Indonesia’s Suharto died on January 27. Like Chile’s Pinochet, Suharto is a man who is revered by the right even as they tut-tut his atrocities. What are they to do when a man does all the right things economically, and just has a nasty habit of murdering people? Overlook the murders, obviously, and point to the prosperity that fascism brings with it.
I came across two sources that wrote about Suharto’s passing – Hugo Restall in the Wall Street Journal, and the National Security Archives, which through the Freedom of Information Act has secured the release of internal US government documents that originated during Suharto’s bloody rule.
Hugo Restall:
Will history treat Suharto kindly? Many of his countrymen today do not. Last year, students protested in Jakarta over the government’s decision not to prosecute him for corruption, even as the former Indonesian president lay on his sickbed. Abroad, too, it is fashionable to sneer. Many mention him in the same breath as Mobutu Sese Seko, another officer turned strongman, who plundered Zaire from the mid-1960s to the late 1990s. Suharto is accused of similar avarice, and vastly inflated estimates of his family fortune are blithely tossed around.
But the pendulum of condemnation has swung too far, and Suharto’s death yesterday should be the impetus for a reappraisal. The positive contributions of the man who made Indonesia a respected member of the international community deserve at least equal emphasis.
Consider that when Gen. Suharto came to power after a failed communist coup in 1965, Indonesia was an economic basket case and a troublemaker in the region. The pro-communist populism of President for Life Sukarno had led the country down a dead end. Think of Sukarno as the Hugo Chavez of his era.
National Security Archive:
This National Intelligence Estimate prepared by the CIA at the end of 1968 offers a positive portrait of Suharto and the New Order regime he had assembled following his ouster of Sukarno in March 1966 and consolidation of control in the intervening months. Just 18 months after the bloody massacres involving the murder of between 500,000 and one million alleged supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party, the NIE states that “the Suharto government provides Indonesia with a relatively moderate leadership.” The estimate reports, “There is no force in Indonesia today that can effectively challenge the army’s position, notwithstanding the fact that the Suharto government uses a fairly light hand in wielding the instruments of power. Over the next three to five years, it is unlikely that any threat to the internal security of Indonesia will develop that the military cannot contain; the army–presumably led by Suharto–will almost certainly retain control of the government during this period.”
Hugo Restall:
Instead of seeking to be a leader of the Third World, Suharto invested in his own people. He used the income from oil exports to dramatically improve health and primary education, especially for girls. Women’s participation in the workforce grew. Life expectancy increased to over 70. According to one account, the honor he took the most pride in was an award for developing agriculture.
National Security Archive:
Suharto made his first visit as head of state to the U.S. in May 1970. The trip came amidst a major crackdown on political parties in Indonesia aimed at insuring the dominance of the Joint Secretariat of Functional Groups (GOLKAR) and the Army in parliamentary elections scheduled for 1971, as well as detailed revelations of pervasive corruption among government and military officials including smuggling, bribery, kickbacks and nepotism.
Hugo Restall:
Suharto initially entrusted economic policy to a group of neoclassical economists who became known as the “Berkeley mafia,” since many were trained at the University of California. He had met some of them at the army staff college in the early 1960s. Much like Augusto Pinochet’s “Chicago boys” in Chile, they set fundamental policies of welcoming foreign investment and trade that sustained growth even when their influence waned and corruption grew.
Meanwhile, Indonesia became an ally of the free world and a force for peace in the region. Then Foreign Minister Adam Malik was instrumental in the 1967 founding of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which was a bulwark against the spread of communism. Its role gradually expanded to promoting trade and stability, and Indonesia remains the indispensable core of the group.
National Security Archive:
On the eve of Indonesia’s full-scale invasion of East Timor, President Ford and Secretary Kissinger stopped in Jakarta en route from China where they had just met with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. For more than a year the U.S. had known that Indonesia was planning to forcibly annex East Timor, having followed intelligence reports of armed attacks by Indonesian forces for nearly two months. Thus, Ford or Kissinger could not have been too surprised when, in the middle of a discussion of guerrilla movements in Thailand and Malaysia, Suharto suddenly brought up East Timor. “We want your understanding,” Suharto stated, “if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action.”
Hugo Restall:
Like Deng Xiaoping, he rescued his country from totalitarianism and poverty, and put it on the path to prosperity and a large measure of personal freedoms. For all his flaws, Suharto deserves to be remembered as one of Asia’s greatest leaders.
National Security Archive:
Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke’s visit to Jakarta in April 1977 and his lengthy meeting with President Suharto was the first by a high-ranking Carter Administration official. The visit occurred during the run-up to tightly-controlled Presidential and parliamentary elections in which hundreds of Suharto opponents had been arrested and critical newspapers shuttered.
In May, 1984 Vice President George H. W. Bush visited Indonesia as part of a longer trip that included stops in Japan and South Asia. The briefing papers prepared for Vice President Bush highlight the continued focus on commercial and security relations over considerations of human rights. In 1984 the U.S. provided $45 million in credits for foreign military sales (FMS) and $2.5 million in International Military and Educational Training (IMET), “our second largest IMET program worldwide.” Vice-President Bush’s political scene setter notes that “political activity in Indonesia is tightly controlled,” with “no organized political activity” between national elections and opposition forces “dispirited and incapable for the foreseeable future of mounting a direct challenge to his power.”
Vice President Bush’s visit came on the heels of a major Indonesian military offensive in East Timor in which hundreds of civilians were massacred and in the midst of a period of severe repression in Indonesia punctuated by “a government-organized campaign of summary killings of alleged violent criminals” known as the “mysterious killings,” which began in late 1982 and continued through 1984. The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta estimated that the government had summarily executed about 4,000 people, with continued killings reported.
This illustrates the point that the U.S. is comfortable and willing to sleep with any leader of any stripe who grabs the reins of power so long as he maintains a favorable investment climate for U.S. corporations. With loyalty comes accolades – Suharto, the mass murderer and ruthless dictator actually “…put [Indonesia] on the path to prosperity and a large measure of personal freedoms.” We are thankful for him.
US foreign policy is a bloody enterprise operating behind an ideological blind. There is the Suharto/Pinochet/Chicago model, where any amount of bloodshed is for a noble cause, or the Chavez model, where economic improvement for ordinary people leads to contempt and coup d’état. Chavez is helping the wrong people. Though he has killed no one, he can do no right. Suharto and Pinochet, mass murderers, are national saviors.
Piece of Mindful 