Sebuah pengakuan mantan intel Australia ttg dilema Barat, soal PKI, Papua, Timor & Soeharto - AS http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/suharto-may-have-been-the-devil-we\ -knew/2008/02/10/1202578596970.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1 <http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/suharto-may-have-been-the-devil-w\ e-knew/2008/02/10/1202578596970.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1> Suharto may have been the devil we knew
Paul Monk The Age - February 11, 2008 PRESIDENT Suharto was a blackguard, a mass murderer and a kleptocrat, with whom we should have been seriously at odds, if not at war, according to his critics. Other prominent figures saw him as a white knight, a charming fellow who did a lot for Indonesia, as well as for the region, and as a great friend to Australia. There is a good deal of truth in both sets of claims. The man was a "prince", in Machiavelli's sense, and assessing our relationship with him is a test of our capacity for dispassionate judgement about international politics, "princes" in general, our security interests and our moral commitments. Suharto is dead, but our need to be able to make dispassionate judgements in these domains, with regard to Indonesia and many other countries, will be enduring. That's why thinking a bit harder about Suharto at this juncture is worthwhile. We need to come to terms with the fact that, in external affairs, we often face intractable dilemmas and must make a choice between evils. This very idea makes many people feel uncomfortable, but it is an inescapable aspect of statecraft. Few things illustrate this more starkly than the history of Australia's relationship with Indonesia, before, during and since Suharto's long rule. In the late 1940s, Australia's leaders had to choose between supporting the Dutch in their attempt to hold onto their colonies in the "East Indies" or the Indonesian nationalists under Sukarno. They chose the latter, but Sukarno proved a very difficult neighbour to deal with. In the mid to late 1950s, there was serious debate at the highest levels in Australia regarding whether our interests would best be served by a fragmented or a unified Indonesia. It was decided that, all things considered, the latter would be our best bet, but that Sukarno was a problem and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was looming as an even greater one. Sukarno was determined, in the late 1950s, to acquire Dutch New Guinea, though it was Melanesian and not, therefore, self-evidently part of a nation centred on Java. A top-secret intelligence study in 1957 advised that our interests would best be served by seeking the co-operation of the Dutch in developing the whole island of New Guinea and giving it independence as a unified Melanesian state. Robert Menzies made this his policy. But Menzies had a problem. The Dutch would not co-operate. And Sukarno kept pressing his claim. At the psychological moment, in late December 1961, Menzies received a "your eyes only" letter from British prime minister Harold Macmillan saying, more or less in these words, "Dear Bob, I've had a chat with Jack (Kennedy) in Bermuda and we think you should roll over on this Dutch New Guinea thing . . . We'll throw this bone to Sukarno, separate the Indonesian nationalists from the communists and then find some other way to deal with the PKI." This was the origin of the so-called "act of free choice", by means of which West Papua was handed over to Indonesia between 1962 and 1968. Menzies' hand was forced by the attitude of Washington and London. If he defied them and resisted Sukarno, he risked a war with Indonesia on most uncertain terms. The alternative was to sacrifice West Papua and that choice was made, as the lesser of two evils. As for finding another way to deal with the PKI, Western analysts were in agreement, in the early 1960s, that Sukarno could not contain the increasing power of the Communists and that only the Indonesian Army had the strength to do so. Led by the young Colonel Suharto, in 1965-66, the army overthrew Sukarno and destroyed the fabric of the PKI. In the process, it slaughtered an estimated 500,000 people, including the families of PKI cadres and sympathisers, who were executed wholesale without trials or rights of appeal. These events, the setting for Christopher Koch's fine novel and Peter Weir's excellent film The Year of Living Dangerously, were unambiguously welcomed by Australia's leaders and the hope was expressed, in late 1965, that the army would "finish the job". The late Alan Taylor told me a few years ago that he had joined the Department of Foreign Affairs just after these events and would never forget the "enormous feeling of relief in the place" at what had happened. Even before Suharto overthrew Sukarno, thoughtful people in Foreign Affairs were thinking ahead about Portuguese Timor. Gordon Jockel wrote a particularly fine analysis of the problem for Arthur Tange in 1962. But in 1973, good friends of Australia in Indonesian national security circles approached our embassy and indicated that they were proposing to Suharto that Portuguese Timor be absorbed into Indonesia. The debate that then took place in Canberra was vigorous and intelligent, but it led, ultimately, to Gough Whitlam's choice, subsequently endorsed by Malcolm Fraser, to do nothing to oppose Indonesian annexation of East Timor and to publicly play down the brutalities entailed in that annexation, between 1975 and 1983. There have always been those who have asserted that it was the wrong choice. What has never been clear is what better alternative was open to the Australian governments of those times. All these events are the background to a reasoned assessment of Suharto as "prince" and a mature approach to Australia's diplomatic relations with Indonesia. There are, alas, no neat, morally ideal solutions to problems of this nature. Nor was Suharto a neat or morally ideal solution to Indonesia's difficulties in the 1960s and '70s. But he was a prince of considerable abilities and our only effective option for decades was to work with him as best we could. Paul Monk is a specialist in international relations and a former intelligence officer [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
