The Audacity of Hope

Chapter Eight
The World Beyond Our Borders
INDONESIA IS A nation of islands—more than seventeen thousand in all, spread
along the equator between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, between Australia and the
South China Sea. Most Indonesians are of Malay stock and live on the larger islands of
Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Bali. On the far eastern islands like Ambon
and the Indonesian portion of New Guinea the people are, in varying degrees, of
Melanesian ancestry. Indonesia’s climate is tropical, and its rain forests were once
teeming with exotic species like the orangutan and the Sumatran tiger. Today, those rain
forests are rapidly dwindling, victim to logging, mining, and the cultivation of rice, tea,
coffee, and palm oil. Deprived of their natural habitat, orangutans are now an
endangered species; no more than a few hundred Sumatran tigers remain in the wild.
With more than 240 million people, Indonesia’s population ranks fourth in the world,
behind China, India, and the United States. More than seven hundred ethnic groups
reside within the country’s borders, and more than 742 languages are spoken there.
Almost 90 percent of Indonesia’s population practice Islam, making it the world’s
largest Muslim nation. Indonesia is OPEC’s only Asian member, although as a
consequence of aging infrastructure, depleted reserves, and high domestic consumption
it is now a net importer of crude oil. The national language is Bahasa Indonesia. The
capital is Jakarta. The currency is the rupiah.
Most Americans can’t locate Indonesia on a map.
This fact is puzzling to Indonesians, since for the past sixty years the fate of their nation
has been directly tied to U.S. foreign policy. Ruled by a succession of sultanates and
often-splintering kingdoms for most of its history, the archipelago became a Dutch
colony—the Dutch East Indies—in the 1600s, a status that would last for more than
three centuries. But in the lead-up to World War II, the Dutch East Indies’ ample oil
reserves became a prime target of Japanese expansion; having thrown its lot in with the
Axis powers and facing a U.S.-imposed oil embargo, Japan needed fuel for its military
and industry. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan moved swiftly to take over the
Dutch colony, an occupation that would last for the duration of the war.
With the Japanese surrender in 1945, a budding Indonesian nationalist movement
declared the country’s independence. The Dutch had other ideas, and attempted to
reclaim their former territory. Four bloody years of war ensued. Eventually the Dutch
bowed to mounting international pressure (the U.S. government, already concerned with
the spread of communism under the banner of anticolonialism, threatened the
Netherlands with a cutoff of Marshall Plan funds) and recognized Indonesia’s
sovereignty. The principal leader of the independence movement, a charismatic,
flamboyant figure named Sukarno, became Indonesia’s first president.
Sukarno proved to be a major disappointment to Washington. Along with Nehru of
India and Nasser of Egypt, he helped found the nonaligned movement, an effort by
nations newly liberated from colonial rule to navigate an independent path between the
West and the Soviet bloc. Indonesia’s Communist Party, although never formally in