Indonesia did indeed become a “quiet, compliant partner” of the United States, which explains why so many Americans today have barely heard about the country. But at the time, things were very different. The annihilation of the world’s third-largest communist party, the fall of the founder of the Third World movement, and the rise of a fanatically anticommunist military dictatorship violently rocked Indonesia, setting off a tsunami that reached almost every corner of the globe.
