Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

With Prabowo’s fall, the Americans started to cover their tracks. In late July, John Shattuck, assistant secretary of state for human rights, finally seemed to notice the situation in Indonesia. Officials were, he now said, “watching very closely.” Franklin Kramer, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, attempted to put a spin on events by praising the Indonesian military’s “recent restraint in quelling unrest.”²³ U.S. embassy officials in Jakarta expressed “shock and anger” at Prabowo; one nonetheless insisted that “even if U.S.-trained soldiers had committed some of the murders, the United States should continue to work with the military, to maintain influence over what happens next.”²⁴ President Habibie pleaded with the White House for an invitation so he could “thank Clinton in person.”²⁵ For what, one wonders?

Secretary of Defense Cohen led the first high-ranking American delegation to visit Indonesia after Suharto’s resignation. He stated that the United States still hoped to “build upon a military relationship in the future,” and he refused to comment on accounts of atrocities committed by military men, saying only, “I do know that the Indonesian government has a number of investigations under way in terms of any abuses of human rights.” Two weeks later an Indonesian military tribunal found a first lieutenant and a second lieutenant guilty of “taking action outside of their orders” in the sniper killings of the four students, sentencing one to ten months, the other four months, in prison. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who attended an ASEAN meeting at the end of July, denounced the treatment of dissidents in China and Burma but said not a word about the rapes, murders, and disappearances of dissidents and ethnic Chinese in Indonesia.

It may seem that what happened in Indonesia was another successful American-choreographed replacement of a regime that had become “unacceptable”—especially since the army in which the United States had invested so much came out in an even more powerful position in the new, soon-to-be “democratic” Indonesia (even with the last-minute replacement of Prabowo by Wiranto). But the truth of the matter was that the IMF and the U.S. Department of Defense, having helped reverse a quarter century of economic progress, had probably made it impossible for any Indonesian government to recover from the disaster.

Indonesia’s six million citizens of Chinese ancestry constituted only 3.5 percent of the population during Suharto’s regime, but it was estimated that they contributed close to three-quarters of the country’s wealth. In the wake of the riots, thousands of ethnic Chinese fled Indonesia, taking some $85 billion in capital with them. This makes it virtually certain that Indonesian banks will sooner or later have to default on their loans from overseas lenders. Equally important, in 1997 China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore were the largest investors in Indonesia, followed by Japan and South Korea. Money from overseas Chinese sources will no longer be readily forthcoming for Indonesia. Both mainland China and Taiwan denounced the riots. China also pointedly noted that it had tried to help Indonesia economically with cash, medical supplies, and a refusal to devalue its own currency in order to avoid competing with Indonesian exports. Indonesia has instead been turned into a ward of the IMF and the United States, although it is unlikely that the American public understands this or feels in any way responsible for the huge economic contraction under way there. But this is a blowback of monumental proportions.

The American government may be satisfied to see army rule in Indonesia, but the Indonesian people probably are not. The best thing that could happen to Indonesia would be for the Americans to get out of the way and let Japan assume some responsibility. Japan, like China, tried to do so in the autumn of 1997, but its efforts were blocked by the United States, which does not like rivals in providing “leadership” in Asia. Japan is nonetheless Indonesia’s main economic partner, taking 40 percent of its exports and supplying 25 percent of its imports. Japan, still the world’s second largest economy, has a huge stake in Indonesia’s return to economic viability, and it has the financial clout to spur renewed growth.

If, instead, Indonesia is allowed to stagnate, living off food handouts from the Americans, it is quite possible to predict that Islam, which until now has shown its tolerant and broad-minded face throughout most of the country, will turn militant and implacable. This, in turn, would guarantee the end of American influence (much as it did in Khomeini’s Iran) and it would greatly complicate Australia’s foreign policy. It is a direction that some in the Indonesian army would welcome, despite their close friendships with American military officers developed over the years in JCET exercises.