Description:

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, AND GQ“A radical new history of the United States abroad” (Wall Street Journal) which uncovers U.S. complicity in the mass-killings of left-wing activists in Indonesia, Latin America and around the world In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful. In this bold and comprehensive new history, Vincent Bevins builds on his incisive reporting for the Washington Post, using recently declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony collected across twelve countries to reveal a shocking legacy that spans the globe. For decades, it's been believed that parts of the developing world passed peacefully into the U.S.-led capitalist system. The Jakarta Method demonstrates that the brutal extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of Washington's final triumph in the Cold War.

Review

Vincent Bevins's The Jakarta Method is a sweeping, meticulously researched account of how Washington's anticommunist crusade shaped the modern world through a series of mass murder programs spanning at least twenty-two countries. At the center of this history stands Indonesia's 1965-66 massacre—the extermination of between half a million and one million people affiliated with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), then the world's third-largest communist party—which became so influential as a model of state terror that the capital city's name became a codeword for anticommunist extermination across Latin America.

Bevins structures his narrative around a web of interconnected personal stories: Francisca, a multilingual librarian and translator whose husband Zain worked at the communist newspaper Harian Rakyat; Sakono, a young Marxist schoolteacher in Central Java; Magdalena, a teenage factory worker barely aware of the politics swirling around her; Benny Widyono, an Indonesian economist of Chinese descent who watched Indonesian generals being groomed at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas; and Carmen Hertz, a Chilean lawyer who received a postcard reading "Jakarta is coming" before Pinochet's coup. Through these lives, the Cold War becomes not an abstraction but a series of concrete betrayals and catastrophes inflicted on people who believed they were building a better world.

The book's great achievement is its global scope. Bevins traces a clear arc from the CIA's first covert successes in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), through the failed bombing of Indonesia (1958), to the US-backed coup in Brazil (1964), and finally to the Indonesian massacre itself—revealing how each operation informed the next. He demonstrates that Washington's approach evolved from clumsy direct intervention under Frank Wisner's CIA to the more sophisticated strategy of cultivating anticommunist military elites, training them at Fort Leavenworth, and letting them seize power with US support operating in the background. The Brazilian and Indonesian models then radiated outward: Brazil helped install dictatorships across South America, while "Jakarta" became the explicit name for extermination plans in Chile, Brazil, and Argentina under Operation Condor.

Bevins is particularly effective in demolishing the comfortable myth that the massacres were spontaneous eruptions of tribal violence. He shows through declassified cables and survivor testimony that the killings in Indonesia were a coordinated military operation—"Operation Annihilation"—in which the US embassy supplied kill lists, communications equipment, and propaganda support, while Western media outlets broadcast Indonesian military talking points that helped demonize the PKI. The propaganda campaign that General Suharto used to justify the killings—fabricating stories of communist women torturing and sexually mutilating captured generals—bears striking resemblance to Brazil's foundational anticommunist myth of the 1935 Intentona Comunista, a connection Bevins explores without overstating the evidence for direct transmission.

The book's most haunting passages describe what the violence did to ordinary people. Magdalena, arrested at seventeen for her membership in a communist-affiliated textile union, was raped by police officers who considered her subhuman because of the Gerwani propaganda. Sakono watched his friends taken away in the night, never to return, and spent years in concentration camps. Francisca emerged from prison to find her husband had been tortured and disappeared, her house smeared with graffiti, and her eldest daughter forced to publicly chant against Sukarno. These accounts are rendered with restraint but devastating clarity.

Where the book is most intellectually provocative is in its final chapters, where Bevins asks what world the anticommunist crusade actually built. He argues that the dictatorships installed across the Global South did not produce the dynamic capitalist development promised by Modernization Theory, but rather "crony capitalism"—corrupt, extractive systems that kept former colonial nations in structural subservience to the wealthy world. The gap between the First and Third World, which the Bandung movement of 1955 sought to close, remains nearly as vast today. And the violence had a corrosive effect on the global left itself: movements that survived concluded that armed resistance and jealous guarding of power were necessary for survival, producing exactly the authoritarian tendencies that the West then cited to justify further intervention.

The writing is clear and propulsive, managing the extraordinary feat of making a twelve-country, multi-decade narrative feel coherent and personal. If there is a weakness, it is that the later chapters covering Operation Condor and Central America, while essential to the argument, move at a pace that cannot match the depth achieved in the Indonesian and Brazilian sections. But this is a minor flaw in a work of tremendous ambition and moral seriousness. The Jakarta Method is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the world we inhabit was forged—not through the triumph of freedom over tyranny, but through the systematic destruction of people who believed, sometimes naively, that democracy and justice could coexist.

Reviewed 2026-03-28

Notable Quotes

What happened in Brazil in 1964 and Indonesia in 1965 may have been the most important victories of the Cold War for the side that ultimately won—that is, the United States and the global economic system now in operation.

Introduction, framing the central thesis of the book — Cold War, US foreign policy, global order

I fear that the truth of what happened contradicts so forcefully our idea of what the Cold War was, of what it means to be an American, or how globalization has taken place, that it has simply been easier to ignore it.

Bevins explaining why the Indonesian massacre has been forgotten despite its world-historical significance — collective memory, American identity, historical erasure

In history, every religion has greatly honored those members who destroyed the enemy. The Koran, Greek mythology, the Old Testament. Groton boys were taught that. Doing in the enemy is the right thing to do. Of course, there are some restraints on ends and means... But there are no limits to what you can do to a Persian. He's a Barbarian.

Paul Nitze describing the upper-class imperial values instilled at the Groton School, which produced many early CIA officers — imperialism, CIA culture, elite ideology, dehumanization

We are gathered here today as a result of sacrifices. Sacrifices made by our forefathers and by the people of our own and younger generations. For me, this hall is filled not only by the leaders of the nations of Asia and Africa; it also contains within its walls the undying, the indomitable, the invincible spirit of those who went before us.

Sukarno's opening speech at the 1955 Bandung Conference, the founding moment of the Third World movement — Third World movement, anticolonialism, Bandung Conference

Colonialism has also its modern dress, in the form of economic control, intellectual control, actual physical control by a small but alien community within a nation. It is a skillful and determined enemy, and it appears in many guises. It does not give up its loot easily.

Sukarno at Bandung, defining neocolonialism for the assembled leaders of Asia and Africa — neocolonialism, imperialism, Third World solidarity

Washington policymakers had not been privy to all the facts nor really grasped the inwardness of the situation, but had proceeded on the assumption that Communism was the main issue. This was the all too common weakness of Americans—to view conflict in black and white terms, a heritage, no doubt, from our Puritan ancestors.

Ambassador Howard Jones reflecting on the disastrous 1958 CIA operation to break up Indonesia — US foreign policy failure, anticommunist ideology, cultural blindness

I think one of our important jobs is to strengthen the spine of the military. To make it clear, discreetly, that we are not necessarily hostile to any kind of military action whatsoever if it's clear that the military action is—Against the left.

Ambassador Lincoln Gordon and President Kennedy on tape, discussing preparations for a coup against Brazilian President Goulart in 1962 — US intervention in Brazil, Kennedy administration, military coups

From our viewpoint, of course, an unsuccessful coup attempt by the PKI might be the most effective development to start a reversal of political trends in Indonesia.

Ambassador Howard Jones himself acknowledged the strategic value of a 'premature PKI coup' at a State Department meeting — provocation strategy, CIA operations, Indonesia

Spread the story of PKI's guilt, treachery and brutality (this priority effort is perhaps most needed immediate assistance we can give army if we can find way to do it without identifying it as solely or largely US effort).

Ambassador Marshall Green's cable to the State Department on October 5, 1965, laying out US strategy after the September 30th Movement — propaganda warfare, US complicity, Indonesian massacre

It really was a big help to the army. I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad.

Robert Martens, the US embassy political officer who compiled kill lists of communists and handed them to the Indonesian military — kill lists, US complicity, moral indifference

After asking them quietly to give way, and firing into air, para-comandos were 'forced by their intransigence to terminate breathing of these nine GERWANI witches.'

A US embassy cable reporting casually on the murder of nine women from the Indonesian Women's Movement by paracommandos — dehumanization of women, state violence, diplomatic complicity

No one cared, as long as they were Communists, that they were being butchered.

Howard Federspiel of the State Department, summarizing the Western response to the Indonesian massacres — moral indifference, dehumanization, Cold War priorities

Almost overnight the Indonesian government went from being a fierce voice for cold war neutrality and anti-imperialism to a quiet, compliant partner of the US world order.

Historian John Roosa's summary of the consequences of the 1965-66 massacres — regime change, Cold War victory, suppression of independence

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.

Henry Kissinger on Chile's election of Salvador Allende, approving hundreds of thousands in CIA funding to prevent it — US arrogance, Chile, contempt for democracy

Jakarta is Coming.

Graffiti appearing across Santiago in the early 1970s, a mass death threat against the Chilean left invoking the Indonesian massacre — Jakarta method, state terror, Chile, anticommunist violence

If we just put the Jakarta plan into place, kill ten or twenty thousand, then that's it. Then that's all the resistance and we win.

A Chilean naval officer discussing Plan Yakarta, overheard by constitucionalista sailor Pedro Blaset — extermination planning, Chile, Jakarta method

You're all indoctrinated! And it's because of this indoctrination that we're going to put into effect Operation Jakarta, and neutralize two thousand communists right here in São Paulo.

Brazilian General D'Avila Mello losing his temper during a press interview and revealing the existence of Operação Jacarta — Brazil, Jakarta method, state terror, extermination plans

Surely, this will be my last opportunity to speak to you. The Air Force is now already bombing the antennas... I will pay with my life for my loyalty to the people. And I tell you all that I am certain that the seed we have planted in the conscience in thousands and thousands of Chileans cannot be held back forever.

Salvador Allende's final radio address as the Chilean Air Force bombed the presidential palace on September 11, 1973 — democratic socialism, Chile coup, martyrdom, resistance

The guerrilla is the fish. The people are the sea. If you cannot catch the fish, you have to drain the sea.

Guatemalan dictator Ríos Montt explaining his genocidal strategy against the indigenous Mayan population — genocide, Guatemala, counterinsurgency, state terror

The United States won. Here in Indonesia, you got what you wanted, and around the world, you got what you wanted. The Cold War was a conflict between socialism and capitalism, and capitalism won.

Winarso, head of a survivors' organization in Solo, Indonesia, answering the author's question about who won the Cold War — Cold War victory, global capitalism, survivors' perspective

You killed us.

Winarso's answer to the author asking how the United States won the Cold War — anticommunist violence, moral reckoning, US responsibility

I guess it's funny—well, maybe 'funny' isn't the word—but we know who is responsible for the violence that destroyed this place. We know it was the United States that was behind it. But we keep sending our kids there, because they have nowhere else to go.

Antonio Caba Caba of Ilom, Guatemala, where the military massacred most of the village's men, now sending youth to the US for work — migration, Guatemala, historical irony, US responsibility

For the first time in my life, I became aware that I didn't actually come from an uncultured or backwards people, and the other peoples of Africa and Asia weren't backwards either. I had always been told, and even thought, that we were very stupid Indonesians who didn't know what we were doing, trying to build a country without any education or resources.

Francisca describing her experience at the 1963 Games of the New Emerging Forces in Jakarta — Third World solidarity, decolonization, cultural awakening

That's usually enough. Men take advantage of weakness in other men. They're just like countries in that way. The strong man takes the weak man's land. He makes the weak man work in his fields. If the weak man's woman is pretty, the strong man will take her.

Lolo Soetoro, Barack Obama's Indonesian stepfather, explaining to the young boy why a man was killed — power, imperialism, violence, Indonesia under Suharto

In an historical sense—and especially as seen from the South—the Cold War was a continuation of colonialism through slightly different means.

Historian Odd Arne Westad's formulation, which Bevins invokes to reframe the Cold War as a global process of decolonization violently shaped by superpower intervention — Cold War reinterpretation, colonialism, global South perspective