to link Indonesia to global markets and U.S.-supported security alliances. I took off one star mainly because the analysis, based largely on declassified U.S. documents, is too Washington-centric. Indonesian players have walk-on roles when they appear in U.S. memos and cables, but they don't star in the show. Unfortunately, presenting the story through a U.S. lens could mislead careless readers into thinking that Washington was pulling the strings in Jakarta. In reality, the U.S. embassy was often behind the curve and had little influence on local events, which unfolded according to their own logic. This situation only changed in 1966/67, when national bankruptcy forced the new military government to seek help from donors such as the U.S., Japan, and the IMF.

The book's DC-centric bias is most egregious in the retelling of the Indonesian Army's massacre of Communists in 1965/66. As the book makes clear, the U.S. cheered on and extended limited covert support to the killers. Our behavior was disgraceful. But if one reads between the lines, it's also clear that the purges caught the U.S. by surprise and were organized by Indonesian generals for purely Indonesian reasons. The bloodbath would have happened whether or not the CIA was involved. Placing evil U.S. behavior at the center of an historical narrative is aesthetically satisfying but it doesn't necessarily capture the real forces driving events.