Economists with Guns : Authoritarian Development and U. S. -Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968

by Simpson, Bradley

• ISBN13: 9780804756341
• ISBN10: 0804756341
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-28
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

Offering the first comprehensive history of U.S relations with Indonesia during the 1960s,Economists with Gunsexplores one of the central dynamics of international politics during the Cold War: the emergence and U.S. embrace of authoritarian regimes pledged to programs of military-led development. Drawing on newly declassified archival material, this book examines how Americans and Indonesians imagined the country's development in the 1950s and why they abandoned their democratic hopes in the 1960s in favor of the military regime of General Suharto. Far from viewing development as a path to democracy, this book highlights the evolving commitment of both Americans and Indonesians to authoritarianism in the 1960s and succeeding decades. At a crucial juncture in modern Indonesian history, the United States found common cause with the Indonesian armed forces and their technocratic allies as the purported guardians of political and economic stability, shaping the country's trajectory in ways thatas Indonesia's current fragile transition to democracy illustratescontinue to unfold.

Author Biography

Bradley R. Simpson teaches and researches twentieth-century U.S. foreign relations and international history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is a research fellow at the National Security Archive, where he directs a project to declassify U.S. documents concerning Indonesia and East Timor during the reign of General Suharto (1965-1998).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Imagining Indonesian Development	p. 13
The Kennedy Administration Confronts Indonesia	p. 37
Developing a Counterinsurgency State	p. 62
The Road from Stabilization to Konfrontasi	p. 87
From High Hopes to Low Profile	p. 113
Indonesia's Year of Living Dangerously	p. 145
The September 30th Movement and the Destruction of the PKI	p. 171
Economists with Guns: Washington Embraces the New Order	p. 207
Conclusion	p. 249
Abbreviations	p. 263
Notes	p. 265
Works Cited	p. 339
Index	p. 361
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