Opaque Intentions: U.S. Diplomacy and Covert Action in Indonesia, 1945-1958
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 26, 2019
- Creator
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Zimmerman, Anna
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense
- Abstract
- In his classic work The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, William Appleman Williams argued that above all, American foreign policy in the Cold War and beyond was characterized by a “continuing, even increasing disparity between the actuality and the rhetoric.”1 Acting on these disparities and contradictory truths would ultimately lead to turmoil and crisis, the purported struggle between good and evil ending in tragic waste and a lack of poetic justice of any kind. In literature, these are the fundamental elements of great tragedies. In American history, this is the story of the United States and Indonesia. U.S. foreign policy towards Indonesia during the Truman and Eisenhower presidencies was formulated upon the basis of several inconsistencies in ideology and priorities. From 1945- 1958, these inconsistencies played out in an especially tragic fashion, leading to covert intervention, civil war, violence, and international uproar. While many historians credit anticommunism as the primary informant of U.S.-Indonesia relations during the Truman and Eisenhower presidencies, pragmatic concerns played equal—if not greater—roles in determining the United States’ position on the newly independent Southeast Asian nation. Colonialism, economic concerns, international reputation, and a need for political alignment shaped the initial diplomatic initiatives of the Truman administration and would later serve as the justification for an extensive yet frequently overlooked covert war conducted by the CIA during the Eisenhower years. Although the official narrative expounded an ideological love of democratic liberty, conflicting and paradoxical diplomatic aims led to the use of covert action as a way to achieve objectives that were largely unrelated to a conceptual opposition to communist governance. In this American drama, the disparity between rhetoric and reality had disastrous effects.
- Date of publication
- spring 2018
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Castro, Sara
- Degree
- Bachelor of Arts
- Academic concentration
- Peace, War, & Defense
- Honors level
- Honors
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Graduation year
- 2018
- Language
- English
Relations
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