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The Military in Research on Indonesian Politics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
Extract
The general direction of research on Indonesian politics has come under severe criticism at least twice. In 1964 Harry J. Benda charged that students have essentially presented us “highly sophisticated and persuasive answers to an intrinsically mistaken, or irrelevant, question.” Castigating what he sees as a general approach to explain Indonesian politics on the premise of “What is wrong with Indonesia?,” he concludes that “perhaps our basic error all along has been to examine Indonesia with Western eyes; or, to be more precise and more generous, with eyes that, though increasingly trained to see things Indonesian, have continued to look at them selectively, in accordance with preconceived Western models.”
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- Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1972
References
1 “Democracy in Indonesia,” Journal of Asian Studies, 23:3 (May 1964), pp. 449 and 450CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Feith, Herbert, “History, Theory and Indonesian Politics: A Reply to Harry J. Benda,” Journal of Asian Studies, 24:2 (February 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 “History and Social Structure in the Study of Contemporary Indonesia,” Indonesia, published by Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, no. 7 (April 1969) p. 5.
3 The main exceptions are Pauker, Guy J., “The Role of the Military in Indonesia,” in Johnson, John J. (ed.), The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries, Princeton University Press, 1962Google Scholar; and Lev, Daniel S., “The Political Role of the Army in Indonesia,” Pacific Affairs, 26:4 (Winter 1963/1964)Google Scholar. A few other publications focussing on the army, do not need to detain us here: they are either grossly lacking in depth, or highly specialized studies of limited relevance to this topic.
4 This phenomenon does not only apply to the study of Indonesian politics but is common in area studies covering the Afro-Asian world. However, the military in developing nations has received attention in comparative analyses. But the highly sophisticated theoretical frameworks resulting from such efforts are often open to challenge since they generally lack empirical underpinning. For a critical review of this type of research into the military of developing nations, see Dowse, Robert E., “The Military and Political Development,” in Leys, C. (ed.), Politics and Change in Developing Nations, (Cambridge, 1969).Google Scholar
5 For the “Kahinians,” those scholars who followed the pace set by Kahin, George McTurnan (Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, Cornell University Press, 1952)Google Scholar, see Feith, Herbert, The Study of Indonesian Politics: A Survey and Apologia(Paper presented to Australasian Political Studies Association,August 1969).Google Scholar
6 Anderson, Ben, American Values and Research on Indonesia(Paper presented to the Association of Asian Studies Conference, Spring 1971), pp. 15 f.Google Scholar
7 See, for instance, Pauker, Guy J., “Southeast Asia as a Problem Area in the Next Decade,” World Politics, 11:3 (April 1959), p. 343CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also the statement of William T. R. Fox, quoted in Lucian W. Pye, “Armies in the Process of Modernization,” Johnson (ed.), op. cit., p. 70; Lovell, John P. and Kim, C. I. Eugene, “The Military and Political Change in Asia,” Pacific Affairs, 15:1 and 2 (Spring and Summer 1967), p. 114Google Scholar; and Willner, Ann Ruth, “Perspectives on Military Elites as Rulers and Wielders of Power,” Journal of Comparative Administration, 2:3 (November 1970), p. 262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 See Huntington's description of what he calls “praetorianism,” a state of general over-all politicization of society which very often provides for the military to interfere in politics. Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 194 ff.Google Scholar
9 There exists also a pro-military bias displayed by scholars who regard the military as the single most outstanding agent of modernization. However, this form of bias which is equally at variance with reality does not need to be discussed here since its influence on the research on Indonesian politics has remained extremely slight. See Anderson, op. cit., p. 16.
10 Ibid., p. 6.
11 The latter events have been fully discussed in Anderson, Benedict R. O'G., The Pemuda Revolution, (unpublished Ph.D thesis, Cornell University), 1967Google Scholar. (This thesis will soon be published in Indonesia under the title of “Java in A Time of Revolution”).
12 Such an attitude is most apparent in Ruth McVey, “The Post-Revolutionary Transformation of the Indonesian Army,” Indonesia, Cornell University, No. 11 (April 1971), Part I, a study which focusses with great single-mindedness and sense of purpose on recording any possible instance of internal army dissent (see also fn. 12).
13 McVey (op. tit.) has exactly two sentences to spare on this initiative to build army unity in an article the first part of which consists of 46 pages dealing with military politics in the period 1950–58. Also in the main textbook for Indonesian politics between 1950 and 1956. (Feith, Herbert, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962)Google Scholar the emphasis is on army divisions rather than drives for unity.
14 See, for instance, Pauker, “Role of the Military,” op. cit., p. 219; also Feith, Herbert, “Dynamics of Guided Democracy,” in McVey, Ruth (ed.), Indonesia, (New Haven, 1963), p. 328Google Scholar; Lev, op. cit., p. 359 (Lev, however, offers a variety of reasons including a reference to the unwillingness of the army leaders to take over. See also his The Transition to Guided Democracy: Indonesian Politics 1957–59, Monograph, Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1966, p.70).
15 For another recent attempt to explain the divisions in the army, see Gregory, Ann, “Factionalism and the Indonesian Army: The New Order,” Journal of Comparative Administration, 2:3 (November 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 This theory is most prominently propounded in a research paper drafted in 1965 and secretly circulated by Benedict R. Anderson and Ruth T. McVey, recently published as A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965 Coup in Indonesia, Interim Reports Series, Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1971; see also Daniel S. Lev, “Indonesia 1965: The Year of the Coup,” Asian Survey, February 1965; W. F. Wertheim, “Indonesia Before and After the Untung Coup,” Pacific Affairs, Spring-Summer 1966; Lucien Rey, “Dossier of the Indonesian Drama,” New Left Review, March/April 1966.
17 See Pauker, Guy J., “Indonesia: The Age of Reason?,” Asian Survey, February 1968, p. 135.Google Scholar
18 See Feith, Herbert, “Soeharto's Search for A Political Format,” Indonesia, Cornell University, no. 6 (October 1968), p. 95.Google Scholar
19 McVey, Ruth, Prospects for Indonesian Stability, (Paper for Discussion at the Royal Institute of International Relations), London, 1969.Google Scholar
20 For a brief study of the historical roots of corruption in Asia, see Wertheim, W. F., East-West Parallels, (The Hague, 1964), pp. 103–131.Google Scholar
21 For an interesting inquiry into the causes of corruption in Indonesia, see Smith, Theodore M., “Corruption, Tradition and Change,” Indonesia, Cornell University, no. 11 (April 1971).Google Scholar
22 See Faith. “Soeharto's Search,” op. cit., p. 100.
23 A notable exception is the translation of one of the most important army doctrines into English by Guy J. Pauker in his The Indonesian Doctrine of Territorial Warfare and Territorial Management, RAND Memorandum No. RM-3312-PR, Santa Monica, Calif., November 1963. Also Lev (Transition) makes use of military sources.
24 A perfect example of misrepresentation of military affairs by secondary sources is the interpretation given by anti-army newspapers to the reappointment of Colonel A. H. Nasution as Chief-of-Staff of the Indonesian Army in 1955. Reflecting on the 17th October 1952 Affair which had let to the discharge of Nasution part of the Djakarta press and most explicitly the nationalist Mereka (of November 11, 1955) reported prominently that Nasution in an Order of the Day of November 7, 1955 had “confessed his earlier mistakes” and undertaken that no such action will occur again. In fact, the Merdeka report bears hardly any resemblance to this Order. But with the text of this Order unavailable to most people Nasution's self-koreksi will have projected a forthcoming policy quite different from what Nasution was, indeed, announcing and pursuing. The reporting in the Indonesian press which has traditionally been largely interested in disseminating its own opinions rather than reporting facts, has not only misled the Indonesian public, including parts of the officer corps, but has also found entrance into Western scholarship. The story of Nasution having “reconsidered” his attitudes, especially vis-à-vis Sukarno, came thus to be recorded in the most important textbook for Indonesian politics of this period (Feith, Decline, op. cit., p. 443), and has been almost unquestioningly adopted by other scholars (see, for instance, Pauker, “Role of the Military,” op. cit., p. 225; or Lev, Transition: op. cit., p. 6.) It is worth noting that McVey in her study (“Post-Revolutionary Transformation,” op. cit.) relies heavily for evidence on army actions and intentions on Merdeka and the Communist daily Harian Rakjat. However, the anti-military bias displayed in this article should not be regarded as resulting entirely from the use of such sources.
25 For instance, the Socialist-leaning Pedoman (of October 17, 1956) and the Times of Indonesia (of December 14, 1956; quoting Prime Minister AH Sastroamidjojo) both reported an attempted ocany cupation of Djakarta by the entire force of Regiments No. 9 and 11 on October 11, 1956 which, however, was spoiled by the 8th Regiment in Bogor which blocked the way into die capital. Such an event never took place, but this legend has survived in Western writing till now, and has been most recently dwelled upon by McVey (“Postrather Revolutionary Transformation,” op. cit., p. 165).
26 Western scholars, explicitly Feith, are, of course, well aware of the limited representativeness of these intellectuals. Sec “Soeharto's Search,” op. cit., p. 99 n.
27 See Anderson, Pemuda Revolution, op. cit., passim.
28 I am drawing here and in the following part heavily on findings in my forthcoming Ph.D thesis, The Political Orientation and Political Involvement of the Indonesian Officer Corps: A Case Study of the Siliwangi Division (Monash University).
29 Transition, op. cit., p. 4; see also Anderson, American Values, op. cit., p. 16.
30 “Dynamics,” op. cit., p. 322.
31 Anderson, American Values, op. cit., p. 16.
32 For an enlightening study on the army's attitudes toward Sukarno's foreign policy, and the role of the Communist Party in it, see Polomka, Peter, The Indonesian Army and Confrontation, An Inquiry into the Functions of Foreign Policy under Guided Democracy, (M.A. thesis, Melbourne University), 1969.Google Scholar
33 For the different fields of recruitment, see Pauker, “Role of the Military,” op. cit., pp. 189–192.
34 A more detailed account of why the threat of further coup attempts has lessened, is provided in my “The Fashioning of Unity in the Indonesian Army,” Asia Quarterly (Brussels), 1:2 (July 1971); see also my “Some Conditional Predictions on the Political and Military Development in Indonesia,” in Proceedings of A Defense Seminar, Adelaide 1970, publ. by the United Service Institution of South Australia, Adeliade, 1971.
35 For an attempt to analyse the army's perception of its place in the nation, see my “Das Selbstverstaendnis der indonesischen Armee und ihre Rolle in der Politik” (The Sclf-Perceiption of the Indonesian Army and its Role in Politics) Europa Archiv (Bonn), Vol. 1971, no. 6 (March 1971).
36 This term has been borrowed from Geertz, Clifford, “The Integrative Revolution,” in Geertz, Clifford (ed.), Old Societies and New States, (Glen-coe: The Free Press, 1963).Google Scholar