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Bevin's book is exceptionally well researched. He meticulously relays the story of the transition from decolonization to ephemeral semi-socialist reign to authoritarian developmentalism in most third world nations through survivors' firsthand accounts and their personal and often devastating experiences.
The author is true to his journalistic creed; he refrains from over-emphasizing any particular theory, no matter how plausible, if it is largely based on speculations. Where dependable data and declassified records are absent, he is explicit in saying that his account is at best incomplete. This is true, for instance, about the infamous September 30th movement of Indonesia and the rise of the unremarkable General Suharto. What really happened that night and who the schemers were have not been completely understood to this day.
The book is replete with some staggering factual revelations about the United States' role, both as an enabler and an accomplice, in the anticommunist crusades of Indochina and South America. It should go without saying, however, that what the United States did in various countries during the cold war was not always done with the purpose of extracting favorable economic benefits; there were those who truly believed that the communism had to be defeated because it was an invasive, expansionist, and tyrannical sociopolitical system. Frank Wisner Jr. said it about his father: "He didn't think he was doing it to help his business buddies back in New York; he thought it was about the cause. For what it is worth, I believe that he believed that".
The story ends by reminding readers that the "extermination of communists" in those third world nations did not bring about a transition to a prosperous liberal democracy. To varying degrees, crony capitalism persists and inequality abounds. Many, such as Indonesia itself, have smaller GDP per capita ratios (normalized by that of the United States') today than they did in the 60's. Transition to the developed world simply never occurred and it likely will never occur.
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Popular Highlights in this book
What happened in Brazil in 1964 and Indonesia in 1965 may have been the most important victories of the Cold War for the side that ultimately won—that is, the United States and the global economic system now in operation.Highlighted by 398 Kindle readers- I fear that the truth of what happened contradicts so forcefully our idea of what the Cold War was, of what it means to be an American, or how globalization has taken place, that it has simply been easier to ignore it.Highlighted by 374 Kindle readers
- When the United States entered World War II, it was what we would now consider an apartheid society.Highlighted by 315 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
About the author
Even those well-versed in post-WWII U.S. foreign policy will appreciate Bevins.
An excellent book. While I believe I have a decent understanding of CIA-backed regime change from Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) to the present, Bevins has probably done more to give shape and depth to that understanding than anyone outside of Chomsky and Alfred McCoy. Bevins' account spans the globe, but his core chapters – as well as his main threads from start to finish – focus on U.S. interventions in Indonesia and Brazil in the mid-1960s. This focus is all to the good, for my sense is that even among readers who are familiar with the overthrow of Mossadegh for the Shah, Arbenz for Armas, Allende for Pinochet, the Iran-Contra affair, and so on, may nevertheless have – as I admittedly did – much less familiarity with the U.S.-backed regime changes in Brazil and Indonesia. The broad story in these two countries is much the same as elsewhere: (1) install a military strongman to quash any possibility of communist movements and parties gaining any real power (Cold-War anti-communism was a genuine impetus for most U.S. policy-makers, argues Bevins), while at the same time (2) insisting that the strongman and his military do whatever is necessary to eliminate any impediment to U.S. business interests (of course, (1) and (2) typically fit together like hand in glove). What is NOT the same is this: U.S. "success" in these two countries (ASIDE(!) from the death of over a million innocent civilians) formed a sort of working model & method for the CIA in the years ahead. ALSO, the populations and economies of Brazil and Indonesia completely dwarf, say, El Salvador, or ... Guatemala. This is not to diminish what "we" (CIA-backed death squads) did in smaller countries. But it is to suggest, as Bevins does, the following: had these two countries been left to develop along the independent lines then being pursued, after winning their political independence yet before CIA-derailment, the world we live in today might look VERY different indeed.
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2022
- Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2020
- Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2024
Top reviews from other countries
- Bernardo JuremaReviewed in Germany on July 6, 2020
Perhaps the most important book in international politics published in 2020.
Remember that leftist slogan, “Another world is possible”? Turns out, not only was another world possible, but in fact another world did exist, for a while at least, until it was brutally, violently, ruthlessly and systematically suppressed. Right after World War 2, as much of the Third World was shaking off the shackles of colonialism, the U.S. kicked off a counter-offensive, providing overt and covert military assistance and diplomatic and economic support to topple left-leaning governments and slaughter leftist movements across the Third World. Vincent Bevins tells in “The Jakarta Method” the story of how these anti-communists massacres to a large extent shaped the world we live in today. As a result, a global system was created “that only had two basic structural types – Western advanced capitalist countries and resource-exporting crony capitalist societies shaped by anticommunism” and most of the countries affected by the U.S.-backed global anti-communist campaign “slid right into the second category, becoming very much like Brazil” (p. 241).Bernardo JuremaPerhaps the most important book in international politics published in 2020.
Reviewed in Germany on July 6, 2020
This book offers a key frame through which to understand the triple crisis – climate collapse, the rise of the far-right, and economic downturn – affecting the world today. For that reason, it is perhaps the most important book in international politics published in 2020.
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Eric VertommenReviewed in France on November 15, 2024
Excellent ouvrage sur la croisade anticommuniste des États-Unis commencée en 1965 en Indonésie
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Rosemary AbeReviewed in Brazil on January 28, 2021
Não consegui deixar de pensar nas campanhas de Trump e Bolsonaro ao ler este livro
