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Reflections on the Indonesian Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Rupert Emerson
Rupert Emerson
Affiliation:
Harvard
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Extract

The tangled affairs of Indonesia, twice thrust upon the Security Council, have served as an admirable touchstone of the principles, purposes, and effectiveness of the United Nations as well as of the policies of some of its leading members. Fundamental principles of the new postwar order were at stake. The Atlantic Charter had affirmed the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they would live, and the collapse of empires before the Japanese onslaught led to the widespread conclusion that the old colonial system was dead. These doctrines found sober and modified expression not only in Chapter XI of the United Nations Charter, but also in the more general assertion of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples and of the universal application of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The rights of dependent peoples, the validity of the doctrine of self-determination, and the possibilities for peaceful change all hovered about the Security Council chamber in the course of the debates on the two Indonesian cases.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , October 1948 , pp. 59 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1948

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References

1 For the history of the Republic, see Wolf, Charles Jr, The Indonesian Story, New York, John Day, 1948.Google Scholar

2 Department of State Bulletin, XIII, No. 330 (Oct. 21, 1945), pp. 644–48.

3 Also known as the Cheribon Agreement. For the text of this Agreement, the Renville Agreement and other key documents, see Department of State Bulletin, XVIII, No. 454 (March 14, 1948), pp. 323–36.

4 Department of State Bulletin, XVII, No. 422A (Aug. 3, 1947), p. 230.

5 Even though the Republic might be determined not to be a state for United Nations purposes, the Council might still have found the hostilities a threat to the peace.

6 This verdict is in sharp contrast to the judgment expressed by Lt. Governor-General van Mook at an Indonesian conference on Oct. 1, 1946, when he asserted that the earlier view of the Republic as a Japanese invention was based on deficient knowledge. “When we now look back into history, it is apparent that in the Republic forces were at work that signified more, and were rooted deeper, than a mere surge of wild terrorism; forces which at the same timeresisted the Japanese fascistic warp of the whole.”

7 It is, however, an interesting point of legal speculation as to whether the Council has power to adopt a cease-fire resolution under any other article than Article 40.

8 The magnitude of the operation may beseen from the report of the Good Offices Com-mittee of May 19, 1948, that some 35,000 members of the Indonesian forces had been moved from Dutch to Republican territory under the truce agreement. See Second Interim Report of the Committee to the Security Council (Doc. S/787), p. 21.

9 This issue was graphically described in a telegram from the Republican Vice-Premier to thePresident of the Council, dated Sept. 29, 1947 (Doc. S/568): “As soon as Dutch have succeeded in occupying few towns and few main roads they start claiming that entire area covered by imaginary demarcation lines they draw on map becomes terra nederlandica.Subsequently follow inevitable mopping up operations, rounding off actions, clearing up actions, and what not. Not astonishing at all that in such a way fierce fighting continues unabated. Penetration is not occupation. Nor does it confer right to penetrators toregard areas between converging lines of penetration as occupied territory or even patrol the same.”

10 For these negotiations and documentsrelated thereto, see First Interim Report of the Committee of Good Offices to the Security Council (Doc. S/649).

11 The withdrawal issue was a central feature of the Council debates during October, 1947. On Oct. 31 a Soviet resolution calling for withdrawal to prefighting lines was de-feated when it received only the votes of the U.S.S.R., Australia, Colombia, and Poland. It was opposed by the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Belgium, the remainder abstaining.

12 For an analysis of the Renville Agreement stressing this aspect, see Kennedy, Raymond, “Truce in Indonesia,” Far Eastern Survey Vol. XVII, March 24, 1948.Google Scholar

13 It was also provided that the parties might agree on another method for ascertaining the popular will in place of a plebiscite. On June 10, 1948, the American and Australian representatives on the Good Offices Committee, noting that no significant progress had been made in the five months since the Renville Agreement, proposed informally to the Dutch and Indonesians that, among other things, a freely andpopularly elected Constituent Assembly for the whole of Indonesia should be brought into being. This proposal the Republic accepted and the Dutch vigorously rejected.

14 See The Committee of Good OfficesReport on Political Developments in Western Java (Doc S/729).