Foundations of the American Century

by Inderjeet Parmar

  123. Sutton, “Confidential: Information Paper, Congress for Cultural Freedom,” September 1967; Report 002784 (FFA).

  124. Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe, 241.

  125. William Appleman Williams, Some Presidents, from Wilson to Nixon (New York: New York Review, 1972), 22.

  126. Ford Foundation, American Studies Abroad, April 1969; Report 004642; FFA.

  127. Letter, Elliott to Price, 13 February 1954; PA55–9, reel 0942 (FFA).

  128. Inderjeet Parmar, “Institutes of International Affairs: Their Roles in Foreign Policy-Making, Opinion Mobilization, and Unofficial Diplomacy,” in Diane Stone and Andrew Denham, eds., Think Tank Traditions (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 19–34; Parmar, “American Foundations and the Development of International Knowledge Networks,” Global Networks 2, no. 1 (2002): 13–30. See also Lewis Coser, Men of Ideas (New York: The Free Press, 1965).

  5. THE FORD FOUNDATION IN INDONESIA AND THE ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

  1. J. K. King, Southeast Asia in Perspective (New York: Macmillan, 1956); W. Henderson, ed., Southeast Asia: Problems of United States Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1963).

  2. Secretary of State Cordell Hull noted that “the successful defense of the United States, in a military sense, is dependent upon supplies of vital materials which we import in large quantities from this region of the world”; cited in Lawrence Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), 147.

  3. Memorandum EB34, 7 March 1941, CFR, War-Peace Studies.

  4. King, Southeast Asia in Perspective, 7. King, and the CFR study group that contributed to his book, funded by Carnegie, noted that Southeast Asia was “an interconnected strategic unit” whose “loss” would divide the air and sea routes from the Pacific to the Indian oceans.

  5. President Sukarno was a founder member of the Non-Aligned Movement and hosted the Bandung conference of 1955.

  6. Memorandum by Dyke Brown to Rowan Gaither, “Asian Studies Proposal of Stanford University,” 3 April 1951; reel 0402, grant 05100035; FFA.

  7. Survey of Asian Studies, prepared by the Ford Foundation, 1951; reel 0402, grant 05100035; FFA.

  8. The Korean War, which broke out in June 1950, was the trigger for the release by President Truman of NSC-68, written by Paul Nitze, among others, a few months earlier. NSC-68 called for a massive program of American rearmament and hailed the adoption of militarized containment and “rollback” of the Soviet Union. Secretary of State Dean Acheson noted that NSC-68 aimed to “bludgeon the mass mind of ‘top government’” to support rearmament and intervention; cited by Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 90. See also Jerry W. Sanders, Peddlers of Crisis (Boston: South End Press, 1983).

  9. Between them, Malaya and Indonesia supplied 90 percent of the world’s rubber and 55 percent of its tin, resources which were militarily valuable way beyond their value in dollars; King, Southeast Asia in Perspective, 9.

  10. The Communist Party Indonesia (PKI) had around three million members and another twelve million supporters through a range of youth, student, labor, and peasants’ organizations.

  11. David Ransom, “Ford Country: Building an Elite for Indonesia,” In S. Weissman, ed., The Trojan Horse (San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1974), 93–116.

  12. Ian Chalmers and V. R. Hadiz, eds., The Politics of Economic Development in Indonesia (London: Routledge, 1997), 18–19.

  13. J. Bresnan, Managing Indonesia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), ix, 301. Bresnan was Ford’s assistant representative in Indonesia (1961–1965), representative (1969–1973), and head of Ford’s Asia and Pacific office (1973–1981). As a result, he became very familiar with the economists who transformed Indonesia (and their Ford connections). Finally, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Henry Luce Foundation financed Bresnan’s research.

  14. Memorandum by John Bresnan (FF), “The Ford Foundation and Education in Indonesia,” (for internal circulation), August 6, 1970; 005509. More recently, Bresnan has justified Ford’s roles in Indonesia; Bresnan, At Home Abroad: A Memoir of the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, 1953–1973 (Jakarta: Equinox, 2006).

  15. George McTurnan Kahin, Southeast Asia: A Testament (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 1. Neither Kahin nor Bresnan ought to be seen as cynical self-servers or reactionaries but as authentic liberals operating in a particular structural context created, in part, by the Ford Foundation’s own “politicized” programs.

  16. Edward H. Berman, The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on U.S. Foreign Policy (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1983); Robert F. Arnove, ed., Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980); Inderjeet Parmar, “Engineering Consent: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Mobilisation of American Public Opinion, 1939–1945,” Review of International Studies 26, no. 1 (2000).

  17. Martin Bulmer, “Philanthropic Foundations and the Development of the Social Sciences in the Early Twentieth Century: A Reply to Donald Fisher,” Sociology 18 (1984): 572–579; Barry Karl and Stanley N. Katz, “Foundations and Ruling Class Elites,” Daedalus 116, no. 1 (1987): 1–40; Barry Karl, “Philanthropy and the Maintenance of Democratic Elites,” Minerva 35 (1997): 207–220; and H. Anheier and S. Daly, “Philanthropic Foundations: A New Global Force?” in Global Civil Society 2004–05, ed. Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mary Kaldor (London: Sage, 2005).

  18. Peter D. Bell, “The Ford Foundation as a Transnational Actor,” International Organization 25, no. 3 (1971): 117. Such analyses implicitly accept the “modernization” thesis, with or without reservations that do not fundamentally challenge that paradigm’s assumption that the way to build a modern economy and eradicate poverty and “underdevelopment” in the Third World is to transfer Western capital, as well as modes of thought, organization, and technologies that, in the hands of “modernizing elites” would transform societies; Richard Magat, The Ford Foundation at Work (New York: Plenum Press, 1979); Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 2003); Bresnan, in a memoir, notes he was “intellectually committed to social modernization by way of economic development” when he arrived at the Ford Foundation’s filed office in Jakarta in 1961; Bresnan, At Home Abroad, 2007.

  19. As Truman’s assistant secretary for Far Eastern affairs, and just prior to taking up the presidency of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1952, Rusk encouraged American institutions to “open… [their] training facilities for increasing numbers of our friends from across the Pacific”; cited in Parmar, “American foundations and the development of international knowledge networks,” Global Networks 2, no. 1 (January 2002): 18.

  20. William Greenleaf, The Ford Foundation: The Formative Years (unpublished internal report, 1958), chapter 2, 43; report 013606; FF archives.

  21. Point Four was a U.S. foreign aid project aimed at providing technological skills, knowledge, and equipment to poor nations throughout the world. The program also encouraged the flow of private investment capital to these nations. The project received its name from the fourth point of a program set forth in President Truman’s 1949 inaugural address. From 1950 until 1953, Point Four aid was administered by the Technical Cooperation Administration, a separate unit within the Dept. of State. During the administration of President Eisenhower, it was integrated into the overall foreign aid program.

  22. It is clear from the records that Ford wanted it to appear that the need for a survey had arisen spontaneously from Stanford’s own scholars rather than from Ford itself; see Memorandum, Dyke Brown (FF) to Rowan Gaither (FF), “Conference with Carl Spaeth” (Stanford), 21 February 1951; reel No. 0402, grant 05100035, Leland Stanford Junior University, “Survey of Asian Studies”; FF archives.

  23. Letter, H. Rowan Gaither Jr., Associate Director (Ford Foundation), to J. E. Sterling (President, Stanford University), 27 April 1951; reel 0402, grant 05100035, Leland Stanford Junior Un
iversity, “Survey of Asian Studies”; FF archives.

  24. Ford argued that “if the personnel bottleneck in the United States is to be smashed, incentives must be provided to attract the most promising scholars into the field,” a perfect illustration of Laski’s structural explanation of foundations’ influence; A Survey of Asian Studies, 16. The Asian Studies networks envisaged would be composed of “centers in selected underdeveloped countries with corresponding ‘cousin’ establishments in the United States”; A Survey of Asian Studies, 25.

  25. Memorandum, Dyke Brown to Rowan Gaither, “Asian Studies Proposal of Stanford University”, 3 April 1951; reel 0402, grant 05100035.

  26. Letter, Spaeth to Gaither, 30 March 1951; reel 0402, grant 05100035; FF archives.

  27. Memorandum, Dyke Brown to Rowan Gaither, “Asian Studies Proposal of Stanford University,” 3 April 1951.

  28. Ford Foundation Directives for the 1960s. Supporting Materials Volumes I and II. Program Evaluations, 1951–1961; December 1961; report 011193; FF archives.

  29. Ford Foundation, “ITR Program Grants. Summary Sheet, Calendar Years 1951 Through 1966,” in Section 3, ITR Finding Aid/Notebook; FF archives.

  30. William Greenleaf, The Ford Foundation, chapter 6, 28–29.

  31. Appendix, “South and Southeast Asia,” to Report of the Trustees Ad Hoc Committee on the Overseas Development Program, March 28/29 1963; ITR box 035769; FF archives.

  32. Minutes, Trustee and Executive Committee meetings, December 12–13–14, 1957; ITR box 035805; FF archives.

  33. International Training and Research, Reports 1956; ITR box 035805; FF archives.

  34. International Training and Research, Foreign Area Studies, Docket Excerpt, March 14–15, 1966; PA61–47, reel 1887.

  35. A Survey of Asian Studies, 26–29.

  36. The “Techniques of Soviet Indoctrination and Control” project encompassed a broad, global Cold War strategy, including countries such as Japan, Italy, Iran, and India.

  37. Kahin the was author of a well-received study, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1952), and a New Deal liberal. To Ford, their plans would be more successful if they used people experts like Kahin to win Indonesians’ “confidence” and generate the basis of Indonesian applications for Ford grants; Meeting Notes by Dyke Brown (FF) for John Howard (FF), June 4, 1952; FF International Training and Research, box 036139: Indonesia—General Correspondence, 1952. The U.S. ambassador in Jakarta, Cochran, suspected that Kahin was (too) close to the (pro-Western and generally anti-Sukarno) Socialist Party of Indonesia; letter, Samuel P. Hayes Jr., Head of ECA Mission, Jakarta, to Carl Spaeth (FF), May 21, 1952; ITR box 036139: Indonesia—General Correspondence, 1952. Cochran, Kahin thought, had been the main reason that the State Department temporarily withheld his passport; letter, PF Langer to Cleon Swayzee, April 15, 1953; reel 0408; PA54–6. In the same letter, Langer confirmed that Kahin, although politically “left of center… is certainly neither Communist nor pro-Communist.”

  38. “Copy and Excerpt: Journal of Cleon O. Swayzee: Response to Howard’s cable of March 9 195 [final digit missing from copy, but most likely 1952]; reel 0408; PA54–6.

  39. Kermit Roosevelt, a senior officer in the CIA’s Middle Eastern division, had “expressed strong approval” of the Indonesian project. This was May 1953. By the summer of 1953, Roosevelt was directing the CIA’s successful coup that ousted the democratically elected Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh. In his own account of the matter, Roosevelt claimed that the coup was to prevent a communist takeover; Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979); Excerpt from Memorandum dated 26 May 1953 from Cleon Swayzee to Carl B. Spaeth, “Conversation with Mr. Kermit Roosevelt on the Langer Proposals”; reel 0408; grant PA54–6.

  40. FF Inter-Office Memorandum, Clarence E. Thurber to Central Files, “Telephone Conversation with George Kahin, Concerning Country Study on Indonesia,” August 31, 1954; reel 0408; PA54–6. Emphasis added.

  41. Memorandum by Kahin to C. O. Swayzee, BOTR, Ford Foundation: “Contemporary Indonesia Project: A Study of Indonesian Government and Politics,” attached to a letter, Kahin to Swayzee, June 6, 1953; reel 0408; PA54–6.

  42. Kahin, Southeast Asia, 141. This suggests that Kahin’s original objection was tactical and not principled; indeed, he suggested a study that would subject Indonesia to far wider and deeper American surveillance than had originally been proposed.

  43. Board on Training and Research Docket, “Coordinated Country Studies on Soviet Techniques of Indoctrination and Control,” 5 May 1953; reel 0404, grant 54–6.

  44. Kahin Memorandum, 1–2.

  45. Ibid., 2.

  46. Ibid., 5.

  47. Ibid., 6.

  48. George McT. Kahin, “Cornell Modern Indonesia Project: Report for the Period July 1, 1954—September 30, 1955,” 4; submitted October 30, 1955; reel 0408; PA54–6 [hereafter MIP Report].

  49. Ibid., 6–7.

  50. At the national level, CMIP had obtained the support of President Sukarno and leading government ministers; ibid., 2.

  51. Ibid., 13.

  52. Ibid., 16.

  53. Ibid., 17.

  54. Internal Ford Memorandum by A. Doak Barnett to Thurber, Howard, and Everton, “Barnett-Everton Trip to Cornell, March 8–9,” March 10, 1960; reel 0408; PA54–6.

  55. Letter, Kahin to Clarence Thurber (Ford Foundation), December 31, 1957; reel 0408; PA54–6.

  56. Letter, Kahin to Clancy Thurber, February 9, 1962; reel 0408; PA54–6.

  57. Letter, Kahin to John Everton, March 14, 1961; reel 0408; PA54–6.

  58. Letter, Elmer Starch (FF) to Kahin, 10 September 1954; reel 0408; PA54–6.

  59. Letter, Paul F. Langer to Cleon O. Swayzee, July 13, 1953.

  60. Memorandum, “Excerpt from Draft Minutes of Meeting of May 5, 1953,” in which the “sensitivity” and “danger” of studying communism in Indonesia was noted several times, as was the necessity of never publicly using the actual title of the project, “Soviet Techniques of Indoctrination and Control”; reel 0408; PA54–6. For CIA and State Department consultations and the quotation on U.S. vital interests, see Memorandum by Paul F. Langer to Philip E. Mosley, Carl Spaeth, and Cleon O. Swayzee, “Implementation of the Proposed Coordinated Country Studies”; reel 0408; PA54–6.

  61. Letter, Langer to Swayzee, 13 July 1953; in reel 0408; PA54–6.

  62. Ibid.

  63. Frank L. Kidner, executive officer of the project “A Proposal to the Ford Foundation for a Grant-in-Aid Covering Teaching and Research in Economics and Related Fields in Social Sciences Between the University of California and the University of Indonesia,” March 25, 1958; reel 0679; PA58–309.

  64. Docket Excerpt, Board of Trustees Meeting, “University of California, Development of Training and Research in Indonesia,” March 21–22 1958; reel 0679; PA58–309.

  65. Docket Excerpt, Board of Trustees Meeting, March 21–22, 1958.

  66. David Ransom, “The Berkeley Mafia and the Indonesia Massacre,” Ramparts (October 1970): 37–42.

  67. Press Release, University of California, Office of Public Information, July 10, 1956.

  68. “Application to the Ford Foundation for a grant for financing research and training services and assistance by the University of California to the University of Indonesia in economics and related fields,” 30 April 1956; reel 0695; PA56–190.

  69. Program Letter no. 3; Country: Indonesia; by John Howard, 22 December 1954; Report 006574.

  70. “Application to the Ford Foundation… ,” 2–3; reel 0695; PA56–190.

  71. Letter, Clark Kerr (Berkeley Chancellor) to John Howard (FF), May 18, 1956; reel 0695; PA56–190.

  72. Annual Report, 1959–1960, University of California—University of Indonesia Economics Project, 4–5; reel 0679; PA58–309.

  73. Ralph Anspach, “Monetary Aspects of Indonesia’s Economic Reorganization in 1959,” Ekonomi Dan Keuangan Indonesia (February 1960); Bruce Glassburner, “
Problems of Economic Policy in Indonesia, 1950–57”, available in multilith; Annual Report, 1959–1960; reel 0679; PA58–309.

  74. Ford Foundation, Annual Report, 1959–1960 (New York: Ford Foundation), 5–6.

  75. Ford Foundation, “Indonesia: Program Report,” 1958; 7; 003236.

  76. Ford Foundation, Annual Report, 1959–1960, 6–7.

  77. Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, “Recollections of My Career,” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 22, no. 3 (December 1986): 29.

  78. Richard W. Dye (Ford Foundation), The Jakarta Faculty of Economics, January 1965, 5; 000374.

  79. “Ford Foundation Supported Activities in Indonesia: Status Report,” December 1961, part 1; i–ii; 011174.

  80. “Ford Foundation Supported Activities… ,” December 1961, part 1; ii, 2; 011174.

  81. Ibid., December 1961, part 1; ii, 5; part 2, p.3.

  82. Bresnan, At Home Abroad, 107.

  83. “Ford Foundation Supported Activities… ,” December 1961, part 2; 2.

  84. Thee Kian Wie, “In Memoriam: Professor Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, 1917–2001,” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 37, no. 2 (2001): 176. There was a “flying lecturers” program that reached universities throughout Indonesia.

  85. “Ford Foundation Supported Activities… ,” December 1961, part 2; 1–2.

  86. Ibid., 3.

  87. The Ford Foundation in Indonesia: Ford Foundation Staff Comments on Ramparts Article, October 1970; 2; 012243.

  88. Excerpts from Ramparts/Comments on Ramparts Excerpts (By F. Miller); attached to 012243.

  89. Attachment 1, Excerpts from Ramparts… ,4; 012243.

  90. R. Robison, Indonesia (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1986), 110–111; emphasis added.

  91. Excerpts from Ramparts…; 012243.

  92. C. B. Mahon, “Comments on Indonesia,” 1952, 8; 006326.

  93. Edwin G. Arnold and Dyke Brown, “Burma and Indonesia,” September 21, 1952, p. 1, 43; 003367.