Andrew S. Terrell - HIST 6393: Empire, War & Revolution!

Fall 2010

• Kahin, Audrey, and George McTurnan Kahin. Subversion As Foreign Policy: The Secret
Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia. Seattle, Wash: University of Washington
Press, 1997.

George and Audrey Kahin look at President Eisenhower’s hidden hand policies in

Southeast Asia during the 1950s. They begin by putting Indonesia in context with earlier moves

in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam citing how the eventually misdeeds of these militarized

covert actions were not seen as long term failures in the contemporary. During the Eisenhower

administration, Communist infiltration was feared to be grouping much of Southeast Asia

together and the Eisenhower administration had no intentions of allowing for such a large

expansion by Communism. The Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allen, urged Eisenhower to

deal with Indonesia by weakening the central government’s favor on Sumatra and Sulawesi. To

accomplish this goal in 1957, the Eisenhower administration enlisted not only the CIA, but also

“substantial components of the U.S. Seventh Fleet.” The Chinese nationalist regime on Taiwan

allowed for a close port and supply centers as well. After two years the instigated civil war

pushed for a policy reassessment in Washington where Eisenhower concluded that reconciliation

with Sukarno was the prudent course of action.

Based on numerous interviews and State Department document, the Kahins have added

to the colorful historiography of US covert actions. Readers’ attention is brought to significant

problems with decision makers in the early Cold War years through the Kahins’s elaborate

monograph on a little known, and little understood period in U.S. history. During Eisenhower’s

successive administrations, covert action capability expanded beyond what Truman intended

with the National Security Act of 1947. The Kahins raise significant questions about historical

analogies and lessons and the role history should have played even in the 1950s. Foremost is the
Andrew S. Terrell - HIST 6393: Empire, War & Revolution! Fall 2010

reasonable assertion that a successful scenario cannot be duplicated unless all considerations and

requirements are identical to the first. For example, the successes in Iran and Guatemala a few

years before this were in different societies, under different circumstances, and were carried out

by completely different forces. The Kahins suggest these short-term successes along with others

may have given the Dulles brothers and Eisenhower a false sense of security that proved

disastrous. The Kahins also note that the rapprochement with Sukarno should have been a

warning for future escalations in Vietnam.

As the Kahins did write this in the post Cold War world, they spent some time looking at

long term changes in Indonesia after Eisenhower. As it turned out, the US operation pushed

Sukarno to build up an army that eventually staged a coup and led to the ousting of communists

from all levels of state. The subsequent massacres involved in the overthrow of Sukarno and rise

of the military Junta led by Suharto, the Kahins concede, had no definitive links to American

intervention. In the end, despite an initial failure and oversight of the CIA, Indonesia would be

communist free by 1966.