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Robert Kennedy’s trip to the Far East (1964)

Map of Robert Kennedy’s trip to the Far East (1964)

Attorney General Robert Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, visit Korea and meet Korean President Park Chung-hee
23 January 1964
41 seconds
Critical Past LLC


In January 1964, United States Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was sent by President Lyndon Johnson to a trip to the “Far East.” Kennedy’s mission was to placate the armed conflict in the Indonesian-Malayan Borneo border and to “take [the] controversy out of the jungle...and put it around the conference table” in Bangkok. When Sukarno ignored President Johnson’s letter expressing concern at the unfolding events in Borneo, the latter decided to send the envoy for a personal meeting with the former. The Attorney-General was no stranger to the region, having mediated the West Irian dispute between the Indonesians and the Dutch in 1962. Upon arrival in the region, Kennedy expressed his strategy that the issues around Malaysia “must be decided and determined by Asians, not by outsiders.” Kennedy visited Tokyo to meet Indonesian President Sukarno, went to Seoul and visited the trenches of the South Korean troops and US servicemen guarding the North Korean border and met with President Park Chung-hee (initiating conversations about sending Korean troops to South Vietnam*), went to Manila to talk to Philippine President Macapagal, traveled to Kuala Lumpur to visit Malaysia Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, and then back to Jakarta before heading out to Bangkok, and then to London. Leveraging US-aid to Jakarta, Kennedy managed to convince Sukarno to entertain a series of attempts at mediating the Indonesia-Malaysia armed conflict happening in Sabah and Sarawak. Leaders from other nation-states in Southeast Asia such as Thailand Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman and Cambodia Head of State Prince Norodom Sihanouk became mediators. At the heart of the United States’s anxiety is the possibility of the conflict to blow up into unmanageable proportions, a “continued war in the jungle,” adding unnecessary complexity to its anti-communist efforts, particularly with the already aggravated situation in Vietnam. At the same time, this was also an attempt by the US to delicately appraise and ensure that Indonesia was not moving too far into China’s sphere of influence.

The visit was arranged without consultation with the British Government. According to commentators, during this time, the British Government had been wary of the American approach to the Borneo conflicts, noting the “American softness towards Sukarno” and how “Kennedy, like the others before him, had become captivated by Sukarno’s charm.” There were also camps in the British Government that started an “inspired whispering campaign” about how Kennedy harbored “devious intent” in how his travels failed to secure a pragmatic resolution to Indonesia’s violent resistance to the formation of Malaysia. This dissatisfaction followed the burning of the British Embassy and other British property in Jakarta in September 1963.

In 1964, rhetorics of solidarity and regionality were refracted by valencies of the postcolony in the Cold War—motivated by an anti-colonial political will, discerning of the political efficacy of race and ethnicity, and neocolonial affinities and entanglement. The shift of the discourse of regionality from the Association of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Federation of Malaya, and the Philippines established in 1961), to the Maphilindo (Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia formalized in 1963), and to Macapagal’s proposal to create an Afro-Asian Conciliation Commission in 1965, plays out this refraction. While the ASA attempted to consolidate a Southeast Asian common market aligned with the United States, Maphilindo cultivated an idea of Pan-Malayan unity and the exceptionality of the Malay race. These entanglements of region and race are opened to a vaster solidarity inspired by the Bandung Conference of 1955. In an attempt to resolve the tensions between Malaysia and Indonesia, and in order to gain favor in the looming national elections, Macapagal proposed to convene a Conciliation Commission: each of the Maphilindo states were to choose an African or Asian state to form a three-man team, who then would need to unanimously choose another nation to complete a four-man commission that would recommend measures towards Indonesia-Malaysia reconciliation and a time-limit to accomplish these.