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Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia

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The book raises unsettling questions about possible American involvement in the rise to power of Suharto. It is well known that the Nixon administration aided Pinochet's coup against Allende in the 1970s, and turned a blind eye to the purges later committed by Pinoceht. But Suharto's accession and the anti-communist purges in Indonesia involved far more dead. Maybe half a million.

Thus far, those events have received little recognition inside or outside Indonesia for any American influence. The book delves into this. It furnishes details about Dulles' fear, apparently successfully conveyed to Eisenhower, that communists were on the verge of taking over Indonesia. Recall that this was in the depths of the Cold War. The "loss" of China to Mao's forces was still fresh. So too the baleful influence of Joseph McCarthy in Washington. Given this US worldview, the book's premise is rather plausible. That, to some extent, the US gave a green light to Suharto's atrocities.