Abstract
The majority of historical accounts on Indonesia in the 1960s speak of a struggle between two main forces. On one side was Sukarno’s central government, which many capitalists feared was at risk of being dominated by communists, and on the other were an array of regionally based rebels seeking autonomy. Behind this simplistic reading of history, however, there is a complex narrative, which throws light on a web of deceit, intrigue and capitalist ambitions. Greg Poulgrain’s The Incubus of Intervention addresses this less talked about history of Indonesia.
During the Cold War, Indonesia witnessed a battle between corporate interests pursued by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Allen Dulles and contending world views of President John F. Kennedy and to an extent United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold. An American diplomat and lawyer who became the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence and its longest-serving director to date, Allen Dulles became the quintessential formulator American foreign policy in Indonesia in the 1950s. The early Cold War period allowed for such an unconventional elevation. Between his stints of government service, Dulles was a corporate lawyer and partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, an international law firm. Discovery of an enormous source of copper and gold in West Papua and Papua provinces of Indonesia and the attempts to control those resources constituted the crux of American foreign policy towards Indonesia along with its attempts to prevent the country’s slide into communism.
There are several authoritative narratives detailing the CIA’s missteps in Indonesia. Stephen Kinzer’s The Brothers narrated the story of the two siblings—John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles—serving as American secretary of state and the CIA director, respectively. Kinzer, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, produced a highly critical account of the two blaming the Dulles brothers for being jointly responsible for what a reviewer of the book wrote as ‘acts of extreme geopolitical myopia, grave operational incompetence and misguided adherence to a creed of corporate globalism’ (Kinzer, 2013). Poulgrain’s narrative reaches the same level of intense criticism of Dulles, whom he describes as a person with ties to a number of legal and corporate interests.
Contrary to Dulles’ deceitful ambitions, President John F. Kennedy pursued a friendly relationship with Sukarno and attempted to find a peaceful course of action to keep Indonesia within the American sphere. This apparently jeopardized the corporate background interests of Dulles, whose strategy of regime change had advanced before Kennedy became president. The Kennedy administration’s steps to win over Sukarno’s Indonesia included facilitating its claim to West Irian, then the Netherlands colony of West New Guinea. Determined not to lose Indonesia to communist influence, White House officials overcame Secretary of State Dean Rusk’s scepticism of Sukarno and Rusk’s attachment to the Netherlands, a NATO ally. They shifted American policy from neutrality in the dispute towards pressure on the Netherlands to relinquish West New Guinea to Indonesia. The Netherlands, after initial resistance, agreed to a final plan that included minimal role for the United Nations in the transfer procedures. Kennedy was also instrumental in ensuring that Indonesia does not escalate its guerrilla war against Netherlands forces in West New Guinea.
Writers like Kinzer argue that this set up the machination for Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Many would have wanted Kennedy killed—crime syndicates, political opponents, Cuban expatriates and even the Russians. As Poulgrain argues Allen Dulles was a strong contender to be on that list. President Lyndon Johnson allegedly told friends in Congress on 29 November 1963 that the Kennedy assassination had ‘some foreign complications, CIA and other things’. That same day, he telephoned Allen Dulles to serve on an investigative commission headed by chief justice Earl Warren. This ensured that these ‘complications’ would remain secret, Kinzer writes.
Tim Weiner’s Legacy of the Ashes: The History of the CIA details the shocking revelations about CIA and uncovers why nearly every CIA Director has left the agency in worse shape than when he found it; and how these profound failures jeopardize American national security. Weiner notes President Eisenhower’s decree to the CIA to overthrow the Sukarno government on 25 September 1957 and Dulles’ failure to obey the order that no American personnel were to be involved in the operation (Weiner, 2008). As a result, CIA pilots began bombing in support of American-backed rebels on 19 April 1958. However, the capture of American pilot Allen Lawrence Pope brought the operation to an end the very next day. Pope was held under house arrest for four years and was released in 1962 after considerable back-channel negotiations by President Sukarno.
Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison’s Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957–1958 is yet another account of the attempts to overthrow Sukarno (Conboy & Morrison, 1999). While the authors stop short of questioning the CIA’s manoeuvres and the ultimate political cost those incurred, there are sufficient indications in the books that the operation was a grave error. Poulgrain’s is a reiteration of these findings. His scathing critique of Dulles and arguments made by Weiner and Conboy and Morrison underline the fact that without Dulles’ dubious role, the history of Indonesia would have been vastly different.
Poulgrain further shows how Dulles manipulated the autonomy seeking rebellion in Indonesia itself in order to have it fail. Such conspiratorial analysis has been this historian’s forte. For example, in his 1998 book The Genesis of Konfrontasi: Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, 1945–1965, Poulgrain narrates how confrontation with Indonesia was deliberately provoked to facilitate the inclusion of Sarawak in Malaysia and to bring down Sukarno. The ultimate aim of Dulles was to keep Indonesia away from the clutches of the communists. The back-story, however, is much more convoluted and intriguing. CIA indeed went to great lengths to oust Sukarno. Among other things, it even attempted producing a pornographic movie or at least some still photographs that could pass for Sukarno and his Russian girlfriend in a bizarre attempt to humiliate him. The Agency developed a full-face mask of the Indonesian leader, which was to be sent to Los Angeles where the police were to pay some pornographic film actor to wear it. This project resulted in some photographs, though they were never used (Poulgrain, 1998).
On 24 July 1975, R.S. Dewi Sukarno, Sukarno’s widow drafted a letter to President Gerald Ford detailing the American efforts against her husband. She wrote,
the CIA is said to have spied on my husband: manufactured a fake film in order to slander the good name and honour of Sukarno: prepared an assassination attempt against him and conspired to oust him from power to estrange him from the Indonesian people by accusing him of collaborating with international communism in betrayal of Indonesian independence.
She added, ‘I must now ask you, Mr. President, did the United States of America commit these hideous crimes against Indonesia and against the founder of the nation?’ She, for obvious reasons, did not receive a reply.
Similar to Kennedy, UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold’s ideals of non-aligned movement became an impediment to the attempts made by Dulles to control and access the resource-rich former colonies for American corporate control. In Indonesia and also in Congo, then a colony of Belgium, Hammarskjold’s efforts were despised by Dulles. Poulgrain alleges Hammarskjold’s death in the 1961 plane crash in the Congo had a definite CIA and corporate connection.
All in all, Poulgrain’s book, The Incubus of Intervention, is indeed a richly sourced and thought-provoking account of Indonesia’s history, which is not taught in classrooms.