Jakarta, 25 March 1964
333. Secret Immediate
Subandrio called me in this evening shortly before a meeting with Sukarno. He is leaving in a few hours for The Hague and Paris (returning on the 6th or 7th of April) and said that Sukarno would want to know where Australia stood on Malaysia. I take that with a grain of salt but I expect we got a mention as I got in last and unusually got more words in than vice-versa.
2. The burden of the opening gambits of the conversation were not much different from that reported in my 327 including a lot about power politics and so on. Although he withdrew his comment about ‘gunboat diplomacy’ when taxed.1
3. Because, however, of his willingness to listen, I hope I got over rather more clearly than usual exactly where we stood. I told him that the Prime Minister and you had shown remarkable public restraint when commenting on behaviour which we found trying. No doubt our distress at Indonesian attitudes stemmed from incomprehensible ‘Western’ logic but we did not enjoy Indonesia’s assumption of righteousness in everything or tendency to classify others as Neo-Colonialist or ‘old established’2 which appeared to give her a right to interfere in the business of her neighbours and to be angry when she was disagreed with. I was well aware that he was cross with what you had said in the House. I had, however, found it possible to disagree with him without necessarily provoking him, though this was not a characteristic of most Indonesians or of the Government generally. While he got a little dark occasionally he accepted all this in good faith.
4. I said further that he was perfectly well aware where we stood on Malaysia. He could believe me or not as he chose, and I was somewhat disconcerted that after what must have been fifty meetings with him I had not got it over[. B]ut the fact was that Australia regarded relations with Indonesia as of primary but not predominant importance[—]of more importance perhaps in practical long term consideration than our relations with Malaysia. We had, however, strong views about interference with neighbours and we had commitments to Malaysia which we would honour. As he knew we had been careful to maintain our Ministerial and Diplomatic contacts with Indonesia when we might have taken action which disturbed them. You had not been encouraged by the results, your view on our relations with Indonesia would not distract us into dishonourable channels.
5. I pressed him very hard on what possible justification Indonesia would have for maintaining its troops, T.N.I. troops (‘of course they are’, he said) on someone else’s territory. Surely he must see that in our eyes and in the eyes of the majority of countries this was indefensible. He fell back on the argument that what others had done to Indonesia could be done in reverse. I also pressed him hard on what ‘political’ discussions he wanted as a concession to this so-called right. For good measure I told him that Australia had not in 1958 and did not now plan the dismemberment of Indonesia.3 We did not want to Balkanize our part of the world. We looked forward to a time when we, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia could look after ourselves. For my part I do not want to be Ambassador to Ceram.4 Indonesian policy had set back her rightful role in this part of the world by years. Instead of assuming a position of peaceful leadership she had produced a situation of fear and suspicion not only with the Malaysians but with us and I suggested with the Filipinos too.
6. After all this, for which I expect you would have quite properly thrown a Foreign Ambassador out of your room, Subandrio settled down to an attempt to explain Indonesian behaviour. He began on his well known ground of British behaviour and designs in and for South East Asia. He said that Indonesia faces a build-up of Malaysian invective during their elections. He claimed that regardless of all his efforts in Bangkok, Tun Razak had refused to sit down and talk about a political settlement despite the fact that he had offered to accept Malaysia as existing in principle. The Malaysians, enraged5 by the British and by us wanted to humiliate and defeat Indonesia. We thought we had the power to do so, as indeed we had. But if we thought that Indonesia would bow to threats of this kind we were wrong. Until your statement in the House he had had great hopes of Australia as the key to a solution. What was he to think now.
7. So far as a political settlement was concerned he had no precise ideas but if only the Malaysians would be prepared to say at the Ministerial level ‘what is it Subandrio that worries you’, then in a way that we probably would no doubt be unable logically to comprehend, a solution could be found. Indonesia must be given ‘some sugar on the pill’ she now realised she must swallow. Of course we had our own public opinion. He understood, he claimed, why you had felt it necessary to speak publicly as you did but he had his own public opinion too. Not only public opinion. He had been pressed by some military people for ‘diversionary’ tactics in New Guinea to distract Australia from Malaysia. He had ‘sneered’ at them on the grounds that this would involve Indonesia in manifest expansionism. If he consented to such a move he could not be honest with himself or with us ‘even in the back of his mind’.
8. Sukarno was the answer to all this. It was he who hated and was really worked up about Malaysia. He said without too much conviction that he thought he could persuade him and that in any event the President was no fool and understood the realities of what he faced. Malaysia was one of these realities. While Indonesia could go on for years with confrontation of Malaysia, why should they. He did not want to.
9. He was faced, he said, with demands from the Navy for 6 new ships from the Russians. There would ostensibly be no strings to new equipment of this kind but of course there were ‘implied’ strings. Indonesia did not want this. The waste of money was less important than the strings.
10. I confess that I was becoming somewhat bemused by all this until Subandrio suddenly embarked on an unbridled attack on the Chinese beginning with Peking but closer to home on Lee, Toh and Goh. I asked him whether he did not feel that they might have a Malaysian loyalty which was more important than one to Peking. He replied ‘nonsense’. They would, he said, take over in Malaysia and while Indonesia might accept Malaysia as it was now, it will ‘never’ accept ‘Chinese Malaysia’. The Singapore Chinese did not want a settlement and the Tunku did not either. I told him that they did, and that they prayed for peace and not to be interfered with by their neighbour. I said that ‘by his kind permission’ I had seen Toh and Goh in Singapore on my way to Australia and had formed a very clear impression of their anxiety to make Malaysia work.6 He again said ‘nonsense’ claiming that ‘we know with our Chinese, how can you’.
11. Subandrio said that we could not possibly understand this problem as the Indonesians did. In 1950 when the Indonesians thought they were independent they had been perpetually obstructed not only by the Dutch but by the Chinese who expected to be ‘paid on the dot’ whenever the Indonesian Government wished to move someone by K.P.M. or by some other means from one island to another.7 We knew what independence was. Indonesia had only recently discovered its reality. Indonesian sensitivity on this matter is like Malaysia, one of the facts of life. Subandrio is engagingly sure that we understand what he is talking about as I know we do.
12. He then pleaded with me to exercise what influence I might have to persuade Malaysia to ‘put some sugar on the pill’. I reminded him that he had told me before that Indonesia did not and would not accept Malaysia as a ‘fact of life’. He brushed this aside and said that Indonesia now did but they should not be ‘ made to swallow the pill’. I told him that we regarded Malaysia not as a ‘pill’ but as a natural neighbour. They and we and the British had no aggressive designs on Indonesia.
[NAA: A1838, 3006/4/9 part 6]
1 24 March. It reported Subandrio’s reaction to Barwick’s statement in Parliament on 11 March. Subandrio claimed that Indonesia understood Australia’s position on Malaysia, but that Australia did not want to understand Indonesia’s. All Australia’s public statements ‘were directed against Indonesia—none against the other side’, and Barwick’s statement ‘seemed to imply that [the Indonesians] preferred ‘gunboat diplomacy’ to discussion’. Subandrio also warned that if Australia’s current attitude continued, there would not be a ‘formal break’ in Australian-Indonesian relations, but there would be ‘disturbance of friendly contacts’.
2 A reference to Sukarno’s view of the Western powers and their allies as the ‘old established forces’ (OLDEFOS), as opposed to the ‘new emerging forces’ (NEFOS)—the newly-independent states.
3 That is, during the PRRI-Permesta rebellion.
4 Ceram (Seram) is an island in the Moluccas (Maluku), south of western Irian Jaya.
5 Perhaps, ‘encouraged’.
6 Shann had recently returned to Australia for consultations.
7 The first government of the newly-independent Indonesia assumed office in September 1950, following the adoption of the August 1950 constitution. Prior to the creation of an Indonesian-owned shipping service in April 1952, government travel and shipping requirements had to be conducted through Dutch and Chinese shipping agents. KPM was the Dutch-owned Royal Packetship Company.