On May 8, the United States ordered JCET activities suspended in Indonesia after the Nation’s Allan Nairn, at this potentially embarrassing moment, exposed the nature of the Pentagon’s covert assistance program for Kopassus. By mid-May 1998, U.S. officials had started to signal changes in their position and begun to leak to the press statements not for attribution indicating that the IMF’s reform program would not work unless Suharto were replaced. Senators like John Kerry of Massachusetts and Paul Wellstone of Minnesota echoed this demand on Capitol Hill. All of this was taken in Indonesia by powerful ABRI generals as a signal that they should act to secure the country and their positions in it. At the same time, students of Jakarta’s prestigious Trisakti University saw an opportunity to achieve a measure of democracy and took to the streets in orderly demonstrations, demanding an end to the privileges enjoyed by Suharto’s relatives. Amid growing turbulence in Jakarta, President Suharto left Indonesia for a state visit to Egypt, and the country’s top military officer, General Wiranto, left the capital on May 14 and flew to eastern Java for a divisional parade. In this context, Indonesia erupted.
Suharto was in Egypt when, on May 12, four students from Trisakti University were shot dead in the streets of Jakarta, even though the police were then armed only with blanks and rubber bullets. Eyewitnesses nonetheless saw snipers armed with rifles with telescopic sights and dressed in police uniforms fire on the students from a road overpass. The students were buried immediately without autopsies. As Business Week magazine reported, “On May 14, trucks loaded with muscular men raced to shopping centers and housing projects owned by ethnic Chinese. The men doused the shops and houses with gasoline and set off devastating fires. At least 182 women were raped or sexually tortured, some of them repeatedly, by men with crewcuts whom the victims believe to be soldiers.”16 At the Chinese-owned Lippo Karawaci Mall, security cameras tape-recorded six truckloads of men breaking into banks and cash dispensers, then inviting in thousands of looters. These actions were reported at more or less the same moment at forty different shopping malls across the city, resulting in 1,188 deaths, the looting and burning of 2,470 shops, and the destruction of 1,119 cars.
The Indonesian military high command and other top Indonesian officials would have liked the world to believe that this savagery was the result of visceral anti-Chinese feelings, “spontaneous outbursts of a crowd run amok,” in the words of Maj. Gen. Syafrie Samsuddin, then military commander of Jakarta. Far too many American pundits also found this explanation convenient. For example, in the New Republic, Jonathan Paris, an international lawyer connected with the Council on Foreign Relations, typically attributed the “riots” to “racial hatred and economic jealousy.”17
But there are obvious problems with this explanation. As George Hicks, an Australian economist who has written extensively on Indonesia, points out, it is unlikely that mobs could simultaneously attack forty different Chinese-owned shopping malls spread around more than twenty-five kilometers without planning and coordination, not to speak of “without a single culprit having to face any police or military units in a city of ten million normally crawling with heavily armed forces of law and order.”18 The Indonesian scholar Ariel Heryanto has observed that the events of May were not “racially motivated mass riots” but “racialized state terrorism.” The evidence, he believes, indicates that “racism among members of civil society was not responsible for the recent riots, nor for most other major anti-Chinese riots in past decades.”19 Instead, he argues that these, like the massive anti-Chinese pogroms that accompanied Suharto’s rise to power in 1965-66, were incited by the army. This time, as Asiaweek put it, General Prabowo believed “that he could take power in exactly the same way as his own father-in-law wrested power from Sukarno,” by appearing to restore order in the face of uncontrolled ethnic rioting.20
Rather than a race riot, William McGurn, senior editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, compares May 1998 in Jakarta to Kristallnacht, when in November 1938 Hitler sent Nazi thugs into the streets to attack Jewish stores and homes.21 One of Hitler’s intentions was to see how the rest of the world would respond, and he concluded, correctly as it turned out, that the democracies would not interfere with his genocidal plans for Europe’s Jews. Many have noted that in the weeks before the Indonesian riots, hundreds of young men trained by Kopassus were brought into Jakarta from East Timor. The theory is that Prabowo, either on his own or on orders from Suharto, organized the chaos to create an excuse for a crackdown. It was, however, Prabowo’s rival, General Wiranto, who proved to be the main beneficiary of the chaos. On May 21, Wiranto persuaded Suharto to resign in favor of his vice president, B. J. Habibie, and on May 28 he relieved General Prabowo of his command. According to Allan Nairn, during the week these events took place, General Wiranto rather than General Prabowo was observed “consulting nonstop with the U.S. Embassy.”22
With Prabowo’s fall, the Americans started to cover their tracks. In late July, John Shattuck, assistant secretary of state for human rights, finally seemed to notice the situation in Indonesia. Officials were, he now said, “watching very closely.” Franklin Kramer, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, attempted to put a spin on events by praising the Indonesian military’s “recent restraint in quelling unrest.”23 U.S. embassy officials in Jakarta expressed “shock and anger” at Prabowo; one nonetheless insisted that “even if U.S.-trained soldiers had committed some of the murders, the United States should continue to work with the military, to maintain influence over what happens next.”24 President Habibie pleaded with the White House for an invitation so he could “thank Clinton in person.”25 For what, one wonders?
Secretary of Defense Cohen led the first high-ranking American delegation to visit Indonesia after Suharto’s resignation. He stated that the United States still hoped to “build upon a military relationship in the future,” and he refused to comment on accounts of atrocities committed by military men, saying only, “I do know that the Indonesian government has a number of investigations under way in terms of any abuses of human rights.” Two weeks later an Indonesian military tribunal found a first lieutenant and a second lieutenant guilty of “taking action outside of their orders” in the sniper killings of the four students, sentencing one to ten months, the other four months, in prison. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who attended an ASEAN meeting at the end of July, denounced the treatment of dissidents in China and Burma but said not a word about the rapes, murders, and disappearances of dissidents and ethnic Chinese in Indonesia.
It may seem that what happened in Indonesia was another successful American-choreographed replacement of a regime that had become “unacceptable”—especially since the army in which the United States had invested so much came out in an even more powerful position in the new, soon-to-be “democratic” Indonesia (even with the last-minute replacement of Prabowo by Wiranto). But the truth of the matter was that the IMF and the U.S. Department of Defense, having helped reverse a quarter century of economic progress, had probably made it impossible for any Indonesian government to recover from the disaster.
Indonesia’s six million citizens of Chinese ancestry constituted only 3.5 percent of the population during Suharto’s regime, but it was estimated that they contributed close to three-quarters of the country’s wealth. In the wake of the riots, thousands of ethnic Chinese fled Indonesia, taking some $85 billion in capital with them. This makes it virtually certain that Indonesian banks will sooner or later have to default on their loans from overseas lenders. Equally important, in 1997 China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore were the largest investors in Indonesia, followed by Japan and South Korea. Money from overseas Chinese sources will no longer be readily forthcoming for Indonesia. Both mainland China and Taiwan denounced the riots. China also pointedly noted that it had tried to help Indonesia economically with cash, medical supplies, and a refusal to devalue its own currency in order to avoid competing with Indonesian exports. Indonesia has
instead been turned into a ward of the IMF and the United States, although it is unlikely that the American public understands this or feels in any way responsible for the huge economic contraction under way there. But this is a blowback of monumental proportions.
The American government may be satisfied to see army rule in Indonesia, but the Indonesian people probably are not. The best thing that could happen to Indonesia would be for the Americans to get out of the way and let Japan assume some responsibility. Japan, like China, tried to do so in the autumn of 1997, but its efforts were blocked by the United States, which does not like rivals in providing “leadership” in Asia. Japan is nonetheless Indonesia’s main economic partner, taking 40 percent of its exports and supplying 25 percent of its imports. Japan, still the world’s second largest economy, has a huge stake in Indonesia’s return to economic viability, and it has the financial clout to spur renewed growth.
If, instead, Indonesia is allowed to stagnate, living off food handouts from the Americans, it is quite possible to predict that Islam, which until now has shown its tolerant and broad-minded face throughout most of the country, will turn militant and implacable. This, in turn, would guarantee the end of American influence (much as it did in Khomeini’s Iran) and it would greatly complicate Australia’s foreign policy. It is a direction that some in the Indonesian army would welcome, despite their close friendships with American military officers developed over the years in JCET exercises.
Even should a U.S. president and Congress one day wake up to their constitutional duties and reassert authority over the Department of Defense, that still might not bring JCET and similar programs under control. The Pentagon’s most recent route around accountability is “privatization” of its training activities. As investigative journalist Ken Silverstein has written, “With little public knowledge or debate, the government has been dispatching private companies—most of them with tight links to the Pentagon and staffed by retired armed forces personnel—to provide military and police training to America’s foreign allies.”26 The companies involved are generally associated with the Department of Defense’s Special Operations Command, which has replaced the CIA’s Directorate of Operations as the main American sponsor of covert action in other countries. Nonetheless, these are privately contracted mercenaries who, by their nature, are not directly responsible to the military chain of command. In many cases, these private companies have been formed by retired special forces personnel seeking to market their military training to foreign governments, regardless of the policies of the Defense Department.
One reason privatization appeals to the Pentagon is that whatever these companies do becomes “proprietary information.” The Pentagon does not even have to classify it; and as private property, information on the activities of such companies is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Given the extreme legalism of American political culture, this is sufficient to shield such companies from public scrutiny, although it would probably not protect them from the new international criminal court. Private companies are at present training the armies of Croatia and Saudi Arabia and are active in Honduras, Peru, and many other Latin American countries. Such firms also purchase weaponry from former Soviet states for distribution to groups that the U.S. government may want to arm without being accused of doing so, such as guerrillas fighting for Bosnia and in Kosovo.
In addition to the Department of Defense’s JCET operations, both public and private, its arms sales are a vital component of stealth imperialism. By several orders of magnitude the United States maintains the world’s largest military establishment and is the world’s biggest arms exporter. According to 1995 figures released by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (whose very name is an Orwellian misnomer and which, in 1998, was absorbed by the State Department), the world spent $864 billion on military forces. Of this amount, the United States accounted for $278 billion, or 32 percent, some 3.7 times more than the then second-ranked country, Russia.27 The most dramatic cuts in military spending since 1987, the all-time peak year, when $1.36 trillion worth of arms passed from manufacturers to buyers, have come from Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reports that in 1997 the U.S. share of global deliveries of major conventional weapons, worth about $740 billion, had grown to 43 percent whereas Russia’s share was 14 percent.28
In 1997, total worldwide military and arms spending was approximately one-third lower than ten years ago, at the end of the Cold War. Nonetheless, in addition to being the world leader in arms transfers, the United States continues to dominate the development of military technology. According to SIPRI, the U.S. military research and development budget was more than seven times that of second-place France. In 1997, SIPRI found that the world spent $58 billion on military R&D, of which the United States spent $37 billion. In terms of overall national military spending, the Pentagon’s most recent Quadrennial Defense Review, concluded in May 1997, envisaged defense budgets in the range of $250-260 billion until the end of time—an amount vastly greater than anything that might be spent by any conceivable combination of adversaries. The defense budget for the year 2000 was $267.2 billion, plus augmentations in order to pay for the Kosovo war.
Together with NATO, Japan, South Korea, and Israel, the United States accounts for 80 percent of the world’s total military spending. In 1995, the United States alone outspent Russia, China, Iraq, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Libya, and Cuba combined, by a ratio of two to one; with its allies, it outstripped all potential adversaries by a ratio of four to one. If the comparison is restricted to only those countries considered regional threats by the Pentagon—the “rogue states” of Iraq, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Libya, and Cuba—the United States outspent them twenty-two to one.
Interestingly enough, maintaining access to Persian Gulf oil requires about $50 billion of the annual U.S. defense budget, including maintenance of one or more carrier task forces there, protecting sea lanes, and keeping large air forces in readiness in the area. But the oil we import from the Persian Gulf costs only a fifth that amount, about $11 billion per annum. Middle Eastern oil accounts for 10 percent of U.S. consumption, 25 percent of Europe’s, and half of that of Japan, which contributes in inverse proportion to maintaining a G-7 military presence there. It is not that Europe and Japan are incapable of securing their own oil supplies through commercial treaties, diplomacy, or military activity, but that America’s global hegemony makes it unnecessary for them to do so.
One of the things this huge military establishment also does is sell arms to other countries, making the Pentagon a critical economic agency of the United States government. Militarily oriented products account for about a quarter of the total U.S. gross domestic product. The government employs some 6,500 people just to coordinate and administer its arms sales program in conjunction with senior officials at American embassies around the world, who spend most of their “diplomatic” careers working as arms salesmen. The Arms Export Control Act requires that the executive branch notify Congress of foreign military and construction sales directly negotiated by the Pentagon. Commercial sales valued at $14 million or more negotiated by the arms industry must also be reported. Using official Pentagon statistics, between 1990 and 1996 the combination of the three categories amounted to $97,836,821,000. From this nearly $100 billion figure must be subtracted the $3 billion a year the government offers its foreign customers to help subsidize arms purchases from the United States.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the five leading arms suppliers for the period 1993 through 1997 were the United States, Russia, England, France, and Germany, though total American sales were some $14 billion greater than those of the other four combined. SIPRI has found that the five leading arms purchasers for that period were Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Turkey, Egypt, and South Korea, each of which spent between $5 billion and $10 billion on arms over this five-year period.29 Japan was the second-biggest purc
haser of high-tech weapons. All the leading purchasers were close American allies or clients.
Both the United States government and the world’s arms dealers claim that the arms trade has declined since 1987, the benchmark year for the Cold War. However, this “decline” is based almost entirely on declining arms sales by the former Soviet bloc—and it is likely that the 1987 estimates of arms sales by the former Soviet Union were as inflated as the estimates of, for example, the Soviet naval threat during the 1980s. American arms sales in any case have actually increased in the years since the Cold War ended. By 1995, according to its own Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the United States was the source of 49 percent of global arms exports. It shipped arms of various types to some 140 countries, 90 percent of which were either not democracies or were human rights abusers.
In November 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton announced that he would make it his policy “to reduce the proliferation of weapons of destruction in the hands of people who might use them in very destructive ways.” In February 1995, President Clinton released his new arms export policies. They renewed old Cold War policies even though the Cold War had clearly ended, but they emphasized the commercial advantages of foreign arms sales. According to the Clinton White House, the United States’ arms export policies are intended to deter aggression; “promote peaceful conflict resolution and arms control, human rights, [and] democratization”; increase “interoperability” of the equipment of American and allied armies; prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles; and “enhance the ability of the U.S. defense industrial base to meet U.S. defense requirements and maintain long-term military technological superiority at lower costs.”30 One of the arms industry’s chief lobbyists commented, “It’s the most positive statement on defense trade that has been enunciated by any administration.”31 But despite the doublethink language of the White House, there are certain essential contradictions in arms sales policy that cannot be papered over. The Pentagon’s global industrial policy, which keeps its corporate support system in place and well funded, regularly overrides more traditional foreign policy concerns, creating many potential long-term problems that may, in the end, prove beyond all solution. Arms sales are, in short, a major cause of a developing blowback world whose price we have yet to begin to pay.
Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire Page 13