The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

The war on Vietnam plays an infinitely larger role in history in the common understanding of a typical U.S. citizen than does what the U.S. government did to Indonesia in 1965-1966. But if you read The Jakarta Method, the new book by Vincent Bevins, you will have to wonder what moral basis there can possibly be for that fact. During the war on Vietnam a tiny fraction of the casualties were members of the U.S. military. During the overthrow of Indonesia, zero percent of the casualties were members of the U.S. military. The war on Vietnam may have killed some 3.8 million people, not counting those who would die later from environmental poisoning or war-induced suicide, and not counting Laos or Cambodia. The overthrow of Indonesia may have killed some 1 million people. But let’s look a bit further. The war on Vietnam was a failure for the U.S. military. The overthrow in Indonesia was a success. The former changed little in the world. The latter was critical in destroying the non-aligned movement of third-world governments, and in establishing a policy of quietly “disappearing” and torturing and slaughtering huge numbers of left-leaning civilians all over the globe. That policy was taken by U.S. officials from Indonesia to Latin America and used to establish Operation Condor and a wider global network of U.S.-led and U.S.-supported mass-murder operations. The Jakarta method was used in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, to the tune of 60,000 to 80,000 people murdered. The same tool was taken into Vietnam in 1968-1972 under the name Operation Phoenix (50,000 killed), Iraq 1963 and 1978 (5,000 killed), Mexico 1965-1982 (1,300 killed), the Philippines 1972-1986 (3,250 killed), Thailand 1973 (3,000 killed), Sudan 1971 (fewer than 100 killed), East Timor 1975-1999 (300,000 killed), Nicaragua 1979-1989 (50,000 killed), El Salvador 1979-1992 (75,000 killed), Honduras 1980-1993 (200 killed), Colombia 1985-1995 (3,000-5,000 killed), plus some places where similar methods had been begun already, such as Taiwan 1947 (10,000 killed), South Korea 1948-1950 (100,000 to 200,000 killed), Guatemala 1954-1996 (200,000 killed), and Venezuela 1959-1970 (500-1,500 killed). These are Bevins’ numbers, but the list is hardly exhaustive, and the full impact can’t be understood without recognizing the extent to which this was known around the world outside of the United States, and the degree to which this murder spree made the mere threat of further killing decisive in influencing governments toward policies that harmed their people — not to mention the resentment and blowback produced. I just interviewed John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, on Talk Nation Radio, about his new book, and when I asked him how many coups had been accomplished without any coup being needed, simply with a threat, his answer was “countless.” The Jakarta Method makes clear some basic points that popular conceptions of history get wrong. The Cold War was not won, capitalism was not spread, the U.S. sphere of influence was not enlarged just by example or even by Hollywood promotion of something desirable, but also significantly by murdering masses of men, women, and children with dark skin in poor countries without getting U.S. troops killed which might have caused someone to start caring. The secretive, cynical CIA and alphabet soup of unaccountable agencies accomplished almost nothing over the years through spying and snooping — in fact those efforts were almost always counterproductive on their own terms. The tools that overthrew governments and imposed corporate policies and sucked out profits and raw materials and cheap labor were not just propaganda tools and not just the carrots of aid to brutal dictators, but also, perhaps first and foremost: the machete, the rope, the gun, the bomb, and the electric wire. The murder campaign in Indonesia did not have a magical origin out of nowhere, though it was new in its scale and in its success. And it did not depend on a single decision in the White House, though the transfer of power from JFK to LBJ was critical. The United States had been preparing Indonesian soldiers in the United States for years, and arming the Indonesian military for years. The U.S. took a peacefully minded ambassador out of Indonesia and put in one who had been part of a brutal coup in South Korea. The CIA had its new leader of Indonesia picked out well in advance, as well as long lists of “communists” who should be murdered. And so they were. Bevins notes that U.S. officials had already supplied similar murder lists in Guatemala 1954 and Iraq 1963. I suspect South Korea 1949-1950 may belong in that list as well. The overthrow in Indonesia protected and enlarged the profits of U.S. oil companies, mining companies, plantation owners, and other corporations. As the blood flowed, U.S. media outlets reported that backward Orientals were spontaneously and meaninglessly ending lives they didn’t much value (and nobody else should much value either). In reality the primary mover behind the violence and chief instigator in keeping it going and expanding was the U.S. government. The world’s third largest communist party was destroyed. The founder of the Third World movement was removed. And an insane right-wing anti-communist regime was established and used as a model for elsewhere. While we now know from research by Erica Chenoweth that nonviolent campaigns against tyranny and foreign occupation have been far more likely to succeed and those successes dramatically longer lasting than the successes of violent campaigns, knowledge of this approach was impeded by the overthrow of Indonesia. Around the world, a different lesson was “learned,” namely that leftists in Indonesia should have been armed and violent. This lesson brought endless misery to various populations for decades. Bevins’ book is remarkably honest and free of U.S.-centric bias (or anti-U.S. bias for that matter). There is one exception, and it’s a predictable one: World War II. According to Bevins, the United States military fought in World War II to liberate prisoners from death camps, and won the war. The power of this mythology in advancing programs of mass killing that Bevins clearly objects to should not be under-estimated. The U.S. government before and during World War II refused to evacuate those threatened by the Nazis, declined repeatedly to take any diplomatic or military step to halt that horror, and never associated the war with efforts to save prison camp victims until after the war was over — a war overwhelmingly won by the Soviet Union.

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.

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.

Have you ever read a book where the author makes a claim early in the book that is wrong and you begin to question his/her credibility? Well Bevins does this in the Jakarta Method and it left me wondering if other claims in his book are also wrong. Bevins claims in the first chapter that the first time napalm was used was during Truman's and the West's efforts to fight the communist attempt to take over Greece. This is false - napalm was used by US forces during WWII in places like Okinawa and Micronesia. Bevins also seems obsessed with calling JFK and Sukarno womanizers. He makes this claim more than once which is overkill. He also describes Sukarno's interaction with US officials as polite even though the US was "bombing" Ambon and trying to prevent Indonesia from falling under the Second World's influence. He also makes this claim more than once which is also overkill. He claims Stalin told communist forces around the world to "stand down" on more than one occasion in the book. I would not call Soviet efforts to take over Eastern Europe any sort of "stand down." He also mentions how the West caved when Jakarta was given West New Guinea but mentions nothing about Jakarta's 40+ years of transmigrasi policy which, according to some, is the text book definition of ethnic cleansing. The indigenous Melanesians of Papua have not been treated well by national government in Jakarta (which has been dominated by Javanese), and Bevins fails to mention this. I wanted to love this book and can't help wondering if Bevins (as some other reviewers have noted) has an ax to grind about US foreign policy since the end of WWII. If you Google Bevins you will see where his political loyalties lie. The man can believe and support whatever he wants, but if he wants to transition from being a journalist to being an historian he needs to get the history right and overcome his political biases. I spent four years in Indonesia and admire the people and the country. It looks like Bevins also admires Indonesia and perhaps he wants to remain there which could explain why he is not very critical of the Indonesian government in this book. One final note - I think Bevins missed an opportunity in the book. He introduces the viewpoint of an ethnic Chinese Indonesian without adequately noting that Indonesian Chinese are not treated well because they are Christians. My landlord in Jakarta was an ethnic Chinese. He told me many stories over the years about how hard the ethnic Chinese have it in Indonesia. I liked that Bevins compares the ethnic Chinese of Indonesians to the Jews of Europe. There are many parallels, but Bevins neglects to mention the role religion plays in Indonesia regarding why the ethnic Chinese and some other minorities have not fully integrated into Indonesian society. To be fair to Bevins, some of the points I raise in this review could result in books that Bevins or someone else may write someday. Let's see what Bevins tackles in his next book. I'll read it.

This book does a great job of presenting under-discussed topics and events to light with backing by pages and pages of sources to follow up claims.

I guess if one is a left-winger, this story will be harrowing; however, for the many who are not, this book is simply one detailing the murky state of the Cold War, and the fact that America, at one time, was willing to do what it took to contain the international communist menace. It always surprises me that the left, especially its mouthpieces like Mr. Bevins, cannot conceive how a large portion of a society would not want to be transformed into a Marxian hellhole. The idea that Stalin told the communist world to stand down, is one that is entirely belied by the communist bloc's actions worldwide. And the Indonesians had to deal with a large communist party in their own country. That they dealt with the problem seems to offend some, that Suharto did so in such an effective manner should offer a measure of praise. Dealing with Maoist insurgents definitely requires more than kid gloves. It should be taken for granted that most left-wing movements are generally bloodthirsty and should be treated likewise. We should revel in such action, just like we should revere Felix Rodriguez for eliminating the threat of Che Guevara. Know this, at one time the CIA actually used its resources to attack the enemy in effective ways. If you read between the lines, you begin to understand the effectiveness of that effort in this book. Don't worry about the leftist sensationalism, don't let yourself be conned by the crocodile tears of those whose only goal was to inflict communism on Indonesia and Brazil, be proud that at one time a problem was defined and dealt with in a manner that was needed.

This book is engagingly written and an enjoyable easy read about an interesting subject. It fails however in that it has pretenses to knowledge of facts which are too often incorrect or incomplete, and much more importantly disappoints in failing to deliver evidence of its primary accusation that the USA is primarily or even significantly responsible for the mass murders whcih took place in Indonesia after the fall of Sukarno. It troubles me little that this book is extremely biased, but Leftists are always kind and sincere humanitarians while Americans are mostly Bond villains. Western colonialists are properly treated as imperialists, but Sukarno's imperialist conquest of West Papua is seen as benign or even justified. The transparent bias at least prepares you for what is coming, or rather what isn't coming. The subtitle of the book purports to link Washington's Anti-Communist Crusade and Indonesia's Mass Murder "Program." Certainly, this is a topic that calls out for further investigation, and I had hoped for a more satisfying answer to the many open questions surrounding these events. Despite much rhetoric about Washington's dark hand, the book contains little actual journalism in this regard. The book adds precious little to what is already known about the many mysteries that continue to surround the 30th of September Movement, or the mass murders that came after it - and falls short of other recent works on the later. The book contains a few first person interviews, but essentially no corroboration or original source documents establishing Washington's hand in directing or encouraging mass murder. The most damning evidence is a quote from a US official regretting that he gave the new regime a list of names of known communists - though nothing to corroborate this - and nothing to link this single "list" to the massive scope of the organized slaughter of hundreds of thousands over many months. A reader is left asking, "where's the beef?" Perhaps even worse than the book's unproven dark speculations of US involvement is how it simply lets other guilty parties off the hook and fails to examine other guilty perpetrators. The book hardly touches upon the racial nature of the murders despite the fact that they can easily be seen as a massive pogrom against Indonesia's Chinese minority that used politics as a thinly veiled pretense. The book fails to examine the extent to which these local prejudices were to blame rather than foreign conspiracies. That Indonesia failed to deal with these unrequited race hatreds allowed a repeat of mass rapes and murders in the anti-Chinese pogrom which was repeated after the fall of Suharto. The book also sidesteps the roll of PNI nationalists, and entirely ignores the significant roll of Preman mobsters which has been told so well in Joshua Oppenheimer's work. Most of the unanswered questions remain unanswered here. The book ends with a thud, in the form of a shallow survey or world geopolitical events that neither do justice to those events or links them with the mass-murders in Indonesia. I would have preferred a shorter book, or devoting more room to its central subject, than this filler material. You should read this book if you are interested in the subject matter, but be skeptical and verify its asserted facts before repeating them - many are either wrong or treat unresolved questions as established facts. Don't buy this book if you are looking for answers to the mysteries of Suharto's coup against Sukarno, the details of the mysterious September 30th murder of the Generals, a thorough investigation of the mass-murders and its perpetrators, or for proof of the supposition that Washington had a direct hand in these murders beyond post hoc acceptance and moral support.

Relying on declassified primary sources and direct quotes, the evidence is overwhelming- the US were the baddies in 1945-1990. Bevins obliterated the narrative that the Cold War was an equal fight and efforts between the Soviet Union and USA. It was really just the US conducting campaigns of mass terror and utilizing economic sanctions to get the populations of wherever to bleed until they opened up markets. It reveals the complicity of many social scientists architecting “Modernization Theory” and needed Washington’s Bullets to make it come true. It adds fuel to the fire of the US’s imploding liberal democracy, and makes us remember why we should not feel any remorse as it crumbles.

The Jakarta Method is a compelling narrative, and easy to read. I stayed up until the early morning hours reading it--I could not put it down. The content is heavily based on official declassified documents, research conducted with historians and other experts, and a lot of testimony from firsthand sources. The author refrains from offering his own opinions. This book is a fascinating telling of aspects of the Cold War that I, as an American (even an amateur history buff), did not know. It's important to note that the author does not offer any apologies or sympathy to the atrocities committed by the Soviet and/or Chinese Communist parties. The book is devoted to telling the stories of countries that escaped American mainstream media, but nonetheless are important to understanding our world as it was 70 years ago and how our world is now. The author has done a great service by compiling these intertwined stories to illustrate how the US attained and preserved its spot at the top of the world order. This is the type of far-reaching and gripping story that gets picked up for a Netflix series in the next 10 years.

The Jakarta Method combines original interviews and exhaustive research to show: 1) how the brutal Indonesian and Brazilian dictatorships became two of the strongest American allies in the Cold War; and 2) how the covert-backing of mass murder was a key component of American foreign policy for decades. The U.S. backed military coup in Indonesia (1965) triggered an extermination program that killed in upwards of 1,000,000 people and landed hundreds of thousands of others in concentration camps. The Indonesian slaughter of alleged leftists reflected a massive strategic shift in the Cold War and became a model for the future. With U.S. support, the Brazilian military dictatorship, which took over in 1964, wholly embraced these tactics and spread them throughout South America. When the Brazilian and Chilean dictatorships began to collaborate in the 70s, their secret extermination plan was called Operação Jakarta (The Jakarta Operation). Jakarta was soon invoked throughout the world as a warning of what awaited any country that chose a different path.

The war on Vietnam plays an infinitely larger role in history in the common understanding of a typical U.S. citizen than does what the U.S. government did to Indonesia in 1965-1966. But if you read The Jakarta Method, the new book by Vincent Bevins, you will have to wonder what moral basis there can possibly be for that fact. During the war on Vietnam a tiny fraction of the casualties were members of the U.S. military. During the overthrow of Indonesia, zero percent of the casualties were members of the U.S. military. The war on Vietnam may have killed some 3.8 million people, not counting those who would die later from environmental poisoning or war-induced suicide, and not counting Laos or Cambodia. The overthrow of Indonesia may have killed some 1 million people. But let’s look a bit further. The war on Vietnam was a failure for the U.S. military. The overthrow in Indonesia was a success. The former changed little in the world. The latter was critical in destroying the non-aligned movement of third-world governments, and in establishing a policy of quietly “disappearing” and torturing and slaughtering huge numbers of left-leaning civilians all over the globe. That policy was taken by U.S. officials from Indonesia to Latin America and used to establish Operation Condor and a wider global network of U.S.-led and U.S.-supported mass-murder operations. The Jakarta method was used in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, to the tune of 60,000 to 80,000 people murdered. The same tool was taken into Vietnam in 1968-1972 under the name Operation Phoenix (50,000 killed), Iraq 1963 and 1978 (5,000 killed), Mexico 1965-1982 (1,300 killed), the Philippines 1972-1986 (3,250 killed), Thailand 1973 (3,000 killed), Sudan 1971 (fewer than 100 killed), East Timor 1975-1999 (300,000 killed), Nicaragua 1979-1989 (50,000 killed), El Salvador 1979-1992 (75,000 killed), Honduras 1980-1993 (200 killed), Colombia 1985-1995 (3,000-5,000 killed), plus some places where similar methods had been begun already, such as Taiwan 1947 (10,000 killed), South Korea 1948-1950 (100,000 to 200,000 killed), Guatemala 1954-1996 (200,000 killed), and Venezuela 1959-1970 (500-1,500 killed). These are Bevins’ numbers, but the list is hardly exhaustive, and the full impact can’t be understood without recognizing the extent to which this was known around the world outside of the United States, and the degree to which this murder spree made the mere threat of further killing decisive in influencing governments toward policies that harmed their people — not to mention the resentment and blowback produced. I just interviewed John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, on Talk Nation Radio, about his new book, and when I asked him how many coups had been accomplished without any coup being needed, simply with a threat, his answer was “countless.” The Jakarta Method makes clear some basic points that popular conceptions of history get wrong. The Cold War was not won, capitalism was not spread, the U.S. sphere of influence was not enlarged just by example or even by Hollywood promotion of something desirable, but also significantly by murdering masses of men, women, and children with dark skin in poor countries without getting U.S. troops killed which might have caused someone to start caring. The secretive, cynical CIA and alphabet soup of unaccountable agencies accomplished almost nothing over the years through spying and snooping — in fact those efforts were almost always counterproductive on their own terms. The tools that overthrew governments and imposed corporate policies and sucked out profits and raw materials and cheap labor were not just propaganda tools and not just the carrots of aid to brutal dictators, but also, perhaps first and foremost: the machete, the rope, the gun, the bomb, and the electric wire. The murder campaign in Indonesia did not have a magical origin out of nowhere, though it was new in its scale and in its success. And it did not depend on a single decision in the White House, though the transfer of power from JFK to LBJ was critical. The United States had been preparing Indonesian soldiers in the United States for years, and arming the Indonesian military for years. The U.S. took a peacefully minded ambassador out of Indonesia and put in one who had been part of a brutal coup in South Korea. The CIA had its new leader of Indonesia picked out well in advance, as well as long lists of “communists” who should be murdered. And so they were. Bevins notes that U.S. officials had already supplied similar murder lists in Guatemala 1954 and Iraq 1963. I suspect South Korea 1949-1950 may belong in that list as well. The overthrow in Indonesia protected and enlarged the profits of U.S. oil companies, mining companies, plantation owners, and other corporations. As the blood flowed, U.S. media outlets reported that backward Orientals were spontaneously and meaninglessly ending lives they didn’t much value (and nobody else should much value either). In reality the primary mover behind the violence and chief instigator in keeping it going and expanding was the U.S. government. The world’s third largest communist party was destroyed. The founder of the Third World movement was removed. And an insane right-wing anti-communist regime was established and used as a model for elsewhere. While we now know from research by Erica Chenoweth that nonviolent campaigns against tyranny and foreign occupation have been far more likely to succeed and those successes dramatically longer lasting than the successes of violent campaigns, knowledge of this approach was impeded by the overthrow of Indonesia. Around the world, a different lesson was “learned,” namely that leftists in Indonesia should have been armed and violent. This lesson brought endless misery to various populations for decades. Bevins’ book is remarkably honest and free of U.S.-centric bias (or anti-U.S. bias for that matter). There is one exception, and it’s a predictable one: World War II. According to Bevins, the United States military fought in World War II to liberate prisoners from death camps, and won the war. The power of this mythology in advancing programs of mass killing that Bevins clearly objects to should not be under-estimated. The U.S. government before and during World War II refused to evacuate those threatened by the Nazis, declined repeatedly to take any diplomatic or military step to halt that horror, and never associated the war with efforts to save prison camp victims until after the war was over — a war overwhelmingly won by the Soviet Union.

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.

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.

Have you ever read a book where the author makes a claim early in the book that is wrong and you begin to question his/her credibility? Well Bevins does this in the Jakarta Method and it left me wondering if other claims in his book are also wrong. Bevins claims in the first chapter that the first time napalm was used was during Truman's and the West's efforts to fight the communist attempt to take over Greece. This is false - napalm was used by US forces during WWII in places like Okinawa and Micronesia. Bevins also seems obsessed with calling JFK and Sukarno womanizers. He makes this claim more than once which is overkill. He also describes Sukarno's interaction with US officials as polite even though the US was "bombing" Ambon and trying to prevent Indonesia from falling under the Second World's influence. He also makes this claim more than once which is also overkill. He claims Stalin told communist forces around the world to "stand down" on more than one occasion in the book. I would not call Soviet efforts to take over Eastern Europe any sort of "stand down." He also mentions how the West caved when Jakarta was given West New Guinea but mentions nothing about Jakarta's 40+ years of transmigrasi policy which, according to some, is the text book definition of ethnic cleansing. The indigenous Melanesians of Papua have not been treated well by national government in Jakarta (which has been dominated by Javanese), and Bevins fails to mention this. I wanted to love this book and can't help wondering if Bevins (as some other reviewers have noted) has an ax to grind about US foreign policy since the end of WWII. If you Google Bevins you will see where his political loyalties lie. The man can believe and support whatever he wants, but if he wants to transition from being a journalist to being an historian he needs to get the history right and overcome his political biases. I spent four years in Indonesia and admire the people and the country. It looks like Bevins also admires Indonesia and perhaps he wants to remain there which could explain why he is not very critical of the Indonesian government in this book. One final note - I think Bevins missed an opportunity in the book. He introduces the viewpoint of an ethnic Chinese Indonesian without adequately noting that Indonesian Chinese are not treated well because they are Christians. My landlord in Jakarta was an ethnic Chinese. He told me many stories over the years about how hard the ethnic Chinese have it in Indonesia. I liked that Bevins compares the ethnic Chinese of Indonesians to the Jews of Europe. There are many parallels, but Bevins neglects to mention the role religion plays in Indonesia regarding why the ethnic Chinese and some other minorities have not fully integrated into Indonesian society. To be fair to Bevins, some of the points I raise in this review could result in books that Bevins or someone else may write someday. Let's see what Bevins tackles in his next book. I'll read it.

This book does a great job of presenting under-discussed topics and events to light with backing by pages and pages of sources to follow up claims.

I guess if one is a left-winger, this story will be harrowing; however, for the many who are not, this book is simply one detailing the murky state of the Cold War, and the fact that America, at one time, was willing to do what it took to contain the international communist menace. It always surprises me that the left, especially its mouthpieces like Mr. Bevins, cannot conceive how a large portion of a society would not want to be transformed into a Marxian hellhole. The idea that Stalin told the communist world to stand down, is one that is entirely belied by the communist bloc's actions worldwide. And the Indonesians had to deal with a large communist party in their own country. That they dealt with the problem seems to offend some, that Suharto did so in such an effective manner should offer a measure of praise. Dealing with Maoist insurgents definitely requires more than kid gloves. It should be taken for granted that most left-wing movements are generally bloodthirsty and should be treated likewise. We should revel in such action, just like we should revere Felix Rodriguez for eliminating the threat of Che Guevara. Know this, at one time the CIA actually used its resources to attack the enemy in effective ways. If you read between the lines, you begin to understand the effectiveness of that effort in this book. Don't worry about the leftist sensationalism, don't let yourself be conned by the crocodile tears of those whose only goal was to inflict communism on Indonesia and Brazil, be proud that at one time a problem was defined and dealt with in a manner that was needed.

This book is engagingly written and an enjoyable easy read about an interesting subject. It fails however in that it has pretenses to knowledge of facts which are too often incorrect or incomplete, and much more importantly disappoints in failing to deliver evidence of its primary accusation that the USA is primarily or even significantly responsible for the mass murders whcih took place in Indonesia after the fall of Sukarno. It troubles me little that this book is extremely biased, but Leftists are always kind and sincere humanitarians while Americans are mostly Bond villains. Western colonialists are properly treated as imperialists, but Sukarno's imperialist conquest of West Papua is seen as benign or even justified. The transparent bias at least prepares you for what is coming, or rather what isn't coming. The subtitle of the book purports to link Washington's Anti-Communist Crusade and Indonesia's Mass Murder "Program." Certainly, this is a topic that calls out for further investigation, and I had hoped for a more satisfying answer to the many open questions surrounding these events. Despite much rhetoric about Washington's dark hand, the book contains little actual journalism in this regard. The book adds precious little to what is already known about the many mysteries that continue to surround the 30th of September Movement, or the mass murders that came after it - and falls short of other recent works on the later. The book contains a few first person interviews, but essentially no corroboration or original source documents establishing Washington's hand in directing or encouraging mass murder. The most damning evidence is a quote from a US official regretting that he gave the new regime a list of names of known communists - though nothing to corroborate this - and nothing to link this single "list" to the massive scope of the organized slaughter of hundreds of thousands over many months. A reader is left asking, "where's the beef?" Perhaps even worse than the book's unproven dark speculations of US involvement is how it simply lets other guilty parties off the hook and fails to examine other guilty perpetrators. The book hardly touches upon the racial nature of the murders despite the fact that they can easily be seen as a massive pogrom against Indonesia's Chinese minority that used politics as a thinly veiled pretense. The book fails to examine the extent to which these local prejudices were to blame rather than foreign conspiracies. That Indonesia failed to deal with these unrequited race hatreds allowed a repeat of mass rapes and murders in the anti-Chinese pogrom which was repeated after the fall of Suharto. The book also sidesteps the roll of PNI nationalists, and entirely ignores the significant roll of Preman mobsters which has been told so well in Joshua Oppenheimer's work. Most of the unanswered questions remain unanswered here. The book ends with a thud, in the form of a shallow survey or world geopolitical events that neither do justice to those events or links them with the mass-murders in Indonesia. I would have preferred a shorter book, or devoting more room to its central subject, than this filler material. You should read this book if you are interested in the subject matter, but be skeptical and verify its asserted facts before repeating them - many are either wrong or treat unresolved questions as established facts. Don't buy this book if you are looking for answers to the mysteries of Suharto's coup against Sukarno, the details of the mysterious September 30th murder of the Generals, a thorough investigation of the mass-murders and its perpetrators, or for proof of the supposition that Washington had a direct hand in these murders beyond post hoc acceptance and moral support.

Relying on declassified primary sources and direct quotes, the evidence is overwhelming- the US were the baddies in 1945-1990. Bevins obliterated the narrative that the Cold War was an equal fight and efforts between the Soviet Union and USA. It was really just the US conducting campaigns of mass terror and utilizing economic sanctions to get the populations of wherever to bleed until they opened up markets. It reveals the complicity of many social scientists architecting “Modernization Theory” and needed Washington’s Bullets to make it come true. It adds fuel to the fire of the US’s imploding liberal democracy, and makes us remember why we should not feel any remorse as it crumbles.

The Jakarta Method is a compelling narrative, and easy to read. I stayed up until the early morning hours reading it--I could not put it down. The content is heavily based on official declassified documents, research conducted with historians and other experts, and a lot of testimony from firsthand sources. The author refrains from offering his own opinions. This book is a fascinating telling of aspects of the Cold War that I, as an American (even an amateur history buff), did not know. It's important to note that the author does not offer any apologies or sympathy to the atrocities committed by the Soviet and/or Chinese Communist parties. The book is devoted to telling the stories of countries that escaped American mainstream media, but nonetheless are important to understanding our world as it was 70 years ago and how our world is now. The author has done a great service by compiling these intertwined stories to illustrate how the US attained and preserved its spot at the top of the world order. This is the type of far-reaching and gripping story that gets picked up for a Netflix series in the next 10 years.

The Jakarta Method combines original interviews and exhaustive research to show: 1) how the brutal Indonesian and Brazilian dictatorships became two of the strongest American allies in the Cold War; and 2) how the covert-backing of mass murder was a key component of American foreign policy for decades. The U.S. backed military coup in Indonesia (1965) triggered an extermination program that killed in upwards of 1,000,000 people and landed hundreds of thousands of others in concentration camps. The Indonesian slaughter of alleged leftists reflected a massive strategic shift in the Cold War and became a model for the future. With U.S. support, the Brazilian military dictatorship, which took over in 1964, wholly embraced these tactics and spread them throughout South America. When the Brazilian and Chilean dictatorships began to collaborate in the 70s, their secret extermination plan was called Operação Jakarta (The Jakarta Operation). Jakarta was soon invoked throughout the world as a warning of what awaited any country that chose a different path.

Bevins travels the world to tell a story the US mainstream press has largely ignored or covered up. His research and command of many world languages allows him to center the people who were the victims of US Cold War policy from Indonesia to Guatemala. A terrific book, couldn't recommend it more highly.

Bevins flips the common understanding of the Cold War on its head and lays out a compelling case that the view of a vast, coordinated, secret network often associated with global communism actually applies far more accurately to the American-led Anticommunist forces. In a very easy-to-follow narrative format that weaves a cohesive story by following the lives of a handful of inspiring socialists, organizers, unionists, and others from various corners of the global south whose lives have been thrown into chaos or otherwise altered by the Anticommunist movement of the mid-20th Century. He is able to relate their remarkable stories in a compelling and empathetic way, and draw out important connections that reveal how the strategies of rabid Anticommunist movements evolved and were aided over time by the US foreign policy establishment. This is an essential book that will challenge many conceptions of the way the Cold War was fought and won.

A wonderfully written, somber look at how the 20th century was shaped by U.S. policies not enough people know about. The death tolls are staggering. Reading this made me ache for the world that could have been, if Sukarno, Lumumba, and other strong independent voices had been allowed to flourish.

Bevins does an incredible job summing up the devastating consequences of American "anti-communist" foreign policy. He writes in a detailed, but concise manner that never fails to drive home the horrific and spreading impact these policies have on the victims of U.S. imperialism around the world.

If I had to pick one book to illustrate the horrors that America subjected the third world to during the cold war, this would be it. A harrowing account throughout, absolutely essential to gaining a real understanding the postwar world order.

Bevins has outdone himself. Great book, doesn’t need to be political or stretch the truth to get across its core point: it took unimaginable violence committed by evil men to make the world we live in

Watched Glenn Greenwald’s System Update episode on YouTube that is an interview with Vincent Bevins about The Jakarta Method that led to reading and listening to the book twice. It made it clear that this is terrible history that calls for the prosecution of all those responsible in the US and victims’ countries for this and other crimes because it will continue as it has until these monsters are held accountable, and establish that the world will no longer tolerate murder by the US government.

Great book that offers a look at the the CIA’s and State Department’s not-so-clandestine foreign policies which shaped some of the quest human rights violations of the 20th century.

A must-read book for anyone interested in 20th century international affairs. Very accessible to a wide audience, but subject matter experts will also find it interesting.

I'm a slow reader but I finished this book in less than a day. The Jakarta Method drives home the underestimated impact of the Cold War that is still very much felt today in our globalized world. Vincent Bevins masterfully weaves interviews with people affected by the US-backed anti-communist agenda in different continents (particularly Indonesia, Guatemala, and Brazil) into historical events, comprehensive research, and declassified documents. He offers facts without being speculative and refrains from painting this complex history in black and white. He retells personal stories and interviews with respect and empathy without sensationalizing them or falling prey to the white savior complex. For that especially I highly commend the author.

a great look at American intervention during the rise of third world nationalism during the cold war.

Every citizen of the United States should read this book to understand the frightening influence the U.S. government has in shaping the world in a manner it wants--oftentimes in opposition to the desires of the citizenry of foreign lands who should have the right to self-determination. Any decent person with a soul should find these truths appalling. No wonder the world has so many problems. The U.S. has created many of them or in some way sowed the poisonous seeds of the bitter harvest.

This was a one sided look in a vacuum. I read through the whole book but while reading it still showed so many illigocs on how it got to this conclusion. You really have to take the view that Communism is wanted by everyone, but the powers in the US Government to rate this any higher. I did not put it down and managed to take what I could so only say it does say a lot about the ability of the writer to do a good job at putting words together and closely keeping the narrative functiona nd moving and not make that an issue in what otherwise is missing a more complex and accurate approach. .

Bevins has put together a book that is meticulously researched, touchingly personal, and an incisive addition to our understanding of the stakes and driving forces of the Cold War. Weaving together the stories of victims who lived through the anti-communist violence that defined the Cold War for many in the third world with superb reporting on the global network of right-wing authoritarian movements that traded information, techniques, and vocabulary, Bevins has created an important corrective to the traditional understanding of the Cold War as a battle between democracy and authoritarianism. From Indonesia, to Brazil, to Guatemala, to the Congo, Bevins traces the violent origins of the world we live in today.

I just finished this book and it was a great read. From the onset, the book does a great job at providing a clear picture of Cold War Indonesia for the reader who is not saavy to Asian cold war dynamics, and then, and here is the surprising rub, contextualizes what happened in Jakarta, with what happened in Latin America. I was not expecting this twist, but it provided new insight into what I knew (or thought I knew) about US war crimes in LATAM in the 70's and 80's with Project Condor. The book reads easily, and keeps you engaged the whole time.

This book was really great. It certainly made me feel a variety of many different emotions. Overall, it's disturbing. There is so much horror. Thankfully, there is perseverance. It made me question what I am really okay with, when it comes to any sort of governmental interference. Vincent Bevins did an incredible job of respecting the stories of people he talked to who were affected by these events. I have to say... my favorite aspect, was how he used the stories of people to align you with the timeline of historical events that were taking place. Look forward to hearing more from this writer.

Fantastic book, looking forward to the author’s future work.

The pro of this is book is the author is very affluent with international politics esp. commie world in SE Asia and South America during the 1960s. The con is, the author is clearly has a bias to left or a leftish :) he doesn't add up many facts from the right wing and military information 'wacca really going on'. Overall, nice addition to history book, but don't make it as your primary book as this book is not too neutral in analyzing world history.

This book makes me a sadder American. What kind of government considers it normal to slaughter millions of innocent people in the name of democracy? Well, apparently our government does. And we’ve been inflicting holocausts on the world since 1945. Who are we, really?

This book is excellent. I am fairly well versed on the US endeavors to stop communism in central and South America and obviously in Vietnam. Great book about Indonesian politics of the 60’s and the modern day ripple effects.

Overall, a very good read. Clear and well-written. The international comparisons are well done. The author can be forgiven for a few historical inaccuracies in his portrayal of Brazilian politics, since he’s got most of the story right.

Vincent Bevins does an amazing job of presenting his well-researched information in a way that is easy to understand for somebody not too well versed in history. It's evident that he really cares about the subject matter and getting the information out about this overlooked and dark part of our history. I highly recommend this book!

This book was written by someone who not only deeply cared about the subject matter but understood the history behind it. Not only was it a well researched and thought out book but it was also incredibly written. I feel like I connected to the subject matter like I would in a piece of fiction, but this is very real. I highly recommend it.

This book is as important to understanding the current world order as Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. It clearly illustrates the patterns common to the rise of autocracy, and paints a picture of the world that was stolen from the people of the Third World by the agents of the International, fascist, and Nazi-Laced anti-communist movement.

Interesting viewpoint and some of the information has credible citations, but the author makes some bold claims and draws sweeping conclusions based on limited verifiable information. Felt like a biased, one-sided view of history based on anecdotal evidence and interviews, with some more solid evidence sprinkled in. There is little doubt that the US had some role to play in the horrors that took place across the globe during the Cold War, but the author seems to stretch the evidence too far and places nearly full responsibility on the US, while at the same time praising and excusing figures like Castro and Mao. Interesting perspective, but I was unimpressed with the author’s credibility and didn’t buy into the narrative being sold.

Great book, well sourced. Able to tell a complex story that spans decades across the globe in a meaningful and digestible way. Great primer on the cold war and plenty of citations for those that want to continue exploring the topics mentioned!

Strong storytelling, highy accessible writing. A good primer on post-WWII Indonesian history for the average American reader. Great to have on the shelf.

Very well documented and reads very quick. He does a very good job of merging first person accounts with a more historic analysis.

The best and most important book, that I've read in a while. It helped me understand everything that had happened in the last 80 years throughout the world.

A truly readable must read book. Fills in a lot of what doesn’t ever get talked about, especially within American empire. Highly recommended!!!

Top of the line book about the moronic foreign policy in the United States.

great book to read and learn about unknowns of history. history that has been hidden from majority of people in the west. great mixture of first hand account plus research done rightly.

Freedom, democracy, universal human rights. All these nice words foreigners believe are the basis of Americans foreign policy. So shocking to learn that under table, it is completely opposite.

I couldn't get through it. Bevins is reflexively and illogically anti-American and anti-Western. Nuance, competing goods, and ethical people trying to make the best decision possible given limited options all escape him. Avoid.

Incredible book. Incredible storytelling by the author. Recommending it to all my colleagues as I pick it up to read again.

Enthralling and heartbreaking account of massive political slaughter in the pursuit of capitalist interests in the 20th century.

A non fiction highly readable page turner revealing empathy for people who lived through the US un(der)reported tacit approval for patterned massacre during the covert Cold War.

This is not alternative history. It is history that is excluded from textbooks and the mainstream press. That alone justifies the read.

Well researched and also readily accessible.

Excelente

Excellent book

A fascinating, informative, and utterly depressing chapter in twentieth-century world history, of the sort that's generally either omitted altogether or heavily abridged in American textbooks and popular culture, obscuring our country's shameful activities abroad. Under a variety of presidents of both major parties, both throughout the Cold War and after, we interfered in elections, overthrew governments, aided militia groups, spread wildly fabricated propaganda, and otherwise fought to prevent other peoples from embracing communism (which was frequently used as a catch-all term for any vaguely leftist social platform). At our worst, we directly participated in the slaughtering of unarmed millions -- first in Indonesia in 1965 and then via copycat 'Jakarta' programs in twenty-one further nations that likewise followed the U.S. cue in labeling their left flank as enemies and engaging in mass murder and even genocide (since entire indigenous populations were sometimes placed in that category) to eradicate them. In each case, America provided some combination of soldiers, arms, training, names and addresses of targets, and an overall rabid and dehumanizing anticommunist ideology. Again and again we failed to live up to our stated democratic ideals, and author Vincent Bevins has painstakingly assembled a thorough accounting of it here, his sources ranging from newly declassified and surprisingly candid C.I.A. files to in-depth personal interviews around the globe. It's illuminating for an understanding of how geopolitics reached its current configuration, with "third world" referring to devastated and impoverished countries rather than its more neutral initial definition, as well as the potential minimal value of our word in international affairs today. As a book, I think the presentation perhaps could have been arranged better, instead of jumping so much in place and time, and I wish the audiobook had included the sourcing that exists in the print edition, given how often the writer will make a reference to something like "one of JFK's best biographers" or "the most famous European to relate this experience" without providing the exact name in question in the main text. Nevertheless, the title is too valuable and well-researched of a contribution for those issues to register as particularly significant. [Content warning for torture and rape.]

I read "The Jakarta Method" by Vincent Bevins in few days. Very easy, fluid and well written. I appreciated it very much. I knew, but in a superficially way, the facts of massacre in Indonesia in 1965-66. This book gave me the opportunity to deepen the knowledge of this page of contemporary history during the Cold War. Stories almost totally unknown in our latitudes during or perhaps intentionally and obstinately concealed by the toxic narratives that surround us. It is the right book to try to know and understand something more on the activities of the CIA in Asia. The book by Bevins shows many different scenarios during the Cold War but with the single common denominator of the anticommunist crusade carried out by USA. Really enlightening.

The topic of CIA assassination and anticommunist violence is a vast one, and because so much of that history (particularly in the 1960s) is shrouded in secrecy, it is incredibly easy for a lesser writer to tumble into hyperbole and speculation. I dont think that is an inherently bad way to write about CIA meddling, but Bevins’ attention to research and citation elevates this work into something really thought provoking. The balance between agonizing personal anecdotes and broad historical contexts marry together into a really excellent historical analysis.

This is a great book tracing the history of American and western imperialism in the name of Cols War realpolitik. It’s clear and accessible. It also does a great job of delineating what we can know and what we can speculate about without falling into paranoia or overblown conclusions. It’s easy to focus on Soviet and Chinese evil in the 20th century. It’s harder but more essential for those of us in the west to face what was done in the name of freedom, democracy and capitalism.

Essential account of not only U.S. history since the Cold War, but world history. Enlightening and paradigm shifting details about the cold war that Americans may not be familiar with. Highly recommended for all history nerds, or those who are curious about what the U.S. actions mean for other countries around the world.

I liked this book. I liked how the author described the world that the left-wing movement in Indonesia was trying to create. The things the left-wing/anti-colonialist/anti-capitalist people were up to prior to the violence against them were beautiful, and that makes the details of what was perpetrated even more jarring.

I got the hardcover, learned a lot about stuff that is left out of history classes, both high school and college. The Jakarta Method in Indonesia is extremely overlooked despite the US foreign policymakers extreme success compared to other regions at the time, despite how grim it was.

and see what our government's true legacy is. Very moving and factually easy to understand, excellently documented record of US foreign policy. I couldn't put it down and refer to it often.

A highly engaging read. Brings to light a disturbing narrative thread of the Cold War that is often swept under the rug in your standard historical accounts.

This is a fast-paced, and deeply disturbing history of part of the Cold War. Bevin's does an excellent job condensing and contextualizing decades of history across the globe in a few short pages. The background will make the book accessible to a general readership, and also helps to provides a human face to survivors of the U.S.-backed Cold War crusade against communist, communist adjacent, and more liberal anti-colonial movements in the Third World. Growing up, I remember hearing about figures like Suharto in the news, without understanding how his rise to power came about, or even really knowing what the U.S. role was in his rise to power. In the case of Reagan's support for Civil Wars in Central America, these are things that I was aware of as well to some degree with news about the Iran-Contra hearings, but without this book I never would have made a connection to Indonesian history. Bevins focus on Jakarta and Indonesia in 1965 also offers a useful connective thread for understanding some of the second and third order effects as they relate to the Cold War and the present era. I wish I had learned about this history years ago. One aspect of the story that I found darkly comic was the use of opinion pages and editorials from respectable news outlets in the U.S. and the dissonance between the way that these events were characterized to U.S. readers at the time and how they were experienced by people on the receiving end of these policies. As Bevin notes, some of the reporting takes a more skeptical and journalistic approach for a time in the 1970s and 80s, but you have to laugh sometimes to keep from crying, in light of the way that some events in "far away lands" continue to be reported in ways that too often seem more like exercises in public relations, rather than attempts to provide the American public with an accurate snapshot of current events (e.g. most notoriously with the coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War in 2002 and 2003, but unfortunately, not exclusive to that one event). In any event, I can't recommend the book highly enough. The "Jakarta Method" is thought provoking and a very well written short history that raises as many difficult questions as it answers.

The Jakarta method shows how anticommunism and the horrific violence that came with it has changed our world.

A very important book about an episode of history right-wing zealots would prefer we forget.

Essential reading for anyone curious about current affairs anywhere in the world.

Cannot recommend this book enough.

Having read several scholarly books on Latin America, this was refreshingly accurate regarding that region. This was an amazing book, definitely would recommend to anyone new or seasoned to this subject.

The Jakarta Methods must have been a difficult book to write. It is a difficult book to read. And it is a difficult book to review. The post-war or the cold war era is the first history that unfolded in front of a recording, observing, monitoring global media and a large, ethically-conscientious, aware, and activist set of observers. Yet, barely a half a century later, the next generation is aware of so little that shaped our societies outside some major events involving the US and Europe. The book tries to fill the gap somewhat by discussing highly significant - and widely ignored - political upheavals of certain Latin American and East Asian countries whose ramifications were enormous beyond their borders and forever from then. The events discussed in the book are not just novel and vital but also incredibly fascinating. The author's years in journalism help him fuse personal stories of leaders and rebels to everyday citizens with history-making events. Readers are transported to the streets of Indonesia and Brazil, villages of Guatemala and Vietnam, eavesdrop the interactions of the heads of India, Egypt, or the US to vividly imagine how it must have happened, at least from the author's viewpoint. As great as it is, the book is not about recounting the forgotten stories. The author unreservedly accuses the US government of numerous high crimes as it used all sorts of underhand stratagems to increase its influence in third world countries. The range of allegations includes a host of highly abhorrent behaviors, including aiding mass murders, outright racism, working against the democratic forces/wishes, and even war crimes. Anyone sympathetic to the publicly avowed American belief in fundamental rights, democratic values, and other liberal ideals will find the book in the least highly antagonistic, if not outright fictional. The American political class is rarely shown more villainous. The next part of the review is most challenging as one tries to provide a balance and critic some of the messages in the book. The author is consciously one-sided and deliberately extreme to evoke the strongest emotions. In a way, he spends more effort avoiding even the most well-known crimes of left-leaning juntas, governments, and forces of the times than filling the book with those of the right-leaning ones, led by the US. There was a cold war. The US and the USSR - no matter what their ideologies were for their citizens and friends - were playing a high stake, even if militarily low-key, geopolitical war games on a global canvas. While relativism would not make the US misbehaviors any less pardonable, the author is too unbalanced in casting aside the far worst bunglings of its adversaries, which decidedly destroyed people many times more. It is difficult to judge the acts of one time from the values of the other. No matter what we deem right today, the US's adopted antidote to communism was capitalism and not democracies. From the time immemorial until today, political opposition was brutally and unjustly murdered in almost all systems except those with the strongest belief in people's choices. The US was barely a believer of full democratic ideals (cue its own course towards universal suffrage) in those decades. It decided to repress communism undemocratically, abhorrent, but not out of tune with the methods of the time. The author could have philosophized more on limits of democratic ideals, and from there provided a better perspective on what the US did comprehensively wrong with far-reaching consequences for everyone. For example, society should not democratically vote against democratic processes like what Hitler effectively did in the 1932 election. A majority in any society should not be allowed to use democratic methods to trample on the rights of the minority or pardon killers, or sanction ideologies - like infanticide or the burning of the widows, for instance - that are just wrong. The question that should be asked was whether communism was one such ideology that the Western democratic society had to try and obliterate undemocratically. Or was it deemed such simply because the principal adversaries adopted it? The book talks about events that were heinous. Mass murderers were helped by people who were supposed to be good. The book has flaws, but still a must-read for anyone interested in global events.

In our zeal to destroy any tremors of left wing tendencies that threatened our corporate economic interests in other countries, we used the CIA to install vicious dictators after removal of basically democratically elected governments, resulting in mass deaths of populations in those countries. Instead of advancing democracy as we claim, we have hypocritically destroyed it for our own selfish benefit. This book should be required reading in public high school. I am so relieved that we are learning the truth now about our conduct elsewhere but wish that the truth could have been exposed earlier to limit the damage we have done.

A pleasure to read would be a wrong way to phrase it – this is, after all, a book of the plunders of imperialism that killed not only millions in the Third World, but left behind a vacuum of an alternative – socialist – project. But this is not just another book that presents the relentless ravages of the CIA. It is about how anti-communism was a project, and its almost unthinkable violence tells us how real and living the project of building a more just world was – where the former colonies of the world could stand up straight again. Bevins’ through his expansive interviews, clear writing, and impressive research weaves together stories that are lesser told. He takes us from Brazil to Indonesia, and draws a compelling parallel between the coups of 1964 and 1965 in those two countries, respectively. Perhaps one of the most silenced tragedies of the 20th century – the anti-communist massacres in Indonesia 55 years ago – resulted in a million killed in a few quick months. This was a strategy of CIA-back mass killing so successful that it became known as the ‘Jakarta Method’ – which gives the book its title. ‘Jakarta is coming’ would be written on the walls in Allende’s Chile, warning of more bloody coups to come on the continent. In the 1960s, the Third World had a vision and project of the future. In this book, you will find that those dreams, vision, and projects are not so farfetched or distant – in fact, they seem more necessary than ever. You will hear the stories of those lived to tell them, and that, despite the horrors and violence they faced, those dreams have remained alive somehow. Even better, this book is published on the birth date of Ho Chi Minh himself. Do yourself a favour and read this book!

Really solid book, author does a great job running through how the Cold War is broadly defined and introducing people who are unfamiliar with the subject to the basics. Also cool how Bevins uses interviews and people who experienced the history first-hand as sources and then almost constructs the broader narrative around their experiences using declassified documents as a way to verify/contextualize their stories. Bevins focuses primarily on Indonesia and then the devastating ripples the US assistance of Indonesia in carrying out the purge of the left had worldwide. I bought the book to learn about Indonesia so I liked that that was the primary focus. Great info about the Cold War in Latin America in the 70s onward and some great analyses of what the Cold War meant/means and the examination of the impacts are really well argued. Only reason I said four stars is because I feel like John Roosa (whom Bevins cites) did a great job of detailing how the US collaborated with the Indonesian army to bait the PKI into a coup so they could oppress it with a countercoup and despite Roosa's work Bevins (and he's not alone in this) still speculates as to Suharto's involvement in a broader conspiracy, which I think Roosa largely explains away in his book. Read for an episode of my podcast, Hard Fried History.

This is an excellent and well-researched book about the CIA's role in the massacre of millions of individuals around the globe in the name of anti-communism.

Astonishing and eye-opening! It is a story I knew in shadows that is all the more terrifying told all together.

Americans are probably one of the most propagandized and least informed populations on the planet, and I'm saying that as one of them. As an adult I was constantly confronted by the reality that History as I knew it, was no only wrong, but was a purposeful lie to allow people in power to continue to commit atrocities. We white wash everything, and even modern journalism does this through omission and context-free "straight" reporting. So our current situation of a global rise of Fascism and fascistic leaders coming to power comes on us as if from nowhere. This book is a wonderful explanation of the how, and why for the moment we are in. Bevins has done a great job interweaving personal stories with recently released and verified information of exactly what our security state was up to during the cold war, and how it has led to this moment of Trump and Bolsonaro. The USA partnered with Nazi's and other Fascists world wide to create an anti-communist network of murder that has been memory holed for much of the modern world. The tragedy of this is that it's victims have been as well, and Bevins does a masterful job of telling the story of these victims of CIA/US machinations. If you want to know why we are where we are politically world wide, and want to get extremely pissed off about it, read this book!

This proved to be as infuriating as it was informative. What else could I possibly feel when reading about the support that the US government provided for hard-right regimes as they brutalized their own citizens? The millions of innocents in Indonesia, Guatemala, and other nations that were terrorized, imprisoned, tortured, and killed not only for involvement in leftist governments or organizations but often mere perceived involvement? The historically documented callousness that US government officials held for these disrupted or destroyed lives while they operated with an absurdly broad and also stupidly black and white view of communism that rarely adhered to reality? Now granted, it’s not as if this historical pattern of US Cold War “support” is brand-new to me. However, until coming across “The Jakarta Method,” I definitely had no idea of the terrible extent of American interference in the toppling of leftist regimes around the globe and the scope of the horribly enthusiastic support it always readily provided for the brutal repressions and exterminations that followed. Through his thorough research and clearly-constructed narrative, VIncent Bevins has successfully provided a brand new lens for the past that reveals a present-day world that is far more shaped, if not outright scarred, by America’s brutal anti-communist support than most realize. I definitely plan on recommending this eye-opening history whenever the opportunity arises.

This reads like a well written fiction, and is the most easy to read, follow, and understand history book I have ever read. It is also very balanced (given the subject matter). This is a brutal story, with lots of pretty dark implications about the US's role in the world, but Vincent lets you draw your own conclusions by offering multiple perspectives. It focuses on the Indonesian people, but also some of the key players inside the state department, JFK, and Johnson, and they are given a fair and accurate portrayal. I won't go into my own politics or conclusions from this book, but I do think this is crucial history that every American should read about, and this is the most accessible vessel for this era of US foreign policy than I have ever read in my life. If I won the lottery, I would pay this guy to write this book a dozen more times about different events in history.

Summed up abstractly, The Jakarta Method tells how the worldwide anticommunist crusade supported by America's surveillance state unfolded in Brazil and Indonesia, and how the overthrow of democratically elected governments in those countries impacted events in numerous countries from Chile to China. In telling the story Bevins explicates the underlying authoritarian Modernization Theory, the motive (prevent any possibility of success outside the capitalist framework), and the ruthless means, and in the penultimate chapter asks whether the brutal sacrifice of millions of lives was worth it even from a strictly economic perspective. A study of this scope might ordinarily be dubbed 'magisterial,' but Bevins keeps it 'tapesterial' by weaving in moving accounts of the people involved, both heroes and villains. The relentless horrors in the narrative are mitigated by rich emotion, insight, and even humor. In giving a forum to people whom the corporate media relentlessly ignore, Bevins offers a beautiful, humane rendering of an ugly, inhumane process.

Thoroughly researched and fact driven. Bevins does a remarkable job at breaking down the complex nature of U.S foreign policy and its subsequent effects. This should be mandatory reading.

An accessible, thorough and compelling look into an erased but vital history. This book could be pedantic, but Bevins writes so fluidly and straightforwardly — and examines the people involved (from the bottom to the top) in a way that draws you in. As a reader I’m very attached to and moved by Francisca’s story in particular. Also his explainer on the terms First, Second and Third World should be taught in schools. The whole book should be taught in schools!

I highly recommend reading “The Jakarta Method”. This book reveals the limitless action the US took with the goal of eradicating communism (at the cost of many, many innocent lives), and shows how the US backing of a devastating event in Indonesia created a lasting framework that was later used in other countries. Through the telling of true and personal histories of people who actually lived through it, “The Jakarta Method” builds an accessible story that left me angered at the atrocities committed, shocked at what could be accomplished in the name of anticommunism, and wondering- can there be a future for the left? And, what would our world look like if anticommunism hadn't won? (Note: I received an advance copy in order to provide feedback.)

This book tells history that will be unknown to many readers, but it does far more than that. It accomplishes the thorny task of showing what unwieldy political processes—anti-communism—meant for regular people, through beautifully told, memorable stories of people caught up in the Cold War currents. Its character-driven analysis is both gripping and revelatory. Further, Bevins makes a compelling case for the continued relevance of these massacres, tracing their ripples all the way down to the present, from Guatemala to Indonesia to Brazil. Plus, Bevins seems to be the rare American journalist who not only doesn't seem to hold, but consistently rejects, the ideology of US supremacy he so meticulously documents throughout this text. A fantastic book.

It's really baffling to me how the events in Indonesia in the 1960s aren't something we know more about. But after reading this and learned about the U.S. policy of influencing foreign affairs in countries they were worried might fall to Communism (or even stay remotely neutral in the Cold War) it really makes sense. Bevins connects the history in Indonesia to those around the world, and you really start to see how much of the world today was shaped by U.S. foreign policy from the 50s-80s. I'd highly recommend this book for anyone interested not only in world history, but really anyone looking to learn more about current geopolitical affairs.

Picked this up to help pass the existential dread in quarantine. On one hand, I'll have finished it by the end of the first day reading it, so it failed in its task of being a time sink. On the other hand, Bevins has done a phenomenon job of doing what many fail to - he ties together various loose ends to tell an engaging and unheard story about a pivotal moment in the Cold War, and thus our current world order. Reading his debut will make you feel significantly smarter, both in your understanding of history AND at dinner table debates - which is what we all really care about, right?

I highly recommend the Jakarta Method. This book is a fascinating look into lesser known aspects of the Cold War. A lot has been written about how the USA and the USSR acted in Europe and East Asia during the Cold War. The Jakarta Method is about the Cold War-related violence that ravaged the so called Third World. The book is very informative and based on robust research work (documental + interviews w/ firsthand sources) and also very well written. I was impressed by the author's clarity of ideas and expression - his writing is compelling and hardly ever difficult.

The main selling point of The Jakarta Method is Bevins' committed reporting of and adept handling of the books' characters and their traumatic pasts. Navigating the extremely delicate territory of exhuming the horrific memories of genocide survivors is an act of dexterity akin to a Cirque de Soleil performance. This book should be the first in an endless series detailing the many clandestine crimes of the post-war United States regime. Much like many of the victims of its policies and aggression the United States' crimes too have been deliberately disappeared. The least we can do is to try to bring light to them.

Beautifully written, deeply researched, heartrending tale of how our modern world was formed in blood. This is essential reading to understand modern international affairs.

A very well written and deeply researched overview of the different atrocities carried out by the "winning side" of the cold-war. Even people who are very deeply attuned to global politics often ignore the bloody history of the Indonesian anti-communist crusade. But this is not a book about Indonesia - it's a book about the world and the how the global order came to be, but it's also about three-dimensional human characters that lived through this history. Covers many countries and the cold war foreign policy of the US. A very pleasurable prose dealing with very unpleasant things. Extremely informative.

I read this book and really, really enjoyed it! Learned a ton about the world that I didn't learn while pursuing an undergraduate degree in history at a prestigious, northeast liberal arts college. Highly recommend this to anyone with even a small amount of interest in history or politics.

I picked this book up because I’ve been reading a lot of history on 20th century Russia and thought this would be an interesting segue into the western side of the Cold War and the CIA. It became apparent almost immediately that the author’s take would have a far left slant, but I thought I could trust the author to at least accurately present facts, and that would be worthwhile. Unfortunately, after a bit more reading, I realized the author cannot be trusted to even present those facts. His characterization of Marx is, simply put, embarrassing, as is his description of the Russian Revolution as (paraphrased) a coup by a few intellectuals against a decrepit ruling regime. This is... certainly a take. He also downplays the deeply held leftist belief that communism cannot survive side by side with capitalism. To succeed (which is taken as a moral imperative), the working classes must violently overthrow their bourgeois oppressors, and this must happen everywhere. In this light, it’s understandable why stable and prosperous countries might not find this an attractive ideology. I am not naive about America. Like any powerful country, she has pressed her own interests, often ruthlessly. But the unfortunate fact is that leftist regimes do the same, and with an equal indifference towards the people caught in their way. To airbrush this is deeply dishonest, and fundamentally misleads the reader in a way that can’t be overlooked. I was extremely surprised to discover how profoundly the author misinforms the reader, given the glowing praise this book has received. Presumably all the professional journalists who wrote these reviews are aware of, say, Ho Chi Mihn’s brutal tactics against his own countrymen, and understand that it’s insufficient to simply note a speech where he proclaimed his good intentions. Perhaps they aren’t that well informed. I don’t know. In any case, if you’re looking for an evenhanded history of the Cold War, and the CIA’s covert operations, I recommend you keep looking. I will be.

Very highly recommended. The book manages to convey the horrors of the Cold War's secret plots without dwelling on macabre details. It's rigorously fact based — and connects the dots such that, by the end, you have a clearer sense of why our world looks the way it does.

. . .Bevins covers it thoroughly weaving both narrative and heart-wrenching testimony.

Well researched and well written! Should be a must read for high school students or anyone thinking of joining the U.S. military. They should know what they are really fighting and dying for.

The only reason I have given this a 3-star rating is because I have been looking forward to reading this book and it arrived today, but when I opened it -- YIKES -- I could not believe how small the type font is. It is about the size of footnote font in most books. What was the publisher thinking, saving a bit on printing costs? I'm literally going to have to get a magnifying glass to read it. Given the tiny font size, getting this as an e-book would be a better choice.

I'm an Indonesian who was born in 1994. I have been interested to learn about life during the Suharto's era. My parents were always reluctant to share their experiences. This book is truly eye-opening.

The information contained in the book and CD is frightening because the fact the government of USA be involved in dirty tricks getting people murdered by the thousands is sad yet unfortunate its true.

There are some great things in this book. I especially liked the accounts by Indonesian victims of 1965 and the American diplomat Howard P. Jones. The author told the stories of these witnesses to history responsibly and integrated them into a historical narrative. The author does a service to Indonesian voices that have never been heard before. However, I do not recommend this book for two reasons. The first is that while it reveals a lot of important background about the CIA methods for engineering coups, the book doesn’t end up proving its principal thesis that the events of 1964-65 constituted a “Jakarta Method" by American actors. The second is that it’s poorly written. When discussing Suharto’s 1964 coup and the ensuing mass murders of 1965, historians integrate internal and external causes. It is a complex state failure, not a Disney story with a single villain behind everything. The internal economic situation in Indonesia declined in the early 1960s after an initial period of prosperity and Sukarno became increasingly reliant on foreign aid. Sukarno’s frequent visits to the USA were linked to his desire for such aid, which the USA provided while the USSR, shamefully, did not. Here Sukarno was in trouble. If Indonesia became a US ally this would have likely provoked armed reaction from the communist PKI, as the PKI rightly suspected the US of dominating and exploiting its Third World allies. The “year of living dangerously” in 1964 was an act of desperate flailing by Sukarno, trying to provoke the USSR or China into sending him some aid so that he wouldn’t have to depend on the US. The US reacted by beginning to cut aid, meant as more of a warning than a direct rejection. These economic issues take up only one page of this book, hidden under the heading “Konfrontasi” (which refers to something quite different, Indonesia’s military confrontation with British Malaysia). But it is impossible to understand why Suharto’s coup was accepted without this economic context. Sukarno’s power sharing between the military and PKI flourished in the good times, but in the bad times the only thing preventing civil war was the charisma of Sukarno himself, and this was a cause of concern for every educated person in the country. This is why the Indonesian military was accepting the CIA’s assistance in the first place! It is not like they were happy with the CIA’s bungled 1958 invasion. Furthermore, Suharto had already independently developed the economic power moves that the author claims the army didn't know until the CIA taught them (the "civic action program" mentioned in the text on pages 89, 116 and 125), so he was likely using them mostly for their money. I recommend David Jenkins’ article “One Reasonably Capable Man: Soeharto’s Early Fundraising” which is freely available online for anyone who wants to understand how Suharto obtained power by internal means. If you understand the economic motivation for the coup, you can also understand the horrible, inhumane logic of the mass killings. The rightists had a common goal: to empower a centralized government given the problems that the weak, charismatic government of Sukarno had caused. There was a problem standing in the way: the mass popular movement of the PKI prepared to stand their ground against authoritarianism. The solution was to eliminate the PKI, and as we all learned from the film “The Act of Killing,” they had plenty of local paramilitary allies stupid and mean enough to do it. Even if the CIA pushed for this murder, they had a poor understanding of Indonesian history and culture (as evidenced in the book, they did not even know that prominent Army figures had been trained in America) and they could not have orchestrated it as well as Indonesia’s own military men did. The author presents no new evidence that the CIA was behind Suharto’s coup. He only suggests that such evidence might yet be secret. Claiming that "most Indonesians had no idea who Suharto was ... but the CIA did" he overstates the case that the USA knew who Suharto was. They knew he was an army general, but there is no evidence they ever talked to him personally. As memorably described in the book “The Sukarno File” (2006), on October 1, 1964, diplomats in Washington woke up, read the news, and frantically telegrammed their counterparts in Jakarta, asking “who the hell is Suharto?” This should have been mentioned in this book—it doesn’t even contradict the CIA plot thesis, necessarily—but it is omitted. It is important to understand how little-known Suharto was because the truth of the matter is he was not hand-picked by anyone to be Sukarno's replacement. Over the course of the Konfrontasi and the "civic action program," Suharto observed the situation silently and stayed below the radar of external and political forces even as his personal power grew. The CIA may have given Suharto some suggestions on how to propagandize to Indonesians as discussed at the end of chapter 6, but again, their understanding of the culture was poor and Suharto probably used their advice to his own ends. The film “The Dancer” (Sang Penari, 2011) available on Netflix gives a more accurate portrayal of the Sukarno years and their decline and end than this book. This book may still be a good read if you want to learn about the crimes and failures of the CIA. However, you’d probably have a better time reading Tim Weiner’s epochal book “Legacy of Ashes,” or Chomsky’s older “The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism,” because of the other flaw in this book, its egregious writing style. Here is an example: "A Dutchman named Henk Sneevliet, the local Comintern boss, had helped found Asia’s first Communist Party outside the former Russian Empire—the Indonesian Communist Party—and thought the Chinese party could learn from the success that Indonesian Communists had working with the Islamic Union mass movement. Mao’s job was to support the ‘bourgeois’ Nationalists, and play a secondary role in the construction of a capitalist nation. A loyal Communist, Mao obeyed. This did not work out so well for the Chinese Communists. In 1927, Chiang turned on them." The text is a series of little bumps, and when you read it, it’s like riding in a car down a bumpy road. Imagine a whole book written like this. It gets exhausting fast, and the text sometimes feels more like disjointed thoughts jotted down as a prelude to an actual manuscript. I can easily rewrite that entire paragraph as follows: "The Indonesian Communist Party, the oldest Communist Party in Asia, had found success in partnering with a mass movement called the Islamic Union, and its leadership believed that the Chinese would benefit from a similar partnership. Mao followed their guidance and partnered with the Chinese Nationalists. This alliance, however, ended in betrayal." Confusingly, this paragraph comes from page 18, but the Indonesian Communist Party is actually reintroduced on page 35 and it is only on page 35 that we learn about its history and its common acronym, PKI. Rearranging the text to offer a parallel between the 1927 massacre and the 1965 massacre would have been deeply enlightening. This is representative of the poor flow of the entire book. For example, the "civic action program" is also introduced twice, and both times given an acronym that is never used. Briefly, some other issues: the author has a terrible habit of introducing new topics in the final sentence of a paragraph, instead of the first sentence of the next paragraph, which creates additional little bumps. It feels like more of a distorted historical memoir by the author, making connections between his personal background living in two countries far from the thoughts of most Americans, but equally affected by bloody CIA-influenced right wing coups 60 years before. To conclude, this is far from the worst book written about Indonesia and you might get some useful knowledge from it. It is overall a good thing to bring 1965 to the awareness of Americans, and I wish I could have seen this book displayed prominently to idle browsers in physical storefronts (a sad thing that the coronavirus has taken from us), but there are better books and films out there on these subjects. I once saw a prewar film about white adventurers in Borneo which included ridiculous footage of the white heroes "teaching" the natives how to build a wooden raft, or rather, shouting some nonsense for the camera's sake while the Indonesians waited patiently to resume work. The CIA wanted their Washington superiors to believe that they were the white heroes in Indonesia, and Bevins falls for this narrative to an embarrassing extent. The CIA provided funding and training to the Indonesian military, but only after badly bungling their relationship with them and proving themselves distrustworthy. The CIA may have thought themselves clever by setting up classes to "teach" the Indonesian Army various Machiavellian ideas, but Indonesian generals had already come up with these ideas independently. This is not something worthy of being called a "method" and the chief agents behind 1964 and 1965 were Indonesian, not American.

"The Act of Killing," which author Vincent Bevins references in the introduction to this book, is far and away the best movie of the 2010s. As soon as I read Bevins' praise for it I was certain to finish the book. "The Jakarta Method" should be conceived as an introduction to the American strategy that won the Cold War in the Third World. The aftermath of World War II reproduced the aftermath of the Civil War -- the fascists lost the war itself, then won the peace except on the actual battlefields. I already knew most of what is in "The Jakarta Method." My next door neighbor is after all a veteran of the Guatemalan Army during the civil war there. I would encourage anyone who hasn't looked too deeply into the history of the Cold War to read it BEFORE reading other books. Most more extensive books about the Cold War in a single country or region, will back up what you read here. It is not really a flaw that the book (exclusive of appendices -- and this time I READ the appendices) is only 258 pages long. That makes it accessible, like the movie that inspired it. Outside Europe, it appears the United States feared social democrats as much as actual Communists. Their local partners would kill both interchangeably by the millions. (As I observed years ago in a review of a similar book for the now-defunct consumer website epinions, the CIA connived at the deaths of these millions of people so that the average American could remain fat, broke and unhappy.) America remembers Vietnam as the most traumatic event of the Cold War but sending in thousands of American soldiers and Marines was only necessary where America's local partners were utterly incompetent, as they were in South Vietnam. In other countries the elite and its captive militaries knew what they were doing. In several of them, the top military leader was loyal to the constitution rather than the elite, so he would be assassinated or sidelined and someone more radical would be picked. Such characters exist in every military, including that of the United States itself. The heart of "The Jakarta Method" is its interviews with survivors of the persecution of leftists in dozens of countries around the world, but especially Indonesia. People who already had a firm sense of their identities when it began tend to be in their eighties and nineties now. The last chapter, which catches up with these people in the new homes they have found -- mostly in social democratic Europe -- partially makes up for the fact the book has no index. Apart from this, its only real flaw is that Appendix Five uses an incoherent definition of "regular war" and misidentifies Myanmar as Thailand. Five stars.

If you are interested in history or politics, this book is a must read. It tells a story of events during the Cold War, that many American politicians and journalists either don’t know about or feel really uncomfortable talking about. It will likely change your mind on America being the „good guys“ and you will realize why many countries around the world are filled with resentment towards the USA. The USA is in the process of working up its history of Native American genocide, slavery and Jim Crow, but they yet to have to work up their most recent widely accepted crimes against humanity: the events described in this book.

A pleasure to read would be a wrong way to phrase it – this is, after all, a book of the plunders of imperialism that killed not only millions in the Third World, but left behind a vacuum of an alternative – socialist – project. But this is not just another book that presents the relentless ravages of the CIA. It is about how anti-communism was a project, and its almost unthinkable violence tells us how real and living the project of building a more just world was – where the former colonies of the world could stand up straight again. Bevins’ through his expansive interviews, clear writing, and impressive research weaves together stories that are lesser told. He takes us from Brazil to Indonesia, and draws a compelling parallel between the coups of 1964 and 1965 in those two countries, respectively. Perhaps one of the most silenced tragedies of the 20th century – the anti-communist massacres in Indonesia 55 years ago – resulted in a million killed in a few quick months. This was a strategy of CIA-back mass killing so successful that it became known as the ‘Jakarta Method’ – which gives the book its title. ‘Jakarta is coming’ would be written on the walls in Allende’s Chile, warning of more bloody coups to come on the continent. In the 1960s, the Third World had a vision and project of the future. In this book, you will find that those dreams, vision, and projects are not so farfetched or distant – in fact, they seem more necessary than ever. You will hear the stories of those lived to tell them, and that, despite the horrors and violence they faced, those dreams have remained alive somehow. Even better, this book is published on the birth date of Ho Chi Minh himself. Do yourself a favour and read this book!

It felt like it was written for an adolescent audience. The narrative was very broken up; the author inserted new characters and their personal anecdotes without telling you who they were. You need to have wikipedia ready while reading the book to look up the obscure people and events he references because he does not explain. The author also goes off on many different tangents in an attempt to create a web of stories that all fit together by the end of the book. The stories are interesting and most add support to his overall thesis, but it creates a very disjointed reading experience. I was expecting the book to be written at a higher level.

holiday paradise exposed as a rear guard action of the cold war, another fledgling democracy strangled at birth, if this is the real price to be paid for our liberty, status and material wealth. One must question it. Well written in a style that is easy to relate to. Many restaurants were founded by women in Bali this book explains why

Ao ler o livro me impressiono como a tática do anticomunismo continua sendo utilizada nos dias de hoje. No caso dos EUA não deixa de ser irônico/tragicômico que tenha sido usada e surtido efeito dentro do próprio país que destruiu a democracia em vários países do mundo.

This is a must read book for everyone who wants to understand the world since the Second World War. Turns out neoliberal capitalism has killed a lot more people than the communists.

It's a good book. Indonesia under Sukarno was a decent democracy, the country was politically neutral (didn't side neither with US nor Soviets). But for the political US elites this was not good enough (interesting to confirm Chomsky's statement that JFK was one of the worst and most aggressive among US post WW2 presidents) . They needed a client state at any cost. The cost was estimated between 500.000 and 1 million of dead people in only first few years of Suharto's military dictatorship. And the usual excuse was anticommunism even though many victims had nothing to do with the communists. The brutality of the methods of the forces (Suharto and his killers) that executed the military coup (supported by CIA) and later on led the country, was nicknamed Jakarta method. It became synonym for efficient killing of political opponents and reign of terror to achieve political victory. It looks to me like German Nazis were a role model, they were equally efficient. Or maybe it's just coincidence. But then the ancient Romans were not much different either. The US political and intelligence elites were so exited about the success of turning a big independent and strategically important country into a puppet state (it was by far the biggest US achievement in the cold war), that they decided to continue to use the Jakarta method in other countries especially in Central and South America. And often with similar success, like in Chile, for instance. The general recipe is actually very simple. You bribe the military of some country, you target the most corrupt and unscrupulous ones in that country, you train them in your camps and your special schools, you vine them, you dine them and you enrich them and you give them all kind of support and then in return they remove for you the government you don't like (against which you run already political propaganda in your media before the coup). If you succeed, your investment in the coup was peanuts compared to the value of the resources of the country you put under control. And then you praise a new leadership and that country's new political system as a new vibrant democracy open for business and free market. Or grabitisation as Michael Hudson calls it. I'm really surprised that such books are still available. Some people might get educated about real history. Not many though, unfortunately.

O livro é muito interessante e bem escrito. O autor apresenta uma rica pesquisa sobre os fatos, muitos os quais eu desconhecia. Eu gostei muito dessa leitura e recomendo este livro.

It's essential reading if you want to understand the cold war

Ótimo

Important read.

Incredible book - very personal stories add impact.

A very impressive and powerfully composed book, which shines a light on an under-discussed and disquieting feature of 20th century history: the organised mass-murders that were carried out by Western-backed governments from Southeast Asia to Africa and Latin America, to crush any and all left-aligned movements during the 'Cold' War. This is a morally serious and important corrective to a popular conception of the Cold War as a bloodless intrigue of envelopes passed under tables, denim jeans being smuggled into Central European cities till the war was eventually run by rock'n'roll music. As the book makes clear, these mass murder campaigns weren't carried out in defence of democracy, but to ruthlessly stifle it wherever its outcomes were inconvenient to the Western world's preferred outcomes. This is a well-researched, sensitively written, and troubling book that I think is re-starting some serious conversations.

As I write Russia is trying to crush Ukraine and the western world is reacting with horror. This book is a salutary reminder that the USA and it's western allies have been responsible for the deaths of millions and the brutal crushing of democracy in countries all over the world since 1945. We will never succeed in building a just world if we cling to the illusion of western sanctity.

America's paranoia was the cause of a slaughter of gigantic proportions. I never understood how Communists were bad but the fascist murderers of Latin America were somehow ok. Democracy? Only when it suited.

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). 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.

Super interesting and really well written and engaging. Just about every page peeled back some more of my ignorance, made me boggle at the scale and sweep of what occurred and made me sad for the then possible futures we lost. I have recommended this book to loads of people, unreservedly.

I read Bevins' fantastic expose over the course of two evenings and was left stunned on about dozen fronts; the subject matters is not light reading and the writing is fantastic, humane and highly lucid. I shall be gifting many copies.

Vincent Bevins' book is as exciting as a novel, written with the fluidity of a news article and the depth of a historical-political essay. The story told by Bevins, excellently documented, sheds light on a chapter of our history and perhaps suggests that our lives could have been different if important collective and popular initiatives had not been dramatically boycotted by the usual strong, greedy and cynical powers. The Jakarta Method is a touching story about the life of people who could be us. A must read for those who want to build their own awareness and the ability to understand even the small news events in their imperceptible complexity and strategic depth: at stake there is always the freedom to choose who to be and which side to be on. Pietro Fiocchi (Journalist, MA Political Sciences)

The narratives of survivors give the kind of detail that makes these events real. Bevins also ties together events around the world that I know, or thought I knew, into a new whole.

Devestating account of imperialism.

The story of how the name of a city become synonymous with a style of bloody, brutal repression of the left wing across the world. Essential reading for anyone with interests in modern geopolitics and the impressions that the US has left across the world. I started following the author on Twitter, as he was one of the few English-speaking journalists that wrote about Brazil. I soon realised that he was not just a useful source of info on random Brazilian topics, but an excellent journalist, who dives deep into this poorly-known topic.

Waited for the paperback but well worth all the great reviews and attention this has received over the last year

A very interesting book one must read at this time. It shows in detail that a democracy can be be as cruel and corrupt as one expects dictatorships to be. This book is particularly relevant today as increasingly non US enterprises/organisations are condemned at great speed.

This book was spectacular, going beyond my high expectations. I expected all that has been described by others- a macro look at a global story, one with the USA intimately involved. I wasn’t expecting the personal stories, bringing personalities and humour(!) to quite an unbelievable reframing of history. I learned an embarrassing amount...

This is a book everyone interested in geopolitics should read. It cuts like a hot knife through butter proving that "the free worlds" interest in defending democracy is just a fairytale.

Fascinating read. I could not put this book down. It was so interesting. I gained a lot of new knowledge from it.

An essential read for anyone, really informative and great for those who don’t have much insight on the Cold War’s affect on the global south.

I didn't actually get the book, so I sourced it from eBay instead. It's actually a good book

This is a very simple explanation of the history of Indonesia. It is naïve on so many levels.

反共の名の下に、アメリカの支援で虐殺などの非人道的な事が行われた。 それは、当然に非難されるべきであるし、容認すべきではない。 しかし、ソ連もまた非人道的な事を行っており、米国やその抑圧的な同盟国のみを非難をするのは、視点が偏っている。

This is a much needed antidote to the myth of American exceptionalism, and it' full of interesting details.. Books like this and those by Noam Chomsky can help Americans yo understand how to improve their country.

Excellent book that provided insight into a side of the cold war we never heard about.

The violence of the anti-communist global campaign co-ordinated by the CIA as the dominant force in global affairs of the last seventy years, is meticulously researched and peppered with personal stories of those who dreamed and suffered.