[ppi] [ppiindia] Indonesia back on the world stage

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/HC30Ae01.html
Mar 30, 2006 
   

Indonesia back on the world stage
By Michael Vatikiotis 


SINGAPORE - It was a potentially sticky situation. There was Indonesian Foreign 
Minister Hassan Wirajuda standing beside Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of 
state, on her recent visit to Jakarta, and the subject was Iran. The reporter 
asked: "Do you think the idea of an eventual Iranian nuclear bomb is 
inevitable?" Given Jakarta's protracted efforts to restore close relations with 
Washington so that it may resume buying state-of-the-art military equipment and 
train its officers in the US, this was a potentially awkward moment. 

But by Indonesia's top diplomat, it was taken as an opportunity to declare 
Indonesia's traditionally strong sense of independence. Like Iran, Indonesia is 
a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, he said. The treaty supports 
the rights of NPT parties to develop nuclear technology for peaceful uses, he 
added. Then he reminded Rice that he had recently visited Tehran and that the 
Iranian foreign minister had just visited Jakarta. On both occasions he had 
told the Iranians that Indonesia "would be among the first to tell Iran not to 
put their peaceful nuclear uses to developing nuclear weapons". 

What on earth is Indonesia doing going anywhere near the Iran issue at a time 
when the United States is cheering, not chiding, Jakarta's counter-terrorism 
efforts and is considering negotiations toward a bilateral free-trade 
agreement? Why, too, would Indonesia go out of its way at a recent meeting of 
the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors in Vienna to ask that 
more time be given Iran to assure concerned parties that its development of 
nuclear technology is truly for peaceful purposes? 

Welcome to the brave new world of Indonesian foreign policy. The international 
community has only just started to focus on Indonesia's successful democratic 
transition, the economy is only just recovering from nearly a decade of malaise 
and crisis, and the business community is waiting with genuine expectation for 
the government's "war on corruption" to be won. But President Susilo Bambang 
Yudhoyono is an impatient man - he wants Indonesia to make its mark on the 
world now. 

"We are the fourth-most-populous nation in the world. We are home to the 
world's largest Muslim population. We are the world's third-largest democracy. 
We are also a country where democracy, Islam and modernity go hand in hand," 
Yudhoyono declared last May in his first major foreign-policy speech. "And our 
heart is always with the developing world, to which we belong. These are the 
things that define who we are and what we do in the community of nations." 

In fact, what Yudhoyono aims to do is pretty ambitious. Bringing democracy to 
Myanmar comes high up the list. So, too, does helping Palestinians win their 
statehood from Israel. Then there is North Korea: the president wants to visit 
Pyongyang and has already sent an envoy to the hermit state to try to restart 
stalled security talks between the two Koreas. And if dealing with one end of 
the "axis of evil" isn't risky enough, Indonesia has also flagged its intention 
to help reconcile Iran with the West, exemplified by Wirajuda's visit to Tehran 
last month, and thereafter by at least two high-level visits by Iranian 
officials to Jakarta. 

Talk to many Indonesians about Yudhoyono's foreign-policy objectives and they 
will argue that the country simply isn't ready to take on the world. There are 
too many priorities at home: sorting out the economy, combating corruption, 
resolving internal conflicts and curbing Islamic militancy, to name just a few. 
Realists and pragmatists such as former foreign minister Ali Alatas argue that 
Indonesia is weak and has no clout in the international community. "Who would 
listen?" Alatas asks, though he recently served as a special envoy to UN 
Secretary General Kofi Annan. 

Fortunately for Yudhoyono, the United States is listening. Indonesia's 
democratic and moderate Islamic credentials appeal to Washington, which is also 
on the lookout for a strategic counterbalance to China in the region. 

"Your challenge now is to expand the peace, the opportunity and the freedom 
that we see in much of Southeast Asia to all of Southeast Asia," Rice said in a 
speech to an Indonesian international-relations forum during her mid-March 
visit to Jakarta. "The United States is eager to work with ASEAN through our 
new enhanced partnership, and we look to Indonesia ... to play a leadership 
role in Southeast Asia and in the dynamic changing East Asia." 

Perhaps of all the remarkable transformations Indonesia has made over the past 
six years, its return to the diplomatic stage is potentially the most 
significant for the rest of Asia. Indonesia's hard-won democratic credentials 
could help promote and defend democracy and human rights in the region, its 
non-aligned credentials can amplify the voice of the developing world and, last 
but by no means least, Indonesia's status as the largest Muslim democracy could 
have a positive impact on the Islamic world and help bridge the growing divide 
with the Western world. 

It's often hard for the outside world to appreciate just how far Indonesia has 
come since the 1998 fall of former president Suharto. The 2004 presidential 
election in Indonesia crowned a six-year-long political transition to 
democracy. Widespread fears of communal violence and administrative chaos 
proved unfounded. Incoming President Yudhoyono quickly established a government 
with serious policies aimed at tackling corruption, improving welfare and 
cementing representative democracy in place. His ability and resolve to pursue 
these goals in the face of the tsunami that hit Indonesia harder than any other 
Asian country and of ongoing terrorist attacks is nothing short of remarkable. 

In his first year in office, Yudhoyono made several tough policy choices, among 
them his decision to pursue peace in Aceh province. The Helsinki agreement 
signed last August brought a halt to almost three decades of conflict in Aceh 
and potentially helped to set a precedent for using local autonomy as a way to 
settle protracted irredentist conflicts in the wider region, including for 
insurgency-racked southern Thailand. Less obviously, the new Indonesian 
government has set about fashioning an active foreign policy that, if 
successfully implemented, could see Indonesia emerge as a strong advocate for 
global peace and other humanitarian issues. Yudhoyono says he wants to be "a 
peacemaker, confidence-builder, problem-solver, bridge-builder". 

This activism is not new for Indonesia. Although obscured for much of the past 
30 years, Indonesia has historically played a constructive role in world and 
regional affairs. In 1955 Indonesia connected Asia with Africa through the 
Bandung Conference, which in effect elevated the role of the developing world 
in international affairs. In 1967, Indonesia was instrumental in bringing the 
non-communist countries of Southeast Asia together to form the Association of 
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In the 1980s, Indonesia initiated and helped 
see through the regional diplomatic effort that brought peace to Cambodia. 

But the world has tended to view Indonesia through a rather different lens. The 
unfortunate history of Indonesia's occupation of East Timor after 1975 and the 
rough handling of internal conflicts in Aceh and Papua have seen tough military 
crackdowns on irredentism and widespread human-rights abuses, for which no one 
has truly been held responsible. Although Washington recently restored 
military-to-military ties, US officials are still waiting for Jakarta to 
prosecute the military officers culpable for the horrific violence that 
attended East Timor's separation from Indonesia in 1999. This kind of record 
doesn't easily make for credible peacemaking or bridge-building ­ and the 
recent upsurge of unrest in Papua points to obstacles ahead. 

Then, too, there are plenty of domestic obstacles to effective policymaking. 
Yudhoyono's policy advisers are full of good ideas and intentions but lack the 
capacity to implement them. Indonesia's political culture militates against 
initiative-taking and effective delegation. Bureaucratic backbiting and petty 
jealousies plague the system and hinder creativity. Yudhoyono's team of 
talented advisers are constantly putting out small domestic fires and beating 
off damaging allegations of personal gain, which at times makes it hard to 
focus on complex foreign-policy issues. 

However, there are distinct signs of change. Wirajuda has helped bring a 
measure of pride and prestige to the once-dispirited Foreign Ministry. He has 
promoted younger diplomats and given his aides more responsibility. Plum 
foreign postings are advertised and healthy competition for the posts is 
encouraged. Indonesia's new ambassadors to Australia and the United Kingdom are 
both relatively young high fliers. 

Indonesia's new-age diplomats are also spending less time defending the 
indefensible. The armed forces have so far stayed out of sensitive political 
decisions and supported the Aceh peace process; as a rule the army and police 
no longer shoot demonstrators; and militants held responsible for acts of 
violence are being brought to justice through the courts rather than the 
streets. Some reflexive instincts are hard to change, though. The government is 
still barring journalists and human-rights workers from the restive Papua 
region. 

Some initiatives are bearing fruit in modest ways. After Yudhoyono's 
controversial visit to Myanmar, that country's ruling military junta has 
announced that it will send its foreign minister to a newly established 
bilateral commission aimed at expediting Myanmar's slow progress to democracy. 

Human-rights activists have criticized the Indonesian government for engaging 
with the military regime in Yangon on the grounds that urgent issues such as 
the release of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi were not pressed. But the 
Indonesian Foreign Ministry argues that engagement and gradual persuasion are 
more effective agents of change. "If we become harder on Myanmar, they [will] 
close themselves even more," commented Foreign Ministry spokesman Desra 
Percaya. 

It's a gamble because Myanmar's generals have proved skillful at using 
engagement as a delaying tactic. But this is not to say that Jakarta is turning 
soft on autocracy. In January Wirajuda called on the military junta in Myanmar 
to fulfill its pledge to introduce democracy. "Myanmar is disturbing the 
balance" of ASEAN, Wirajuda told the media in Jakarta. "And because of that we 
are asking it to show concrete steps toward democracy." 

Indonesia's advantage as a pressure point on Myanmar is that it has no 
strategic interests at play on mainland Southeast Asia. Other nearby 
democracies such as Thailand and India find that economic and strategic 
interests inhibit them from advocating political change in Myanmar. Neither is 
Jakarta so closely bound to Beijing economically and culturally; its sheer size 
gives Indonesia something of a license to tweak the dragon's tail. 
Non-alignment may be out of fashion, but it was noticeable how Rice was greeted 
on her recent visit to Jakarta by editorials that positioned Indonesia as a 
friend, rather than an ally, of the United States. 

Indonesia is also managing in a modest way to engage constructively with the 
more militant Islamic world. In the past few weeks Jakarta has hosted 
high-profile visits from the Iranian vice president and foreign minister. There 
are risks and opportunities for Indonesia: engaging with the militant fringe 
will fuel suspicions about Indonesia's own considerable fundamentalist problem. 
A recent poll in Jakarta revealed that more than 11% of people surveyed believe 
that suicide bombings against civilian targets can be justified. The 
opportunity is for Indonesia's moderate mainstream to start influencing the 
rest of the Muslim world. 

On balance the latter is more important, as Indonesia's own struggle against 
conservative Islamic forces lends credibility to its push for tolerance and 
reform in the wider Muslim world. For this reason Indonesia's democratic 
transition could potentially be far more important than anything the 
administration of US President George W Bush can do in the Middle East to 
implant democracy.

Michael Vatikiotis is a former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. He is 
currently a visiting research fellow at Singapore's Institute of Southeast 
Asian Studies. 

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us 
about sales, syndication and republishing .)



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