As president, Sukarno blamed Indonesia’s poverty on Dutch imperialism and capitalism, abrogated Indonesia’s inherited debts, nationalized Dutch properties, and turned over the management of most of them to the army. He developed a state-centered economy that the army, the civil bureaucracy, and Sukarno himself could milk for their benefit. Not surprisingly, Indonesian private enterprise and foreign aid both declined. Both the U.S. and the British governments became alarmed and sought to destabilize Sukarno’s position, just as the U.S. had tried to destabilize Allende in Chile. Sukarno
...more
