RI-U.S. ties endure ups and downs

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