Word: sukarno
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Indonesia's President Sukarno has threatened the new Federation of Malaysia, insulted Britain and brought his own country very close to disaster. Both Indonesia and the Philippines refuse to recognize Malaysia, questioning the United Nations survey which found that the inhabitants of Sarawak and Sabah favored federation...
...this objection is purely technical. Sukarno has repeatedly called Malaysia a "neocolonialist" attempt to maintain British influence in the area. Behind that charge lies his ambitions for territorial aggrandizement and a desire to give circuses instead of bread to the Indonesian people; to take their minds off hunger, unemployment and a crumbling economy...
...Philippines' objection stems from its claim to Sabah. However, this claim is both tenuous and obscure, and the Philippines have showed no aggressive tendencies. Indonesia has been less reticent. President Sukarno has promised to crush Malaysia and has sent combat troops to the borders of Sarawak and Sabah...
...Singapore. Diplomatically, the Tunku got tough. He severed relations with Indonesia and with the Philippine government, which sponsored some anti-Malaysia demonstrations of its own-in support of tenuous Filipino claims to North Borneo. Then Abdul Rahman alerted the Malayan army reserve against the possibility that Sukarno might try to infiltrate Sarawak and North Borneo with guerrilla troops...
Indonesia's mob diplomacy served Sukarno well. In heating up a new crisis over Malaysia, he has created an issue to take the minds of his underfed, underemployed people off Indonesia's slide toward economic ruin and once again raised the specter of a bloody, interminable guerrilla war in the steaming thickets of Borneo. For the new nation of Malaysia, it was an ominous, inauspicious start...