Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and Glossary
- Introduction
- Chapter One American Foreign Policy and the End of Dutch Colonial Rule in Southeast Asia: An Overview
- Chapter Two “It’s 1776 in Indonesia”
- Chapter Three The United States and the Dutch East Indies: the Celebration of Capitalism in West and East during the 1920’s
- Chapter Four American Visions of Colonial Indonesia from the Great Depression to the Growing Fear of Japan,1930-1938
- Chapter Five The Specter of Japan and America’s Recognition of the Indonesian Archipelago’s Strategic Importance,1938-1945
- Chapter Six The Politics of Independence in the Republik Indonesia and International Reactions,1945-1949
- Chapter Seven The Emerging Cold War and American Perspectives on Decolonization in Southeast Asia in the Postwar Era
- Chapter Eight Indonesia’s Struggle for Independence and the Outside World: England, Australia, and the United States in Search of a Peaceful Solution
- Chapter Nine Armed Conflict,the United Nations’Good Offices Committee, and the Renville Agreement: America’s Involvement in Trying to Reach a Settlement
- Chapter Ten Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia and Indonesian Politics:US Foreign Policy Adrift during the Course of 1948
- Chapter Eleven Rescuing the Republic’s Moderates from Soviet Communism: Washington’s Conversion to Unequivocal Support of Indonesia’s Independence
- Epilogue
- Archival Sources and Selective Bibliography
- Sources of Illustrations
- Notes
- Index
Chapter One - American Foreign Policy and the End of Dutch Colonial Rule in Southeast Asia: An Overview
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and Glossary
- Introduction
- Chapter One American Foreign Policy and the End of Dutch Colonial Rule in Southeast Asia: An Overview
- Chapter Two “It’s 1776 in Indonesia”
- Chapter Three The United States and the Dutch East Indies: the Celebration of Capitalism in West and East during the 1920’s
- Chapter Four American Visions of Colonial Indonesia from the Great Depression to the Growing Fear of Japan,1930-1938
- Chapter Five The Specter of Japan and America’s Recognition of the Indonesian Archipelago’s Strategic Importance,1938-1945
- Chapter Six The Politics of Independence in the Republik Indonesia and International Reactions,1945-1949
- Chapter Seven The Emerging Cold War and American Perspectives on Decolonization in Southeast Asia in the Postwar Era
- Chapter Eight Indonesia’s Struggle for Independence and the Outside World: England, Australia, and the United States in Search of a Peaceful Solution
- Chapter Nine Armed Conflict,the United Nations’Good Offices Committee, and the Renville Agreement: America’s Involvement in Trying to Reach a Settlement
- Chapter Ten Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia and Indonesian Politics:US Foreign Policy Adrift during the Course of 1948
- Chapter Eleven Rescuing the Republic’s Moderates from Soviet Communism: Washington’s Conversion to Unequivocal Support of Indonesia’s Independence
- Epilogue
- Archival Sources and Selective Bibliography
- Sources of Illustrations
- Notes
- Index
Summary
“Curiously enough,” George F. Kennan told US Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, on December 17, 1948,“the most crucial issue at the moment in our struggle with the Kremlin is probably the problem of Indonesia.”A friendly and independent Indonesia, the powerful director of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department informed Marshall,was vital to US security interests in Asia. Kennan emphasized that America's dilemma in mid-December 1948, was not merely the question of whether the Netherlands or the Indonesian Republic should govern the region and thus control the rich agricultural and mineral resources of the archipelago. Instead, the real issue boiled down to either “Republican sovereignty or chaos,”and he reminded the Secretary of State that it should be obvious that chaos functioned as “an open door to communism.”
In his counsel to President Truman and Secretary Marshall before December 1948, George Kennan had given precedence to the European arena as far as America's confrontation with the Soviet Union was concerned. Until then, he had only sporadically focused his intellectual attention on the nationalist movements in South or Southeast Asia. In fact, due to the political views of his senior foreign policy advisers, among whom Kennan's opinion weighed heavily, Harry Truman considered the anti-colonial upheavals in Asia to be an annoying little “sideshow.” In the immediate post-war years,Kennan and his colleagues on the Policy Planning Staff found it difficult to fathom that political developments in these distant colonial outposts could jeopardize America's preeminence in the world. In some instances,Kennan even displayed a condescending “disregard for the weak and less developed world.” America's showdown with the Soviet Union, he asserted in July 1947,would play itself out primarily in the European Theater, where the dangerous stream of communism threatened to inundate “every nook and cranny… in the basin of world power,”to cite one of the ingenious metaphors he crafted in his essay on “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.” His insistence on a US containment policy designed to curb Soviet political machinations in Western Europe earned him the critical designation of “sorcerer's apprentice.” As Kennan personally remembered, it also reduced him on occasion to the role of “court jester” and “intellectual gadfly” within the State Department.
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- American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/IndonesiaUS Foreign Policy and Indonesian Nationalism 1920–1949, pp. 25 - 43Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2002