Julia Suryakusuma, Jakarta | Wed, 11/30/2011 9:38 AM A | A | A | - Klipping the Jakarta post
When European and Western hegemony was at its peak in the 1980s and 1990s, my late husband, Ami, often asked why people studied European languages instead of Chinese or Japanese. “Asia,” he said, “is where the future will lie.” If Ami were still alive, he would be justified in saying, “I told you so” (although Hindi, Korean and Indonesian would have been on his list now too!).
Even the US has cottoned-on now, shifting its gaze from the Middle East (where the Arab Spring is starting to look more like autumn) to Asia. The stable societies in our region continue to enjoy booming economic growth despite Europe and America’s financial crisis (which is not global at all, folks!).
That’s why US President Barack Obama hailed the decade-old “Asia-Pacific century” two weeks ago in Australia. He also announced that the US would establish a new foothold in the most dynamic part of the world by strengthening military ties with its longtime ally Down Under. It will deploy 2,500 Marine Air-Ground Task Force in Darwin by 2017 for the first time since World War II.
This generated speculation, controversy and anxiety. Some viewed it negatively, accusing the US of aggressive imperialist ambitions. They said that the move undermined efforts to make the region more peaceful and could tear ASEAN apart. Another analyst said the US had its sights on Timor Leste’s oil reserves and its troubled Freeport interests in Papua. Even our smooth-as-silk foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa, questioned American motives, hoping the deployment wouldn’t create tensions in the region. Given the US’ reputation as a bullying Globocop, these reactions were not surprising, but were they right?
The Darwin base seems to me to be more recognition of American weakness than a statement of ambition. Surely it is really about the US trying to maintain its dwindling power as China rises? It seems to me that if China thinks the US is trying to encircle them, they’d be dead right.
And you can see why: China is currently the second-largest economy after the US, contributing 30 percent of global wealth. Even by conservative estimates, it’s projected to overtake the US as world economic leader by 2027. China is also the US’ banker as well as the world’s factory floor, with global markets flooded with Chinese goods — and takeovers.
In 2005, MG Rover became the last domestically-owned mass-production car manufacturer in Britain, snapped up by the Nanjing Automobile group. Imagine — the quintessential British sports car is now Chinese, or half-Chinese at least. (Well, better Chinese than belly-up, like the eurozone.)
The point is that almost everyone else in Asia expects China’s financial invasion to be followed by military expansionism. Their shared heebie-jeebies are driving them to band together to contain the dragon. Even Vietnam is burying the hatchet of the Vietnam War and getting cosy with America. Politics do make for strange bedfellows, but is their China-phobia justified?
Maybe — history suggests that every rising imperial power has expressed itself with military force: the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans, Russia, Germany, Britain, Japan and America. Why would China be different?
As China builds its military and buys more of the world’s resources to fuel its growth, it is less willing to hear Americans telling it what to do (on the US’ quandary re China, read http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/06/news/international/china_america_full.fortune/). It continues to back its pariah buffer state, North Korea;
it continues to incarcerate dissidents; its threats to invade Taiwan have not been withdrawn. And now, it is making serious claims in the South China Sea.
But while China may be a rising power, the US is still a great power — in fact, for all its many faults and failings, still the dominant global power. It still has the stronger military as well as global reach, with allies and bases all over the world, particularly in regions surrounding China (Japan, Taiwan, Korea, India, etc.).
It is determined to keep China hemmed in if it can. So, like it or not, there is a real possibility of eventual conflict in the Pacific between the eagle and the dragon, as many fear.
Like Indonesia, Australians know that if an attack comes, it will be from the North as in World War II (invasion via Antarctica might be a bit tricky). This means that a “love triangle” between the US, Australia and Indonesia has its own natural geopolitical logic.
Indonesia is of increasing strategic importance to the US because it’s the obvious leader of a regional neutral block. It also controls three vital deep-water passages between the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific: the Lombok, Malacca and Sunda Straits.
Australia is also a natural ally of Indonesia because of the similarities between them — yes, that’s right, I did say similarities. Unlike China, both are multiparty democracies and both have open economies (and have signed free-trade deals with each other).
And whatever misgivings Indonesians and Australians may have about the US, it’s still an open society and a genuine democracy, and China is neither of those things. Shared anxieties about China will make these similarities matter more than differences.
My Chinese calendar says 2012 will be the year of the Dragon. By the looks of it, so will be many other years to come. So Ami was right — start learning Chinese, folks!
The writer (www.juliasuryakusuma.com) is the author of Julia’s Jihad.
Follow our twitter @jakpost
& our public blog @blogIMO
| | | | | | | | Post Comments | Comments (7)
Mauricio | Thu, 01/12/2011 - 10:12am
A reason that China has not asserted itself is that China is militarily weak. As Robert Kagan explained in his "Power and Weakness", a man living in the woods armed with only a knife may learn to live with the bears that live near his house, whereas the same man armed with a shot-gun might be more inclined and prepared to confront the bears.
China is not fundamentally different than any other country. It seeks power and influence with the tools at its disposal, taking stock of its own capabilities and the capabilities of its rivals.
Report Abuse
Paolo Scalpini | Thu, 01/12/2011 - 00:12am
Not very well researched this writing. Even after WWII with the French still clinging on to Vietnam and the Americans putting their nose in it, Ho Chi Minh already considered China as the biggest threat to Vietnam. No wonder. China occupied Vietnam for many centuries as a "southern province".
Unfortunately the rise on China is overrated. How much of the progress and wealth can still be found if you leave the coastal region and big cities?
Yes there is a lot of manufacturing due to artificially cheap prices. But what about real efficiencies, and innovation? Is it not a paper dragon with all this debt paper?
More worrying than Chinese expansionism is internal instability. Some day, I fear, China will face a new revolution. Hopefully China will thus start selling to their internal market and use the paper to import goods and services for their people instead of amassing capital.
Report Abuse
jennifer | Wed, 30/11/2011 - 21:11pm
The first half of this piece is great. I was with the author until she said 'everyone expects China's financial invasion to be followed by military expansionism'. Yes, true, everyone expects that. But the rest should have about how China has not acted militarily like the US or European nations have and there is no reason to think that they will. China has wielded financial might at certain points in history without the kind of militarization/conquest/world's police one conceives of according to the western model. I am so over the "China fearmongering beware of attack" theme that is so prevalent. Give us something else, please. The China-hegemon-not-a-free-society-smart-with-money-taking-over-the-world discussion is dead. The dragon has entered and is doing fine. Everyone else needs to stop their whining and bitching from below.
Report Abuse
Mario | Wed, 30/11/2011 - 15:11pm
So uh, any of you start learning Chinese? I do.
Report Abuse
Mauricio | Wed, 30/11/2011 - 13:11pm
What do you do wrong?
Well, for one, you engage in these tedious, ill-informed, paranoic diatribes about foreign intervention. This serves to not only to annoy and distract others, but more importantly it serves to distract Indonesians from the indisputable fact that the biggest threat to Indonesian security and stability comes, not from Australia or from the United States, but rather from your own government, your own military and your own people. That's what you do wrong.
Report Abuse
agus | Wed, 30/11/2011 - 12:11pm
Who needs the enemy when Australia and US make use every chance to badmouth Asia in every countries and continents?
Does Asia do anything wrong to receive negative treatment from former colonialists?
Report Abuse
Mauricio | Wed, 30/11/2011 - 12:11pm
Yankee, go home! Australia is a rich, developed country. I don't see why Americans should be subsidizing Australia's defense, or providing an insurance policy or defense shield of any king. Indonesians are fundamentally suspicious and ambivalent about getting entangled with the U.S. I don't see why the United States should partner with such potentially unreliable, paranoic and reluctant associates. Leave Indonesians to fend for themselves and defend themselves when and if the Chinese threat materializes. Good riddance, with "allies" like these who needs enemies!
I rather think the U.S. should strike a grand bargain with Russia and China, to divy up the world into exclusive areas of influence and dominance, and settle the issue once and for all. If China wants to be China, monggo mas...Silahken. They make our goods and bankroll the U.S., and the U.S. turns a blind eye. Yeah, that's the ticket...
Report Abuse
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Monday, November 28, 2011
Marines in Darwin: Trashing the Lombok treaty
Duncan Graham, The Jakarta Post, Malang, East Java | Wed, 11/23/2011 9:45 AM A | A | A | - Klipping The Jakarta Post
In 2006 the two relevant foreign ministers, Alexander Downer and Hassan Wirajuda, signed the Australia-Indonesia Agreement on the Framework for Security Cooperation.
It took two years of negotiations to develop the document, which replaced the 1995 formal defense pact. What’s now known as the Lombok Treaty committed both nations to cooperation and consultation in defense and law enforcement, combating international crime and terrorism, and sharing intelligence.
The two countries also agreed they would not “in any manner support or participate in activities by any person or entity which constitutes a threat to the stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity of the other Party”.
Then, suddenly last week Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama announced that up to 2,500 American Marines would be stationed in Darwin, the largest port in Australia closest to Indonesia. This newspaper described the news as a “bombshell”.
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa had apparently been alerted ahead of the announcement. Did this comply with the Lombok Treaty clause on “consultation”? Only if you embrace Australian newspeak where the word has become synonymous with informing others after a cast-iron decision has been made.
That wasn’t the only gulf in interpretation. It seems Australia’s decision to allow heavily armed foreign forces to dig in on the border doesn’t fall into the category of threatening the other’s “stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity”.
Indonesia appears to differ. Natalegawa, who was educated in the UK and Australia and is no slouch in understanding the subtleties of English, was reported as saying it could create “a vicious circle of tension and mistrust”. In plain speak, this is instability. The treaty was designed to do the opposite.
Establishing a US base in northern Australia is meant to send a message to India and China, the two growing super-powers. But between those faraway places and the Great South Land lies a lovely archipelago, the world’s third-largest democracy. This strategic zone will now have American warships, warplanes, submarines and helicopter gunships on a nearby beach — and Indonesians weren’t asked what they thought.
Perception depends on position. Living a few hundred kilometers northwest of Darwin, I have a different view of plans to turn the Northern Territory into an armed camp than when I lived in Perth.
If I was still in my home state (and earlier state of ignorance about Southeast Asia), I might have thought the idea of beefy American soldiers between little me and the land-hungry masses of Asia to be comforting.
Most Australians know about their nation’s empty interior and over-populated neighbors. We’ve grown up fearing the menacing arrows of descending communism believing that only the gallant forces of the Free World could stop the evil Red Tide, just as they halted the Japanese in the 1940s.
But then we matured and it seemed that the gravity theory driving Australian foreign policy had been buried. Wrong. Last week it was exhumed and revived.
It’s been embarrassing trying to explain to Indonesians why a sovereign nation would allow foreign troops to be based on its soil, unless, of course, the host is weak, insecure and subservient to a colonial master.
That’s the obvious logic, and no end of rabbiting on about independent alliances and historical ties will shake local opinion. My friends are just a mite confused — why the US military and not the UK when Australia has the Union Jack on its flag and the Queen’s head on its currency?
It would be easier trying to explain cricket.
The Indonesian media response has been robust with commentators asking how the deal sits alongside the regular pleas for Australians to develop friendly grassroots relationships with the people next door. There’s been much talk of a new Pearl Harbor.
How would Australians react if Indonesia suddenly announced a similar number of Chinese troops being stationed in Bali? Would Canberra accept the “normal bilateral agreement” line? If our Javanese neighbors in suburban Malang invite Ambonese hardmen (the preman usually used for “protection”) to settle in and flex their muscles, my family would be rapidly reappraising our community relationships.
Does Indonesia have territorial ambitions on Australia? It’s about as impossible to erase this deeply-
embedded but absurd fear in the Australian psyche, as it is to convince the electorate that the US will not necessarily dash into the fray should the continent be attacked.
The Indonesian armed forces would be formidable defenders of their land, but don’t appear to have the equipment, funds, or enthusiasm to invade 7.69 million square kilometers. There’s no discernable political appetite for such an insane adventure. Terrorists occasionally add Australia in their visions of a Caliphate but these crackpots are on the fringe of the fringe.
The last test of US resolve in this region came during the 1999 East Timor Referendum crisis when Australia appealed for American involvement. Then president Bill Clinton maneuvered a few warships but kept them over the horizon. The tension with Indonesia was an Australian problem, and no grunts’ boots were among the international peacekeepers that trod the turf of what is now Timor Leste.
The realpolitik is that future US policy will be based on that nation’s national interests at the time and having a US Marine base in Australia will make not a whit of difference. If Washington decrees these troops will be deployed elsewhere or sent back to their northern hemisphere home, Canberra’s agreements with the US will have no more value than the Lombok Treaty.
In the meantime, we Australians have to remain in this region for the rest of our existence. Better Gillard puts her government’s energies into encouraging us to understand and appreciate our neighbors than being matey with the Marines.
If we really must have a US presence, then invite the Peace Corps.
The writer is an East Java-based journalist.
Follow our twitter @jakpost
& our public blog @blogIMO
| | | | | | | | Post Comments | Comments (19)
Edo E | Tue, 29/11/2011 - 09:11am
@ Mauricio, I only completed your sentence about Pearl Harbor, nothing more. Funny how you concentrate on that irrelevancy and "forget" completely the rest, very especially the debunking of your adored US-"policy of engagement". But that's how rhetorical manipulation (fill in some non existent gaps) and diversion (9/11...) works when caught red handed, right? Your zero comments about the gold in Papua and about the official link regarding the near 700 foreign military US-bases (this is the main subject here, remember?) exposes you as a fraud. A pity.
Report Abuse
Mauricio | Tue, 29/11/2011 - 07:11am
I set you straight of several accounts and fill in your gaps of glaring ignorance, and this is your come back? The US provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor? That's as foul an accusation as the pathetic, pathological delusion that 9/11 was carried out by the CIA. Yeah, you know what you're talking about...
Report Abuse
Edo E | Mon, 28/11/2011 - 10:11am
Mauricio, you surely mean the US-provoked Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1945, when only the US-elite (including Roosevelt...) knew about the imminent attack and didn't warn their own people in Hawaii, to play afterwards the "surprised", "offended" guys. The military shield was created later to counter the real threat of Communism, of course, while the emergence of some Asian countries was surely more self-made than due to altruistic motives of the USA (else, the "former" [?] US-colony Philippines would be also at the top...). And I'm sure you know about the exemplary fate of the Vietnamese, who can tell what real US-"policy of engagement" did to their country and how gloriously the GIs run away from there. On the other side, one has to admit that the USA did gain fantastic military victories against superpowers like Grenada and Panama, having curiously more problems with underdogs like Afghanistan and Iraq. Maybe that's the reason why they need more than an aircraft carrier to swallo... ehm, ... put an eye on Papua, where the interest is almost purely economical (gold. A lot of gold) against a future (and VERY real) Wahhabization of Indonesia. The USA has almost 700 foreign military bases in many countries of the world (please check the FBI-report http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/bsr/BSR2010Baseline.pdf ) to defend their (former) "policy of engagement", read: the interests of their multinationals (including sales of weapons, oil-exploitation, minerals, the abominable GM-seeds, chemicals, etc). China and the Saudis have already began to engage in an economic colonialism too, with different means to achieve that target. The USA and Australia have been allies since WW2, thus China has to surmount a "gap" of 70 years. Peanuts in history.
Report Abuse
Mauricio | Sat, 26/11/2011 - 11:11am
Your analogy of stationing Chinese troops on Flores is specious, Edo. For one, because unlike Australia and the United States, China and Indonesia have not been long-time allies that have fought wars together. For two, because unlike the U.S. which has had and continues to have bases in East Asia, China does not have such history and experience. Therefore to compare U.S. placing troops in Australia with China placing troops in Indonesia is specious and ultimately misguided. Next time you want to make a point with an analogy, think more deeply about the issue.
Report Abuse
Mauricio | Sat, 26/11/2011 - 10:11am
That's December 7, not 11.
Report Abuse
Mauricio | Sat, 26/11/2011 - 10:11am
Wake up and smell the coffee, Edo. The United States has been ENGAGED with East Asia ever since the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1945. The East Asian Miracle and the Rise of the Asian Tigers took place and was made possible only through the active engagement and intervention of the United States in creating a military shield. The re-emergence of Japan, the rise of the RoK, Taiwan, Singapore could not have taken place without the engagement of the United States. The present move to station GIs in Australia is a continuation of a policy of engagement with East Asia dating from December 11, 1945.
Reading up on some history and IR might do you (and this forum) some good, pal. It's only a provocation cuz you don't see the forest from the trees. If you are concerned about a military presenting a clear and present danger to Indonesians, I suggest that you look inwards to your own military and to the threat that it poses to Indonesian nationals and to Indonesian stability.
Report Abuse
Edo E | Sat, 26/11/2011 - 09:11am
@ Mauricio, I'm a little confused. You say that the "GIs in Australia are a SIGNAL, a token that says that the United States is ENGAGED and it has willing allies in the region." If this is true, then this is clearly a threat and a provocation, of course. Just imagine China stationing 5,000 soldiers on a future base in Flores. The howls and hypocritical whining from the USA and Australia would be almost unbearable.
With a US-company getting FREELY 99% of the profits, I see absolutely no need to take the whole island militarily, as it would be completely counterproductive (the fight against guerrillas and local soldiers would only hamper the production, and they don't want that). Besides, political colonialism is being replaced by economical corporation-colonialism. With the base in Darwin, they are only preparing for FUTURE conflicts against the radicals.
Report Abuse
In 2006 the two relevant foreign ministers, Alexander Downer and Hassan Wirajuda, signed the Australia-Indonesia Agreement on the Framework for Security Cooperation.
It took two years of negotiations to develop the document, which replaced the 1995 formal defense pact. What’s now known as the Lombok Treaty committed both nations to cooperation and consultation in defense and law enforcement, combating international crime and terrorism, and sharing intelligence.
The two countries also agreed they would not “in any manner support or participate in activities by any person or entity which constitutes a threat to the stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity of the other Party”.
Then, suddenly last week Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama announced that up to 2,500 American Marines would be stationed in Darwin, the largest port in Australia closest to Indonesia. This newspaper described the news as a “bombshell”.
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa had apparently been alerted ahead of the announcement. Did this comply with the Lombok Treaty clause on “consultation”? Only if you embrace Australian newspeak where the word has become synonymous with informing others after a cast-iron decision has been made.
That wasn’t the only gulf in interpretation. It seems Australia’s decision to allow heavily armed foreign forces to dig in on the border doesn’t fall into the category of threatening the other’s “stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity”.
Indonesia appears to differ. Natalegawa, who was educated in the UK and Australia and is no slouch in understanding the subtleties of English, was reported as saying it could create “a vicious circle of tension and mistrust”. In plain speak, this is instability. The treaty was designed to do the opposite.
Establishing a US base in northern Australia is meant to send a message to India and China, the two growing super-powers. But between those faraway places and the Great South Land lies a lovely archipelago, the world’s third-largest democracy. This strategic zone will now have American warships, warplanes, submarines and helicopter gunships on a nearby beach — and Indonesians weren’t asked what they thought.
Perception depends on position. Living a few hundred kilometers northwest of Darwin, I have a different view of plans to turn the Northern Territory into an armed camp than when I lived in Perth.
If I was still in my home state (and earlier state of ignorance about Southeast Asia), I might have thought the idea of beefy American soldiers between little me and the land-hungry masses of Asia to be comforting.
Most Australians know about their nation’s empty interior and over-populated neighbors. We’ve grown up fearing the menacing arrows of descending communism believing that only the gallant forces of the Free World could stop the evil Red Tide, just as they halted the Japanese in the 1940s.
But then we matured and it seemed that the gravity theory driving Australian foreign policy had been buried. Wrong. Last week it was exhumed and revived.
It’s been embarrassing trying to explain to Indonesians why a sovereign nation would allow foreign troops to be based on its soil, unless, of course, the host is weak, insecure and subservient to a colonial master.
That’s the obvious logic, and no end of rabbiting on about independent alliances and historical ties will shake local opinion. My friends are just a mite confused — why the US military and not the UK when Australia has the Union Jack on its flag and the Queen’s head on its currency?
It would be easier trying to explain cricket.
The Indonesian media response has been robust with commentators asking how the deal sits alongside the regular pleas for Australians to develop friendly grassroots relationships with the people next door. There’s been much talk of a new Pearl Harbor.
How would Australians react if Indonesia suddenly announced a similar number of Chinese troops being stationed in Bali? Would Canberra accept the “normal bilateral agreement” line? If our Javanese neighbors in suburban Malang invite Ambonese hardmen (the preman usually used for “protection”) to settle in and flex their muscles, my family would be rapidly reappraising our community relationships.
Does Indonesia have territorial ambitions on Australia? It’s about as impossible to erase this deeply-
embedded but absurd fear in the Australian psyche, as it is to convince the electorate that the US will not necessarily dash into the fray should the continent be attacked.
The Indonesian armed forces would be formidable defenders of their land, but don’t appear to have the equipment, funds, or enthusiasm to invade 7.69 million square kilometers. There’s no discernable political appetite for such an insane adventure. Terrorists occasionally add Australia in their visions of a Caliphate but these crackpots are on the fringe of the fringe.
The last test of US resolve in this region came during the 1999 East Timor Referendum crisis when Australia appealed for American involvement. Then president Bill Clinton maneuvered a few warships but kept them over the horizon. The tension with Indonesia was an Australian problem, and no grunts’ boots were among the international peacekeepers that trod the turf of what is now Timor Leste.
The realpolitik is that future US policy will be based on that nation’s national interests at the time and having a US Marine base in Australia will make not a whit of difference. If Washington decrees these troops will be deployed elsewhere or sent back to their northern hemisphere home, Canberra’s agreements with the US will have no more value than the Lombok Treaty.
In the meantime, we Australians have to remain in this region for the rest of our existence. Better Gillard puts her government’s energies into encouraging us to understand and appreciate our neighbors than being matey with the Marines.
If we really must have a US presence, then invite the Peace Corps.
The writer is an East Java-based journalist.
Follow our twitter @jakpost
& our public blog @blogIMO
| | | | | | | | Post Comments | Comments (19)
Edo E | Tue, 29/11/2011 - 09:11am
@ Mauricio, I only completed your sentence about Pearl Harbor, nothing more. Funny how you concentrate on that irrelevancy and "forget" completely the rest, very especially the debunking of your adored US-"policy of engagement". But that's how rhetorical manipulation (fill in some non existent gaps) and diversion (9/11...) works when caught red handed, right? Your zero comments about the gold in Papua and about the official link regarding the near 700 foreign military US-bases (this is the main subject here, remember?) exposes you as a fraud. A pity.
Report Abuse
Mauricio | Tue, 29/11/2011 - 07:11am
I set you straight of several accounts and fill in your gaps of glaring ignorance, and this is your come back? The US provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor? That's as foul an accusation as the pathetic, pathological delusion that 9/11 was carried out by the CIA. Yeah, you know what you're talking about...
Report Abuse
Edo E | Mon, 28/11/2011 - 10:11am
Mauricio, you surely mean the US-provoked Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1945, when only the US-elite (including Roosevelt...) knew about the imminent attack and didn't warn their own people in Hawaii, to play afterwards the "surprised", "offended" guys. The military shield was created later to counter the real threat of Communism, of course, while the emergence of some Asian countries was surely more self-made than due to altruistic motives of the USA (else, the "former" [?] US-colony Philippines would be also at the top...). And I'm sure you know about the exemplary fate of the Vietnamese, who can tell what real US-"policy of engagement" did to their country and how gloriously the GIs run away from there. On the other side, one has to admit that the USA did gain fantastic military victories against superpowers like Grenada and Panama, having curiously more problems with underdogs like Afghanistan and Iraq. Maybe that's the reason why they need more than an aircraft carrier to swallo... ehm, ... put an eye on Papua, where the interest is almost purely economical (gold. A lot of gold) against a future (and VERY real) Wahhabization of Indonesia. The USA has almost 700 foreign military bases in many countries of the world (please check the FBI-report http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/bsr/BSR2010Baseline.pdf ) to defend their (former) "policy of engagement", read: the interests of their multinationals (including sales of weapons, oil-exploitation, minerals, the abominable GM-seeds, chemicals, etc). China and the Saudis have already began to engage in an economic colonialism too, with different means to achieve that target. The USA and Australia have been allies since WW2, thus China has to surmount a "gap" of 70 years. Peanuts in history.
Report Abuse
Mauricio | Sat, 26/11/2011 - 11:11am
Your analogy of stationing Chinese troops on Flores is specious, Edo. For one, because unlike Australia and the United States, China and Indonesia have not been long-time allies that have fought wars together. For two, because unlike the U.S. which has had and continues to have bases in East Asia, China does not have such history and experience. Therefore to compare U.S. placing troops in Australia with China placing troops in Indonesia is specious and ultimately misguided. Next time you want to make a point with an analogy, think more deeply about the issue.
Report Abuse
Mauricio | Sat, 26/11/2011 - 10:11am
That's December 7, not 11.
Report Abuse
Mauricio | Sat, 26/11/2011 - 10:11am
Wake up and smell the coffee, Edo. The United States has been ENGAGED with East Asia ever since the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1945. The East Asian Miracle and the Rise of the Asian Tigers took place and was made possible only through the active engagement and intervention of the United States in creating a military shield. The re-emergence of Japan, the rise of the RoK, Taiwan, Singapore could not have taken place without the engagement of the United States. The present move to station GIs in Australia is a continuation of a policy of engagement with East Asia dating from December 11, 1945.
Reading up on some history and IR might do you (and this forum) some good, pal. It's only a provocation cuz you don't see the forest from the trees. If you are concerned about a military presenting a clear and present danger to Indonesians, I suggest that you look inwards to your own military and to the threat that it poses to Indonesian nationals and to Indonesian stability.
Report Abuse
Edo E | Sat, 26/11/2011 - 09:11am
@ Mauricio, I'm a little confused. You say that the "GIs in Australia are a SIGNAL, a token that says that the United States is ENGAGED and it has willing allies in the region." If this is true, then this is clearly a threat and a provocation, of course. Just imagine China stationing 5,000 soldiers on a future base in Flores. The howls and hypocritical whining from the USA and Australia would be almost unbearable.
With a US-company getting FREELY 99% of the profits, I see absolutely no need to take the whole island militarily, as it would be completely counterproductive (the fight against guerrillas and local soldiers would only hamper the production, and they don't want that). Besides, political colonialism is being replaced by economical corporation-colonialism. With the base in Darwin, they are only preparing for FUTURE conflicts against the radicals.
Report Abuse
US, ASEAN to reaffirm ties at NY summit
Endy M. Bayuni, The Jakarta Post, New York | Fri, 09/24/2010 9:19 AM A | A | A | - Klipping the Jakarta Post
It will be a short luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria in New York on Friday, but organizers still call it a summit, the second of its kind involving the president of the United States and the leaders of ASEAN.
President Barack Obama has invited ASEAN leaders, who usually gather in New York at this time of the year for the UN General Assembly, to meet with him to discuss ways of further enhancing relations between the US and the 10 countries from what Washington officials increasingly describe as a dynamic region.
Conspicuously missing will be the big stature of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Instead, Vice President Boediono checked into the nearby InterContinental Hotel Barclay on Thursday as soon as he landed here to represent Indonesia.
Myanmar is the other country not represented by its top leader, probably just as well as Obama will likely raise tough questions about the November general elections that the Myanmar junta is organizing.
The gist of the meeting isn’t likely to generate the attention of the international media more drawn into the Burma issue.
The leaders will take up where they had left off after the inaugural US-ASEAN summit in Singapore in November, when they identified areas for closer and deep cooperation, including in trade and investment, regional security, disaster management, food and energy supply and climate change.
Boediono made the short visit here to also meet with former president Bill Clinton and lunch with entrepreneurs and meet with the Indonesian community in New York.
As a further sign of greater US engagement with ASEAN, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to travel to Hanoi later this year for the East Asia Summit (EAS), an annual meeting involving the 10 ASEAN countries and China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.
The EAS, with ASEAN driving the process, now appears to be the chosen venue to build an East Asian Community, especially now that Russia and the US have both agreed to the terms set for their involvement.
Washington overcame the last hurdle when Clinton last year signed the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation that effectively bound countries to commit to working toward peace and stability in the region.
While Indonesia and other ASEAN countries welcome the greater engagement of the US with the region, they are wary that Washington would use this as a platform to forge alliances to counter the rapid rise of China.
Clinton raised eyebrows when she urged China to guarantee maritime security in the South China Sea during a meeting with ASEAN counterparts in Hanoi in June.
China has insisted that the overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea should be resolved by countries in the region to the exclusion of others.
With China embroiled in a similar territorial dispute with Japan, another US ally, ASEAN fears a new kind of cold war between the US and China is evolving.
“I don’t think ASEAN should be dragged into this conflict,” an ASEAN diplomat said.
Editorial Page 6
Related News >>
Police detain Filipino activists at Bali protest
US, ASEAN set to forge real cooperation
US says ASEAN has role to play in Myanmar and Koreas
ASEAN to bring in US as counterbalance to China
Follow our twitter @jakpost
& our public blog @blogIMO
| | | | | | | | Comments (1)
muradali_shaikh | Fri, 24/09/2010 - 09:09am
How the CIA ran a secret army of 3,000 assassins
By Julius Cavendish in Kabul
Thursday 23 September 2010
The US Central Intelligence Agency is running and paying for a secret 3,000-strong army of Afghan paramilitaries whose main aim is assassinating Taliban and al-Qa'ida operatives not just in Afghanistan but across the border in neighbouring Pakistan's tribal areas, according to Bob Woodward's explosive book.
Although the CIA has long been known to run clandestine militias in Afghanistan, including one from a base it rents from the Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half-brother in the southern province of Kandahar, the sheer number of militiamen directly under its control have never been publicly revealed.
Woodward's book, Obama's Wars, describes these forces as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qa'ida and Afghan Taliban havens there. Two US newspapers published the claims after receiving copies of the manuscript.
The secret army is split into "Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams", and is thought to be responsible for the deaths of many Pakistani Taliban fighters who have crossed the border into Afghanistan to fight Nato and Afghan government forces there.
There are ever-increasing numbers of "kill-or-capture" missions undertaken by US Special Forces against Afghan Taliban and foreign fighters, who hope to drive rank-and-file Taliban towards the Afghan government's peace process by eliminating their leaders. The suspicion is that the secret army is working in close tandem with them.
Although no comment has been forthcoming, it is understood that the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, Gen David Petraeus, approves of the mission, which bears similarities to the covert assassination campaign against al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which was partially credited with stemming the tide of violence after the country imploded between 2004 and 2007.
The details of the clandestine army have surprised no one in Kabul, the Afghan capital, although the fact that the information is now public is unprecedented. There have been multiple reports of the CIA running its own militias in southern Afghanistan.
The operation also has powerful echoes of clandestine operations of the 1990s, when the CIA recruited and ran a militia inside the Afghan border with the sole purpose of killing Osama bin Laden. The order then that a specially recruited Afghan militia was "to capture him alive" – the result of protracted legal wrangles about when, how and if Osama bin Laden could be killed – doomed efforts to assassinate him before 9/11.
Report Abuse
It will be a short luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria in New York on Friday, but organizers still call it a summit, the second of its kind involving the president of the United States and the leaders of ASEAN.
President Barack Obama has invited ASEAN leaders, who usually gather in New York at this time of the year for the UN General Assembly, to meet with him to discuss ways of further enhancing relations between the US and the 10 countries from what Washington officials increasingly describe as a dynamic region.
Conspicuously missing will be the big stature of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Instead, Vice President Boediono checked into the nearby InterContinental Hotel Barclay on Thursday as soon as he landed here to represent Indonesia.
Myanmar is the other country not represented by its top leader, probably just as well as Obama will likely raise tough questions about the November general elections that the Myanmar junta is organizing.
The gist of the meeting isn’t likely to generate the attention of the international media more drawn into the Burma issue.
The leaders will take up where they had left off after the inaugural US-ASEAN summit in Singapore in November, when they identified areas for closer and deep cooperation, including in trade and investment, regional security, disaster management, food and energy supply and climate change.
Boediono made the short visit here to also meet with former president Bill Clinton and lunch with entrepreneurs and meet with the Indonesian community in New York.
As a further sign of greater US engagement with ASEAN, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to travel to Hanoi later this year for the East Asia Summit (EAS), an annual meeting involving the 10 ASEAN countries and China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.
The EAS, with ASEAN driving the process, now appears to be the chosen venue to build an East Asian Community, especially now that Russia and the US have both agreed to the terms set for their involvement.
Washington overcame the last hurdle when Clinton last year signed the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation that effectively bound countries to commit to working toward peace and stability in the region.
While Indonesia and other ASEAN countries welcome the greater engagement of the US with the region, they are wary that Washington would use this as a platform to forge alliances to counter the rapid rise of China.
Clinton raised eyebrows when she urged China to guarantee maritime security in the South China Sea during a meeting with ASEAN counterparts in Hanoi in June.
China has insisted that the overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea should be resolved by countries in the region to the exclusion of others.
With China embroiled in a similar territorial dispute with Japan, another US ally, ASEAN fears a new kind of cold war between the US and China is evolving.
“I don’t think ASEAN should be dragged into this conflict,” an ASEAN diplomat said.
Editorial Page 6
Related News >>
Police detain Filipino activists at Bali protest
US, ASEAN set to forge real cooperation
US says ASEAN has role to play in Myanmar and Koreas
ASEAN to bring in US as counterbalance to China
Follow our twitter @jakpost
& our public blog @blogIMO
| | | | | | | | Comments (1)
muradali_shaikh | Fri, 24/09/2010 - 09:09am
How the CIA ran a secret army of 3,000 assassins
By Julius Cavendish in Kabul
Thursday 23 September 2010
The US Central Intelligence Agency is running and paying for a secret 3,000-strong army of Afghan paramilitaries whose main aim is assassinating Taliban and al-Qa'ida operatives not just in Afghanistan but across the border in neighbouring Pakistan's tribal areas, according to Bob Woodward's explosive book.
Although the CIA has long been known to run clandestine militias in Afghanistan, including one from a base it rents from the Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half-brother in the southern province of Kandahar, the sheer number of militiamen directly under its control have never been publicly revealed.
Woodward's book, Obama's Wars, describes these forces as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qa'ida and Afghan Taliban havens there. Two US newspapers published the claims after receiving copies of the manuscript.
The secret army is split into "Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams", and is thought to be responsible for the deaths of many Pakistani Taliban fighters who have crossed the border into Afghanistan to fight Nato and Afghan government forces there.
There are ever-increasing numbers of "kill-or-capture" missions undertaken by US Special Forces against Afghan Taliban and foreign fighters, who hope to drive rank-and-file Taliban towards the Afghan government's peace process by eliminating their leaders. The suspicion is that the secret army is working in close tandem with them.
Although no comment has been forthcoming, it is understood that the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, Gen David Petraeus, approves of the mission, which bears similarities to the covert assassination campaign against al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which was partially credited with stemming the tide of violence after the country imploded between 2004 and 2007.
The details of the clandestine army have surprised no one in Kabul, the Afghan capital, although the fact that the information is now public is unprecedented. There have been multiple reports of the CIA running its own militias in southern Afghanistan.
The operation also has powerful echoes of clandestine operations of the 1990s, when the CIA recruited and ran a militia inside the Afghan border with the sole purpose of killing Osama bin Laden. The order then that a specially recruited Afghan militia was "to capture him alive" – the result of protracted legal wrangles about when, how and if Osama bin Laden could be killed – doomed efforts to assassinate him before 9/11.
Report Abuse
Durban conference, committing to the commitment
Warief Djajanto Basorie, Jakarta | Mon, 11/28/2011 8:55 PM A | A | A | -Klipping The Jakarta post
The United Nations climate conference in Durban, South Africa, from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9will be another attempt to achieve what the annual meeting failed to accomplish in Copenhagen in 2009: A legally binding global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The first commitment period of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which binds only developed nations to reduce emissions, expires at the end of 2012. A more comprehensive pact was the goal in Copenhagen, but the divide between developed and developing countries has not yet been bridged. That was still the case at the 2010 conference in Cancun, Mexico, and will remain so in Durban unless a quantum leap occurs.
The developed nations want developing nations to enter a legally binding accord in a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. The developing nations insist that they should be allowed to make their own cuts voluntarily.
Their argument is that the bulk of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are a result of the extensive use of fossil-based fuels (coal, oil and gas) by economically advanced nations since the Industrial Revolution. Thus the burden of emissions reduction should fall on developed nations, the developing countries say. The United States and European Union nations were responsible for 54 percent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions from 1900 to 2007, writes Kelly Rigg, the chief of Tck Tck Tck, a coalition of 200 NGOs pushing for a global climate deal.
Although the US, the world’s biggest emitter, did not sign up in Kyoto, the protocol does work. It is on track to achieve an emissions reduction of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. This represents a 29 percent reduction of emissions levels that would be expected without the protocol.
But this progress can be undone if the Kyoto Protocol is allowed to lapse with no clear replacement for a legally binding accord. All nations involved in the conference say they are committed to finding a climate solution, but arriving at such a long-term, common solution is indeed difficult.
Indonesia wants developed nations, particularly the United States, to sign up for a second commitment period. “We want to appeal to their noble senses,” Rachmat Witoelar, the Indonesian President’s special envoy for climate change told a pre-Durban roundtable with journalists. The Obama administration is not the obstacle. It’s the US Congress that is influenced by fossil-fuel-related interests that object to carbon emission reductions. Get the United States to make a statement of commitment and an agreement can be reached in the conference after Durban, Witoelar implored.
While Indonesia does not want to sign a legally binding accord, it has taken the lead in volunteering unilateral cuts. It wants the Durban conference to move on the Bali Roadmap as an ongoing process, the executive chair of the National Council on Climate Change says. The roadmap is an accord that was reached at the 2007 climate conference in Bali, to resolve differences between developed and developing nations.
It has two negotiating tracks. One is to discuss long-term post-2012 issues. The second track is resolving commitments to the Kyoto Protocol. Negotiations on both tracks should have been completed at the Copenhagen conference in 2009.
Although Durban may not promise a definitive, all-encompassing pact, what could be a realistic expectation is a series of smaller steps that eventually build up to the ultimate, global accord.
Those achievable steps could include idea-sharing. Indonesia could share its REDD+ initiative in unilaterally reducing emissions from deforestation. Linked to this sharing of information would be voluntary cuts by developing nations. Meanwhile, Australia can explain its US$25 per ton carbon tax scheme that it legislated in October. This is a tax on pollution, a financial disincentive for those who damage the environment.
Other achievable steps are the establishment of mechanisms in financing and technology transfer. On finance, a pre-Durban meeting in Panama City on Oct. 1-7 discussed implementing a $30 billion fast-track fund by 2012 to precede a $100 billon fund by 2020.
On technology transfer, talk is on the setting up of a Technology Executive Committee (TEC) that will give policy direction. Another body being fleshed out is the Climate Technology Center and Network (CTC-N). Its job is to undertake the actual technology transfer to developing countries. Two outstanding issues of the CTC-N are the shaping of the governance body and determining the host country.
For its part, Indonesia still stands to benefit from these shorter-term goals even if no major multilateral deal is reached. Beyond that, Indonesia will continue to engage in bilateral partnerships.
In paraphrasing Lord Stern, the author of the highly acclaimed and equally criticized 2006 Stern Report on economics and climate change, the cost of action that nations undertake to reduce risks of climate change will be less than the cost of inaction and living with climate change.
The writer teaches journalism at the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute in Jakarta.
Follow our twitter @jakpost
& our public blog @blogIMO
| | | | | | | | Post Comments | Comments (1)
petani gurem | Tue, 29/11/2011 - 04:11am
Indonesia send a huge number of delegates to COP 17 in Durban - nearly 200 persons. In comparison, Malaysia only send less than 20 participants, Philippines 16, Vietnam about 30. Why must the Indonesian government waste so much public money to participate in Durban conference. Does a large number of participants can achieve a better result than a smaller one. How many carbon footprints Indonesian delegation create to go to Durban. Rather than to beg money from developed countries to rehabilitate damaged environment or to develop green technology, it is better the Government to save money by sending only a limited number of participants that are really necessary to negotiate in that forum. The money that can be saved from sending a smaller delegation then could be used to build 5 wind turbins, or to build 50 microhydro generator or to reforest 100 ha of damaged teak forest in Central Java, and so on.
By this way, Indonesia can get more benefit in reducing CO2 emission and simultaneously create many jobs in rural areas.
Report Abuse
The United Nations climate conference in Durban, South Africa, from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9will be another attempt to achieve what the annual meeting failed to accomplish in Copenhagen in 2009: A legally binding global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The first commitment period of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which binds only developed nations to reduce emissions, expires at the end of 2012. A more comprehensive pact was the goal in Copenhagen, but the divide between developed and developing countries has not yet been bridged. That was still the case at the 2010 conference in Cancun, Mexico, and will remain so in Durban unless a quantum leap occurs.
The developed nations want developing nations to enter a legally binding accord in a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. The developing nations insist that they should be allowed to make their own cuts voluntarily.
Their argument is that the bulk of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are a result of the extensive use of fossil-based fuels (coal, oil and gas) by economically advanced nations since the Industrial Revolution. Thus the burden of emissions reduction should fall on developed nations, the developing countries say. The United States and European Union nations were responsible for 54 percent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions from 1900 to 2007, writes Kelly Rigg, the chief of Tck Tck Tck, a coalition of 200 NGOs pushing for a global climate deal.
Although the US, the world’s biggest emitter, did not sign up in Kyoto, the protocol does work. It is on track to achieve an emissions reduction of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. This represents a 29 percent reduction of emissions levels that would be expected without the protocol.
But this progress can be undone if the Kyoto Protocol is allowed to lapse with no clear replacement for a legally binding accord. All nations involved in the conference say they are committed to finding a climate solution, but arriving at such a long-term, common solution is indeed difficult.
Indonesia wants developed nations, particularly the United States, to sign up for a second commitment period. “We want to appeal to their noble senses,” Rachmat Witoelar, the Indonesian President’s special envoy for climate change told a pre-Durban roundtable with journalists. The Obama administration is not the obstacle. It’s the US Congress that is influenced by fossil-fuel-related interests that object to carbon emission reductions. Get the United States to make a statement of commitment and an agreement can be reached in the conference after Durban, Witoelar implored.
While Indonesia does not want to sign a legally binding accord, it has taken the lead in volunteering unilateral cuts. It wants the Durban conference to move on the Bali Roadmap as an ongoing process, the executive chair of the National Council on Climate Change says. The roadmap is an accord that was reached at the 2007 climate conference in Bali, to resolve differences between developed and developing nations.
It has two negotiating tracks. One is to discuss long-term post-2012 issues. The second track is resolving commitments to the Kyoto Protocol. Negotiations on both tracks should have been completed at the Copenhagen conference in 2009.
Although Durban may not promise a definitive, all-encompassing pact, what could be a realistic expectation is a series of smaller steps that eventually build up to the ultimate, global accord.
Those achievable steps could include idea-sharing. Indonesia could share its REDD+ initiative in unilaterally reducing emissions from deforestation. Linked to this sharing of information would be voluntary cuts by developing nations. Meanwhile, Australia can explain its US$25 per ton carbon tax scheme that it legislated in October. This is a tax on pollution, a financial disincentive for those who damage the environment.
Other achievable steps are the establishment of mechanisms in financing and technology transfer. On finance, a pre-Durban meeting in Panama City on Oct. 1-7 discussed implementing a $30 billion fast-track fund by 2012 to precede a $100 billon fund by 2020.
On technology transfer, talk is on the setting up of a Technology Executive Committee (TEC) that will give policy direction. Another body being fleshed out is the Climate Technology Center and Network (CTC-N). Its job is to undertake the actual technology transfer to developing countries. Two outstanding issues of the CTC-N are the shaping of the governance body and determining the host country.
For its part, Indonesia still stands to benefit from these shorter-term goals even if no major multilateral deal is reached. Beyond that, Indonesia will continue to engage in bilateral partnerships.
In paraphrasing Lord Stern, the author of the highly acclaimed and equally criticized 2006 Stern Report on economics and climate change, the cost of action that nations undertake to reduce risks of climate change will be less than the cost of inaction and living with climate change.
The writer teaches journalism at the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute in Jakarta.
Follow our twitter @jakpost
& our public blog @blogIMO
| | | | | | | | Post Comments | Comments (1)
petani gurem | Tue, 29/11/2011 - 04:11am
Indonesia send a huge number of delegates to COP 17 in Durban - nearly 200 persons. In comparison, Malaysia only send less than 20 participants, Philippines 16, Vietnam about 30. Why must the Indonesian government waste so much public money to participate in Durban conference. Does a large number of participants can achieve a better result than a smaller one. How many carbon footprints Indonesian delegation create to go to Durban. Rather than to beg money from developed countries to rehabilitate damaged environment or to develop green technology, it is better the Government to save money by sending only a limited number of participants that are really necessary to negotiate in that forum. The money that can be saved from sending a smaller delegation then could be used to build 5 wind turbins, or to build 50 microhydro generator or to reforest 100 ha of damaged teak forest in Central Java, and so on.
By this way, Indonesia can get more benefit in reducing CO2 emission and simultaneously create many jobs in rural areas.
Report Abuse
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
ASEAN Security Community vs Minimum Essential Force
Andi Widjajanto, Jakarta | Thu, 11/24/2011 10:03 AM A | A | A | - Klipping The Jakarta Post
There is an inconsistency between Indonesia’s defense and foreign policies as a result of competing paradigms that serve as the foundations of these policies.
To explore how these two competing paradigms create a disintegrative national security policy, I analyze two major goals of Indonesia’s national security policy: ASEAN Security Community (ASC) 2015 and the Minimum Essential Force (MEF) 2024.
Currently, Indonesia’s defense policy is based on four documents: Grand Strategy 2008, Defense Doctrine 2008, Defense Intelligence Estimate 2008 and Defense Posture 2024.
These four documents mark a significant shift in our defense policy from one that focused on internal security operations during the Soeharto era to one that tries to create a modern, integrated armed forces that is able to anticipate security challenges in the 21st century.
Unlike the defense policy that has published four legal documents, Indonesia’s foreign policy is based on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s doctrine of “one thousand friends, zero enemies”, and Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa’s doctrine of “dynamic equilibrium”.
These two doctrines coexist with the midterm goal to create an ASEAN Community in 2015.
In the realm of defense, the evolution of Indonesia’s defense policy was initiated in 1999 when the country decided to start reforming its military, making it into a professional organization by eliminating the notions of a political- and business-oriented army.
Ideally, this military reform will be followed by a defense transformation that will try to close the strategic gap between the current force and future force.
This gap will be closed by ini-tiating the program of military reduction that tries to remove obsolete military technologies from Indonesia’s weapons system as well as by implementing a military modernization program aiming to create a Minimal Essential Force by 2024.
The MEF 2024 will serve as a transition force until Indonesia is able to initiate a military innovation program that will try to adopt the most advanced military technology to start a revolution in military affairs that will transform TNI into an agile force of the 21st century.
In terms of force projection, the military sets up two strategic plans. The first is strategic, planning to create MEF 2024, the second is strategic planning to establish a future force for 2050.
According to these two plans, theoretically, TNI will adopt four different concepts of force ratio to project its transformation until 2050.
The first projection utilizes the concept of force-to-risk ration to create a force that will be able to deal with security risks such as internal conflicts, border disputes, terrorism and transnational security issues. This force will be supported by 1 percent of GDP and is expected to be achieved in 2014.
The second projection uses the concept of force to space ratio to create a military that will be able to protect Indonesia’s vast territory.
This force — although will rely on forward deployment especially of border divisions, naval patrol, as well as air control — will mainly be defensive in nature. This force is projected to be achieved in 2020 and will be supported by 1.5-2 percent of GDP.
The third projection uses the concept of force-to-force ratio to create a military that will be able to employ a balancing strategy especially against neighboring states that deploy offensive and provocative forces to Indonesia’s border areas.
To achieve this force, Indonesia will allocate 2.5-3 percent of GDP each year until this force is established between 2024 and 2029.
The last projection uses the development of military technology as the main component to create a future force of 21st century. This force will be established by integrating the latest advancements in military technology in the military doctrine-strategy and weapon systems.
The integration means Indonesia will implement long-term modernization and even arms acquisition programs.
To support these programs, 3.5-4 percent of GDP will be allocated to support the defense budget until this force is achieved in 2050. These programs will transform Indonesia’s military to become an offensive force that has a reliable deterrence strategy.
These programs could result in an arms race in the region that will increase the probability of regional conflict between states in Southeast Asia.
By analyzing two policies of ASC 2015 and MEF 2024, we can find significant differences between the trajectory of security goals projected by the foreign and defense policies.
The foreign policy has a more optimistic trajectory indicated by the establishment of ASC in 2015 that will bring peace and stability in the region. However, the defense policy has a more pessimistic and realistic trajectory that projects a long-term evolution of military force.
The trajectory also projects a long-term evolution of military changes that consist of three main programs of military reform, defense transformation and military innovation.
These competing trajectories give clear indications of the existence of a disintegrative national security policy: Our foreign policy is not coherent with our defense policy.
The foreign policy projects the paradigm of liberal institutionalism that relies on a strategy of institutionalization of liberal norms in Southeast Asia.
The concept of “one thousand friends, zero enemies”, “dynamic equilibrium” or a “security community” resonate with how Indonesia’s foreign policy is closer to a liberal institutionalist paradigm than a realist one. In contrast, the defense policy represents the defense realism paradigm.
Since the policy of band-wagoning will never be an option for Indonesia’s military, the strategy of balancing will be continuously used and modified to create future force suited for the 21st century.
This paradigm guides the trajectory of Indonesia’s military to implement a defense transformation and military innovation program to create a more modern force that has a more advanced weapons system.
If Indonesia manages to achieve both the ASC 2015 and MEF 2024, then there will be a puzzling regional security architecture in Southeast Asia. We may see the creation of a security community that coexists with an offensive and provocative force deployment.
The writer is a lecturer at the Department of International Relations, University of Indonesia.
There is an inconsistency between Indonesia’s defense and foreign policies as a result of competing paradigms that serve as the foundations of these policies.
To explore how these two competing paradigms create a disintegrative national security policy, I analyze two major goals of Indonesia’s national security policy: ASEAN Security Community (ASC) 2015 and the Minimum Essential Force (MEF) 2024.
Currently, Indonesia’s defense policy is based on four documents: Grand Strategy 2008, Defense Doctrine 2008, Defense Intelligence Estimate 2008 and Defense Posture 2024.
These four documents mark a significant shift in our defense policy from one that focused on internal security operations during the Soeharto era to one that tries to create a modern, integrated armed forces that is able to anticipate security challenges in the 21st century.
Unlike the defense policy that has published four legal documents, Indonesia’s foreign policy is based on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s doctrine of “one thousand friends, zero enemies”, and Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa’s doctrine of “dynamic equilibrium”.
These two doctrines coexist with the midterm goal to create an ASEAN Community in 2015.
In the realm of defense, the evolution of Indonesia’s defense policy was initiated in 1999 when the country decided to start reforming its military, making it into a professional organization by eliminating the notions of a political- and business-oriented army.
Ideally, this military reform will be followed by a defense transformation that will try to close the strategic gap between the current force and future force.
This gap will be closed by ini-tiating the program of military reduction that tries to remove obsolete military technologies from Indonesia’s weapons system as well as by implementing a military modernization program aiming to create a Minimal Essential Force by 2024.
The MEF 2024 will serve as a transition force until Indonesia is able to initiate a military innovation program that will try to adopt the most advanced military technology to start a revolution in military affairs that will transform TNI into an agile force of the 21st century.
In terms of force projection, the military sets up two strategic plans. The first is strategic, planning to create MEF 2024, the second is strategic planning to establish a future force for 2050.
According to these two plans, theoretically, TNI will adopt four different concepts of force ratio to project its transformation until 2050.
The first projection utilizes the concept of force-to-risk ration to create a force that will be able to deal with security risks such as internal conflicts, border disputes, terrorism and transnational security issues. This force will be supported by 1 percent of GDP and is expected to be achieved in 2014.
The second projection uses the concept of force to space ratio to create a military that will be able to protect Indonesia’s vast territory.
This force — although will rely on forward deployment especially of border divisions, naval patrol, as well as air control — will mainly be defensive in nature. This force is projected to be achieved in 2020 and will be supported by 1.5-2 percent of GDP.
The third projection uses the concept of force-to-force ratio to create a military that will be able to employ a balancing strategy especially against neighboring states that deploy offensive and provocative forces to Indonesia’s border areas.
To achieve this force, Indonesia will allocate 2.5-3 percent of GDP each year until this force is established between 2024 and 2029.
The last projection uses the development of military technology as the main component to create a future force of 21st century. This force will be established by integrating the latest advancements in military technology in the military doctrine-strategy and weapon systems.
The integration means Indonesia will implement long-term modernization and even arms acquisition programs.
To support these programs, 3.5-4 percent of GDP will be allocated to support the defense budget until this force is achieved in 2050. These programs will transform Indonesia’s military to become an offensive force that has a reliable deterrence strategy.
These programs could result in an arms race in the region that will increase the probability of regional conflict between states in Southeast Asia.
By analyzing two policies of ASC 2015 and MEF 2024, we can find significant differences between the trajectory of security goals projected by the foreign and defense policies.
The foreign policy has a more optimistic trajectory indicated by the establishment of ASC in 2015 that will bring peace and stability in the region. However, the defense policy has a more pessimistic and realistic trajectory that projects a long-term evolution of military force.
The trajectory also projects a long-term evolution of military changes that consist of three main programs of military reform, defense transformation and military innovation.
These competing trajectories give clear indications of the existence of a disintegrative national security policy: Our foreign policy is not coherent with our defense policy.
The foreign policy projects the paradigm of liberal institutionalism that relies on a strategy of institutionalization of liberal norms in Southeast Asia.
The concept of “one thousand friends, zero enemies”, “dynamic equilibrium” or a “security community” resonate with how Indonesia’s foreign policy is closer to a liberal institutionalist paradigm than a realist one. In contrast, the defense policy represents the defense realism paradigm.
Since the policy of band-wagoning will never be an option for Indonesia’s military, the strategy of balancing will be continuously used and modified to create future force suited for the 21st century.
This paradigm guides the trajectory of Indonesia’s military to implement a defense transformation and military innovation program to create a more modern force that has a more advanced weapons system.
If Indonesia manages to achieve both the ASC 2015 and MEF 2024, then there will be a puzzling regional security architecture in Southeast Asia. We may see the creation of a security community that coexists with an offensive and provocative force deployment.
The writer is a lecturer at the Department of International Relations, University of Indonesia.
US military base in Darwin a threat?
Angel Damayanti, Jakarta | Thu, 11/24/2011 10:12 AM A | A | A | - Klipping The Jakarta Post
Despite reducing its defense spending and its engagement in two wars, the United States promises to establish a new permanent military base in Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia.
US President Barack Obama unveiled the plan during his visit to one of the US’ counterparts and solid allies in Asia Pacific last week.
The announcement obviously surprised ASEAN leaders, as well as China, as they were about to gather for their summit in Bali.
Although Obama did not mention China, many observers perceive the military base has something to do with China’s rise economically and militarily in the region.
There were at least two reasons cited by Obama to justify the new military base in the Asia-Pacific region. First, is to maintain its ties with Australia, and the second is to enhance its economic development by pursuing cooperation with states in the region.
President Obama plans to set up the US military base in Darwin as America wants to deepen and strengthen its military alliance with Australia.
He aims to fulfill this by arranging a new defense pact with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Therefore, first and foremost, this military base is an implementation of the strategic ties between the US and Australia.
The US-Australian defense agreement is mainly aimed at maintaining and updating US and Australia’s security ties that have spanned 60 years.
However, this strengthening of ties may signal the US’ comeback from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region.
This confirms that the US is willing to play a greater role in the region to counterbalance China’s assertiveness.
Furthermore, an increasing US presence in the region is fulfilling its pledge to protect both its national interests as well as their allies’. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington would give more military support to Southeast Asian countries, mainly the Philippines, in the wake of conflicting claims over the South China Sea against China.
The US military presence in Darwin will be implemented with the gradual deployment of war planes, military equipment and 2,500 mariners in Darwin in the coming years.
Obviously, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister has viewed this alliance as a reaction toward China’s rise (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 19, 2011). Many observers perceive the same since this situation perfectly describes the action-reaction model by Barry Buzan in his book, The Arms Dynamic in World Politics (1998).
Recently, China bought its first multi-role aircraft carrier from Russia in August. The Chinese government did this in accordance with its economic development and the increase in its military spending.
This is not to mention the recent deployment of more advanced Chinese missiles recently on the Indian border, which raised the US’ concerns about China’s attempts to strengthen its deterrence posture and become more aggressive in the region over the past decade.
Interestingly, as written in its defense paper, which was published in March 2010, the Chinese government legitimized its strategy for territorial and sovereignty purposes. This strategy is essential for China due to boundary problems with its neighbors.
The Chinese government still has to address the political problem with Taiwan, as well as several border disputes with India, Japan and some ASEAN member countries in relation to South China Sea claims.
China’s defense paper may confirm that it has no intention of challenging America’s military. However, its military strategy may provoke tensions with the US’ allies, primarily Japan and the Philippines, and create instability which would prompt the US to increase its presence in the region.
Second, Obama explicitly said the US-Australia pact was intended to protect commercial traffic in the Pacific, which is essential for Washington. Like his predecessors, Reagan and Clinton, Obama reemphasized the vital role of the Asia-Pacific region for the US’ economic development.
Moreover, Obama used the opportunity of the East Asia Summit last week to convey US willingness to deepen and strengthen its participation in the entire Asia Pacific.
To demonstrate its seriousness, the US also participated in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and pushed for another free trade alliance called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This agreement was also enhanced with the US’ Pacific counterparts, excluding China and Indonesia, five days before the defense pact was announced.
The TPP includes four ASEAN countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei Darussalam, as well as Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Peru.
The economy does matter; in his book Seapower (2009), Geoffrey Till writes that globalization, which brings transnational economic free trade will, in turn, become a major determinant of military strategy and defense policy.
He believes that globalization depends absolutely on the free flow of sea-based shipping and this obviously needs military forces to guard the lanes.
For this reason, US naval strategy has to be assured that its ships, both for commercial and military purposes, have access to any sea in the name of freedom of navigation.
This is important, as international shipping is not free from all disruptions.
The vulnerability of the Asia-Pacific region may come from states as well as non states. Conflict and instability both ashore and at sea; the domination by certain states in particular seas; and international terrorism, or other group threats, such as piracy, drugs, weapons and people smuggling, which occur in the South China Sea and the Malacca Strait, have become yet more reasons for the US to place its military base in Australia.
Nonetheless, the action-reaction involving the US and China, and a greater role played by the US in
the region, is less likely to support stability and economic development in Asia Pacific.
There are at least three reasons to support this view.
First, the arms dynamic will drag the region toward a security dilemma. In this situation, most of the region’s states will perceive either China or the US as a threat, as happened with Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Second, the absence of security and stability in the region will in turn exacerbate the problem regarding expeditionary operations. And finally, the US’ implementation of freedom of navigation, both for economic and military purposes, will irritate coastal states in the region, mainly Indonesia.
Thus, the US needs to be cautious and transparent in implementing such a military strategy in Australia so that none of the Asia-Pacific states will feel vulnerable. On the other hand, ASEAN needs to bridge the two world powers in the region while accommodating its member states’ interests.
The writer is a lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the Indonesian Christian University (UKI), Jakarta.
Despite reducing its defense spending and its engagement in two wars, the United States promises to establish a new permanent military base in Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia.
US President Barack Obama unveiled the plan during his visit to one of the US’ counterparts and solid allies in Asia Pacific last week.
The announcement obviously surprised ASEAN leaders, as well as China, as they were about to gather for their summit in Bali.
Although Obama did not mention China, many observers perceive the military base has something to do with China’s rise economically and militarily in the region.
There were at least two reasons cited by Obama to justify the new military base in the Asia-Pacific region. First, is to maintain its ties with Australia, and the second is to enhance its economic development by pursuing cooperation with states in the region.
President Obama plans to set up the US military base in Darwin as America wants to deepen and strengthen its military alliance with Australia.
He aims to fulfill this by arranging a new defense pact with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Therefore, first and foremost, this military base is an implementation of the strategic ties between the US and Australia.
The US-Australian defense agreement is mainly aimed at maintaining and updating US and Australia’s security ties that have spanned 60 years.
However, this strengthening of ties may signal the US’ comeback from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region.
This confirms that the US is willing to play a greater role in the region to counterbalance China’s assertiveness.
Furthermore, an increasing US presence in the region is fulfilling its pledge to protect both its national interests as well as their allies’. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington would give more military support to Southeast Asian countries, mainly the Philippines, in the wake of conflicting claims over the South China Sea against China.
The US military presence in Darwin will be implemented with the gradual deployment of war planes, military equipment and 2,500 mariners in Darwin in the coming years.
Obviously, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister has viewed this alliance as a reaction toward China’s rise (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 19, 2011). Many observers perceive the same since this situation perfectly describes the action-reaction model by Barry Buzan in his book, The Arms Dynamic in World Politics (1998).
Recently, China bought its first multi-role aircraft carrier from Russia in August. The Chinese government did this in accordance with its economic development and the increase in its military spending.
This is not to mention the recent deployment of more advanced Chinese missiles recently on the Indian border, which raised the US’ concerns about China’s attempts to strengthen its deterrence posture and become more aggressive in the region over the past decade.
Interestingly, as written in its defense paper, which was published in March 2010, the Chinese government legitimized its strategy for territorial and sovereignty purposes. This strategy is essential for China due to boundary problems with its neighbors.
The Chinese government still has to address the political problem with Taiwan, as well as several border disputes with India, Japan and some ASEAN member countries in relation to South China Sea claims.
China’s defense paper may confirm that it has no intention of challenging America’s military. However, its military strategy may provoke tensions with the US’ allies, primarily Japan and the Philippines, and create instability which would prompt the US to increase its presence in the region.
Second, Obama explicitly said the US-Australia pact was intended to protect commercial traffic in the Pacific, which is essential for Washington. Like his predecessors, Reagan and Clinton, Obama reemphasized the vital role of the Asia-Pacific region for the US’ economic development.
Moreover, Obama used the opportunity of the East Asia Summit last week to convey US willingness to deepen and strengthen its participation in the entire Asia Pacific.
To demonstrate its seriousness, the US also participated in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and pushed for another free trade alliance called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This agreement was also enhanced with the US’ Pacific counterparts, excluding China and Indonesia, five days before the defense pact was announced.
The TPP includes four ASEAN countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei Darussalam, as well as Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Peru.
The economy does matter; in his book Seapower (2009), Geoffrey Till writes that globalization, which brings transnational economic free trade will, in turn, become a major determinant of military strategy and defense policy.
He believes that globalization depends absolutely on the free flow of sea-based shipping and this obviously needs military forces to guard the lanes.
For this reason, US naval strategy has to be assured that its ships, both for commercial and military purposes, have access to any sea in the name of freedom of navigation.
This is important, as international shipping is not free from all disruptions.
The vulnerability of the Asia-Pacific region may come from states as well as non states. Conflict and instability both ashore and at sea; the domination by certain states in particular seas; and international terrorism, or other group threats, such as piracy, drugs, weapons and people smuggling, which occur in the South China Sea and the Malacca Strait, have become yet more reasons for the US to place its military base in Australia.
Nonetheless, the action-reaction involving the US and China, and a greater role played by the US in
the region, is less likely to support stability and economic development in Asia Pacific.
There are at least three reasons to support this view.
First, the arms dynamic will drag the region toward a security dilemma. In this situation, most of the region’s states will perceive either China or the US as a threat, as happened with Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Second, the absence of security and stability in the region will in turn exacerbate the problem regarding expeditionary operations. And finally, the US’ implementation of freedom of navigation, both for economic and military purposes, will irritate coastal states in the region, mainly Indonesia.
Thus, the US needs to be cautious and transparent in implementing such a military strategy in Australia so that none of the Asia-Pacific states will feel vulnerable. On the other hand, ASEAN needs to bridge the two world powers in the region while accommodating its member states’ interests.
The writer is a lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the Indonesian Christian University (UKI), Jakarta.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Marines in Darwin: Trashing the Lombok treaty
Duncan Graham, The Jakarta Post, Malang, East Java | Wed, 11/23/2011 9:45 AM A | A | A | - Klipping The Jakarta Post
In 2006 the two relevant foreign ministers, Alexander Downer and Hassan Wirajuda, signed the Australia-Indonesia Agreement on the Framework for Security Cooperation.
It took two years of negotiations to develop the document, which replaced the 1995 formal defense pact. What’s now known as the Lombok Treaty committed both nations to cooperation and consultation in defense and law enforcement, combating international crime and terrorism, and sharing intelligence.
The two countries also agreed they would not “in any manner support or participate in activities by any person or entity which constitutes a threat to the stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity of the other Party”.
Then, suddenly last week Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama announced that up to 2,500 American Marines would be stationed in Darwin, the largest port in Australia closest to Indonesia. This newspaper described the news as a “bombshell”.
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa had apparently been alerted ahead of the announcement. Did this comply with the Lombok Treaty clause on “consultation”? Only if you embrace Australian newspeak where the word has become synonymous with informing others after a cast-iron decision has been made.
That wasn’t the only gulf in interpretation. It seems Australia’s decision to allow heavily armed foreign forces to dig in on the border doesn’t fall into the category of threatening the other’s “stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity”.
Indonesia appears to differ. Natalegawa, who was educated in the UK and Australia and is no slouch in understanding the subtleties of English, was reported as saying it could create “a vicious circle of tension and mistrust”. In plain speak, this is instability. The treaty was designed to do the opposite.
Establishing a US base in northern Australia is meant to send a message to India and China, the two growing super-powers. But between those faraway places and the Great South Land lies a lovely archipelago, the world’s third-largest democracy. This strategic zone will now have American warships, warplanes, submarines and helicopter gunships on a nearby beach — and Indonesians weren’t asked what they thought.
Perception depends on position. Living a few hundred kilometers northwest of Darwin, I have a different view of plans to turn the Northern Territory into an armed camp than when I lived in Perth.
If I was still in my home state (and earlier state of ignorance about Southeast Asia), I might have thought the idea of beefy American soldiers between little me and the land-hungry masses of Asia to be comforting.
Most Australians know about their nation’s empty interior and over-populated neighbors. We’ve grown up fearing the menacing arrows of descending communism believing that only the gallant forces of the Free World could stop the evil Red Tide, just as they halted the Japanese in the 1940s.
But then we matured and it seemed that the gravity theory driving Australian foreign policy had been buried. Wrong. Last week it was exhumed and revived.
It’s been embarrassing trying to explain to Indonesians why a sovereign nation would allow foreign troops to be based on its soil, unless, of course, the host is weak, insecure and subservient to a colonial master.
That’s the obvious logic, and no end of rabbiting on about independent alliances and historical ties will shake local opinion. My friends are just a mite confused — why the US military and not the UK when Australia has the Union Jack on its flag and the Queen’s head on its currency?
It would be easier trying to explain cricket.
The Indonesian media response has been robust with commentators asking how the deal sits alongside the regular pleas for Australians to develop friendly grassroots relationships with the people next door. There’s been much talk of a new Pearl Harbor.
How would Australians react if Indonesia suddenly announced a similar number of Chinese troops being stationed in Bali? Would Canberra accept the “normal bilateral agreement” line? If our Javanese neighbors in suburban Malang invite Ambonese hardmen (the preman usually used for “protection”) to settle in and flex their muscles, my family would be rapidly reappraising our community relationships.
Does Indonesia have territorial ambitions on Australia? It’s about as impossible to erase this deeply-
embedded but absurd fear in the Australian psyche, as it is to convince the electorate that the US will not necessarily dash into the fray should the continent be attacked.
The Indonesian armed forces would be formidable defenders of their land, but don’t appear to have the equipment, funds, or enthusiasm to invade 7.69 million square kilometers. There’s no discernable political appetite for such an insane adventure. Terrorists occasionally add Australia in their visions of a Caliphate but these crackpots are on the fringe of the fringe.
The last test of US resolve in this region came during the 1999 East Timor Referendum crisis when Australia appealed for American involvement. Then president Bill Clinton maneuvered a few warships but kept them over the horizon. The tension with Indonesia was an Australian problem, and no grunts’ boots were among the international peacekeepers that trod the turf of what is now Timor Leste.
The realpolitik is that future US policy will be based on that nation’s national interests at the time and having a US Marine base in Australia will make not a whit of difference. If Washington decrees these troops will be deployed elsewhere or sent back to their northern hemisphere home, Canberra’s agreements with the US will have no more value than the Lombok Treaty.
In the meantime, we Australians have to remain in this region for the rest of our existence. Better Gillard puts her government’s energies into encouraging us to understand and appreciate our neighbors than being matey with the Marines.
If we really must have a US presence, then invite the Peace Corps.
The writer is an East Java-based journalist.
In 2006 the two relevant foreign ministers, Alexander Downer and Hassan Wirajuda, signed the Australia-Indonesia Agreement on the Framework for Security Cooperation.
It took two years of negotiations to develop the document, which replaced the 1995 formal defense pact. What’s now known as the Lombok Treaty committed both nations to cooperation and consultation in defense and law enforcement, combating international crime and terrorism, and sharing intelligence.
The two countries also agreed they would not “in any manner support or participate in activities by any person or entity which constitutes a threat to the stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity of the other Party”.
Then, suddenly last week Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama announced that up to 2,500 American Marines would be stationed in Darwin, the largest port in Australia closest to Indonesia. This newspaper described the news as a “bombshell”.
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa had apparently been alerted ahead of the announcement. Did this comply with the Lombok Treaty clause on “consultation”? Only if you embrace Australian newspeak where the word has become synonymous with informing others after a cast-iron decision has been made.
That wasn’t the only gulf in interpretation. It seems Australia’s decision to allow heavily armed foreign forces to dig in on the border doesn’t fall into the category of threatening the other’s “stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity”.
Indonesia appears to differ. Natalegawa, who was educated in the UK and Australia and is no slouch in understanding the subtleties of English, was reported as saying it could create “a vicious circle of tension and mistrust”. In plain speak, this is instability. The treaty was designed to do the opposite.
Establishing a US base in northern Australia is meant to send a message to India and China, the two growing super-powers. But between those faraway places and the Great South Land lies a lovely archipelago, the world’s third-largest democracy. This strategic zone will now have American warships, warplanes, submarines and helicopter gunships on a nearby beach — and Indonesians weren’t asked what they thought.
Perception depends on position. Living a few hundred kilometers northwest of Darwin, I have a different view of plans to turn the Northern Territory into an armed camp than when I lived in Perth.
If I was still in my home state (and earlier state of ignorance about Southeast Asia), I might have thought the idea of beefy American soldiers between little me and the land-hungry masses of Asia to be comforting.
Most Australians know about their nation’s empty interior and over-populated neighbors. We’ve grown up fearing the menacing arrows of descending communism believing that only the gallant forces of the Free World could stop the evil Red Tide, just as they halted the Japanese in the 1940s.
But then we matured and it seemed that the gravity theory driving Australian foreign policy had been buried. Wrong. Last week it was exhumed and revived.
It’s been embarrassing trying to explain to Indonesians why a sovereign nation would allow foreign troops to be based on its soil, unless, of course, the host is weak, insecure and subservient to a colonial master.
That’s the obvious logic, and no end of rabbiting on about independent alliances and historical ties will shake local opinion. My friends are just a mite confused — why the US military and not the UK when Australia has the Union Jack on its flag and the Queen’s head on its currency?
It would be easier trying to explain cricket.
The Indonesian media response has been robust with commentators asking how the deal sits alongside the regular pleas for Australians to develop friendly grassroots relationships with the people next door. There’s been much talk of a new Pearl Harbor.
How would Australians react if Indonesia suddenly announced a similar number of Chinese troops being stationed in Bali? Would Canberra accept the “normal bilateral agreement” line? If our Javanese neighbors in suburban Malang invite Ambonese hardmen (the preman usually used for “protection”) to settle in and flex their muscles, my family would be rapidly reappraising our community relationships.
Does Indonesia have territorial ambitions on Australia? It’s about as impossible to erase this deeply-
embedded but absurd fear in the Australian psyche, as it is to convince the electorate that the US will not necessarily dash into the fray should the continent be attacked.
The Indonesian armed forces would be formidable defenders of their land, but don’t appear to have the equipment, funds, or enthusiasm to invade 7.69 million square kilometers. There’s no discernable political appetite for such an insane adventure. Terrorists occasionally add Australia in their visions of a Caliphate but these crackpots are on the fringe of the fringe.
The last test of US resolve in this region came during the 1999 East Timor Referendum crisis when Australia appealed for American involvement. Then president Bill Clinton maneuvered a few warships but kept them over the horizon. The tension with Indonesia was an Australian problem, and no grunts’ boots were among the international peacekeepers that trod the turf of what is now Timor Leste.
The realpolitik is that future US policy will be based on that nation’s national interests at the time and having a US Marine base in Australia will make not a whit of difference. If Washington decrees these troops will be deployed elsewhere or sent back to their northern hemisphere home, Canberra’s agreements with the US will have no more value than the Lombok Treaty.
In the meantime, we Australians have to remain in this region for the rest of our existence. Better Gillard puts her government’s energies into encouraging us to understand and appreciate our neighbors than being matey with the Marines.
If we really must have a US presence, then invite the Peace Corps.
The writer is an East Java-based journalist.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Integration, no; Major power rivalry, yes
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Wed, 12/14/2005 4:18 PM A | A | A | Eric Teo Chu Cheow, Jakarta - Klipping The Jakarta Post
The inaugural East Asia Summit (EAS) will be held in Kuala Lumpur on Dec. 14 under Malaysian Chairmanship, organized in concurrence with the ASEAN and ""ASEAN+3"" Summits. But its odds are probably greater in geo-strategic and political than pure economic and trade terms.
First, big Asian powers have their own agenda, with the latest thinking in Beijing of perhaps ""downplaying"" it in favor of the existing ""ASEAN+3"" or ""10+3"".
Second, and consequently, the ""numbers"" game has begun for the EAS, between ""ASEAN+3+3"" and ""ASEAN+6"", as India battles tenaciously for the second formula, with Japanese ""acknowledgement"".
More importantly, it could prove to be decisive for Japan and China in their future role and leadership in East Asia, just as smaller Asian nations fear of being caught between them in their increasing rivalry within the region.
But where does its future of Asia (integrated or not) really lie in geo-strategic, economic and psychological terms, with Washington's shadow looming behind?
Symbolically, Malaysia has been lobbying hard for the EAS as a fruition of the idea of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, who had mooted an East Asia Economic Caucus or Grouping (EAEC/EAEG) in the early 1990s to ""bring Asians together"". But the situations then and now widely differ.
Some Chinese scholars have in fact recently mooted the idea of the EAS as a sort of an ""Asian coordinating group"" for APEC (just as the existing ""ASEAN+3"" grew from the necessity for Asians to coordinate their positions in the face of the EU at ASEM); but it has one fundamental problem --- India is not a member of APEC and would need to join APEC for this logic to work! Understandably, Beijing may be seeking to assuage American concerns of being left out from the EAS (as expounded by a senior Chinese official recently), as well as to probably ""downplay"" this event, so as to consolidate its own influence within existing ""ASEAN+3"" mechanisms. Big power politics may already be at play behind the EAS before its effective launch!
Two geo-political factors have already influenced the final ASEAN choice of participants to the EAS, which should stand at sixteen when launched.
First, the United States will be absent, unlike the recent APEC Summit in South Korea, and is taking a wait-and-see attitude on the EAS; hence there is a real ""need"" to cater for its ""non-participation"" in this ""pure Asian grouping"", which is on the minds of many Asians.
Second, the rapid rise of India in the past few years has made it necessary for ASEAN to bring India into the mainstream of Asian regional integration, even as a counter-balance to China, as some smaller Asian nations would bashfully admit.
Bearing in mind these two trends, ASEAN Foreign Ministers in a retreat in Cebu, Philippines in May, agreed on three criteria for membership to the EAS ""club"". Firstly, they must be dialogue partners of ASEAN; secondly, they must have substantial economic linkages with the region, and lastly, they must sign the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), before being admitted to the EAS.
China, Japan and South Korea automatically qualify; India qualified too, when it signed the TAC. But it was only after careful consideration and negotiations that Australia and New Zealand agreed to sign the TAC (because of Canberra's special military alliance with the United States); the last two countries were probably included in the EAS as a ""strategic assurance"" to Washington, viz to allay the latter's concerns that the EAS would not be in any way against American fundamental interests within the region, as was initially feared.
But although the EAS' orientation appears to be logically tilted towards economic cooperation (given the present difficulties of bridging serious and fundamental political contentions, especially between Beijing and Tokyo), some observers wonder if the EAS could perhaps ""mesh"" into APEC's agenda, as informally put forward by some Chinese analysts; this would also have the added advantage of balancing Washington with the two Asian feuding giants, as well as India.
Socio-economic issues should thus naturally form the crux of the EAS agenda (for geo-political reasons!), whether in symbiosis with APEC or not.
Many observers had in fact thought that the EAS could envision a sort of pan-Asian Free Trade Area (FTA), a precursor of an Asian Economic Community, whilst others have mooted the possibility of building first an Asian Energy Community, along the lines of the European Coal and Steel Community (amongst its initial six members) in the 1950s.
Energy cooperation would certainly be high on the agenda, as Asian countries, ranging from China and Japan to Indonesia and the Philippines battle the current oil price hike and the ensuing inflationary spiral that may slow down Asian economies. Still others had hoped for an Asian Financial Community, based on the existing Chiang Mai Initiative. But initial hopes and aspirations of a nascent Asian Economic Community of sorts may now prove premature in KL.
More fundamentally, at stake is the future relationship between ""ASEAN+3"" and the EAS, as the former already has intensified cooperation and linkages in almost all fields, which the three new members could ""tag"" on to. But India would feel more comfortable with it was an ""ASEAN+6"" grouping, as it would then not be relegated to the ""third circle"" in KL.
In fact, the future relationship between the EAS (either as a ""ASEAN+3+3"" or ""ASEAN+6"") and the current ""ASEAN+3"" could probably become the thorniest issue in Kuala Lumpur; this ""numbers game"" is clearly a manifestation of the deeper geo-politics that run beneath the EAS.
But the ultimate bottleneck at the EAS would remain undoubtedly the Sino-Japanese feud, which could turn out to be the unfortunate ""highlight"" of this Summit. Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi would be trying to meet bilaterally with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Kuala Lumpur on the margins of the Summit, a bilateral, which Chinese President Hu Jintao had clearly denied Koizumi in Busan during APEC.
Beijing has argued that the last Sino-Japanese bilateral in Jakarta during the April Bandung 50th anniversary commemoration proved futile, as Koizumi still visited Yasukuni Shrine, though briefly, on Oct. 17. Moreover, it appears that there are enormous difficulties this year in organizing the ""traditional"" China-Japan-ROK breakfast summit (as in the past five years) on the margins of the ""ASEAN+3"" Summit, given the serious unhappiness in Beijing and Seoul over Koizumi.
In reality, as long as Beijing-Tokyo relations do not effectively mend, the EAS and its future organization would have little hopes of taking off effectively and Asia would remain unfortunately split (amidst growing Sino-Japanese rivalry) and ""non-integrated"" (with neither a Chinese or Japanese or Indian leadership, or even their co-leadership of Asia); after all, politics still prime over economics (to quote the words of the former Chinese Chairman Mao Tse-toung), and especially in Asia today!
The writer, a business consultant and strategist, is Council Member of the Singapore Institute for International Affairs (SIIA).
The inaugural East Asia Summit (EAS) will be held in Kuala Lumpur on Dec. 14 under Malaysian Chairmanship, organized in concurrence with the ASEAN and ""ASEAN+3"" Summits. But its odds are probably greater in geo-strategic and political than pure economic and trade terms.
First, big Asian powers have their own agenda, with the latest thinking in Beijing of perhaps ""downplaying"" it in favor of the existing ""ASEAN+3"" or ""10+3"".
Second, and consequently, the ""numbers"" game has begun for the EAS, between ""ASEAN+3+3"" and ""ASEAN+6"", as India battles tenaciously for the second formula, with Japanese ""acknowledgement"".
More importantly, it could prove to be decisive for Japan and China in their future role and leadership in East Asia, just as smaller Asian nations fear of being caught between them in their increasing rivalry within the region.
But where does its future of Asia (integrated or not) really lie in geo-strategic, economic and psychological terms, with Washington's shadow looming behind?
Symbolically, Malaysia has been lobbying hard for the EAS as a fruition of the idea of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, who had mooted an East Asia Economic Caucus or Grouping (EAEC/EAEG) in the early 1990s to ""bring Asians together"". But the situations then and now widely differ.
Some Chinese scholars have in fact recently mooted the idea of the EAS as a sort of an ""Asian coordinating group"" for APEC (just as the existing ""ASEAN+3"" grew from the necessity for Asians to coordinate their positions in the face of the EU at ASEM); but it has one fundamental problem --- India is not a member of APEC and would need to join APEC for this logic to work! Understandably, Beijing may be seeking to assuage American concerns of being left out from the EAS (as expounded by a senior Chinese official recently), as well as to probably ""downplay"" this event, so as to consolidate its own influence within existing ""ASEAN+3"" mechanisms. Big power politics may already be at play behind the EAS before its effective launch!
Two geo-political factors have already influenced the final ASEAN choice of participants to the EAS, which should stand at sixteen when launched.
First, the United States will be absent, unlike the recent APEC Summit in South Korea, and is taking a wait-and-see attitude on the EAS; hence there is a real ""need"" to cater for its ""non-participation"" in this ""pure Asian grouping"", which is on the minds of many Asians.
Second, the rapid rise of India in the past few years has made it necessary for ASEAN to bring India into the mainstream of Asian regional integration, even as a counter-balance to China, as some smaller Asian nations would bashfully admit.
Bearing in mind these two trends, ASEAN Foreign Ministers in a retreat in Cebu, Philippines in May, agreed on three criteria for membership to the EAS ""club"". Firstly, they must be dialogue partners of ASEAN; secondly, they must have substantial economic linkages with the region, and lastly, they must sign the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), before being admitted to the EAS.
China, Japan and South Korea automatically qualify; India qualified too, when it signed the TAC. But it was only after careful consideration and negotiations that Australia and New Zealand agreed to sign the TAC (because of Canberra's special military alliance with the United States); the last two countries were probably included in the EAS as a ""strategic assurance"" to Washington, viz to allay the latter's concerns that the EAS would not be in any way against American fundamental interests within the region, as was initially feared.
But although the EAS' orientation appears to be logically tilted towards economic cooperation (given the present difficulties of bridging serious and fundamental political contentions, especially between Beijing and Tokyo), some observers wonder if the EAS could perhaps ""mesh"" into APEC's agenda, as informally put forward by some Chinese analysts; this would also have the added advantage of balancing Washington with the two Asian feuding giants, as well as India.
Socio-economic issues should thus naturally form the crux of the EAS agenda (for geo-political reasons!), whether in symbiosis with APEC or not.
Many observers had in fact thought that the EAS could envision a sort of pan-Asian Free Trade Area (FTA), a precursor of an Asian Economic Community, whilst others have mooted the possibility of building first an Asian Energy Community, along the lines of the European Coal and Steel Community (amongst its initial six members) in the 1950s.
Energy cooperation would certainly be high on the agenda, as Asian countries, ranging from China and Japan to Indonesia and the Philippines battle the current oil price hike and the ensuing inflationary spiral that may slow down Asian economies. Still others had hoped for an Asian Financial Community, based on the existing Chiang Mai Initiative. But initial hopes and aspirations of a nascent Asian Economic Community of sorts may now prove premature in KL.
More fundamentally, at stake is the future relationship between ""ASEAN+3"" and the EAS, as the former already has intensified cooperation and linkages in almost all fields, which the three new members could ""tag"" on to. But India would feel more comfortable with it was an ""ASEAN+6"" grouping, as it would then not be relegated to the ""third circle"" in KL.
In fact, the future relationship between the EAS (either as a ""ASEAN+3+3"" or ""ASEAN+6"") and the current ""ASEAN+3"" could probably become the thorniest issue in Kuala Lumpur; this ""numbers game"" is clearly a manifestation of the deeper geo-politics that run beneath the EAS.
But the ultimate bottleneck at the EAS would remain undoubtedly the Sino-Japanese feud, which could turn out to be the unfortunate ""highlight"" of this Summit. Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi would be trying to meet bilaterally with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Kuala Lumpur on the margins of the Summit, a bilateral, which Chinese President Hu Jintao had clearly denied Koizumi in Busan during APEC.
Beijing has argued that the last Sino-Japanese bilateral in Jakarta during the April Bandung 50th anniversary commemoration proved futile, as Koizumi still visited Yasukuni Shrine, though briefly, on Oct. 17. Moreover, it appears that there are enormous difficulties this year in organizing the ""traditional"" China-Japan-ROK breakfast summit (as in the past five years) on the margins of the ""ASEAN+3"" Summit, given the serious unhappiness in Beijing and Seoul over Koizumi.
In reality, as long as Beijing-Tokyo relations do not effectively mend, the EAS and its future organization would have little hopes of taking off effectively and Asia would remain unfortunately split (amidst growing Sino-Japanese rivalry) and ""non-integrated"" (with neither a Chinese or Japanese or Indian leadership, or even their co-leadership of Asia); after all, politics still prime over economics (to quote the words of the former Chinese Chairman Mao Tse-toung), and especially in Asia today!
The writer, a business consultant and strategist, is Council Member of the Singapore Institute for International Affairs (SIIA).
ASEAN and China form strategic partnership
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Thu, 12/15/2005 4:20 PM A | A | A | Jusuf Wanandi, Jakarta - Klipping The Jakarta Post
A new era has dawned in East Asia. ASEAN and China have forged a Strategic Partnership for Peace and Prosperity. This partnership will have positive implications that go beyond the relationship between ASEAN and China. It will benefit the wider East Asian region and the world. The strategic partnership is a means to making an effective contribution to regional and global peace and prosperity.
ASEAN and China will play an increasingly important role in global affairs. They also have a growing stake in global developments. They are open economies and are rapidly integrating into the global economy. They want to cooperate with each other so that their full integration into the global economy can proceed smoothly -- for each of them and without causing major dislocations within the global economy.
The economies of ASEAN, and particularly China, because of its size, will assume a more prominent place in the global economy within the next two decades. The ASEAN countries will continuously reform, restructure and integrate their economies toward the creation of a single market and production base in 2020.
China, on its part, is making the same effort, and is doing that at a remarkably rapid pace. ASEAN and China can benefit from each other's experiments and experiences. The Framework Agreement for ASEAN-China Closer Economic Relations provides a forum for such productive and open exchanges. They should be undertaken on a regular basis with the involvement of experts from academia, business and the policy community -- from both sides as well as from the wider region.
The transformation of the economies of ASEAN and China may be one of the major developments in the 21st century. Both sides must make a special effort to prevent misperceptions and misunderstandings regarding their development by the global community.
ASEAN and China will need to participate actively in various regional cooperation arrangements, the ASEAN Plus Three, the East Asian Summit, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), as well as in the international arena -- the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and other such bodies. Their increased role in regional and global affairs will shape and be shaped by the emerging regional and evolving international regimes.
ASEAN and China can have a greater influence if they coordinate and harmonize their policies and activities. They can help create a globalization environment that will better facilitate the pursuit for progress of all developing countries. The strategic position of ASEAN and China in those regional and international bodies should be employed to the maximum. They should initiate and actively engage other regional and international participants in the discussion, formulation and implementation of action plans.
To be effective, ASEAN and China have to develop and nurture good relations with other powers in the region, in particular Japan, the United States and India. In this context, ASEAN is in a favorable position, because it has excellent economic and political relations with other regional countries, Japan, Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand, as well as the United States and the European Union.
ASEAN has pursued regional cooperation and integration in Southeast Asia and, at the same time, deepened its relations with all its partners. This reflects its policy of open regionalism, which should also characterize the ASEAN-China strategic partnership. In building an ASEAN Community, ASEAN governments have agreed to intensify the engagement of civil society in regional community building.
The strengthening of the ASEAN-China partnership also necessitates greater people-to-people interaction and cooperation. The voices of the people should also be brought to the attention of governments. A second track ASEAN-China collaboration should be encouraged and facilitated by governments, and be invited to develop ideas and make concrete suggestions to substantiate the strategic partnership.
Economic, political and security issues have become intertwined. Many new cross-border security issues directly affect the people. Although ASEAN and China need to give attention to traditional security issues, such as on the Korean Peninsula, it is the new security issues that require their priority attention. These include trans-border environmental problems, cross-border health issues, drug and people trafficking, smuggling and piracy.
They pose a real threat to the security of the peoples in the region, but they can become sources of conflict among states. These issues form a part of the agenda of the ASEAN Regional Forum, and the time has come for this forum to develop mechanisms for conflict prevention beyond the confidence-building measures. ASEAN and China can initiate this process as both parties have developed a high degree of trust and confidence. Others will then be encouraged to enhance their participation in this forum.
ASEAN and China are also faced with the common challenge of political development so as to be able to sustain their longer-term economic and national developments. Their open economies need to be accompanied by a gradual opening up of political systems. Some ASEAN countries have begun this process and can share their experience with other ASEAN countries and China.
Recent experience in the region has shown that nations that are ill-prepared to undergo political transformation have experienced great and costly disruptions. Open exchanges on these challenges can be facilitated by the second-track. Such exchanges can make important contributions to political development in the two parties because of the mutual trust and mutual understanding that have developed between them.
ASEAN and China must not forgo this historic moment in their relationship. They have produced a variety of initiatives that can further strengthen their mutual trust and mutual understanding. However, they must rightly focus on the strategic initiatives of working together to deepen their relations and at the same time be actively engaged to promote cooperation, peace and prosperity in the wider region.
The vehicles for doing so are there. They must be willing to make the investment to develop mechanisms to realize the East Asian regional objectives, strengthening of trans-Pacific relations through APEC, and productive interactions with other regions in the world through ASEM and FEALAC.
The writer is vice chairman of the Board of Trustees and a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta.
A new era has dawned in East Asia. ASEAN and China have forged a Strategic Partnership for Peace and Prosperity. This partnership will have positive implications that go beyond the relationship between ASEAN and China. It will benefit the wider East Asian region and the world. The strategic partnership is a means to making an effective contribution to regional and global peace and prosperity.
ASEAN and China will play an increasingly important role in global affairs. They also have a growing stake in global developments. They are open economies and are rapidly integrating into the global economy. They want to cooperate with each other so that their full integration into the global economy can proceed smoothly -- for each of them and without causing major dislocations within the global economy.
The economies of ASEAN, and particularly China, because of its size, will assume a more prominent place in the global economy within the next two decades. The ASEAN countries will continuously reform, restructure and integrate their economies toward the creation of a single market and production base in 2020.
China, on its part, is making the same effort, and is doing that at a remarkably rapid pace. ASEAN and China can benefit from each other's experiments and experiences. The Framework Agreement for ASEAN-China Closer Economic Relations provides a forum for such productive and open exchanges. They should be undertaken on a regular basis with the involvement of experts from academia, business and the policy community -- from both sides as well as from the wider region.
The transformation of the economies of ASEAN and China may be one of the major developments in the 21st century. Both sides must make a special effort to prevent misperceptions and misunderstandings regarding their development by the global community.
ASEAN and China will need to participate actively in various regional cooperation arrangements, the ASEAN Plus Three, the East Asian Summit, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), as well as in the international arena -- the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and other such bodies. Their increased role in regional and global affairs will shape and be shaped by the emerging regional and evolving international regimes.
ASEAN and China can have a greater influence if they coordinate and harmonize their policies and activities. They can help create a globalization environment that will better facilitate the pursuit for progress of all developing countries. The strategic position of ASEAN and China in those regional and international bodies should be employed to the maximum. They should initiate and actively engage other regional and international participants in the discussion, formulation and implementation of action plans.
To be effective, ASEAN and China have to develop and nurture good relations with other powers in the region, in particular Japan, the United States and India. In this context, ASEAN is in a favorable position, because it has excellent economic and political relations with other regional countries, Japan, Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand, as well as the United States and the European Union.
ASEAN has pursued regional cooperation and integration in Southeast Asia and, at the same time, deepened its relations with all its partners. This reflects its policy of open regionalism, which should also characterize the ASEAN-China strategic partnership. In building an ASEAN Community, ASEAN governments have agreed to intensify the engagement of civil society in regional community building.
The strengthening of the ASEAN-China partnership also necessitates greater people-to-people interaction and cooperation. The voices of the people should also be brought to the attention of governments. A second track ASEAN-China collaboration should be encouraged and facilitated by governments, and be invited to develop ideas and make concrete suggestions to substantiate the strategic partnership.
Economic, political and security issues have become intertwined. Many new cross-border security issues directly affect the people. Although ASEAN and China need to give attention to traditional security issues, such as on the Korean Peninsula, it is the new security issues that require their priority attention. These include trans-border environmental problems, cross-border health issues, drug and people trafficking, smuggling and piracy.
They pose a real threat to the security of the peoples in the region, but they can become sources of conflict among states. These issues form a part of the agenda of the ASEAN Regional Forum, and the time has come for this forum to develop mechanisms for conflict prevention beyond the confidence-building measures. ASEAN and China can initiate this process as both parties have developed a high degree of trust and confidence. Others will then be encouraged to enhance their participation in this forum.
ASEAN and China are also faced with the common challenge of political development so as to be able to sustain their longer-term economic and national developments. Their open economies need to be accompanied by a gradual opening up of political systems. Some ASEAN countries have begun this process and can share their experience with other ASEAN countries and China.
Recent experience in the region has shown that nations that are ill-prepared to undergo political transformation have experienced great and costly disruptions. Open exchanges on these challenges can be facilitated by the second-track. Such exchanges can make important contributions to political development in the two parties because of the mutual trust and mutual understanding that have developed between them.
ASEAN and China must not forgo this historic moment in their relationship. They have produced a variety of initiatives that can further strengthen their mutual trust and mutual understanding. However, they must rightly focus on the strategic initiatives of working together to deepen their relations and at the same time be actively engaged to promote cooperation, peace and prosperity in the wider region.
The vehicles for doing so are there. They must be willing to make the investment to develop mechanisms to realize the East Asian regional objectives, strengthening of trans-Pacific relations through APEC, and productive interactions with other regions in the world through ASEM and FEALAC.
The writer is vice chairman of the Board of Trustees and a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta.
Indonesia 'must play leading global role'
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sat, 08/20/2005 10:58 AM A | A | A | Ivy Susanti, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta - Klipping the Jakarta Post
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Indonesia must play a leading role in world affairs and suggested it could start by engaging East Asian and Pacific countries.
""Speaking about changes, people are usually faced with three options: whether we should be part of the change, follow the change or lead the change. Indonesia, God willing, surely cannot only be a follower in the changing world but, as former president Sukarno and others showed us, we should be able to lead on certain issues in international relations. This is our ultimate goal, and we can only achieve it if we are doing well at home, such as creating good governance, so we can have strength, capacity and credibility to do more in world affairs,"" he said.
Susilo was speaking during a foreign policy breakfast -- a gathering of the foreign minister, legislators, businesspeople, the media, students, social and religious organizations and academics -- on the occasion of the foreign ministry's 60th anniversary on Aug. 19.
Susilo said Indonesia's foreign policy was founded on four principles: maintaining a constructive approach to diplomacy, maintaining the country's identity in the world, maintaining a nationalistic attitude and avoiding military alliances with other countries.
""Our national interests include, how to rebuild Indonesia after the 1997 economic crisis? How to maintain national sovereignty and regional integrity? And how to accomplish national reform successfully? These are the questions that should be kept in mind when making foreign policy.""
He said Indonesia should take more active role in regional and international forums, like those of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the East Asian Summit, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Organization of Islamic Conference and the Asian-African Conference and the United Nations.
""We want to work with Pacific countries like Australia, New Zealand, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, Nauru and many others. If we want to become the center of regional cooperation and friendship, we must not neglect these countries. They are actually part of the solution,"" he said.
While the world is governed by what he referred to as the ""universal norms"" of capitalism, democracy, human rights, the rule of law and environmental concerns, a ""new sovereignty"" in which countries can intervene in the affairs of other countries on certain grounds like human rights, and a single superpower, Susilo said Indonesia should understand but not necessarily adopt all of these values.
""Speaking about Indonesia's free and independent foreign policy, we must have independent judgment and freedom of action ... Not all countries can build a Great Wall like the Chinese to stop outside influences and values from entering the country,"" he said.
He stressed the importance of involving people from all walks of life in formulating Indonesia's foreign policy. But he said that anyone involved in diplomacy should use their intellect rather than emotion.
""We have to mix emotions with rationality. We all have hearts but we should also use rational thinking in situations where Indonesia is cornered by others,"" he said.
At the end of his speech, Susilo shared his own way of dealing with foreign leaders. He said he took the time to call the leaders personally whenever a problem arose.
""We have to be visionary, but at the same time remain practical. Sometimes, I call foreign leaders at midnight for a discussion. When we had disagreements with Malaysia over Ambalat, their handling of our migrant workers and now we have the haze problem, I took the time to call Abdullah Badawi (the Malaysian prime minister). I also called (John) Howard (the Australian PM) and Xanana (Gusmao, the Timor Leste president) on other issues. My point is, we need to be practical sometimes without worrying about losing face,"" he said.
Also present at the event were several Cabinet ministers and legislators, People's Consultative Assembly Speaker Hidayat Nur Wahid, Nahdlatul Ulama chairman Hasyim Muzadi and Indonesian Ulema Council secretary-general Din Syamsuddin.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Indonesia must play a leading role in world affairs and suggested it could start by engaging East Asian and Pacific countries.
""Speaking about changes, people are usually faced with three options: whether we should be part of the change, follow the change or lead the change. Indonesia, God willing, surely cannot only be a follower in the changing world but, as former president Sukarno and others showed us, we should be able to lead on certain issues in international relations. This is our ultimate goal, and we can only achieve it if we are doing well at home, such as creating good governance, so we can have strength, capacity and credibility to do more in world affairs,"" he said.
Susilo was speaking during a foreign policy breakfast -- a gathering of the foreign minister, legislators, businesspeople, the media, students, social and religious organizations and academics -- on the occasion of the foreign ministry's 60th anniversary on Aug. 19.
Susilo said Indonesia's foreign policy was founded on four principles: maintaining a constructive approach to diplomacy, maintaining the country's identity in the world, maintaining a nationalistic attitude and avoiding military alliances with other countries.
""Our national interests include, how to rebuild Indonesia after the 1997 economic crisis? How to maintain national sovereignty and regional integrity? And how to accomplish national reform successfully? These are the questions that should be kept in mind when making foreign policy.""
He said Indonesia should take more active role in regional and international forums, like those of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the East Asian Summit, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Organization of Islamic Conference and the Asian-African Conference and the United Nations.
""We want to work with Pacific countries like Australia, New Zealand, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, Nauru and many others. If we want to become the center of regional cooperation and friendship, we must not neglect these countries. They are actually part of the solution,"" he said.
While the world is governed by what he referred to as the ""universal norms"" of capitalism, democracy, human rights, the rule of law and environmental concerns, a ""new sovereignty"" in which countries can intervene in the affairs of other countries on certain grounds like human rights, and a single superpower, Susilo said Indonesia should understand but not necessarily adopt all of these values.
""Speaking about Indonesia's free and independent foreign policy, we must have independent judgment and freedom of action ... Not all countries can build a Great Wall like the Chinese to stop outside influences and values from entering the country,"" he said.
He stressed the importance of involving people from all walks of life in formulating Indonesia's foreign policy. But he said that anyone involved in diplomacy should use their intellect rather than emotion.
""We have to mix emotions with rationality. We all have hearts but we should also use rational thinking in situations where Indonesia is cornered by others,"" he said.
At the end of his speech, Susilo shared his own way of dealing with foreign leaders. He said he took the time to call the leaders personally whenever a problem arose.
""We have to be visionary, but at the same time remain practical. Sometimes, I call foreign leaders at midnight for a discussion. When we had disagreements with Malaysia over Ambalat, their handling of our migrant workers and now we have the haze problem, I took the time to call Abdullah Badawi (the Malaysian prime minister). I also called (John) Howard (the Australian PM) and Xanana (Gusmao, the Timor Leste president) on other issues. My point is, we need to be practical sometimes without worrying about losing face,"" he said.
Also present at the event were several Cabinet ministers and legislators, People's Consultative Assembly Speaker Hidayat Nur Wahid, Nahdlatul Ulama chairman Hasyim Muzadi and Indonesian Ulema Council secretary-general Din Syamsuddin.
Navigating turbulent seas
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Tue, 01/02/2007 2:24 PM A | A | A | Bantarto Bandoro, Jakarta - Klipping The Jakarta Post
At a session of the Central National Commission on Sept. 2, 1948, Vice President Mohammad Hatta formulated the principle of Indonesia's foreign policy; namely a free and active foreign policy, reflected in his metaphor ""rowing between two reefs"". This year marks the 58th anniversary of the implementation of this foreign policy.
In response to the continuing and rapid changes in our strategic environment, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono introduced his own metaphor, ""navigating a turbulent sea"", to describe the challenges facing Indonesian foreign policy.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla then joined the chorus of our foreign policy when, commenting on the current international position of Indonesia under the leadership of President Yudhoyono, he said that Indonesia could be a ""mover and shaker"" for regional security and world peace (The Jakarta Post, Oct. 19, 2006).
What does all this branding tell us about our foreign policy. Discussion on the country's foreign policy, particularly during the Yudhoyono government, seems to have been aimed, unintentionally of course, at telling the public here at last three things.
First, to let them know where Indonesia is in the context of the current state of international relations. When Yudhoyono said that the world we live in today is radically different than the one faced by our forefathers, he meant to indicate that the country is now in a particular era of history where foreign policy needs to be adjusted in a way that meets the expectations of the public. Our forefathers were not exposed to such things as globalization, interdependence and the cyberworld -- all things which are part of the country's present-day world.
Second, to let the public know where Indonesia is in its foreign policy discourse. This used to indicate the standpoint of Indonesia when it faced antagonism between the opposing Eastern Communist and Western Capitalist blocks.
This actually refers to the message carried by Hatta's historic reference to ""rowing between two reefs"", that Indonesia should avoid choosing sides between the two blocks. ""Rowing"" perhaps indicates a hard and difficult journey or path for the country. It may be telling us that Indonesia is choosing the hard path. Such a chosen path, however, was able to serve the country's national interests in the following decades.
Third, to let the public know where Indonesia is going in its foreign policy. Referring to Yudhoyono's ""turbulent ocean"", the public is told of the importance of activism in our foreign policy, meaning that such an ""ocean"" must be seen as providing ample diplomatic opportunity for Indonesia rather than risk.
This metaphor by Yudhoyono seems to have been based on the assumption that if Indonesia is to make the right decisions, it must understand how things ""work"" in the ""ocean"" and how they interact. The major foreign policy decisions the country has taken so far, at the regional as well as global level, reflect the recognition of the role of the ""ocean"" in the country's life-support system and its value for the prosperity of the people.
Thus, ""navigating a turbulent ocean"" is assumed to refer to channeling our foreign policy to meet the country's long-term objectives. Navigating the ocean will also allow us to develop extensive and strategic international links that will hopefully secure our external resources for development, as well as for domestic stability.
Perhaps it is within this context that our foreign policy now carries with it a theme which was unthinkable before, namely strategic partnership. Strategic partnerships can be very significant in providing a combined effect to produce intended policy objectives.
So, as we have seen, on the bilateral level we have strategic partnerships with almost all major powers in the world. The seemingly stable and improved domestic conditions serve as a kind of modality for the Yudhoyono government to embark on a new chapter in Indonesia's foreign relations. There is a process of institutional building in the country's foreign relations.
The branding of strategic partnership in our foreign relations has gained popularity -- at least in the eyes of our foreign policymakers -- at a time when the prospects for Indonesia to become, in the words of Jusuf Kalla, a ""mover and shaker"" for world peace is becoming more evident, as indicated by its membership on the United Nations Security Council, as well as its role in seeking peace in the Middle East and on the Korean Peninsula.
Given the many fresh foreign policy initiatives, it is no exaggeration to say that Indonesia has actually passed the two reefs. With its rather ""new"" outlook in foreign relations, Indonesia hopes to gain more strategic benefits by appearing to be different in its approach to salient foreign policy issues.
By navigating the turbulent ocean, Indonesia is attempting to connect itself with the wider world, which is crucial not only to enhance the performance of our independent and active foreign policy, but also to secure the achievements Indonesia has already gained.
One, however, should not ignore the asymmetrical relationship, if any, between Indonesia and its strategic partners, which in turn might effect the sustainability and effectiveness of these partnerships in the future. Indonesia's partnerships with the U.S., China and Japan seem unequal in terms of resources, skills, size, diplomatic leverage and so forth.
Thus, Yudhoyono's metaphor of ""navigating a turbulent ocean"" should not be interpreted as automatically directing the country's foreign policy to ""safety"". Being a smaller partner, Indonesia will likely face the problem of making its partnerships serve its interests without becoming simply a function of the interests of its partners.
This is to say that to sustain its full international engagement and obtain maximum diplomatic and strategic gains, Indonesia should be able to break through any ""barricades"" that might result from expansion of its international transactions. Indonesia's new activism in it foreign policy should be managed in such a way so that it will not hit all the reefs.
The writer is chief editor of The Indonesian Quarterly published by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a lecturer in the International Relations Postgraduate Studies Program at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta. He can be contacted at bandoro@csis.or.id
At a session of the Central National Commission on Sept. 2, 1948, Vice President Mohammad Hatta formulated the principle of Indonesia's foreign policy; namely a free and active foreign policy, reflected in his metaphor ""rowing between two reefs"". This year marks the 58th anniversary of the implementation of this foreign policy.
In response to the continuing and rapid changes in our strategic environment, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono introduced his own metaphor, ""navigating a turbulent sea"", to describe the challenges facing Indonesian foreign policy.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla then joined the chorus of our foreign policy when, commenting on the current international position of Indonesia under the leadership of President Yudhoyono, he said that Indonesia could be a ""mover and shaker"" for regional security and world peace (The Jakarta Post, Oct. 19, 2006).
What does all this branding tell us about our foreign policy. Discussion on the country's foreign policy, particularly during the Yudhoyono government, seems to have been aimed, unintentionally of course, at telling the public here at last three things.
First, to let them know where Indonesia is in the context of the current state of international relations. When Yudhoyono said that the world we live in today is radically different than the one faced by our forefathers, he meant to indicate that the country is now in a particular era of history where foreign policy needs to be adjusted in a way that meets the expectations of the public. Our forefathers were not exposed to such things as globalization, interdependence and the cyberworld -- all things which are part of the country's present-day world.
Second, to let the public know where Indonesia is in its foreign policy discourse. This used to indicate the standpoint of Indonesia when it faced antagonism between the opposing Eastern Communist and Western Capitalist blocks.
This actually refers to the message carried by Hatta's historic reference to ""rowing between two reefs"", that Indonesia should avoid choosing sides between the two blocks. ""Rowing"" perhaps indicates a hard and difficult journey or path for the country. It may be telling us that Indonesia is choosing the hard path. Such a chosen path, however, was able to serve the country's national interests in the following decades.
Third, to let the public know where Indonesia is going in its foreign policy. Referring to Yudhoyono's ""turbulent ocean"", the public is told of the importance of activism in our foreign policy, meaning that such an ""ocean"" must be seen as providing ample diplomatic opportunity for Indonesia rather than risk.
This metaphor by Yudhoyono seems to have been based on the assumption that if Indonesia is to make the right decisions, it must understand how things ""work"" in the ""ocean"" and how they interact. The major foreign policy decisions the country has taken so far, at the regional as well as global level, reflect the recognition of the role of the ""ocean"" in the country's life-support system and its value for the prosperity of the people.
Thus, ""navigating a turbulent ocean"" is assumed to refer to channeling our foreign policy to meet the country's long-term objectives. Navigating the ocean will also allow us to develop extensive and strategic international links that will hopefully secure our external resources for development, as well as for domestic stability.
Perhaps it is within this context that our foreign policy now carries with it a theme which was unthinkable before, namely strategic partnership. Strategic partnerships can be very significant in providing a combined effect to produce intended policy objectives.
So, as we have seen, on the bilateral level we have strategic partnerships with almost all major powers in the world. The seemingly stable and improved domestic conditions serve as a kind of modality for the Yudhoyono government to embark on a new chapter in Indonesia's foreign relations. There is a process of institutional building in the country's foreign relations.
The branding of strategic partnership in our foreign relations has gained popularity -- at least in the eyes of our foreign policymakers -- at a time when the prospects for Indonesia to become, in the words of Jusuf Kalla, a ""mover and shaker"" for world peace is becoming more evident, as indicated by its membership on the United Nations Security Council, as well as its role in seeking peace in the Middle East and on the Korean Peninsula.
Given the many fresh foreign policy initiatives, it is no exaggeration to say that Indonesia has actually passed the two reefs. With its rather ""new"" outlook in foreign relations, Indonesia hopes to gain more strategic benefits by appearing to be different in its approach to salient foreign policy issues.
By navigating the turbulent ocean, Indonesia is attempting to connect itself with the wider world, which is crucial not only to enhance the performance of our independent and active foreign policy, but also to secure the achievements Indonesia has already gained.
One, however, should not ignore the asymmetrical relationship, if any, between Indonesia and its strategic partners, which in turn might effect the sustainability and effectiveness of these partnerships in the future. Indonesia's partnerships with the U.S., China and Japan seem unequal in terms of resources, skills, size, diplomatic leverage and so forth.
Thus, Yudhoyono's metaphor of ""navigating a turbulent ocean"" should not be interpreted as automatically directing the country's foreign policy to ""safety"". Being a smaller partner, Indonesia will likely face the problem of making its partnerships serve its interests without becoming simply a function of the interests of its partners.
This is to say that to sustain its full international engagement and obtain maximum diplomatic and strategic gains, Indonesia should be able to break through any ""barricades"" that might result from expansion of its international transactions. Indonesia's new activism in it foreign policy should be managed in such a way so that it will not hit all the reefs.
The writer is chief editor of The Indonesian Quarterly published by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a lecturer in the International Relations Postgraduate Studies Program at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta. He can be contacted at bandoro@csis.or.id
RI's forecast foreign policy
M. Hadianto B. Wirajuda, London | Mon, 02/02/2009 4:06 PM A | A | A | - Klipping The Jakarta Post
The last year saw Indonesia playing an active international role and witnessed the challenges faced by the country, both in the global and domestic spheres. Indonesia's diplomacy has been tested on a wide range of issues, from the Iranian nuclear issue to the diassent in ASEAN.
Not to mention the problematic issue of citizen protection abroad and the longstanding case of the Israel-Palestine conflict. On the latter, Indonesia has been actively involved in capacity-building for mid-level Palestinian diplomats engaged in Indonesia's Ministry's Education Center. One of Indonesia's diplomatic milestones in 2008 was the successful role of the CTF, the Truth and Friendship Commission, established with Timor Leste to investigate the violence leading up and surrounding the referendum in 1999.
Although parts of the CTF report's suggestions may not be in Indonesia's best interests, it has deliberately managed to exclude international intervention in solving the dispute, and hence introduced a new method for dispute resolution.
At home, the Foreign Ministry remains content to complete its bureaucratic reform, as shown, at least, by the appointment of a deputy foreign minister from its internal staff, although some said the appointment was filled with an eye to political interest, to secure the institution should the Foreign Ministry be led in future by a politician. To a larger and more significant extent, the appointment is to support the missing variable in Indonesia's diplomacy as well as to complete the ideal structure of a foreign policy institution in a democratic era and facing dynamic international challenges.
In 2009 Indonesia will once again put into practice a primary component of democracy: Elections. The 2004 elections were a great success; violence was relatively low and people were able to carry out their right to vote for their desired leaders. In the foreign policy realm during the busiest period of Indonesia's five-year presidency, Yudhoyono's metaphor that Indonesia's foreign policy resembled navigating the turbulent ocean remains relevant in the coming year. What can be shown to endorse the logic of this?
First and foremost is the most apparent global economic crisis. As we found out a decade ago, forging an ideal foreign policy during economic turbulence is rather problematic.
Foreign policy will not work well if domestically our people live under a stagnant economy with poor living standards. The government policy to reduce fuel prices should not be seen as a policy filled with a political mission. It would be wiser for us to think that the policy is a conscious attempt to save the nation from more acute suffering from the ongoing global economic turbulence. Still relevant to Indonesia's measured steps in countering the crisis is Indonesia's preference to avoid taking the same route as in 1998 by relying on international funding agencies.
Understanding the unpleasant experience of such agency mechanisms has raised the awareness of the government (and the people) that going down that road would not be wise. Instead, Indonesia might undertake a bilateral approach with East Asian countries. Therefore, Indonesia's predicted leaning towards East Asia will mostly be motivated by economic interests.
Recent strikes in Gaza have turned Indonesia's attention to the Mideast conflict. Indonesia needs to play a larger role in urging the UN to defuse the tension. Indonesia should practice what it preaches as the world's largest Muslim population by initiating a leading role in the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) to reduce the conflict. The government should have the confidence that a religious-cultural approach, such as facilitating interfaith dialogue between religious leaders from Palestine and Israel, as we successfully did in an Asian-Pacific context, might be an alternative to the problem. However both Israelis and Palestinians are also human beings with a certain faith they live by.
The third challenge for Indonesia's foreign policy is the increasing threat of terrorism. Having not witnessed the threat for almost two years, the world was shocked by the Mumbai terrorist attack toward the end of 2008. Consequently, the security alert has been raised in Indonesia, as home to an amalgamation of moderate and radical Muslims.
To this end, Indonesia should maintain its de-radicalization strategy as an effectively proven strategy to counterterrorism; this can be an asset to revive Indonesia's foreign policy on security issues.
As for ASEAN, the enactment of the ASEAN Charter has brought a new dimension to the organization and it is unlikely that Indonesia will neglect ASEAN from its primary foreign policy concentric circle. Democratic values should be continually promoted to non-democratic members of ASEAN, however this effort should not be seen as an attempt to violate the principle of non-interference but rather as an endeavor to create a coexistence in Southeast Asia because, as believed by the realists, peace is likely to be achieved when states engage in democratic values, to this extent values agreed upon and attuned with the ASEAN way.
The writer is a PhD student in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London
The last year saw Indonesia playing an active international role and witnessed the challenges faced by the country, both in the global and domestic spheres. Indonesia's diplomacy has been tested on a wide range of issues, from the Iranian nuclear issue to the diassent in ASEAN.
Not to mention the problematic issue of citizen protection abroad and the longstanding case of the Israel-Palestine conflict. On the latter, Indonesia has been actively involved in capacity-building for mid-level Palestinian diplomats engaged in Indonesia's Ministry's Education Center. One of Indonesia's diplomatic milestones in 2008 was the successful role of the CTF, the Truth and Friendship Commission, established with Timor Leste to investigate the violence leading up and surrounding the referendum in 1999.
Although parts of the CTF report's suggestions may not be in Indonesia's best interests, it has deliberately managed to exclude international intervention in solving the dispute, and hence introduced a new method for dispute resolution.
At home, the Foreign Ministry remains content to complete its bureaucratic reform, as shown, at least, by the appointment of a deputy foreign minister from its internal staff, although some said the appointment was filled with an eye to political interest, to secure the institution should the Foreign Ministry be led in future by a politician. To a larger and more significant extent, the appointment is to support the missing variable in Indonesia's diplomacy as well as to complete the ideal structure of a foreign policy institution in a democratic era and facing dynamic international challenges.
In 2009 Indonesia will once again put into practice a primary component of democracy: Elections. The 2004 elections were a great success; violence was relatively low and people were able to carry out their right to vote for their desired leaders. In the foreign policy realm during the busiest period of Indonesia's five-year presidency, Yudhoyono's metaphor that Indonesia's foreign policy resembled navigating the turbulent ocean remains relevant in the coming year. What can be shown to endorse the logic of this?
First and foremost is the most apparent global economic crisis. As we found out a decade ago, forging an ideal foreign policy during economic turbulence is rather problematic.
Foreign policy will not work well if domestically our people live under a stagnant economy with poor living standards. The government policy to reduce fuel prices should not be seen as a policy filled with a political mission. It would be wiser for us to think that the policy is a conscious attempt to save the nation from more acute suffering from the ongoing global economic turbulence. Still relevant to Indonesia's measured steps in countering the crisis is Indonesia's preference to avoid taking the same route as in 1998 by relying on international funding agencies.
Understanding the unpleasant experience of such agency mechanisms has raised the awareness of the government (and the people) that going down that road would not be wise. Instead, Indonesia might undertake a bilateral approach with East Asian countries. Therefore, Indonesia's predicted leaning towards East Asia will mostly be motivated by economic interests.
Recent strikes in Gaza have turned Indonesia's attention to the Mideast conflict. Indonesia needs to play a larger role in urging the UN to defuse the tension. Indonesia should practice what it preaches as the world's largest Muslim population by initiating a leading role in the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) to reduce the conflict. The government should have the confidence that a religious-cultural approach, such as facilitating interfaith dialogue between religious leaders from Palestine and Israel, as we successfully did in an Asian-Pacific context, might be an alternative to the problem. However both Israelis and Palestinians are also human beings with a certain faith they live by.
The third challenge for Indonesia's foreign policy is the increasing threat of terrorism. Having not witnessed the threat for almost two years, the world was shocked by the Mumbai terrorist attack toward the end of 2008. Consequently, the security alert has been raised in Indonesia, as home to an amalgamation of moderate and radical Muslims.
To this end, Indonesia should maintain its de-radicalization strategy as an effectively proven strategy to counterterrorism; this can be an asset to revive Indonesia's foreign policy on security issues.
As for ASEAN, the enactment of the ASEAN Charter has brought a new dimension to the organization and it is unlikely that Indonesia will neglect ASEAN from its primary foreign policy concentric circle. Democratic values should be continually promoted to non-democratic members of ASEAN, however this effort should not be seen as an attempt to violate the principle of non-interference but rather as an endeavor to create a coexistence in Southeast Asia because, as believed by the realists, peace is likely to be achieved when states engage in democratic values, to this extent values agreed upon and attuned with the ASEAN way.
The writer is a PhD student in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London
Foreign policy Indonesia outlines post-2015 agenda for ASEAN
Abdul Khalik and Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Wed, 01/05/2011 10:46 AM A | A | A | - Klipping The Jakarta Post
While trying to lead ASEAN to achieve its goal of becoming a community by 2015, Indonesia highlighted its agenda for the 10-member group in the post-2015 period as Southeast Asia’s largest economy chairs the group this year.
Indonesia proposed that this year the ASEAN Community should start playing a role on the global stage by tackling global issues such as climate change, development and conflict and security problems so that after 2015 the group would have a common platform to deal with those global issues.
“We must be outward looking, not self-absorbed,” Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told The Jakarta Post.
“We should begin drafting a road map this year so that in 10 years we have a common platform on global issues, not a common foreign policy as ASEAN is not a supranational organization.”
Apart from playing a greater role in world affairs, Marty said Indonesia’s main task was to guide the group to reach the goal of becoming a community by 2015 while giving substance to ongoing regional architecture building — in this case East Asia and the Pacific.
“Our main basic responsibility is to ensure that during the course of 2011 we continue to make progress to achieve ASEAN’s goal of becoming a community by 2015,” he said.
ASEAN leaders agreed that the community would be built on three main pillars — economic, political and security and sociocultural — to ensure people in ASEAN countries could coexist in a single community.
Marty said that apart from building on developments so far, Indonesia would also propose areas within the three pillars that had not benefited from strong efforts until now.
“For example, how we address maritime issues in our region. We are concerned as maritime issues have become problematic, involving navies and fishing vessels, not only from ASEAN but also from Northeast Asian countries,” he said.
Marty said the seas should a unifying factor for the region.
“We will be keen to develop a maritime forum, discussing how we deal with such incidents, the rules of engagement and standard operating procedures. We don’t want unintended incidents spiraling out of control,” he said.
Analysts warned that Indonesia’s chairmanship would be challenged by problems faced by member countries, and that it had been pushed to balance its position between the US and China, both looking to make the region their sphere of influence.
Border disputes among member countries and outsiders, notably China in the South China Sea, will test Indonesia’s leadership. For instance, if it mediated in the South China Sea dispute between China and six ASEAN countries, Indonesia as a non-claimant state to the territory is expected to show impartiality.
Marty said that under Indonesia’s chairmanship, dialogue between ASEAN and China in the South China Sea dispute would continue, with the hope that all parties could develop codes of conduct on how to settle the problem of claims to the area.
Related News >>
RI's forecast foreign policy
Navigating turbulent seas
RI foreign policy a case of style over substance
Indonesia 'must play leading global role'
Follow our twitter @jakpost
& our public blog @blogIMO
| | | | | | | | Comments (3)
muradali_shaikh | Wed, 19/01/2011 - 19:01pm
BIG TROUBLE IN TUNISIA FOR AMERICA’S MIDEAST RAJ
January 17, 2011
Oops! Something has gone terribly wrong with Washington’s plans for regime change in the Mideast. Wasn’t there supposed to be a US and British engineered revolution against Iran’s mullahs, followed by installation of a cooperative pro-western government and a bonanza for western oil companies?
The revolution came, all right, but in the wrong place. The explosion of popular fury in Tunisia that ousted its dictator of 23-years is sending shock waves across the Arab world and has alarm bells ringing in Washington.
Pay no attention to President Barack Obama’s pious bromides welcoming the revolution in Tunisia. The US, France and their Arab satraps are deeply worried that Tunisia’s popular revolution could spark similar uprising against the dictatorships or monarchies in other members of America’s Mideast Raj, notably Egypt.
It has come to light that Tunisia’s ruling elite had dinners and wine flown in from Paris at government expense for lavish parties in their beachside villas. Shades of the Iranian revolution, when women of the ruling elite in Tehran used to send their dirty laundry to Paris for hand washing, or fly to Paris to have their hair done for a soiree.
In a zesty bit of irony totally lost on the US media, just as a people’s revolution was ousting Tunisia’s brutal US-backed regime, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Qatar piously lecturing local oil monarchs on good government and the need to promote democracy.
Tunisia has not had much strategic importance since Carthage – whose ruins and great war harbor lie in a residential suburb of Tunis – fought Rome in the three Punic Wars. During World War II’s North Africa campaign, Tunisia was battled over by the British, Germans and Italians.
Since then, little Tunisia has been a backwater, known mainly for sunshine, cheap beach vacations, and as a refuge for Italian crooks.
In 1957, Tunisia “gained” independence from former colonial master, France. But it was a sham independence. The French put their own stooge, Habib Bourguiba, in power, who ran the country for France.
After Bourguiba went senile in 1987, the army commander, General Zine Ben Ali, overthrew him and seized power with the blessing of Paris. Ben Ali as ruled with an iron first for the ensuing 23 years.
The US and France have always hailed Tunisia as a poster-boy for “moderation, stability, and democracy. ”
Translation: 1. moderation: following orders from Washington and making nice to Israel; 2. stability: crushing all opposition, particularly Islamist-oriented parties, muzzling the media, and paving the way for US business; 3. democracy: holding fake elections every few years. The US media soft-soaped Ben Ali and gushed over Tunisia’s “moderate” virtues. They did the same for Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.
America’s other “moderate” Arab clients, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman and some of the Gulf states, followed precisely the same model of ersatz elections, ferocious internal oppression, and absolute obedience to Washington.
Tunisia closely resembled other Arab non-oil states in having very high unemployment, social and intellectual stagnation, lack of free speech or expression, and no hope for the future unless one had links to the rapacious, self-serving, western-backed ruling oligarchy. On top of this, in most Arab states, over 60% of the population is under 25.
Gen. Ali’s extended family and business cronies followed a pattern of malfeasance, nepotism and plundering public assets common to most Arab nations. In the Mideast, such oligarchies are commonly called “mafias.” Their secret police are notorious for torture, murder, mass arrests and sadism. Arab armies are designed to cow their people, not protect the nation’s borders.
After the Bush and Obama administrations felt obliged to make a token appeal to their Arab clients for the appearance of at least sham democracy, General Ali obliged by winning his most recent rigged election in 2009 by “only” a razor-thin 89% victory, rather than his usual 94% or 95% win.
Tunisians are known as an easy-going, even-tempered people. US and French aid was supposed to keep a lid on the country and defuse popular unrest. So just about everyone was caught by surprise when Tunisia went critical.
In a heart-warming finale to Gen. Ben Ali’s brutal dictatorship, he fled to France seeking asylum. France’s president, Nicholas Sarkozy, showing remarkable ingratitude even for this notorious ingrate, refused this faithful, long-time French servant refuge. Two other former western plantation overseers who were dying of cancer, Congo’s late Gen. Mobutu and the ousted Shah of Iran, were similarly refused refuge by their American patrons.
As of this writing, Tunisia is in turmoil. There may be a military takeover, which would greatly please Washington, Paris and Cairo, or further convulsions.
The leader of the most important Islamic-oriented party that was outlawed, Rashid Gannouchi (not to be confused with the current figurehead prime minister of the same name), is due to return and is calling for genuine democratic elections. His party, Nahda, would likely win any free elections. So would Islamist parties in every other Arab country, if the west ever allowed them to hold free elections, which it won’t.
In the only two cases in modern Arab history where truly honest elections were held, moderate Islamists won in Algeria, and the Hamas movement won in Gaza. The Algerian army, backed by Paris and Washington, crushed the election and imposed martial law. After Hamas won the Palestinian election, the US, Israel and Egypt locked up Hamas under siege in Gaza and sought to overthrow it using Palestinian mercenaries.
Mainstream Islamist parties in the Mideast have nothing to do with al-Qaida (which barely exists any more) or anti-Western programs. Their primary concern is getting rid of the western-backed oligarchies that keep the Muslim world backwards and in thrall. Their platform is sharing resource wealth, social welfare, education, uprooting thieving oligarchies and fighting endemic corruption.
The big question now is will Tunisia’s dramatic events be a harbinger of other explosions across the volatile Arab world? All eyes are on Egypt, the home of a third of all Arabs. Egypt’s 83-year old military ruler, Husni Mubarak, is a giant version of Tunisia’s Gen. Ben Ali.
Mubarak was engineered into power by the US after the killing of longtime CIA “asset” Anwar Sadat. Gen. Mubarak and has ruled Egypt like a modern-day pharaoh ever since, crushing both violent extremist and legitimate political opposition. Mubarak’s rigged elections, winked at by Washington, are every bit as egregious as Tunisia’s.
So could the flames of Tunisia’s revolution spread to Egypt? Mubarak’s regime is tottering. Egyptians are as restive and disgusted as their Tunisian neighbors. Egyptians, too, are a famously passive, amiable lot, but Egypt’s repression, grinding poverty and rapacious western-aligned elite have enraged most ordinary people.
Tunisia’s neighbors Libya, Algeria and Morocco are similarly unstable and racked by unemployment, a high birth rate, and ferocious repression by their regimes. Col. Khadaffi’s oil-rich Libya is particularly fertile ground for a major convulsion after five decades of eccentric government.
All these authoritarian regimes have crushed opposition, leaving only underground revolutionaries to replace them when revolution inevitably comes. Islamists will be the last men standing. By encouraging repression and thwarting the emergence of democracy in the Arab world, the US has sown the dragon’s teeth of further violence and rises.
We are now seeing what the “stability” and “moderation” so beloved of Washington in the Arab world really brings. The mighty American Raj is built on such euphemisms that really mean dictatorship, corruption, torture, and subservience.
If Washington really wants to foster the democracy that it preaches, then it should help Tunisia’s people create a truly democratic government rather than engineering yet another cooperative general and his grasping family into power as it has done so often since the 1950’s.
30
copyright Eric S. Margolis 2011
Report Abuse
zul | Thu, 06/01/2011 - 05:01am
Appalling behavior and political bastardry by BN and that goose NAJIB-what's his face. Nothing will save them. They have left an indelible stain on Malaysian history
Report Abuse
bab | Wed, 05/01/2011 - 16:01pm
The year 2015 presents a critical challenge to ASEAN sas it is the year of launching its goal: ASEAN Economic Community, that binds its 10 member states into an EU-like economic union. With a population of over 500 million peoples, ASEAN is an economic powerhouse, still emerging with huge potentials, to play a major power roles in both regional and international politics. With varying degrees of liberalization and democratization, ASEAN is actually mosaic of cultures, races, religious beliefs with divergent historical-cultural backgrounds, with some ruled by kings or queens, others by military regimes, and yet some are booming communist states. How well the ASEAN Economic Community can prosper under such diversities or even divergence, is interesting.
Of paramount significance are long standing internal conflicts plaguing ASEAN. Except for Singapore, and the former Indochinese states: Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, all suffer problems of insurgencies, rebellion or secession. Quite unsettling are the Pattani problem in Southern Thailand, Achinese clamor separate Islamic state, the Moro rebellion in Southern Philippines, and the clamor of Malaysia's own Kadazans-Dozon natives in North Borbeo/Sabah for its own independent state, not mention Sabah itself is being claimed by the Philippines.
Of these domestic conflicts, the Moro rebellion presents the biggest challenge to the Philippines and Malaysia, the GRP-MILF peace talks mediator. Intricate issues webbed and worsened by recalcitrant Philippines refusing to honor commitments under the OIC-brokered GRP-MNLF peace agreement signed in September 1996. Malaysia is the facilitator of the GRP-MILF talks, which bogged down two years ago over an interim agreement granting concession to the MILF over the Bangsa Moro ancestral domain in most of the islands of Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan in Southern Philippines. Left unresolved, the Moro problem is a big torn to ASEAN and the parties involved. Sabah is the other Bangsa Moro ancestral homeland, being "owned" by the defunct Sulu Sultanate. Such a "sovereignty-based" conflict seems intractable, and a potential debacle to the ASEAN itself.
Report Abuse
While trying to lead ASEAN to achieve its goal of becoming a community by 2015, Indonesia highlighted its agenda for the 10-member group in the post-2015 period as Southeast Asia’s largest economy chairs the group this year.
Indonesia proposed that this year the ASEAN Community should start playing a role on the global stage by tackling global issues such as climate change, development and conflict and security problems so that after 2015 the group would have a common platform to deal with those global issues.
“We must be outward looking, not self-absorbed,” Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told The Jakarta Post.
“We should begin drafting a road map this year so that in 10 years we have a common platform on global issues, not a common foreign policy as ASEAN is not a supranational organization.”
Apart from playing a greater role in world affairs, Marty said Indonesia’s main task was to guide the group to reach the goal of becoming a community by 2015 while giving substance to ongoing regional architecture building — in this case East Asia and the Pacific.
“Our main basic responsibility is to ensure that during the course of 2011 we continue to make progress to achieve ASEAN’s goal of becoming a community by 2015,” he said.
ASEAN leaders agreed that the community would be built on three main pillars — economic, political and security and sociocultural — to ensure people in ASEAN countries could coexist in a single community.
Marty said that apart from building on developments so far, Indonesia would also propose areas within the three pillars that had not benefited from strong efforts until now.
“For example, how we address maritime issues in our region. We are concerned as maritime issues have become problematic, involving navies and fishing vessels, not only from ASEAN but also from Northeast Asian countries,” he said.
Marty said the seas should a unifying factor for the region.
“We will be keen to develop a maritime forum, discussing how we deal with such incidents, the rules of engagement and standard operating procedures. We don’t want unintended incidents spiraling out of control,” he said.
Analysts warned that Indonesia’s chairmanship would be challenged by problems faced by member countries, and that it had been pushed to balance its position between the US and China, both looking to make the region their sphere of influence.
Border disputes among member countries and outsiders, notably China in the South China Sea, will test Indonesia’s leadership. For instance, if it mediated in the South China Sea dispute between China and six ASEAN countries, Indonesia as a non-claimant state to the territory is expected to show impartiality.
Marty said that under Indonesia’s chairmanship, dialogue between ASEAN and China in the South China Sea dispute would continue, with the hope that all parties could develop codes of conduct on how to settle the problem of claims to the area.
Related News >>
RI's forecast foreign policy
Navigating turbulent seas
RI foreign policy a case of style over substance
Indonesia 'must play leading global role'
Follow our twitter @jakpost
& our public blog @blogIMO
| | | | | | | | Comments (3)
muradali_shaikh | Wed, 19/01/2011 - 19:01pm
BIG TROUBLE IN TUNISIA FOR AMERICA’S MIDEAST RAJ
January 17, 2011
Oops! Something has gone terribly wrong with Washington’s plans for regime change in the Mideast. Wasn’t there supposed to be a US and British engineered revolution against Iran’s mullahs, followed by installation of a cooperative pro-western government and a bonanza for western oil companies?
The revolution came, all right, but in the wrong place. The explosion of popular fury in Tunisia that ousted its dictator of 23-years is sending shock waves across the Arab world and has alarm bells ringing in Washington.
Pay no attention to President Barack Obama’s pious bromides welcoming the revolution in Tunisia. The US, France and their Arab satraps are deeply worried that Tunisia’s popular revolution could spark similar uprising against the dictatorships or monarchies in other members of America’s Mideast Raj, notably Egypt.
It has come to light that Tunisia’s ruling elite had dinners and wine flown in from Paris at government expense for lavish parties in their beachside villas. Shades of the Iranian revolution, when women of the ruling elite in Tehran used to send their dirty laundry to Paris for hand washing, or fly to Paris to have their hair done for a soiree.
In a zesty bit of irony totally lost on the US media, just as a people’s revolution was ousting Tunisia’s brutal US-backed regime, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Qatar piously lecturing local oil monarchs on good government and the need to promote democracy.
Tunisia has not had much strategic importance since Carthage – whose ruins and great war harbor lie in a residential suburb of Tunis – fought Rome in the three Punic Wars. During World War II’s North Africa campaign, Tunisia was battled over by the British, Germans and Italians.
Since then, little Tunisia has been a backwater, known mainly for sunshine, cheap beach vacations, and as a refuge for Italian crooks.
In 1957, Tunisia “gained” independence from former colonial master, France. But it was a sham independence. The French put their own stooge, Habib Bourguiba, in power, who ran the country for France.
After Bourguiba went senile in 1987, the army commander, General Zine Ben Ali, overthrew him and seized power with the blessing of Paris. Ben Ali as ruled with an iron first for the ensuing 23 years.
The US and France have always hailed Tunisia as a poster-boy for “moderation, stability, and democracy. ”
Translation: 1. moderation: following orders from Washington and making nice to Israel; 2. stability: crushing all opposition, particularly Islamist-oriented parties, muzzling the media, and paving the way for US business; 3. democracy: holding fake elections every few years. The US media soft-soaped Ben Ali and gushed over Tunisia’s “moderate” virtues. They did the same for Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.
America’s other “moderate” Arab clients, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman and some of the Gulf states, followed precisely the same model of ersatz elections, ferocious internal oppression, and absolute obedience to Washington.
Tunisia closely resembled other Arab non-oil states in having very high unemployment, social and intellectual stagnation, lack of free speech or expression, and no hope for the future unless one had links to the rapacious, self-serving, western-backed ruling oligarchy. On top of this, in most Arab states, over 60% of the population is under 25.
Gen. Ali’s extended family and business cronies followed a pattern of malfeasance, nepotism and plundering public assets common to most Arab nations. In the Mideast, such oligarchies are commonly called “mafias.” Their secret police are notorious for torture, murder, mass arrests and sadism. Arab armies are designed to cow their people, not protect the nation’s borders.
After the Bush and Obama administrations felt obliged to make a token appeal to their Arab clients for the appearance of at least sham democracy, General Ali obliged by winning his most recent rigged election in 2009 by “only” a razor-thin 89% victory, rather than his usual 94% or 95% win.
Tunisians are known as an easy-going, even-tempered people. US and French aid was supposed to keep a lid on the country and defuse popular unrest. So just about everyone was caught by surprise when Tunisia went critical.
In a heart-warming finale to Gen. Ben Ali’s brutal dictatorship, he fled to France seeking asylum. France’s president, Nicholas Sarkozy, showing remarkable ingratitude even for this notorious ingrate, refused this faithful, long-time French servant refuge. Two other former western plantation overseers who were dying of cancer, Congo’s late Gen. Mobutu and the ousted Shah of Iran, were similarly refused refuge by their American patrons.
As of this writing, Tunisia is in turmoil. There may be a military takeover, which would greatly please Washington, Paris and Cairo, or further convulsions.
The leader of the most important Islamic-oriented party that was outlawed, Rashid Gannouchi (not to be confused with the current figurehead prime minister of the same name), is due to return and is calling for genuine democratic elections. His party, Nahda, would likely win any free elections. So would Islamist parties in every other Arab country, if the west ever allowed them to hold free elections, which it won’t.
In the only two cases in modern Arab history where truly honest elections were held, moderate Islamists won in Algeria, and the Hamas movement won in Gaza. The Algerian army, backed by Paris and Washington, crushed the election and imposed martial law. After Hamas won the Palestinian election, the US, Israel and Egypt locked up Hamas under siege in Gaza and sought to overthrow it using Palestinian mercenaries.
Mainstream Islamist parties in the Mideast have nothing to do with al-Qaida (which barely exists any more) or anti-Western programs. Their primary concern is getting rid of the western-backed oligarchies that keep the Muslim world backwards and in thrall. Their platform is sharing resource wealth, social welfare, education, uprooting thieving oligarchies and fighting endemic corruption.
The big question now is will Tunisia’s dramatic events be a harbinger of other explosions across the volatile Arab world? All eyes are on Egypt, the home of a third of all Arabs. Egypt’s 83-year old military ruler, Husni Mubarak, is a giant version of Tunisia’s Gen. Ben Ali.
Mubarak was engineered into power by the US after the killing of longtime CIA “asset” Anwar Sadat. Gen. Mubarak and has ruled Egypt like a modern-day pharaoh ever since, crushing both violent extremist and legitimate political opposition. Mubarak’s rigged elections, winked at by Washington, are every bit as egregious as Tunisia’s.
So could the flames of Tunisia’s revolution spread to Egypt? Mubarak’s regime is tottering. Egyptians are as restive and disgusted as their Tunisian neighbors. Egyptians, too, are a famously passive, amiable lot, but Egypt’s repression, grinding poverty and rapacious western-aligned elite have enraged most ordinary people.
Tunisia’s neighbors Libya, Algeria and Morocco are similarly unstable and racked by unemployment, a high birth rate, and ferocious repression by their regimes. Col. Khadaffi’s oil-rich Libya is particularly fertile ground for a major convulsion after five decades of eccentric government.
All these authoritarian regimes have crushed opposition, leaving only underground revolutionaries to replace them when revolution inevitably comes. Islamists will be the last men standing. By encouraging repression and thwarting the emergence of democracy in the Arab world, the US has sown the dragon’s teeth of further violence and rises.
We are now seeing what the “stability” and “moderation” so beloved of Washington in the Arab world really brings. The mighty American Raj is built on such euphemisms that really mean dictatorship, corruption, torture, and subservience.
If Washington really wants to foster the democracy that it preaches, then it should help Tunisia’s people create a truly democratic government rather than engineering yet another cooperative general and his grasping family into power as it has done so often since the 1950’s.
30
copyright Eric S. Margolis 2011
Report Abuse
zul | Thu, 06/01/2011 - 05:01am
Appalling behavior and political bastardry by BN and that goose NAJIB-what's his face. Nothing will save them. They have left an indelible stain on Malaysian history
Report Abuse
bab | Wed, 05/01/2011 - 16:01pm
The year 2015 presents a critical challenge to ASEAN sas it is the year of launching its goal: ASEAN Economic Community, that binds its 10 member states into an EU-like economic union. With a population of over 500 million peoples, ASEAN is an economic powerhouse, still emerging with huge potentials, to play a major power roles in both regional and international politics. With varying degrees of liberalization and democratization, ASEAN is actually mosaic of cultures, races, religious beliefs with divergent historical-cultural backgrounds, with some ruled by kings or queens, others by military regimes, and yet some are booming communist states. How well the ASEAN Economic Community can prosper under such diversities or even divergence, is interesting.
Of paramount significance are long standing internal conflicts plaguing ASEAN. Except for Singapore, and the former Indochinese states: Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, all suffer problems of insurgencies, rebellion or secession. Quite unsettling are the Pattani problem in Southern Thailand, Achinese clamor separate Islamic state, the Moro rebellion in Southern Philippines, and the clamor of Malaysia's own Kadazans-Dozon natives in North Borbeo/Sabah for its own independent state, not mention Sabah itself is being claimed by the Philippines.
Of these domestic conflicts, the Moro rebellion presents the biggest challenge to the Philippines and Malaysia, the GRP-MILF peace talks mediator. Intricate issues webbed and worsened by recalcitrant Philippines refusing to honor commitments under the OIC-brokered GRP-MNLF peace agreement signed in September 1996. Malaysia is the facilitator of the GRP-MILF talks, which bogged down two years ago over an interim agreement granting concession to the MILF over the Bangsa Moro ancestral domain in most of the islands of Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan in Southern Philippines. Left unresolved, the Moro problem is a big torn to ASEAN and the parties involved. Sabah is the other Bangsa Moro ancestral homeland, being "owned" by the defunct Sulu Sultanate. Such a "sovereignty-based" conflict seems intractable, and a potential debacle to the ASEAN itself.
Report Abuse
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)