The Jakarta Method

• 1. The Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66

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  In the year 1965, a political purge began in Indonesia that would claim an estimated one million lives. This mass killing targeted members of the political left and movements seeking government reform within the country. American-backed Indonesian forces executed these killings with such efficiency that they successfully destroyed organized opposition to their rule. The scale of death was so vast that it became a defining moment for global anti-communist strategy during the Cold War. Historians now recognize this event as the foundational example referenced by the book's title. The violence did not remain contained within Indonesia but instead served as a blueprint for future operations elsewhere.

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• 2. U.S. Support for Global Mass Killings

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  American government officials provided direct support and complicity for anti-communist mass killings around the world from the Cold War until the present era. U.S. agencies facilitated these campaigns to destroy political leftists and economic reformers across multiple continents. The success of the Indonesian model encouraged Washington to replicate similar tactics in other regions. CIA-sponsored mass killings in Indonesia served as a model for clandestine interference campaigns throughout Asia and Latin America. These operations aimed to dismantle the Non-Aligned Movement while maintaining capitalist dominance globally. The moral grotesqueness of the campaign led to its being barely discussed in U.S. discourse for decades.

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• 3. Replication of Tactics in Latin America

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  Authoritarian regimes in South America adapted the Indonesian strategy to eliminate government reform and economic reform movements. Operation Condor stands as a primary example of how these tactics were implemented across the continent. Patterns from the genocide in Indonesia reverberated through future anticommunist actions in other countries over subsequent years. The United States played a key role in fostering systematic mass murder across the globe, extending from Southeast Asia to South America. This replication ensured that the methods used in 1965 became standard procedure for suppressing dissent in the region. The chilling success of those early campaigns made them attractive to later dictators seeking American backing.

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• 4. Narrative Journalism and Survivor Testimony

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  Vincent Bevins interviewed survivors to humanize large-scale political violence and chronicled their struggles firsthand. He draws on the latest historical scholarship on the global Cold War which entailed hot violent conflicts in Asia Africa and Latin America. His fluency in both Indonesian and Portuguese allowed him to translate complex scholarly accounts into smooth readable prose. Asking one of the Indonesian survivors How did we win the Cold War? elicited the response You killed us. This exchange highlights the difficulty of writing a truly balanced account of such terrible events. Bevins gives voice to victims who have been silenced by history written by the victors.

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• 5. Critical Reception and Historical Impact

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  Major publications praised The Jakarta Method as an excellent well researched and tightly written work. Thomas Kingston noted that while he was familiar with the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66 he had not considered their echoes and influence around the world until reading this book. Daniel Larison lauded the book as exceptional in its dispassionate matter-of-fact reading of history that reveals aspects of American history lost in current memory of the Cold War. Glenn Greenwald stated it provides one of the best most informative and most illuminating histories yet of the CIA and its role in shaping U.S. policy. Stuart Schrader called it trenchant and powerful for documenting the government's role in fostering systematic mass murder across the globe.

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