Chalmers Johnson - Blowback, Second Edition - The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

The Indonesian military high command and other top Indonesian officials would have liked the world to believe that this savagery was the result of visceral anti-Chinese feelings, “spontaneous outbursts of a crowd run amok,” in the words of Maj. Gen. Syafrie Samsuddin, then military commander of Jakarta. Far too many American pundits also found this explanation convenient. For example, in the New Republic , Jonathan Paris, an international lawyer connected with the Council on Foreign Relations, typically attributed the “riots” to “racial hatred and economic jealousy.” 17

But there are obvious problems with this explanation. As George Hicks, an Australian economist who has written extensively on Indonesia, points out, it is unlikely that mobs could simultaneously attack forty different Chinese-owned shopping malls spread around more than twenty-five kilometers without planning and coordination, not to speak of “without a single culprit having to face any police or military units in a city of ten million normally crawling with heavily armed forces of law and order.” 18The Indonesian scholar Ariel Heryanto has observed that the events of May were not “racially motivated mass riots” but “racialized state terrorism.” The evidence, he believes, indicates that “racism among members of civil society was not responsible for the recent riots, nor for most other major anti-Chinese riots in past decades.” 19Instead, he argues that these, like the massive anti-Chinese pogroms that accompanied Suharto’s rise to power in 1965-66, were incited by the army. This time, as Asiaweek put it, General Prabowo believed “that he could take power in exactly the same way as his own father-in-law wrested power from Sukarno,” by appearing to restore order in the face of uncontrolled ethnic rioting. 20

Rather than a race riot, William McGurn, senior editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review , compares May 1998 in Jakarta to Kristallnacht, when in November 1938 Hitler sent Nazi thugs into the streets to attack Jewish stores and homes. 21One of Hitler’s intentions was to see how the rest of the world would respond, and he concluded, correctly as it turned out, that the democracies would not interfere with his genocidal plans for Europe’s Jews. Many have noted that in the weeks before the Indonesian riots, hundreds of young men trained by Kopassus were brought into Jakarta from East Timor. The theory is that Prabowo, either on his own or on orders from Suharto, organized the chaos to create an excuse for a crackdown. It was, however, Prabowo’s rival, General Wiranto, who proved to be the main beneficiary of the chaos. On May 21, Wiranto persuaded Suharto to resign in favor of his vice president, B. J. Habibie, and on May 28 he relieved General Prabowo of his command. According to Allan Nairn, during the week these events took place, General Wiranto rather than General Prabowo was observed “consulting nonstop with the U.S. Embassy.” 22

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.” 23U.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.” 24President Habibie pleaded with the White House for an invitation so he could “thank Clinton in person.” 25For 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.