Word: sukarno
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...surface, Sukarno's belligerence looks very bad for Malaysia. Indonesia's army, largely Soviet-supplied, is the most powerful in the area, Malaysia's one of the weakest. But Malaysia does not stand alone. Britain and Australia are pledged by treaty to defend her and both have planes and troops on Malaysian soil. The United States has promised Britain its full support...
...Sukarno could, of course, enlist Chinese military support, and this is the greatest danger in the situation. But Chinese support would come with many strings attached. Sukarno wants to see the whole Malay Archipelago his domain. He hardly wants to become a puppet in his own land...
Indonesia seems doomed to military failure or, at best, a very limited guerrilla success. Meanwhile, by severing trade relations with Malaysia, Sukarno has invited economic failure. More than half of Indonesia's rubber, which supplies 50 per cent of the nation's foreign exchange income, was formerly processed at Singapore. Indonesian tin will have to be refined in Europe, instead of Penang. And Indonesia's refined oil products, over 60 per cent of which went to Malaya and Singapore in the first half of 1963, will have to find new markets. Indonesia will also forfeit $300 million in proposed American...
...cent. Foreign exchange holdings have declined 75 per cent since 1958. The Indonesian rupiah, which was devalued by 75 per cent in 1960, dropped in May of this year to four per cent of its pre-1960 figure. Rice, Indonesia's staple food, is expensive and scarce, Sukarno will probably have to import over 75 million dollars worth of rice this year, and he will have to sell enough exports...
...diplomacy has left him without markets for some 27 per cent of his exports. There seems little doubt which way be will turn. Having found a new set of enemies, he has no need of old ones. Sukarno, the virulent anti-colonialist, the man who fought the Dutch so bitterly for thirty years, will almost certainly seek his new markets in Holland...