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In their heavy-footed but shrewd way, the Dutch had rushed in. The other nations were able (or thought they were able) to postpone the issue; but to the Dutch, some kind of close relationship with an orderly, non-Communist Indonesia was a matter of economic life or death. They had found themselves urgently faced with the same situation which in the long run will inescapably present itself to the whole Western world.
With Asia against it, the West might some day be as helpless as the white sea monkey on the beach at Jogjakarta.