Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

The Washington Post obtained a copy of a 1990 Department of Defense manual entitled Doctrine for Special Forces Operations, which describes the main activity of special forces on JCET missions as giving instruction in FID, or “foreign internal defense.” In other words, most of the training exercises are meant to prepare foreign militaries for actions against their own populaces or rebel forces in their countries. The manual defines FID as organizing, training, advising, and assisting a foreign military establishment in order to protect its society from “subversion, lawlessness, and insurgency.” Brig. Gen. Robert W. Wagner of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami told Douglas Farah of the Washington Post that FID is the “heart” of special operations, and an officer of the U.S. Army’s Special Forces Command assured Dana Priest that FID is “our bread and butter.” FID is, of course, hardly what Congress specified in the law as the function of JCET, but congressional control over military activities is by now so minimal that the Pentagon pays little attention to specifications that are displeasing. Stripped of its euphemistic language, FID amounts to little more than instruction in state terrorism. Republican representative Christopher Smith, chairman of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, says, “Our joint exercises and training of military units—that have been charged over and over again with the gravest kind of crimes against humanity, including torture and murder—cry out for explanation.” But the U.S. secretary of defense seems to be unconcerned. “In those areas where our forces conduct JCET,” Secretary Cohen averred, “they encourage democratic values and regional stability.”⁹

Just how JCET training contributes to “democratic values and stability” is nowhere better illustrated than by the case of Indonesia, a place Secretary Cohen has visited often to review the results of America’s educational efforts. Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country and the world’s largest Islamic nation. During its early years, after fighting for its independence from the Netherlands, when its founder and leader was President Sukarno (like many Indonesians, including General Suharto, he has only one name), it was a champion of neutralism and a thorn in the side of American foreign policy. Many CIA covert operations were mounted against Indonesia in that period, including during the revolution of 1965, when Suharto came to power, ousted Sukarno, and in a bloody pogrom eliminated leftist forces throughout the islands. Suharto and the army ruled with a strong authoritarian hand until May 1998.

During this period and with considerable American and Japanese support, Suharto overcame starvation on the main island of Java and led the country into sustained economic growth. However, Indonesia was clobbered by the 1997 financial crisis that depressed its stock and currency values to as much as 80 percent below precrisis levels. Because of misguided policies by the United States and the International Monetary Fund, discussed later in this chapter and in chapter 9, the number of people in Indonesia living below the poverty line grew in a matter of months from twenty-seven million to over a hundred million (half the population), and thirty years of economic gains were wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs. The country remains destitute and threatened with possible disintegration, even though its political life has been invigorated by the return of democracy after thirty-two years of one-man rule. Thus far, the blowback from American policies in Indonesia has affected primarily Indonesians and, in particular, the Chinese minority in the country, which is also the entrepreneurial elite. Americans have not been affected, but this is unlikely to last as Indonesia emerges from its present trauma and starts to assess what happened to it and who was responsible.