The New Leader of Indonesia

Two days before the election that propelled him into the presidency of the world's fourth-most-populous nation, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono traveled to the campus of the Bogor Agricultural University for a very serious meeting. Leaving a group of aides waiting outside, the 55-year-old former four-star general strode into one of the institute's classrooms, a laptop tucked under one arm, to face six university professors. For the next three hours, he parried questions about his recently completed Ph.D. thesis: Agrarian and Rural Development as a Strategy to Eradicate Poverty and Unemployment . "We thought it was just going to be a few token questions,"...