United States–Indonesia Relations

The book portrays United States–Indonesia Relations as a history of powerful support followed by a revealing, belated reversal. It links Washington’s backing of Indonesia’s 1965 military takeover and subsequent mass killings to decades of Indonesian violence in East Timor, then emphasizes that a change in United States policy in 1999 quickly altered the Indonesian military’s course. The contrast is central to the account: Washington’s influence, the text argues, could have helped restrain the violence much earlier, but was instead used to support Indonesia until pressure forced a change.

The 1965 takeover and its aftermath

The relationship’s earlier history is introduced through 1965, when an army supported by the United States took control of Indonesia. The account says the takeover was followed by the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly landless peasants. It notes that the Central Intelligence Agency compared the slaughter to crimes committed by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, while the killings were described in detail and received exuberant approval in Western public discussion and the domestic press. The passage uses this reaction to contrast Western celebration of violence abroad with the compassion that followed the 2001 attacks on New York.

The book returns to Indonesia to challenge the idea that relations between the United States and Muslim-majority societies can be understood as a clash of civilizations. Indonesia, identified as the largest Islamic state, is described as a country the United States favored after Suharto came to power in 1965, despite the military massacres carried out with United States assistance. The account says the violence was subsequently pushed from public memory, and that the Clinton administration continued to call Suharto a friend even as his rule was associated with killings, torture, and other abuses. The relationship is therefore presented not as a simple encounter between distinct civilizations, but as a political alliance sustained across grave abuses.

East Timor and continuing support

The text extends this history to East Timor, where the United States and Britain continued supporting Indonesia after Indonesian actions had already eliminated about a third of the population, according to the account. That support persisted through the 1999 violence. Before the early-September battles, thousands had been killed; the ensuing violence drove 85 percent of the population from their homes and destroyed 70 percent of the country. During this period, the Clinton administration publicly maintained that responsibility belonged to Indonesia’s government and that Washington did not want to take that responsibility away.

The account gives particular weight to the contrast between that public position and Washington’s capacity to influence Indonesian decisions. On September 8, 1999, after the worst atrocities were known, Clinton faced substantial pressure, chiefly from Australia but also from people in the United States, to intervene and stop the killings. A few days later, the administration signaled Indonesian generals that the situation was over. The generals promptly reversed course: although they had insisted that they would never withdraw from East Timor and had described their position as defending Indonesian West Timor, they announced a withdrawal and allowed United Nations peacekeepers, led by Australians, to enter without opposition from the Indonesian army.

A reversal that exposed Washington’s leverage

The speed of the generals’ change is the account’s clearest illustration of United States leverage. Indonesian leaders had previously declared that they would not leave; after the United States signal, they withdrew and accepted the peacekeeping force. The text reads this turn as evidence that Washington still held hidden power capable of influencing events. That power, it argues, could have been used to prevent twenty-five years of near-genocidal violence, including the latest outbreak in 1999.

Instead, successive United States administrations, joined by Britain and others, had provided decisive military and diplomatic aid to Indonesia. The account specifically identifies 1978, at the height of the terror, as a period when that support continued. It uses the juxtaposition of a late, effective signal to the generals and years of earlier backing to make a causal and political point: the 1999 reversal showed that the preceding violence was not beyond the reach of outside influence, even if the account does not claim that one signal alone could undo its consequences.

Refugees and the meaning of humanitarian policy

The aftermath did not end with Indonesia’s announcement. The account says the crimes continued in impoverished refugee camps in Indonesian West Timor. It presents those camps as a continuing consequence of the violence and as evidence that withdrawal and the arrival of peacekeepers did not erase displacement or resolve every outcome of the crisis.

The episode also informs the book’s criticism of claims about humanitarian intervention. The author argues that Indonesia’s record in East Timor was later treated in the West as evidence of a new commitment to humanitarian intervention and as justification for NATO’s bombing of Serbia. In the book’s framing, that celebration sits uneasily beside the earlier military and diplomatic support for Indonesia and the delayed response in 1999. The relationship thus serves both as a record of policy choices and as a test of the consistency of humanitarian rhetoric: the decisive change came only after pressure, although Washington had previously possessed influence that could have been used to act sooner.