Foundations of the American Century

by Inderjeet Parmar

  Kahin’s report outlined all the projects being undertaken with Ford funding. It reads like a thorough series of surveys of power in Indonesia. One study focused on the “social, economic, educational, and political background of the Indonesian elite,” especially the “political and military elites.” This was in addition to the large-scale economic and sociopolitical program called the “Village Research Project,” which proposed to collect “data… relating to the power structure, decision making, development of political consensus, influence and prestige rankings, and attitudes towards the outside world.” Interestingly, the methodology of this research project formed the subject of a guidebook, authored by Kahin, that was subsequently made compulsory on courses of research and study at the National Police Academy. Indeed, the head of the national police, General Sukanto, and Dean Djokosutono of UI were “both strongly of the opinion that an effective police inspector must have a good knowledge of the power structure and political articulation of the village.”51 The report also outlined another form of direct intervention in the politics of Indonesia by MIP: its sponsorship of joint projects with the National Islamic Students’ Organization on “Modernist Islam” and its history and contemporary role.52 Finally, a “Student Attitude Survey” aimed systematically to examine the “outlooks of [high school and UI] students towards the world outside, in particular, Indonesia’s relationship with the principal world powers.”53

  The production of published work, based on Ford’s grants to MIP, is impressive. A Bibliography of Grant-Related Materials shows that, over a period of ten years, MIP published at least forty-four books, chapters, and articles. Cornell’s position as the premier university program in Indonesian studies was advanced and consolidated by those publications. The research output covered most of the areas originally planned. The Indonesia project was—in 1960—adjudged by the Ford program officer A. Doak Barnett to have been “extremely productive.”54

  The Bibliography and other internal Ford memoranda demonstrate the multifaceted character of the MIP’s interventions in Indonesian political and academic life as well as its semisecret manner. This is shown by the way in which Kahin mobilized willing Indonesian researchers—friendly to the United States—to undertake research informed by “insider” knowledge. In a letter to Clarence Thurber (FF), Kahin took credit for A. K. Pringgodigdo’s study of the presidency, the author having been the director of President Sukarno’s cabinet. Kahin claimed that he had expended much effort in getting Indonesians to “undertake research and writing on important aspects of the political processes in their country on their own and without any indication of relationship to Cornell… [and without] any indication that their work was anything but completely independent and quite outside the aegis of an American institution.” Cornell’s role was also deliberately not mentioned by the author in the preface to the book.55

  Cornell’s influence within the United States was directly enhanced by Ford grants: it became the premier American center for the training and supply of junior faculty in Southeast Asian studies.56 Its Ford funding was renewed beyond its original three years—up until 1962.57 In Indonesia, it is clear that MIP mobilized and consolidated key U.S.-oriented social scientists at UI, such as Sumitro; encouraged indigenous research; generated a vast knowledge base on Indonesia’s political, economic, and social systems; and articulated Western-oriented elites with the mass of Indonesians in the countryside. Cornell helped foster and strengthen a strategically placed academic-political elite that was increasingly frustrated with the Indonesian government’s nonaligned, independent, anti-Western, and pro-leftist orientation and suspicion of foreign aid, loans, and financial institutions. To Ford, the role of the Cornell initiative was, in the neutral public language they normally chose to adopt, to conduct “systematic inquiry which will be useful to the growth of the new economy,” an economy oriented to capitalist-modernization strategies.58 Behind the scenes, however, and sparking a debate within Ford as to the efficacy of conducting “intelligence operations,”59 Ford officials had cleared the Cornell project with CIA Director Allen Dulles and the State Department; after all, the projects would yield knowledge “of vital importance to the United States.”60 Despite denying that the Indonesia program was “an intelligence operation,” Langer noted, “I personally believe that the Kahin project will probably come up with findings which will prove, in the long run, much more valuable than most of the day-by-day work the [U.S.] government does.”61 It was also hoped that Ford-funded research might contribute “to the formulation of a sound policy on the part of the U.S.”62 Cornell, however, represented only one prong of Ford’s Indonesian intervention.

  BERKELEY AND THE UNIVERSITY OF INDONESIA’S FACULTY OF ECONOMICS

  This Ford program was one of its most controversial initiatives, generating public criticism and a flurry of concern within the foundation. An article by David Ransom in the left-wing magazine Ramparts, in 1970, claimed that Ford, along with the Rockefeller Foundation and the American state, had consciously used its Indonesia programs to train anti-Sukarno economists and social scientists, cadres of leaders who would run Indonesia once Sukharno “got out.” The “expose” generated some concern within Ford, leading to the compilation of documents rebutting the claims. This section considers Ransom’s claims and Ford’s stated aims and programs to determine the degree to which Ford constructed an “anti-Sukarno” elite in Indonesia.

  FORD’S AIMS

  Ford funded this program with grants of $2.5 million, from 1956 to 1962, to assist the economic development of Indonesia. It aimed to do this, in part, by disbursing funds “to develop a faculty of economics and of a staff of related experts consisting of [Indonesian] citizens” and by constructing “an enhanced body of scientific knowledge and understanding of Indonesian institutions” at the University of California–Berkeley.63 Ford officials felt that the “almost total lack of trained economists” hampered both Indonesian development and American competence and knowledge of that society’s dynamics and institutions. Consequently, Ford wanted to build collaboration between Berkeley economists and UI faculty, in addition to providing doctoral fellowships to Indonesians at Berkeley, MIT, and Cornell. Ford planning documents show that foundation officials and trustees fully recognized that Ford-trained Indonesian economists would “be of great influence in the shaping of Indonesia’s economic institutions in the future.” Indeed, it was acknowledged that, by 1958, “the project has become increasingly associated with the internal development of Indonesia.”64 Although Ford’s projects were justified in terms of increasing knowledge and understanding, it is clear that this knowledge was to be put to particular uses—for the “development” of leadership cadres that would be well placed “no matter what turn the political crisis may take.”65

  RANSOM’S CLAIMS

  Ransom’s claims about Ford’s ambitions and activities in Indonesia are simple: Ford sought to replace the old Dutch colonial elite with a pliable, U.S.-oriented Indonesian elite. In short, Ford represented the new American imperium in world affairs. In this view, Sukarno was far too anti-American, left wing, and procommunist to be a vehicle for American interests; instead, the U.S. preferred the upper-class leaders of the Socialist Party of Indonesia (SPI), especially Sumitro and Soedjatmoko, both of whom favored opening up Indonesia to foreign corporations. In 1957, Sumitro fled to Singapore after an SPI and Islamic rebel army-organized uprising, of which he was a leading figure, failed to dislodge Sukarno. After Sukarno, however, Sumitro was elevated to minister of trade in what Ransom calls the “modernist restoration,” which was achieved not with U.S. troops but within “the hallowed private institutions of [U.S.] academia and philanthropy.” Most controversially, Ransom claims that Ford’s head of international training and research programs, John Howard, told him in an interview that “Ford felt it was training the guys who would be leading the country when Sukharno got out.” Finally, Ransom claims that two leading American academics who objected to Ford’s programs had prote
sted and resigned.66

  EVIDENCE: TRAINING THE “BEAUTIFUL BERKELEY BOYS”

  The University of California–Berkeley/University of Indonesia program of cooperation in economics, business administration, and related social sciences began in July 1956 and continued until 1962. The initial grant for $500,000 was split between the two universities, with Berkeley receiving $300,000. UI was to spend the grant on fellowships to Indonesians to study at U.S. universities, principally Berkeley, Yale, and Cornell, and on improving its research facilities in economics. Sumitro, the dean of UI’s faculty of economics, emphasized Indonesia’s need for educated and skilled researchers with doctorates—in a nation with just fifteen Ph.D.s for a population of eighty million people.67

  From Berkeley’s perspective, the project aimed at “research, education, training and related activities designed to strengthen the Indonesian economy, to enhance the standards of Indonesian administration, and to improve the scientific study and understanding of Indonesian society.”68 Such objectives were in line with the Ford Foundation’s own ideas and those of leading Indonesian economists, such as Sumitro.69 It was a program that sought radically to reorganize the Indonesian institutions’ internal administration and develop university “advisory and consultative services” to industry and government. Berkeley agreed to provide several “faculty collaborators” in general economics and fiscal affairs, industrial and business economics, agricultural economics and rural sociology, and social economics and general sociology. In the collaborative process, Berkeley would gain further field-study experience and comparative analytical understanding and strengthen its specialized knowledge of Indonesian economy and society. In turn, UI would receive funding for its economics and social science programs; even more, U.S. assistance would “permit the university structure of Indonesia to play a more stimulating role in rendering service to the developing economy and society.”70 The head of Berkeley’s group in Jakarta was Professor Leonard A. Doyle.71

  The project appeared to work successfully, in general, and was renewed in 1958 for a further two years. By 1959–1960, there were twenty-one UI graduate students on Berkeley-managed programs in the United States: sixteen at Berkeley, two at Stanford, two at UCLA, and one at Columbia. A further ten students arrived in the summer of 1960. The annual report for 1959–1960 stated that the quality of Indonesian students’ research and writing skills, based on expert field-staff supervision, was greatly improved.72

  In addition, the research, dissemination, and advisory activities of Berkeley economists had yielded results. Several research papers and articles had been published on Indonesian monetary problems, the economics of the labor movement, kerosene distribution, entrepreneurship, and the problems of economic policy.73 Berkeley staff presented research papers at other Indonesian universities, to government officials, and to members of the business community and served as consultants to insurance firms, government, and businesses. They also developed Indonesian case-study material to aid teaching in business and public administration.74

  The reorganization and reform of the Indonesian university also, on the whole, progressed according to plan, though less rapidly than hoped. Ironically, Ford’s plans for teaching and examinations were to end the Indonesian system of “free study” in favor of “guided study.”75 There was resistance from some non-U.S. trained Indonesian faculty, ex-colonial Dutch academics, and student-veterans of the anticolonial revolutionary army. There had, however, been great improvements in the rationalization of enrollment requirements and the scheduling of courses and written examinations. Despite resistance, changes had successfully, if slowly, been made, and reforms were expected to accelerate as more and more American-trained faculty returned.76 Sumitro’s own assumptions about the role of economics in development mirrored those within the Ford Foundation: economics was a science based on value-free facts, research, and logic and was oriented to policy and action.77

  It is clear that Ford’s programs at UI were consciously designed to Americanize the institution through a program of “modernization.”78 In a context that took fully into account the balance of political forces in Indonesia, including the strengths and weaknesses of the president, the army, and the communists and general attitudes to the United States, Ford reports refer constantly to the Indonesian state’s attempts to “indoctrinate educators with appropriate political principles,” by introducing “Eastern Socialist teachers,” sending students to the Soviet Union, and by creating a climate within which U.S.-trained Indonesians had to “go to some pains to show freedom from influence by American training.” Conversely, Ford’s Americanizing programs are referred to as “progressive,” “influential,” and self-evidently “good” and “moderate.”79 In a 1961 status report on foundation programs, Ford referred to as evidence of “moderation” that the Indonesian government voiced support for private enterprise.80 Returning Ford fellows were referred to as influential and “self-assertive… beginning to influence their institutions along good lines”; indeed, their demands were considered “encouragingly critical” of the Indonesian status quo. Returning Ford fellows were making “demands for change and progress”; as a body, they were “a small but potentially strategic body of qualified, trained leadership in education,” without which Indonesia would be the worse.81 Without Ford funding, Bresnan claims that there would have been no “economic miracle” in Indonesia.82

  Of the two dozen returned Ford fellows, twenty-two had “loyally” returned to join the faculty at UI, “filling key positions,” including the chairs of the economics department and business department, director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research, and so on. Their influence was felt across the university system, because they were assisting other universities as well as the Indonesian state. Indeed, because of their activities, the latter was considering establishing a governmental training facility for managers.83 The influence of Ford-funded economists was nationwide: Sumitro was not only populating the major universities across Indonesia with his and Berkeley’s graduates but was developing affiliates along the lines of his own faculty’s affiliations with Berkeley. The faculty of economics at UI became a significant influential hub.84

  The effect of American field staff at UI was felt at all levels of the institution, from teaching and research to administration and outside consultancies. Ford’s American scholars were members of an informal “committee-group,” set up by the chairman of the faculty of economics, Widjojo—a Ford fellow—to “discuss problems and offer advice” on academic, intellectual, and administrative matters.85 Overall, the UI-Berkeley collaboration was declared “a clear success.”86

  In response to Ransom’s claims of Ford’s imperial aims and programs in Indonesia, the foundation created a confidential dossier replete with arguments directly to challenge Ransom in the U.S. press, should the “story” break. In practice, the story did not get very much publicity, and the dossier remained for internal use only. Ford’s internal rebuttals argued that Ransom was laughably “off the mark”; that all they had really been interested in doing was to “prepare teachers, not government officials” at UI; and that their programs were nonpolitical and educational only. Ford merely wanted to help bring newly independent Indonesia “more nearly up to date in education, administration and agriculture.”87 All they had done was to train Indonesians in “modern economics of a kind practiced in international economic circles in most parts of the world” in order to create “‘technocrats’… apolitical civil servants.”88 Yet, in even their own Ransom-rebuttal dossier, Ford acknowledges their support of the view that “the political future of Indonesia demanded attention to economic soundness,”89 with “soundness” referring mainly to promarket and foreign investment–friendly economic policies.90 Ford denied that they had consciously created the leaders who would take over when Sukarno got out. In fact, John Howard claimed that he had been misquoted by Ransom—that what he said was that “as things turned out,” Ford’s trained economists were “called to se
rve in the government” after Sukarno; they had not set out to create them.91

  Yet, the evidence of the Berkeley program, as well as that of the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, both justified in Cold War terms and in terms of Indonesia’s strategic and economic value to the United States, undermines Ford’s defense. Ford was not interested in only teaching matters in any case, according to their own records. Research, training a new generation of Indonesian scholars, boosting American expertise on Indonesian society and politics, gathering direct intelligence on Indonesian peasants’ loyalties and attitudes, and so on were at the core of Ford’s programs—in addition to keeping the U.S. State Department fully informed of all initiatives. These are not nonpolitical programs; they helped achieve U.S. State Department goals by articulating academia and officialdom, by reforming Indonesian universities, and by promoting broadly pro–free market economics teaching and research. An early Ford-commissioned report noted the importance of bringing Indonesia “into the orbit of the democratic states.”92 An even earlier report—prior to any Ford investment in Indonesia—noted that Indonesia’s “loss to the free world would be a serious blow” and that Ford could assist by developing “leadership in depth” by educating a new generation of leaders to solve Indonesia’s political problems.93 As the evidence above has shown, Ford’s role in Indonesia was not entirely about neutrally assisting a developing nation: its mineral and population resources and strategic location were of paramount interest, and its internal ideologies and politics were an object of surveillance. Pulling Indonesia into “the democratic orbit” was an openly stated goal that required covert and overt U.S. assistance against Dutch colonials and communist “saboteurs.” And a “sound economy” required U.S.-trained economists, the most potent form of U.S. (nonmilitary) intervention. From Ford’s point of view, “sound economics,” by definition, meant free markets, the predominance of the price mechanism, and an economy open to foreign investment, loans, and trade;94 indeed, these were considered the bases of successful “democracy building” and political freedom.