11 Dec Investigating Indonesia

Since Joko Widodo came to power earlier this year, there have been some important policy advances – even as he battles with the entrenched political elites. He’s announced plans to protect rainforests and peatlands; he’s ordered a crackdown on bureaucratic excess; he’s taken on Australia over the plight of refugees. All this should give Malaysians food for thought and perhaps an incentive to learn more about our big neighbour. Three books delve into the making and re-making of the modern Indonesian nation. Greg Poulgrain’s recently published The Incubus of Intervention (SIRD) examines the ways that US foreign policy under Kennedy used Indonesia as a pawn in its Cold War calculations. The veteran activist and translator of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Max Lane, uses Unfinished Nation (Verso) to analyse the forms of resistance toppled one of the most enduring dictatorships of modern times. And Andre Vltchek’s Indonesia: Archipelago of Fear (with a foreword by Noam Chomsky) (Pluto Press) is an unsettling and humane account of the huge challenges faced by Joko Widodo to overcome the legacy of dictatorship and the plunder of natural resources. Essential reading.