I figure if I want to form any sort of coherent idea about what the hell is going on that I should probably learn something about Sukarno and “The Spirit of Bandung.”

On April 13 of this year, Indonesian Minister of Defense Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin met with U.S Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in Washington where they announced agreement on a new “major defense cooperation partnership.” Apparently, the Indonesians agreed to not complain too much if U.S. military aircraft flew over their airspace, as long as they were going someplace else.

On that very same day, Monday, April 13, Indonesian President Prabowa Subianto was in Moscow meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to a read-out of the meeting headlined “Indonesia-Russia Ties Deepen” that was issued by the Cabinet Secretariat of the Republic of Indonesia, “The meeting, held at the Kremlin Palace, was part of efforts to strengthen strategic cooperation between the two countries amid evolving global dynamics.”

The two deals struck me as paradoxical until I recently happened to scroll into a YouTube video where a youthfully attractive mid-30ish woman was being interviewed. She was Indonesian, speaking English with a heavy Indonesian accent. She taught geopolitics at a major Indonesian university. I can’t remember the name of the university, or her name, or the name of the You Tube channel. But I remember what she said. She said, in so many words, that the paradox was all in my American head; that to Indonesians, the two seemingly paradoxical meetings made perfect sense. The reason, she said, was that the Indonesian culture was still infused with “The Spirit of Bandung.”

The podcast host asked her what she meant by “the Spirit of Bandung.”

“It means,” she responded, “that If I have an enemy, that’s one too many.”

The Bandung Conference was held in 1955 in the City of Bandung on the Indonesian island of Java, hosted by Indonesian President Sukarno.

Indonesians consider Sukarno the Father of their Country, like our George Washington. Since the early 16^th century, Indonesia had been brutally run by European colonizers, principally the Dutch. When the Japanese invaded during WWII, Sukarno sided with them because they promised to get rid of the Dutch. And they did and in 1947 Indonesia declared its Independence as a sovereign nation-state, a Republic, and not somebody's "colony."

Sukarno was the nation’s first President and was still the President and still a womanizer in 1967 when he was brought down in a CIA-supported coup because he refused to choose sides in the geopolitical chess match between the democratic West and communist Russians.

That’s what the Bandung Conference was all about — a meeting of 29 newly independent nations from across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. WWII had severed their tethers to their European colonizers. They didn’t want to choose between this side and that. They wanted to be Free. Independent. Non-allied. All the big names were there: Jawaharial Nehru of India, U Nu of Burma, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt,  Zhou Enlai of China. It was 1955.

In 1955, America was living in the aftermath of the McCarthy witch hunt to unearth communist sympathizers. I was just seven years old at the time, but I already knew that word — “communist.” We got toy soldiers for Christmas. We were the Americans, they were the communists. They had nuclear weapons. By the time I was seven in 1955 I already knew about “atomic bombs.” I’d seen pictures in the town’s daily newspaper. The nuns taught us how to duck and cover beneath our desks. We learned to fear an enemy the way we feared mortal sin. How could anybody side with Them?

It was different in Indonesia. They had defeated their enemy. They were free. Independent. In control of their own destiny.

Trump says he wants to embargo all ships in all the world’s oceans. That requires control of a handful of maritime chokepoints – Panama, Suez, Hormuz… and the Straits of Malacca, which goes through Indonesia, the shortest sea route between East and West, between an old world and an emerging one, which is the way it’s always been and always will be. Indonesia sits in the middle, apparently still guided by the Spirit of Bandung.