Indonesia's strategic location in the western Pacific and its heft as the world's fifth most populous nation have made the U.S. especially patient in dealing with the exasperating President Sukarno. But as he and the Indonesian Communist Party (P.K.I.) have grown increasingly violent in recent months, U.S. patience has worn thin. Last week President Johnson dispatched Veteran Diplomat Ellsworth Bunker, 70, to Djakarta to see what is left to save in Indonesian-American relations.
Very little, obviously. The U.S. has closed down its $50 million average annual aid program to Indonesia as well as its five USIS libraries, which had been repeatedly pillaged by Indonesian mobs. Though U.S. Ambassador Howard Jones and his staff are still in Djakarta, even the envoy's residence has been raided. The only other official U.S. presence is a handful of Peace Corpsmen, largely gym instructors. Sukarno has already taken over nominal management—first step toward probable confiscation—of American rubber interests, as well as the Stanvac and Caltex oil companies.
Just who began it all is not yet clear. Sukarno started an anti-American drive last summer as part of the campaign against Malaysia. Then the P.K.I, got into the act. Soon it had taken over. The P.K.I, has forced Sukarno to ban pro-Sukarno but anti-Communist newspapers, is now pressuring him to ban a nationalist Moslem student group. So obstreperous have the Communists become that for the first time there are signs of opposition; in East Java, 300 have died in clashes between Communists and Moslems.
Last week Communist unions refused to let a Pan Am plane billet overnight at Djakarta, held up telegrams and mail to U.S. newsmen and embassy officials, and urged Indonesian servants in American households to quit their jobs. Whether Sukarno could or could not restrain them, the P.K.I, extremists, carrying coffins through the streets as they chanted about "our enemies the Americans," seemed determined to get every last U.S. citizen out of Indonesia.