The Roots of Reformasi in Indonesia

            
            
            
             Indonesia, from Acheh to Irian Jaya, is equivalent in distance from London to Moscow. It has a population of more than 200 million, which is nearly twice the population of Japan. Its archipelago layout, rather than making communications more difficult, makes it more easier to link together, with sealanes, the economic wealth of the nation, into a single economic unit. Due to centuries of Dutch colonialism, the country, and people, were left backwards. After the independence war against the Dutch, led by Sukarno, the idea of using the military to administer and develop the vast nation was formulated. The nation was divided into military regions, and the Indonesia military ( Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia - ABRI ) was not only to administer these regions, but to start-up and run development projects as well. Sukarno was one of the leaders of the Bandung Conference in the mid fifties that brought together newly-independent Third World nations for the first time, in order to reject the Cold War, started by Churchill after World War II.
             In the mid-fifties, when the Soviets developed a nuclear capability, the Pugwash Doctrine was formulated by Bertrand Russell, to make axiomatic, the assumption of 'mutually-assured destruction'. Based on this assumption, the industrialised nations were to shift towards a 'post-industrial society', supposedly to reduce the hazards of war, but specifically to stop the flow of technology to the Third World, in order to prevent any economic development. The capitalist and communist blocks were then to compete politically by fighting proxy wars in the Third World. For the Third World, a combination of a cut-off of technological assistance and proxy wars, resulted in genocide, which was the overall aim of the ultra-racist Bertrand Russell, and the British oligarchy which he served. .
             In the place of advanced technology such as nuclear power, environmentalism was foistered on, not only the Third World, but the industrialised world as well.