CONEFO

But there is one part of this story that has not been told. At the time of the coup, Sukarno and his allies in Beijing were planning a project that was even more ambitious than the Bandung Conference.

CONEFO, the Conference of the New Emerging Forces, was an attempt to institutionalize the world revolution, unrivaled since the days of the Communist International. With its inaugural session planned for Jakarta in August 1966, the founders of CONEFO intended it to serve as an alternative to the United Nations.

Yet since the ouster of Sukarno, both academic and popular histories have almost entirely neglected CONEFO. At best, it receives passing mention as one of Sukarno’s “spurious” ideas. At worst, it is totally absent.

The project was one of Sukarno’s guiding foreign policy prerogatives in the final years of his rule. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) gave its backing — Indonesia was then part of the “Beijing–Jakarta axis” — and CONEFO quickly generated interest from potential member nations.

This plan deeply worried US and Western state planners. The violent crushing of CONEFO, amid one of the worst political genocides of the twentieth century, had far-reaching consequences. It shifted the balance of power in the Cold War from East to West, amplified the Sino-Soviet split, and truncated the possibilities of emerging revolutionary movements.

An International NASKOM

Understanding CONEFO requires a brief tracing of the geopolitical situation in Southeast Asia at the time. From 1963 to 1965, as the Sino-Soviet split ravaged global Communist solidarities, Indonesia transitioned into Beijing’s closest ally. Indonesia boasted the largest nonruling Communist Party in the world, the PKI. Led by D. N. Aidit, the PKI provided a mass base of support for Sukarno. It also served as a robust facilitator of Soviet economic aid and Chinese diplomatic support for the country.

In 1963, after years of sabotage and attacks from Western powers, Sukarno embarked on a policy of Konfrontasi, or military confrontation, with the newly created, British-backed state of Malaysia. Sukarno viewed Malaysia as a foreign imposition, like Israel in the Arab world. “‘Malaysia’ is not an Asian nation!” he proclaimed, “‘Malaysia” is a nation made up by England in Asian territory.”

As border tensions escalated, the final straw came when the UN Security Council granted Malaysia a nonpermanent seat in early 1965. Sukarno protested by removing Indonesia from the United Nations.

With Indonesia’s exit, the UN now excluded nearly one-third of the world’s population. Taiwan still held the Chinese seat at the expense of the PRC, and Indonesia joined other nonmember states like North Korea and North Vietnam as well as stateless nations such as the Palestinians.

Sukarno derided the UN as a tool of the “Oldefo” — the Old Established Forces. In response, he proposed CONEFO as the “Conference of the New Emerging Forces.”

As a central feature of Indonesian foreign policy, Sukarno and the PKI promoted CONEFO across the Global South, to Communist bloc countries, and to anti-imperialist forces in the First World. They presented CONEFO as an “international NASAKOM,” in reference to another of Sukarno’s neologisms, a balancing act combining nationalist, religious, and communist forces inside Indonesia — a kind of united front at the geopolitical level.

Beijing–Jakarta Axis

In May 1965, Sukarno embraced PKI leader Aidit at a mass rally in Jakarta and shared his CONEFO vision with the crowd: “I now call upon the entire Indonesian people to help in building this, so that in the coming year, brothers and sisters, truly in Indonesia, in Jakarta, we can have the Conference of New Emerging Forces.”

In June, the secretary general of Sukarno’s Indonesian National Party (PNI), Surachman, outlined CONEFO’s ultimate aims: “Concerning the Conefo proposal of Bung Karno, its success will mean the collapse of the United Nations, and the formation of a new United Nations cleansed of imperialism and its puppets.” Surachman repeated these claims at the thirty-eighth anniversary of the PNI in August, predicting that CONEFO would be the “downfall of the United Nations.”

The PKI promoted CONEFO across the Communist world. Aidit delivered a passionate speech exalting CONEFO in Romania, depicting it as a project in “full accord with the Leninist view.” According to the Communist leader, CONEFO would bring together all the “socialist countries, anti-imperialist nonsocialist countries, and progressive forces in the capitalist countries.” Despite the Sino-Soviet split, China had even “agreed to welcome” Soviet participation in CONEFO, which further worried US analysts.

The full list of potential CONEFO members remains cloudy. There are scattered hints, but no definitive list. The growing “Beijing–Jakarta axis” included the DPRK, North Vietnam, and Cambodia, all of which were scheduled to participate. Sukarno also hoped to pull Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser away from the Non-Aligned Movement and into CONEFO.

In 1964, the Indonesian leader promoted CONEFO in Pakistan, while in April 1965, the Somali defense minister informed reporters that his country “will not only participate in CONEFO, but will play [an] active part.” Sukarno’s foreign minister, Subandrio, solicited participation in CONEFO from Iraq and Syria, among other countries.

“A Bad Boys Club”

A sporting event called GANEFO — the Games of the New Emerging Forces — gives us a better sense of who the invitees may have been. Sukarno organized GANEFO in Jakarta in 1963, after the International Olympic Committee had removed Indonesia, a retaliation for its refusal to allow Israel and Taiwan entrance to the Asian Games, which Indonesia hosted, in 1962.

At GANEFO, Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza competed as “Arab Palestine,” under the Palestinian flag. If the list of CONEFO participants paralleled those for GANEFO, there might have been as many as fifty states and national liberation movements present.

The prospect of CONEFO’s formation loomed heavily for US planners. Francis Galbraith, temporarily serving as the top man at the US embassy in Jakarta, said that he was “convinced” that an “alternate UN is [Sukarno’s] ultimate goal.”

In a stridently worded telegram, Galbraith argued that if the “Indo virus” was “allowed to spread unchecked” in Africa and Asia, “it could be a particularly insidious front runner for international communism.” According to Galbraith, Sukarno’s “International NASAKOM” would “undoubtedly have more appeal in Islam-impacted Middle East.”

Department of Defense analysts worried that a successful Chinese-backed nuclear test on Indonesian soil — an idea that Sukarno routinely floated — would add “tremendous drive to Indonesia’s plan” to set up CONEFO “as a rival and eventual successor to the UN.” Canada’s diplomatic mission in Pakistan — a state that was being courted as part of the Beijing–Jakarta axis — warned that “the Sukarno idea of a bad boys club competing with the UN could begin to have a shadow of plausibility.”

According to the US Embassy in Jakarta, construction of the CONEFO facilities became Sukarno’s “stringent national obsession” throughout the summer of 1965. The complex, housed next to the massive, Soviet-financed GANEFO stadium, was to cover a space of 80,000 square meters. It would boast a conference hall for 2,500 people, housing for 3,000 delegates, multiple smaller committee buildings, a health center, a shopping arcade, and much more.

The PRC provided millions of dollars for the construction of CONEFO, shipments of materials, and a joint Indonesian-Chinese architectural and engineering team. Popular volunteer teams joined the effort.

“The Greatest Disaster”

The United States watched the construction of CONEFO with disdain. When embassy officials queried an architect about CONEFO, he proudly replied: “Oh, no, that is being built for our United Nations.”

Mary Vance Trent of the US Embassy in Jakarta reported the development of the project: “Fantastic and extravagant as this scheme may seem from a Westerner’s point of view, it reflects the dead seriousness and the relentless drive of Sukarno . . . in his personal war against imperialism.” The CIA shared that assessment, arguing CONEFO was the physical embodiment of Sukarno’s “desire to construct a building to serve as a new UN for anti-imperialist nations.”

Decades later, Robert J. Martens, former American diplomat in Jakarta, summarized this critical juncture:

For the first time there was going to be a big international conference of New Emerging Forces, and facilities were to be built in Jakarta for this purpose. The Chinese financed this, and began sending over great quantities of material to build this up . . . this kind of rival UN would be formed, based on the East Asian communists and their allies. There were to be other groups in it — a kind of international version of the national front tactic. At a lower plane than the communist core you could have all the Third World nations. . . . New emerging forces would also include as fellow travelers, other progressive forces . . . in the industrialized West, and so on.

The fear of CONEFO, at a critical moment in the Cold War, remains an overlooked factor explaining US support for regime change in Indonesia.

After Suharto’s coup, the US-backed regime unleashed terrifying violence across Indonesia. It also crushed CONEFO and shattered the burgeoning “Beijing–Jakarta axis.” The CIA identified Sukarno’s ouster as “the greatest disaster ever to befall Chinese Communist foreign policy and the greatest single loss suffered by the CCP in the Sino-Soviet struggle.”

With the loss of Jakarta, Beijing was isolated on the international scene. The dream of a Sino-Indonesian regional bloc and an international alternative to the UN was lost. Without a clear path forward internationally, Chinese leaders were forced to look inward.

Mao’s launch of the Cultural Revolution at home was in part a response to the “greatest disaster” of losing Indonesia. The years of domestic upheaval disrupted lines of communication, logistical networks, and connections with friendly states abroad. At the other end of the Cultural Revolution came rapprochement with the United States.

Everything in Order

As Suharto tightened his grip, CONEFO was dismantled. By December 1965, the project had been postponed indefinitely, to be dissolved permanently the following year. What had been completed of the CONEFO complex was transformed into the Indonesian Parliament building, physically and metaphorically parochializing a formerly internationalist infrastructure.

Originally intended for CONEFO, the parliamentary complex became a symbol of graft and elite excess. It was the site of major demonstrations during the recent round of protests.

Sudisman, who was a leading PKI cadre facing certain death in Suharto’s kangaroo courts, described the impact of the coup on the wider geopolitical situation at his trial in 1967:

Israel only attacked the United Arab Republic after the end of Indonesia’s confrontation with Malaysia. This, of course, means that for the imperialists everything is now “in order.” They need no longer fear that their position in Indonesia and the countries around will be disturbed.

As the blood spilled, the memories of Sukarno and the dream of CONEFO receded into the past. Instead of serving as a symbol of anti-colonial aspiration, Indonesia became a cautionary tale illustrating the cruelty of US empire and its satrapies.

Given the pervasiveness of the “Bandung Spirit” before 1965, the speed at which Indonesia transformed into an afterthought is worth pondering. The coup in Indonesia went from “one of the half-dozen most important events in the post-war period,” according to the CIA, to a place that, as the Black Panthers once lamented, “does not always get front page coverage.”

CONEFO would not have healed the fractures in the Afro-Asian world, or between the Communist camps, overnight. But it might have fundamentally altered the contours of the Cold War, not least by reducing the PRC’s motivation for a rapprochement with the United States.

Instead, with a potential Third World competitor to the UN wiped away, the world witnessed an ascendent US empire, whose institutions became the bedrock of international order. Despite claims from the Carnegie Endowment that the UN represents “the needs and interests of the world’s poorest and least-powerful nations,” its utter impotence against Israeli genocide in Gaza over the past two years belies that notion more clearly than ever.

Today the states represented at the BRICS conferences may be accomplishing some core economic objectives that have eluded the Global South for decades. However, the BRICS temperament captures neither the spirit nor the radical imagination of Sukarno, Aidit, and their comrades as they sought to build a “United Nations in Jakarta.”