Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968

Offering the first comprehensive history of U.S relations with Indonesia during the 1960s, Economists with Guns explores one of the central dynamics of international politics during the Cold War: the emergence and U.S. embrace of authoritarian regimes pledged to programs of military-led development.

Drawing on newly declassified archival material, this book examines how Americans and Indonesians imagined the country's development in the 1950s and why they abandoned their democratic hopes in the 1960s in favor of the military regime of General Suharto. Far from viewing development as a path to democracy, this book highlights the evolving commitment of both Americans and Indonesians to authoritarianism in the 1960s and succeeding decades. At a crucial juncture in modern Indonesian history, the United States found common cause with the Indonesian armed forces and their technocratic allies as the purported guardians of political and economic stability, shaping the country's trajectory in ways that—as Indonesia's current fragile transition to democracy illustrates—continue to unfold.