The last half century has seen the creation of the world's fourth most populous country out of more than 3,000 islands, strung like a string of pearls in a coral sea with hundreds of different languages and ethnic groups but bound together by a common history: they all once belonged, however tenuously, to the Dutch.
After 350 years of exploitation, Indonesia emerged after the Second World War as a nation united by its struggle against colonialism. It became an outwardly stable world power, ruled for most of the half century by the avaricious dictator, President Suharto, with the enthusiastic collusion of the Indonesian army.
Now as a new century begins, Indonesia is in danger of breaking up and ceasing to exist.
There are several obvious reasons. One is the gross ill-treatment of sections of the archipelago like Aceh and Irian Jaya. Never enthusiastic partners in the concept of one country, they were alienated by the exploitation of their natural resources by the centre, dominated by the Javanese, and by the ruthless suppression of separatist movements and their supporters by the Indonesian army, which helped itself to many of the spoils.
The military acted as a parallel arm of Suharto's government, with the task of suppressing its own people. It was an essential tool for a dictatorship intent on maintaining stability at all costs, and supported by the United States and Australia as a bulwark against communism. Indeed the big powers generally admired Suharto for engineering fast growth in the Indonesian economy.
The army's biggest mistake was to seize East Timor in 1975. With the West turning a blind eye, they must have thought they would get away with their bloody invasion, as a result of which up to 200,000 people died. But East Timor was a former Portuguese colony, with different traditions and religion from the Dutch.
The injustice rankled with many countries, especially in Europe, and became a diplomatic thorn for Indonesia. Many Indonesians too felt a bad thing had been done. When the students of Indonesia led a street rebellion against the excesses of the Suharto era in the late 1990s, East Timor was not a big issue but the army turned on them too and lost support among the population.
Suharto's successor President BJ Habibie, eager to win the support of the world's financial institutions for his collapsing economy, allowed a UN-organised referendum in East Timor to decide its future. Sections of the army were outraged and organised pro-integrationists to terrorise the population.
When this failed and the people voted for independence, they followed the lead of an infamous US officer in Vietnam: they destroyed the place to save it. But in the end they lost because they miscalculated.
They underestimated the depth of the global outrage at their deeds, and the pressure on the UN not to allow another humanitarian debacle like Rwanda and Bosnia. Indonesia could be bullied because it needed the world's financial institutions to bail it out. So a UN-sanctioned peace force liberated East Timor and the Indonesian army withdrew. Now the mistake of the 1975 invasion of East Timor truly came back to haunt the military.
Seeing the demoralised army withdraw from one area, where they never should have been in the first place, secessionists in other parts of Indonesia realised they had an historic opportunity and began to step up their campaigns for independence.
Aceh, a militant Islamic territory at the opposite end of the archipelago has a centuries-old history of trading as an independent entity and is demanding a similar referendum. So too is Irian Jaya, which became Indonesia's 26th province only in 1969, after a dubious consultation process.
Bali, a Hindu province in a mostly Moslem country is also simmering with discontent. In Sulawesi civil strife continued well into the 1960s and separatist sentiment is rising.
In the Malucu islands, riven by religious wars, the people refer to other ethnic groups, but not themselves, as Indonesians. The nightmare prospect for the Indonesia leadership in the new century is that the country will break apart, just like the old Soviet Union.
The days when the West had strategic and ideological reasons for sustaining the Indonesian military, the glue which kept the country together, have gone. Its concern now is that there should be no instability along one of the world's most important shipping lanes, and the rebellious provinces are receiving none of the world support which favoured the East Timorese.
The best hope for the country is that the democratically elected government in Jakarta of President Abdurrahman Wahid, will somehow settle with the restive provinces.
He can point to the fact that Indonesia is now a more attractive place to stay united with. It has a free press and a mostly democratic government. Its generals are on the defensive and may be punished for their crimes. The army is under orders to stop the oppression. The provinces will get a bigger share of their resources.
It just might work. But nobody is very optimistic.
Conor O'Clery can be reached at coclery@irish-times.ie