The Jakarta Method

April 1, 2020
A veteran international correspondent uncovers the highly disturbing history of a mid-1960s "apocalyptic slaughter" in Indonesia, Latin America, and beyond, undertaken as part of America's aggressively anti-communist foreign policy. As Bevins, who covered Southeast Asia for the Washington Post, describes, this particular era of U.S. foreign policy began to take shape after World War II, eventually leading to the Cold War standoff between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The main thrust of the author's certain-to-be-controversial thesis revolves around U.S. government intervention in Indonesia. In the 1960s, after shrugging off the yoke of Dutch colonizers, the island nation "was home to the world's largest Communist Party outside the Soviet Union and China." Adding to the threat, according to anxious American political and military leaders at the time, Indonesia, with the sixth-largest population in the world, was also "the world's largest Muslim-majority country." After the U.S. played a significant role in ousting Indonesia's communist leaders during the early part of the 1960s, the new, virulently anti-communist leaders initiated a frighteningly widespread murderous cleansing. "In total," writes the author, "it is estimated that between five hundred thousand and one million people were slaughtered, and one million more were herded into concentration camps." As Bevins continued his research beyond Indonesia, he identified nearly 20 other nations targeted by the U.S. for mass murders of alleged communists and ancillary troublemakers seen as anti-capitalists. Other than Indonesia, the focus is most heavily on Brazil, but he at least touches on the other countries affected by American actions, creating a shocking portrait that few readers will forget. Bevins is convinced that most Americans today are aware of this particularly bloody era of U.S. foreign policy, and he's likely right. Although his conclusions will be treated as unbelievable or exaggerated by some, his research is solid and his conclusions convincing. A well-delineated excavation of yet another dark corner of American history.

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