Suharto led Indonesia between 1967 and 1998. Nicknamed ‘The Smiling General’, Suharto was a wily and calculating military leader, but with a ferocity and ambivalence towards violence unmatched by any previous subject on the podcast; it is estimated that over one million Indonesians died in the 1965-66 killings that brought Suharto to power.
That said, Suharto’s development projects caused massive economic growth in his country, to the point where Indonesia was a relatively wealthy country by the 1990s. This makes his legacy highly complex. My guest for this one was Tom Pepinsky of Cornell University in New York (@TomPepinsky on Twitter)
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