RI-U.S. ties endure ups and downs

JAKARTA (JP): If you think the relationship between the United States and Indonesia is at a low ebb and may well deteriorate -- take comfort. It has been worse, a lot worse, not so long ago.

Reading Shared Hopes, Separate Fears -- Fifty Years of U.S.- Indonesia relations by retired senior American diplomat Paul F. Gardner, one concludes that no matter how bad things are, ties were worse in the 1950s and 1960s.

The book (published 1997 by Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado) was commissioned by the Washington-based United States-Indonesia Society. The avowed aim of the work is to shed light on Indonesia -- a country often misunderstood by Americans despite its strategic importance to the USA.

Shared Hopes, Separate Fears traces fifty years of the relationship between the two countries and finds that Indonesia and the United States have much in common: their sheer size, and the diversity of their peoples. Common values may also have sprung from a mutual battle against colonialism, despite an interval of almost two centuries.

One may think then, that Indonesia and the United States would make natural allies. Alas, that is not the case. It probably never will be due to what Gardner calls "fears" - a divergence in strategic political and economic interests.

The book frankly discusses the dark side of the United States' relationship with Indonesia; the policy of domestic interventionism from 1945 to the birth of the New Order.

The book had little to say about the period after 1965. The title is more of a symbolic half century rather than a chronological guide.

Gardner's new book will be a major contribution towards understanding not only the history of U.S.-Indonesia relations, but also the first two decades of this country.

Shared Hopes and Separate Fears takes the view that America's geopolitical interests dictated its policy towards Indonesia between 1945 and 1966. At times the United States even tried to justify interventionism, evident in the covert funding of armed regional rebellions against Jakarta in the 1950s.

Gardner shows that Washington has long recognized the strategic importance of Indonesia to the United States. But the relationship is relatively obscure, certainly less well known than the U.S.'s other policy adventures in the region, such as Vietnam and Korea.

Washington's Indonesia policy during the 1950s and early 1960s was mostly conducted on a covert level, by the Central Intelligence Agency rather than the State Department.

Gardner argues that while American policies certainly influenced the course of Indonesian politics, they occupy a peripheral rather than a central role.

Despite this, we are left to wonder what history would have been like if the U.S. government had been more supportive, or at least sympathetic, of Indonesia during those first difficult years after the proclamation of independence in 1945.

This may be a mute point, but a valid question since the book highlights the hopes, values and goals shared between Indonesia and the United States in those years.

Ultimately, history was shaped greatly by the political players of the time. One of the book's strengths is its examination of some of these players, both Americans and Indonesians, and their impact on events of the time.

Gardner highlights the fact that strategic interests dictated Washington's Indonesia policy in the late 1940s and 1950s. One suspects they still do today, although the detail of policies differ.

Despite much sympathy in American circles, Washington refused to recognize Indonesia's independence in the 1940s for fear of angering the Netherlands, an important ally in both World War II, and in the emerging Cold War with the Soviet Union.

It was also the fear of growing communist influence in Asia that prompted Washington to eventually recognize Indonesian independence in 1950 and start sending aid.

In the mid-1950s, the United States also helped to finance regional rebellions in Indonesia because president Sukarno, in his attempt to assert a non-aligned stance, had started flirting with communist China and the Soviet Union.

The decision to pull the rugs from under the rebels later on was also strategic: Washington had begun to realize the importance of the Indonesian Army, both in the repression of insurgences, and in countering the growing communist power in Indonesia.

The author served at the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia for 10 years in the 1960s, a turbulent political era, which makes him a living witness to major events in nation's history.

The book draws on interviews with major figures in the U.S.- Indonesia relationship. The author had access to some of their official and personal correspondence and notes. Gardner also had access to very telling declassified U.S. government documents.

Some readers may have misgivings about the book, as it is written by a diplomat and funded by an institution dedicated to the promotion of bilateral ties.

But the book is not a scholarly work, and was probably not intended to be. Certainly, it is not as rigorous as the work of Audrey R. Kahin and George McT. Kahin in Subversion as Foreign Policy -- The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia (New Press, New York, 1995) which looks at the period in the Indonesia-U.S. relations when Washington was financing regional rebellions.

The Kahins showed honesty in telling readers that some declassified information from the U.S. State Department or the CIA had already been excised, and that crucial information has not been declassified to this day, more than 30 years later.

These shortcomings in Gardner's book are minor however because the work is still insightful, giving the perspective of an insider in the U.S. State Department, rather than an objective scholar.

In short, the book is highly recommended for anyone wanting to understand not only U.S.-Indonesian relations, but also some aspects of the political history of Indonesia in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s.

-- Endy M. Bayuni