Jakarta, 8 February 1963
130. Secret Immediate
I had an hour with Subandrio this morning, who was even more friendly than he has been in the past and whose professions of anxiety for close relations with Australia were unusually insistent. I think this may reflect some fears as to our reactions to Indonesian policy towards Malaysia.
[ matter omitted ]
2. The main burden of our discussion related to Malaysia. I asked Subandrio what he had meant by announcing a policy of ‘confrontation’ between Indonesia and Malaya. I told him that the Australian Government was deeply concerned by the deterioration in the relations between countries that we regarded as friends and that the triangular complications between the Philippines, Malaya and Indonesia must disturb us as they affected the peace and stability of our area. I hinted vaguely at our commitments to Malaya and the presence of Australian forces there. At the moment the deterioration in relations appeared to be progressive with effort being made on the part of Indonesia to halt this trend. We were of course particularly interested in what would be Indonesia’s reaction in August when Malaysia came into being.1
3. Subandrio said that so far as he was concerned it was naturally a matter of personal pride for a Foreign Minister to be able to say that his relations with all of his neighbours were good. The Malayans by their own actions were making this impossible. He had had intelligence reports for some time of the general attitude of the Malayan Government towards Indonesia, but he had been grossly misled by the former Indonesian Ambassador in Malaya2 as to the real attitude of the Malayans. These reports had now been officially confirmed by a public document, namely the text of speech made by Enche Mohamed Ismail Bin Yusof3 to senior officials of Department of Information and Broadcasting on February 1st. Subandrio gave me a copy of this speech and I must confess that parts of it make pretty odd reading. You will I expect have received this from Critchley but I can cable it if he has not sighted a copy. The Malayans had in effect announced their desire to destroy the leadership and the unity of the Indonesian state and their distress at the failure of efforts to do this which they had actively supported. They wanted a Masjumi Government.4 Subandrio enquired what Australia’s attitude would be if Indonesia were suddenly to make a series of announcements of this kind about the Menzies Government. They further stated that Indonesia was dominated by Communist forces which Sukarno, Subandrio and the others could not control. Malaya as5 a bulwark of anti–Communism and, therefore, unable to have good relations with Indonesia.
4. Subandrio said that confrontation does not mean war. He had himself said in the United Nations6 that if Malaysia was what the people in the area wanted then Indonesia would not stand in the way. They ought at least had had the courtesy to consult the Indonesians 18 months ago as to what they felt. The Malayans had never done so and if Malaya had not set out on a policy of deliberate enmity towards Indonesia, Indonesia would not mind having them as a neighbour. As it was, the Malayans continued to harbour and to subsidise rebels against the Indonesian Government and were by no means incapable of formenting another international plot against the disintegration of the Indonesian state.7 He remarked in passing that he was aware Australia had played no part in previous efforts to this end.
5. Indonesia was not an aggressive country. There were of course as in most countries generals and military spokesmen who made brash and unwise comments, and who were suggesting that Indonesia should finish the Brunei problem off in 10 days by invading North Borneo. Things would be said by Indonesians in the present state of relations with Malaya which we might regard as sensational and ‘scaring’. It was the policy of the President, of Nasution and of himself to settle the Indonesian people down on such matters as such talk had its own inherent dangers in producing an unmanageable psychology. Indonesian purpose was not to that end but to find a national identity which had been disturbed by colonial administration—a colonial administration which he admitted was far more efficient than the Indonesian administration, but which was administration for the few and not a reflection on the national will. This national identity would not be a Communist identity. The President was not and never would be a Communist even if some of his ideas had a Marxist quality, neither was Nasution nor himself, and Communism was not in the nature of the easy going Indonesian people. Moreover Subandrio claimed that the P.K.I. is primarily an Indonesian party assisting the people, who are prepared to work for Indonesia and against the thing which Indonesia feared most, namely foreign intervention and ideologies of whatever kind. If Indonesia can find its national identity and unity this will be to the benefit of Australian security.
6. He knew that there were fears in various parts of the world including the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia as to what Indonesia was going to do with its strengthened armed forces. But he claimed that these forces were not unreasonable for Indonesia and that if they became strong and stable there would be far less temptation for them to test their arms or to engage in politics in order to prove that their failures, such as what he described as the current failure in Sulawesi,8 did not reflect their real capacity.
97. Subandrio claimed that he wants friendship with Malaya but that it was perfectly clear that no Malayan leader wanted friendship with Sukarno or with him. He had told both Selkirk10 and Lee Kuan Yew this last weekend. Differences in alignment and background need not poison relations between countries, for instance, between Indonesia and the Philippines and Australia. Australia is a stable country and the welfare of our people is our primary aim. This was still not yet so in Indonesia. Measures of communistic austerity would not be dictated by the press to the Indonesian people and the solution of its economic ills must take second place to the consolidation of the unity of the country and the emergence of an Indonesian people. (This was a most curious argument but I saw no purpose in the present context in contesting it.)
8. Non-alignment in the world was no longer a dirty word and the world no longer insisted on parliamentary democracy where it is unsuitable. The Indonesian revolution could not succeed under a multi-party system and we must accept the kind of Indonesia which was developing under Sukarno’s leadership.
9. Despite our differences of background development and alignment, Australia and the Philippines for instance, did not seek the downfall of the Indonesian Government or the disintegration of the country. He pleaded with me to try to get the Australian Government to understand the gravity of the situation when a common border would be artificially forced on Indonesia with an avowedly hostile Government. While all efforts at rapprochement would be welcomed, he expected that they would be answered by Malaya with insults. It was obvious for instance, that Macapagal had not bowed to United States and United Kingdom pressure to accept Malaysia because of the Tungku’s policy of personal offensiveness.
10. When I repeated the grave concern of Australia at recent developments and the reasons for it along with the lines of the Minister’s discussions with Suadi,11 he said that he understood how we felt but we must try to put ourselves in his shoes. He was personally desperately anxious for good relations with Australia. China he believed to be expansionist, aggressive and suffering from a superiority complex. He must strive for a policy of friendship with China although he realised from his experience in 195912 that this would not always result in reciprocal goodwill. Some day China, which would be a constant pressure on the countries of Asia, might well say to him ‘Subandrio, we would like to be friends with you, but you have some empty spaces and we have a lot of population’. This was the danger. We must preserve the Islands of the Asian area from the big problem of Asia and probably the biggest problem of the world. I f Malaysia would make a contribution to this Indonesia would welcome it. It would not do so and under the Tungku it would itself be an invitation to Chinese expansionism. Indonesia wants independence and to have it, it must be strong and stable and have friends around it. Can we expect her to accept an avowed enemy on her doorstep.
11. He repeated that the policy of confrontation did not mean a policy of war, but said that in his view there would be a real danger of it if Malaya comes to the borders of Indonesia in August because of Malaysia. He claimed that he had been able to convince Narasimhan13 on Wednesday of the genuine seriousness of the situation that was building up.
12. As I left I asked him what he felt about the locking up in Singapore of the Barisan Socialist leaders.14 He said that he regarded this as need more than a confession of weakness and further claimed that Indonesia had evidence of the Malayan Government’s anxiety to lock up a hundred thousand people in Malaya of Indonesian origin.
[NAA: A1838, 3034/7/1/1 part 1]
1 That is, 31 August 1963 (see footnote 1, Document 8).
2 Mohammed Razif.
3 Mohamed Ismail bin Mohammed Yusof, Assistant Minister of Interior, Federation of Malaya.
4 Madjlis Sjuro Muslimin Indonesia —onsultative Council of Indonesian Muslims—the largest Indonesian Islamic Party, after 1952 representing Modernist Islam. It was banned in 1960 following its support for several regional rebellions in the outer islands in the 1950s.
5 Presumably, ‘was’.
6 UN General Assembly, December 1961.
7 Reference to Malaya’s alleged support for the PRRI ( Pemerintah Revolusioner Republik Indonesia, Revolutionary Government of the Indonesian Republic) rebellion in Sumatra 1958–61. This rebellion had arisen out of disillusionment and frustration with the increasingly authoritarian central government in Jakarta as economic and social conditions failed to improve to expectations in the outer islands. In February 1958 rebel army officers set up a rival PRRI government at Bukittingi in Sumatra. They were joined in their cause by a similar group of army officers from North Sulawesi, who in June the previous year had declared their own autonomous state, beginning the ( Paigam Perjuangan ) Permesta rebellion. The rebellion was not completely suppressed, particularly in Sulawesi, until 1961, but by mid–1958 it had been effectively neutralised by army units landed on the islands from Java.
8 A reference to continued secessionist unrest in Sulawesi.
9 Paragraph 7 was marked ‘large portion indecypherable’ on original document. The paragraph—as above— was repeated in Cablegram 141 from Jakarta, dated 11 February.
10 Lord Selkirk, UK Commissioner of Singapore and Commissioner-General for Southeast Asia.
11 Barwick had called in the Indonesian Ambassador in Australia, Brigadier General Suadi on 5 February and expressed Australian concern at ‘developments affecting public attitudes in Australia and Indonesia’ and at the conflicting statements on Indonesia’s policy coming out of Jakarta.
12 Subandrio had been snubbed by the Chinese leadership during his visit to China in 1959.
13 Chakravarthi Vijayaraghava Narasimhan, UN Chef de Cabinet and Under-Secretary-General for General Assembly Affairs. He was in Indonesia to discuss administrative arrangements for West New Guinea. UN Secretary-General, U Thant, had also requested Narasimhan gain a first hand view of the Indonesia– Malaysia dispute while in Jakarta and subsequently by making a brief visit to Kuala Lumpur.
14 There were 24 leading members of the Barisan Sosialis among the 113 persons detained on 3 February 1962 by Singapore’s Special Branch together with the Police Field Force as part of Operation Cold Store— an operation sanctioned by Singapore’s Internal Security Council in an effort to curb the economic disruption caused by industrial unrest.