Indonesia in ASEAN: Vision and Reality 9789814519236

Table of contents :
Contents
Editorial Note
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Introduction
I. The Visible Indonesia
II. Indonesian Policy Foundations
III. Democracy in Indonesian Foreign Policy
IV. Islam in Indonesian Foreign Policy
V. Indonesia, ASEAN and Regional Political Stability and Security
Conclusion
Addendum
End Notes
References

Citation preview

INDONESIA IN ASEAN

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued more than 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.

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INDONESIA IN ASEAN VISION AND REALIT Y

Donald E. Weatherbee

INSTITUTE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES Singapore

First published in Singapore in 2013 by ISEAS Publishing Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Pasir Panjang Singapore 119614 E-mail: [email protected] Website: All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. © 2013 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the author and his interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the series editor, or the publisher or its supporters. ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Weatherbee, Donald E. Indonesia in ASEAN : vision and reality. 1. Indonesia—Politics and government—1945– 2. Indonesia—Foreign relations—20th century. 3. Democracy—Indonesia. 4. Islam and state—Indonesia 5. Indonesia—Foreign relations—Southeast Asia. 6. Southeast Asia—Foreign relations—Indonesia. 7. ASEAN. I. Title. DS644 W36 2013 ISBN 978-981-4519-20-5 (hard cover) ISBN 978-981-4519-23-6 (e-book PDF) Typeset by Superskill Graphics Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by Refine Printing Pte Ltd

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Contents Editorial Note

vi

Acknowledgements

vii

About the Author

viii

Introduction I. The Visible Indonesia

ix 1

II. Indonesian Policy Foundations

11

III. Democracy in Indonesian Foreign Policy

21

IV. Islam in Indonesian Foreign Policy

37

V. Indonesia, ASEAN and Regional Political Stability and Security

59

Conclusion

83

Addendum

91

End Notes

99

References

107

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Editorial Note The ISEAS Monograph Series disseminates profound analyses by major scholars on key issues relating to Southeast Asia. Subjects studied in this series stem from research facilitated by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. The Institute’s Manuscript Review Committee is in charge of the series, although the responsibility for facts presented and views expressed rests exclusively with the individual author or authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission from the Institute. ***** This inaugural monograph is written by Professor Donald E. Weatherbee while he was Visiting Professorial Fellow at ISEAS from February to May 2013. It is based on research conducted during this period, which included a field trip to Indonesia in April 2013.

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Director Tan Chin Tiong for the invitation to join ISEAS as a Visiting Professorial Fellow in the period February–May 2013. The resources and support provided by Director Tan and his staff during my tenure is deeply appreciated. Special thanks go to Daljit Singh, Coordinator of ISEAS’ Regional Strategic and Political Studies Programme, who husbanded the project from its initial formulation in 2012 to its completion. In Jakarta, United States–Indonesia Society (USINDO) representative Ms Hazelia Margaretha and her staff provided the logistical support for my April visit that allowed me to maximize the time available for interviews, meetings, and contacts. Every step of the way, from draft proposal to completed study, I had critical inputs and feedback, both in substance and style, from Professor Epsey Cooke Farrell-Weatherbee.

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About the Author Donald E. Weatherbee is the Russell Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina. His BA with high honours is from Bates College and MA and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In addition to South Carolina, he has held teaching appointments at Gajah Mada University, Yogyakarta; Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok; National University of Malaysia; Free University of Berlin; and Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul; and was in 2004 the Fulbright-Sycip lecturer in American Studies in the Philippines. Professor Weatherbee’s teaching, research, and many publications have focused on politics and international relations in Southeast Asia. The third, revised, edition of his book, International Relations in Southeast Asia: The Struggle for Autonomy, will be published in 2014. His book Historical Dictionary of United States — Southeast Asia Relations (2008) was republished in soft-cover as The A to Z of United States–Southeast Asia Relations (2010). Professor Weatherbee currently is on the Board of Advisors of the United States–Indonesia Society (USINDO) and is President of the Board of Directors of the American-Indonesian Cultural and Educational Foundation (AICEF).

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Introduction On 31 December 2015, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will celebrate the establishment of the ASEAN Community (AC), designed to be a “dynamic, cohesive, resilient and integrated” institutional expression of “soft regionalism”. It is “soft” in the sense that the members did not give up any of their independent sovereign rights through multilateral cooperation. There is no central authority with plenipotentiary powers. There are no mechanisms through which members can be held accountable for violation of norms or rules. Over the years the regionalist vision, inaugurated in 1967 by the original core of five members — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand — has become even “softer” with the inclusion of the CLMV states — Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam. The AC project comes onto the scene as ASEAN is characterized by intramural political divergence and diminishing international political relevance. The fact that ASEAN has survived its discords and travails over half a century to reach the point of an AC is in no small measure due to the commitment of Indonesia. The vision of an ASEAN Community was given policy content at the 2003 9th ASEAN Summit chaired by Indonesia. Its “Declaration of ASEAN (Bali) Concord II” set forth the objective of the creation of an ASEAN Community by the year 2020.1

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The AC rests on three “entwined and mutually supportive” pillars: the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC); the ASEAN Security Community, renamed the ASEAN Political and Security Community (APSC); and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC). At the 2007 12th ASEAN Summit in Cebu, the Philippines, the timetable was accelerated, setting 2015 as a new date for completion. A reading of the summit’s “Cebu Declaration on the Acceleration of an ASEAN Community by 2015” confirms that the shortening of the calendar had more to do with the dynamics of change in the international environment than progress in community building. Historically, ASEAN has always seemed to be one or more steps behind the regional events affecting it. As an international actor, the ASEAN Community will be little different than the historical ASEAN. The modus operandi is unchanged. The economic, political, and social integration inherent in the AC’s stated goals faces the insurmountable obstacle of the ASEAN principles of sovereignty, non-interference in domestic affairs, and a consensus decision-making mode in which the weakest or the most reluctant member holds a trump card. In the sovereign equality of ASEAN members, the asymmetries of real power within the grouping are not reflected in its decision making. Furthermore, the declaratory international posture of “community” only disguises, but does not alter, the realities of the divisions within ASEAN that inhibit common regional policymaking. This is particularly the case in shaping a common approach to perceived common interests in political stability and security in Southeast Asia. The most ominous of ASEAN’s internal divisions for the AC’s future significance as an international actor is the deepening gulf between ASEAN’s continental and maritime states. Apace with the building of the AC, a subcommunity is emerging in the institutional form of the Greater Mekong Subregion (Wade

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xi

2011). Oriented to China, and especially Yunnan province, the Mekong states’ growing economic ties to China increasingly influence ASEAN’s political approach to China, to Indonesia’s discomfiture. It is generally acknowledged that the AC will be far from complete by 2015. Of the three pillars, only the AEC has reached a developmental level that merits the title “community”. It had a head start, building on existing instruments like the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), the ASEAN Investment Area (AIA) and trade, investment, and services agreements. According to the Chairman’s Statement at the 2013 22nd ASEAN Summit in Brunei, 259 measures, or 77.54 per cent of the AEC blueprint, have been implemented. But even as the AEC tackles tough remaining issues, its relevance is threatened by the centrifugal pulls of the East Asian Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) and the APEC-framed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The seemingly competitive great-power economic strategies are already dividing ASEAN and diminishing the lustre of the AEC. Because of its nature, the AEC is the least entwined with the other pillars of the community. There has been little spillover into the political and security domains of the APSC. It could be argued, in fact, that the AEC — or at least the structures and institutions built into it — could exist on its own, independent of the other ASEAN frameworks. The ASCC’s programmatic agenda mirrors the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and, rather than regionalization in terms of allocation of resources and expertise, depends on the intensification of existing national and local programmes. The ASCC seems to be a lumping together of existing programmes and outreaches so as to give them an ASEAN identity and artificial coherence, without any functional linkages. The amorphousness of its regionalism makes it difficult to characterize

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the ASCC as a community in any institutional way. One could imagine it as a community of shared ideas and intentions with respect to the social problems shared in common by the ASEAN nations. Unlike the AEC, there are few measurements or evaluations of the progress of the ASCC. Certainly its development is the least impeded by ASEAN member states’ consideration of domestic and international political factors. Outside of its cumulative economic integrative efforts, ASEAN has not had the capacity, political will, or strategic coherence to shape common policies necessary to be an effective international actor. In the uphill quest for ASEAN solidarity, Indonesia has been unable to move its unwilling partners to act together to meet common challenges. This has been thrown into sharp relief most recently by the serial crises over the contentious issues in the South China Sea. That Indonesia has failed to translate the three Bali Concords’ appeals for a unified ASEAN voice into a unitary ASEAN international actor is not a reflection on Indonesian foreign policy but an artefact of ASEAN’s decisionmaking processes. The question becomes, what are Indonesia’s alternatives? This question has been raised earlier in the form of whether Indonesia has “outgrown ASEAN”.2 At that time, the issues were democracy and human rights, which are still ASEAN issues today. The question is also pertinent to Indonesia’s national interests in the evolving regional political and security architectures within which ASEAN claims — but has not earned — centrality. How that question might be answered depends on a date in October 2014. The second and final five-year term in office for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ends in October 2014, after his successor has been picked in the July 2014 presidential election. During his decade in power, President Yudhoyono (familiarly known as SBY) has been ably served by two foreign ministers: Dr Hassan Wirajuda

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xiii

(2002–2009) and Dr Raden Mas Marty Natalegawa (2009–2014). Both Hassan and Marty, Western-educated, rose to the summit of Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs — Kementerian Luar Negeri (Kemlu) — through professional competence. President Yudhoyono and his foreign ministers will have advanced a foreign policy agenda with goals in ASEAN, in the East Asian region, in the Muslim world, and globally. By the transfer of government in 2014, SBY and his ministers will have “owned” Indonesian foreign policy for a decade. They have set the interest priorities in the different, and not always complementary, spheres of activity. In mid-2013, SBY is already a lame duck with no new initiatives expected. The government is ticking over on autopilot. The president is seen as having wasted his electoral mandate. Indonesian foreign policy, once a strong suit, is described as “drifting” and “directionless”.3 A crucial question for future Indonesian foreign policy is whether the Indonesian identity and commitment to ASEAN so associated with Yudhoyono and his two foreign ministers will be shared in the administration that comes to power after the 2014 national elections. It may be more nationalistic and less willing to adapt nationalist demands to ASEAN requirements, and it may show a more Islamic face. Support for ASEAN may weaken as a result of Indonesia’s inability to give ASEAN a single voice in accord with Indonesia’s voice on issues of regional security. However, although a new president may set new foreign policy priorities and new policy directions, he or she does not start with a tabula rasa in the world, the Asia-Pacific region, and ASEAN. Future Indonesian foreign policy will reflect Indonesian capabilities, a continuity of principles and strategic goals, and the legacy of a decade of SBY’s “democratized” foreign policy. The transfer of power will occur even as, the pages to follow will show, the regional dynamics of foreign policy are being reshaped.

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Chapter I

The Visible Indonesia A quarter of a century ago, Donald Emmerson, one of America’s most astute observers of Indonesian affairs, wrote an article for Foreign Affairs titled “Invisible Indonesia” (Emmerson 1987). The premise of the article was that the significance of a country and the attention it receives are separate matters. In an almost prescient way, he asserted that Indonesia’s visibility would increase in the years ahead. His dependent variable at the time of writing was stated, “What will make Indonesia better known is its success or failure in selecting someone to replace General Suharto.” Now, well into the post-Suharto era, we can still endorse his conclusion that “in a zigzag trajectory of its own, invisible Indonesia will make its presence known”. The erstwhile “invisible Indonesia” has become a very visible Indonesia in both its regional and global international settings. The zigzags along the trajectory that brought Indonesia its new visibility were sharp and, for policy, daunting. Not the least was overcoming the obstacles left in the political and economic wreckage of the collapsed Suharto regime: political instability, the lingering impacts of the Asian economic meltdown, ethnic and religious violence, and, of course, the separatist war in Aceh. Through the first half-decade after Suharto’s fall, many Indonesia watchers were concerned that the country showed all of the earmarks of a failing state (Weatherbee 2002). Far from 

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Indonesia in ASEAN

failing, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono leads a nation that is globally recognized as a political and economic success story. Indonesia has emerged in the past decade as a signally important middle-power player on the international stage whose friendship and cooperation are sought by the world’s greater powers. A myriad of books, book chapters, and articles have documented Indonesia’s rise to new prominence in world affairs. Although Suharto’s Indonesia may have been globally “invisible”, during the second half of his regime Indonesia had experienced a “rise”. By the early 1990s it was the dominant regional power in ASEAN, an important player in East Asia and the Pacific, and through the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) a leader in the developing world. In its international role and status, the country was defined as a “pivotal state” (Bresnan 1999). The features of a pivotal state include physical size, large population, important geographical location, and, most importantly, capacity to affect regional and international stability. The failure of such a state would have drastic negative impacts in its region and beyond. This was the fear for Indonesia in Southeast Asia at the turn of the century. In a similar way, contemporary Indonesia has been newly categorized as a “swing state”; that is, a state whose decisions about whether to take on new global responsibilities, free ride on the efforts of established powers, or complicate the solving of key challenges may influence the trajectory of the current international order (Kliman and Fontein 2012). The tangible factors that Emmerson laid out to demonstrate Indonesia’s significance — despite its “invisibility” — in the Suharto years are still underpinning Indonesia’s visibility in the Yudhoyono years. Both the Suharto and SBY governments’ international emergence followed upon leadership concentration on winning political stability after domestic crises. While the sources of political stability were very different — authoritarian as

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The Visible Indonesia



opposed to democracy — the relatively stable domestic political base provided a platform from which the other factors of power could be mobilized to support a robust foreign policy designed to secure Indonesia’s national interests. The usual catalogue of the underpinnings of Indonesian foreign policy includes as permanent factors the country’s size and rich resource base, its large population — the world’s fourth largest — and its geostrategic location. The latter item features even more importantly today than in the Suharto era given the new great-power tensions in the region. In U.S. discussions of its pivot or rebalance to Asia, it has emphasized that the strategic dimension is Asia-Pacific-wide, including India and the Indian Ocean. In that strategy, “As Southeast Asia commands both sides of the Indian and Pacific oceans,” a senior U.S. official testified in February 2013, “we see a strong and integrated ASEAN as an important component in bolstering the security of the entire Asia-Pacific.”4 Indonesia is central to that component. Complementing political stability and perhaps a requisite for Suharto and Yudhoyono in their different time frames, strong, growing economies provided critical domestic capabilities for the conduct of forward-looking foreign policy. This gave real substance to their international leadership aspirations. Of course, Yudhoyono’s Indonesian economy has far outstripped Suharto’s in its size and global status, adding to Indonesia’s influence beyond the ASEAN region as well as in ASEAN. One rough measure commonly cited is that, bolstered by domestic consumption, its GDP is growing annually at a rate of more than 6 per cent. Indonesia’s growth rate is exceeded in Asia only by India’s and China’s and, along with theirs, is greater than that of the other members of the G-20 to which Indonesia belongs. It is perhaps Indonesia’s tigerish economy — if only a cub — that is most often latched onto in reporting on Indonesia’s “rise”.

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To the mix of political and economic factors which give credibility to Indonesia’s regional and international rise, it is necessary to add the intangible of a proud nationalism that can quickly take prickly offence or be mobilized over relatively lowpolitics issues such as Malaysia’s alleged purloining of Indonesian musical heritage or the Indonesia–Singapore “sand war”. Taken as a whole, these are the factors in what can be described as Indonesia’s “soft power” capability that underwrite Indonesia’s regional and global high foreign policy profile. Barring a serious economic downturn or political collapse, they will continue to underwrite the foreign policy of Indonesia’s next presidential administration. The components of the solid soft power base gave Suharto and give SBY the confidence to assert Indonesia’s claim to a leading role in Southeast Asia. The noted British scholar Michael Leifer famously described Indonesian foreign policy as being informed by a persistent sense of “regional entitlement” (Leifer 1983, p. 173), a term that has won general acceptance by non-Indonesian scholars.5 However, the use of the word “entitlement”, that is, something that is granted or conferred, does not convey the sense that, in the absence of a contending state with similar power factors, it would be natural that Indonesia would have the leading role in the regional international subsystem embraced within the ASEAN framework.

Indonesia’s Self-perception Indonesia’s view of itself corresponds with that of the international community. In May 2005, President Yudhoyono, in what he termed his first foreign policy speech, outlined what he conceived to be Indonesia’s role, place, and standing in the international community.6 His bottom line was that:

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The Visible Indonesia



We are a proud nation who cherishes our independence and national unity. We are the fourth most populous nation in the world. We are home to the world’s largest Muslim population. We are the world’s third largest democracy. We are also a country where democracy, Islam, and modernity go hand in hand. We will stay our course with ASEAN as the cornerstone of our foreign policy. And our heart is always with the developing world, to which we belong. These are things that define what we are, and what we do in the community of nations.

In the discussion to follow we will look closely at the factors that President Yudhoyono identified as defining what Indonesia is — its identity — in terms of how this can be translated into what it does in the community of nations; that is, foreign policy. Nationalism, democracy, and Islam are qualities, intangibles if you will, difficult to measure or quantify. Staying the course with ASEAN as the cornerstone of foreign policy is a commitment to a multilateral organization that can be measured by intensity of the commitment in terms of willingness to sublimate national interest to perceptions of regional interest as expressed through consensus decision making. The intensity, however, may fluctuate as the other elements of identity come into play. Intensity of commitment will also depend upon how vital the interests are that are placed in the ASEAN hopper.

The ASEAN Framework The signaling of a reassertion of Indonesia’s ASEAN leadership role was given by President Megawati Sukarnoputri in the 2004 annual presidential state address. This followed on the October 2003 Bali Summit. In her one comment on Indonesian foreign policy she said:

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Indonesia in ASEAN In ASEAN, which constitutes a priority in the conduct of our foreign policy, Indonesia was once again able to show its leadership. The success of Indonesia during the 9th Summit, in preparing the Bali Concord II has strengthened the role, commitment, and leadership of Indonesia with ASEAN.7

The 9th Summit and its Bali Concord II, an evocation of the Bali Concord I, 23 years earlier, was the first opportunity for a postSuharto leadership to lay claim to an important role in shaping the region’s future — a reassertion of Indonesia’s primacy in the region. Megawati’s two post-Suharto predecessors were fully preoccupied with sorting out the wreckage of the politicaleconomic collapse that ended the century. During the domestic and international trauma to Indonesia of East Timor’s separation, President Habibie had little time in office (May 1998–October 1999) and less time for ASEAN. President Abdurrahman Wahid (October 1999–July 2001), indirectly elected to a five-year term, had it foreshortened by impeachment proceedings. Wahid’s foreign policy concerns were two, neither of which emphasized ASEAN. The first was to solicit support for Indonesia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The second was to garner foreign assistance and investment to aid in Indonesia’s economic recovery. If there were a strategic vision, it was an India–Indonesia–China partnership to balance the domination of the West. Wahid’s government particularly rejected the “new internationalism” of democratic and humanitarian intervention. President Megawati, herself, despite the Bali Summit, had domestic issues of political stability to deal with: the war in Aceh, ethnic violence, the breakdown of law and order, and the looming spectre of a failed state. It has only been the Yudhoyono government that has had the time, resources, and priorities and, in the second term, an electoral mandate, to give full attention

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to Indonesia’s role in ASEAN as the organization trudged the road to community. Of the three community pillars, the ASEAN Political and Security Community is the most problematic since it touches on vital domestic and international security interests of the member states. It should be pointed out immediately that by “security community” the ASEAN participants do not mean military alliance. This is not a SEATO redux. As will be discussed in greater detail below, the push for an APSC came from Indonesia. Jakarta’s priority for what was termed “collective political defence” was manifested at ASEAN’s first, Bali, summit in 1972, which in its Bali Concord I prepared the way for what was Indonesia’s unrequited hope of political solidarity. The 1972 summit marked Indonesia’s coming-out as a putative leader of ASEAN as opposed to a passive follower. As ASEAN expanded from the original core five, who shared a common political (anti-communist) and strategic outlook (the Soviet threat), to include the CLMV countries, but having little in common politically with them, political and strategic consensus was lost. The kind of leadership that Indonesia could once give was more direct, such as Foreign Minister Mochtar’s immediate response as ASEAN chair to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978. There were the empat mata — “four eyes” — bilaterals between Suharto and his ASEAN counterparts, for example, used to salvage new Philippines president Corazon Aquino’s ASEAN Summit in 1991. The cement of the original ASEAN was directly external threat related: anti-communism, the Cold War, and the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. In the absence of external threat as a promoter of political unity, since the 1992 Singapore ASEAN Summit the truly purposeful and results-producing initiatives of ASEAN have been economic, the ultimate product of which is

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the ASEAN Economic Community. We can consider the AEC a stand-alone structure the operations of which do not at a working level depend on intra-ASEAN political harmonization. There has been no post-1992 political cement to parallel the AEC’s economic cement. Political and strategic disunion marks the APSC. Indonesia’s perception of its foreign policy interest areas has often been graphically modelled as a series of concentric circles, with the first circle being ASEAN with Indonesia at the centre. The first outer circle is East Asia and the Pacific, and outermost is the global circle. It can be questioned, however, whether as a heuristic device this model any longer adequately suggests the ranging of Indonesian interests. Concurrent with the growth of Indonesia’s middle-power capabilities, ASEAN’s capabilities as an effective structure through which Indonesia can defend and promote its interests have weakened. We would suggest here, to be elaborated below, that the ASEAN cornerstone of Indonesian foreign policy is crumbling. This does not mean that ASEAN as an organization is crumbling — after all the League of Nations survived World War II and it did not have an Economic Community — only that its utility as an instrument of Indonesian foreign policy has been diminished. A different graphic model than the concentric circles above would show an Indonesian circle overlapping three separate circles: ASEAN, Asia-Pacific, and global. In those extra-ASEAN circles, Indonesia’s rising power and visibility give it heightened capabilities on a number of foreign policy platforms. As Indonesia’s extra-ASEAN interests — including security — expand, the overlap with the non-ASEAN circles will become larger. A usually unstated concern in some ASEAN quarters is that unless ASEAN’s internal political trajectory changes, Indonesia will have a lesser interest in ASEAN as its primary foreign policy platform. This would seriously undercut ASEAN’s insistence on its centrality to

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The Visible Indonesia



East Asian regionalism and security since it is Indonesia’s role in ASEAN that gives the claim to centrality any credibility. During the Suharto years, Indonesian policy analyst Dewi Fortuna Anwar (1995, p. 57) wrote that ASEAN needs Indonesia more than Indonesia needs ASEAN. The same is even more true today.8 The possibility that Indonesia might have even less need of ASEAN will depend in part on ASEAN’s capability to adjust its structure and operating code to confront the challenges presented by the regional tensions emerging from China’s ambitions coupled to “hard power” and the response of the United States. The above introduces four questions that implicitly inform the discussion of Indonesian foreign policy to follow. First, if Indonesia is to be a leader in ASEAN, in what directions does it want to take it? Second, will ASEAN or its member states follow Indonesia’s lead? Third, is “soft power” enough? Fourth, if ASEAN falters or fails, what are Indonesia’s options with their implications for the region? The answers to these questions require an examination of the continuities in Indonesian foreign policy and then, specifically, President Yudhoyono’s foreign policy objectives, Indonesia’s role in an ASEAN in crisis, and, finally, questions about foreign policy in post-Suharto governments.

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Chapter II

Indonesian Policy Foundations The basic conception of how Indonesian foreign policy should be formulated and carried out was laid out more than six decades ago by Vice-President and Prime Minister Mohammad Hatta in a government statement to Indonesia’s provisional parliament. The speech was titled Mendayung diantara Dua Karang — “rowing between two reefs”.9 It is rightly considered the foundation of Indonesian foreign policy. The two reefs at that time were the Cold War reefs of the Soviet Union and the United States of America. The domestic context for the speech was the rivalry for power between the communist left and the democratic socialists. Hatta’s prescription for navigating the reefs was a foreign policy that was bebas dan aktif (independent and active). Every Indonesian government from Sukarno to Yudhoyono has claimed bebas dan aktif as the foundation of its foreign policy. Bebas dan aktif is not a policy or strategy. It is a quality of policy in the way it is formulated and carried out: with national interests being defined independently (bebas), then pragmatically promoting those interests (aktif ). This is not ideology; it is realism, particularly if we pay attention to Hatta’s insistence that interests had to be pragmatic and pursued in accordance with the realities Indonesia faced in the external environment. 11

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For contemporary Indonesia we could restate Hatta’s title as Mendayung diantara Banyak Karang — rowing between many reefs. On an updated political navigation chart the great-power reefs of China and the United States are prominent, but there are hazards unseen by the founders of Indonesia’s republic such as nationalism and globalism; environmentalism and development; religion and terrorism, to mention a few. There are also a host of what former foreign minister Hassan called “intermestic” issues where there is a confluence of non-traditional issues at the international–domestic policy interface including human rights and national integrity. Even in ASEAN there are reefs: the differing political, strategic, and economic orientations of the continental and maritime members or the tiered economic division between the more economically developed members and the CLMV states. President Sukarno fatefully ignored these strictures. The policy outcome for Hatta was non-alignment. At the most general level of implementation, non-alignment means no formal military alliances that commit the partners to mutual military support in the event of a crisis. On the international scene, Indonesia was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement to which it still belongs. Today’s post-Cold War NAM, however, underwent a transformation beginning with Indonesia’s chairmanship, 1992– 1995. From a Cold War relic, the NAM became an instrument in the Third World’s drive for economic development and political independence from the West.

Limited Alignment Non-alignment formally remains Indonesia’s policy today with respect to military alliance and basing. Non-alignment in the framework of bebas dan aktif does not, however, foreclose military

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relations in what Ciorciari (2010) termed “limited alignments”. This means a security relationship involving such elements as military assistance, preferential arms sales, joint military exercises, access to military education, technical and logistical support and other military and security-related activities. Given the mix of activities, a “limited alliance” not only fosters cooperation with a political spinoff, but also enhances the possibilities for future interoperability. Ciorciari (2010, p.136) concluded that the Indonesia–United States relationship was “one of the clearest cases of limited alignment in Southeast Asia”. The American–Indonesian security relationship blossomed during the administration of President Nixon but was sundered over human rights issues, especially East Timor, in President Clinton’s administration. In the aftermath of 9/11, the security relationship was restored. This was agreed to during President Yudhoyono’s visit to Washington in May 2005, and the final restrictions were lifted in January 2006. A full agenda of training, joint exercises, and the other activities are in place for what both sides acknowledge is a “strategic partnership” in fact, if not in name (Weatherbee 2007, pp.253–59). The current American pivot or rebalance of its military forces to East Asia and the Pacific gives new focus on both sides of the Pacific to the terms of the evolving U.S.–Indonesia security partnership. The argument can be made that, for the United States, its “limited alignment” with Indonesia is geostrategically more significant and poses fewer risks than its formal alliances with Thailand and the Philippines. Australia, too, has a burgeoning “limited alignment” with Indonesia. Although in many ways complementary to the American, it is independent of it and rests on different perceptions of Indonesia in Australian strategy. The relationship is based on what has been called the tyranny of geography.10 From a threat,

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Indonesia has become a strategic partner. After the 2013 second annual meeting of the Australian foreign and defence ministers with their Indonesian counterparts, Australian foreign minister Bob Carr pronounced that “their defence relations have never been better”.11 Not to be left out, China has scrambled to try to enhance its annual defence and security discussions by the respective defence ministries with substantive programming, but with little progress when compared to the American and Australian “limited alignments”. For the Indonesians, it is a nod to non-alignment balance and keeping China happy. The security relationship that Indonesia has developed with the United States and Australia depends in part on the course of Indonesia’s democracy and the politically emotional factors of nationalism and Islam. A persistent current of suspicion of great-power motives and intentions and a sense of vulnerability are part of Indonesia’s political culture. Particularly worrisome for Jakarta proponents and opponents of closer security ties with the U.S. is great-power unilateralism. The combination of Islamist appeals, nationalism and religious solidarity have proved potent mobilizers for opposition to close security relations with the West in general and the United States in particular. The government has not been shaken by the sometimes violent demonstrations and protests against the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is sensitive to the political landmines along the path of security cooperation with the U.S. For example, the claimed excesses of Densus 88, Indonesia’s elite counterterrorist force, are attributed by Muslim critics to its training by U.S. Special Forces and the CIA.12 The bedrock on which all of Indonesia’s interests rest, including security, is sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Yudhoyono administration is just as sensitive as its predecessors in these matters. A successor government may be even more so

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if the political influence of nationalism and Islam is enhanced by the electoral outcomes. While human rights and justice groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International may be concerned by local — but nationally unsystematic — outrages against religious and ethnic minorities, this will be shrugged off by the government. The poor marks for Indonesia in the U.S. State Department’s annual Human Rights Report and Religious Rights Report will spark the usual Indonesian denials and denunciations, but it will not interrupt diplomatic business as usual. The case would be very different if the political situation in Indonesian Papua should continue to deteriorate and the indigenous separatist movement sparks greater repression and a higher level of internal warfare. The same international forces that mobilized against Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor are poised for Papua. Jakarta has sternly warned its friends in Canberra and Washington not to meddle. Jakarta does not perceive any contradiction in its pressing for human rights and self-determination in Palestine, let alone for the Muslims in South Thailand and the Moros in the Philippines, and its stance on Papua. Nor does it admit any relevance of the mode of settlement of the Aceh conflict to Papua. A breakdown forced by American politics of the “limited alignment” with Indonesia would have serious negative strategic implications for Southeast Asia. The Yudhoyono government is in a stronger position than Suharto’s was in the 1990s when the U.S. severed defence relations with Indonesia over the Dili massacre. At the end of the Cold War, there was no imperative security requirement to justify an American free pass to Suharto’s Indonesia. The new imperatives of balancing China’s presence in Southeast Asia may bolster a reluctance to press Indonesia on issues of self-determination and human rights. At this writing, attention has turned to the possibility that Prabowo Subianto, former commander of

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Indonesian Army Special Forces (Kopassus), could be Indonesia’s next president. There is little doubt that U.S.–Indonesian security relations might be at risk anew given his previous military record. The U.S. Congress and human rights NGOs hold him responsible for major rights violations attendant upon the collapse of the Suharto regime and atrocities in East Timor. Are concerns in Washington about China’s ambitions in Southeast Asia great enough to offset reluctance to do business with Prabowo?

Indonesia’s Strategic View Over the years the concept of bebas dan aktif has proved to be very elastic as situations and realities have changed, especially as new, non-traditional interests have been put on the policy agenda. Of course, Indonesia has other important interests. Functional legitimacy for both Suharto and Yudhoyono has roots in economic development which depends on access to markets and investment. A quick look at Foreign Minister Marty’s 2013 “to do” list shows an impressive array of diplomatic tasks.13 The categories for action include bilateral cooperation, expanding markets, securing Indonesia’s borders, protection of citizens abroad, regional peace and stability, consolidating democracy and human rights values regionally and globally, strengthening the regional economy, contributing to global peace, security, and justice, and promoting global and regional economic order. To Marty’s list we might add, to secure Indonesia’s leading role in the regional international order. Historically, Indonesian leadership has sought to do this by adopting policies and strategies which, at the minimum: (1) guarantee that Indonesia’s voice is heard and hearkened to in regional affairs;

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(2) prevent alterations in the regional status quo that would be detrimental to Indonesia’s interests; (3) limit great-power presence offering an alternative leadership to Indonesia’s; (4) multilateralize the pursuit of national interests in cooperative and associational structures that increase capabilities but do not close options. Viewing these strategic goals in the conceptual box of bebas dan aktif, we can ask where they fit into the framework of ASEAN. The short answer is that ASEAN is just one of Indonesia’s foreign policy tools, albeit an important one, through which Indonesia pursues policies to promote its interests. Paralleling ASEAN in Indonesia’s foreign policy arsenal are its other policy instruments including multilateral engagements, with the United Nations being foremost, bilateral relations, and, if necessary, unilateral self-help. ASEAN is a vehicle for promoting Indonesian national interests in an autonomous regional structure in which Indonesia’s leadership is unchallenged, although frequently ignored. While regional peace and stability are vital interests, a multitude of lowerorder Indonesian interests find their place in the welter of ASEAN meetings, committees, and working groups. The effectiveness of the ASEAN foreign policy tool is difficult to measure. ASEAN itself does not produce policy outcomes in the sense of real ASEAN actions independent of the national actions of the member states. ASEAN commitment is only as good as the commitment of the members based on their own appraisal of national interest. This is why any integrative momentum within ASEAN on other than economic measures has been the low-level consensus on noncontroversial issues. The great-power framework within which Indonesia’s regional power ambitions and strategies must be achieved has undergone

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changes. The preponderance of power the United States once enjoyed in East Asia and the Pacific is now commonly seen as challenged by China’s great-power ambitions and growing capabilities. What Beijing claims is a “peaceful rise” has been described as a striving for paramountcy or even hegemony in Southeast Asia. Perceptions of an American decline in power and a rising China have treated the great-power relationship as a zero-sum game in which for Southeast Asia the stakes are high. ASEAN, through its consensual process, has not, and probably will not, achieve a level of political and strategic coherence and unity of will and purpose to become an effective — that is, to influence real outcomes — international actor on matters of regional politics and security. Rather, within ASEAN, its members have demonstrated varied responses to the regional impingements of China–United States relations. These have ranged from strengthening alliances to bandwagoning, with in-between hedging and balance-of-power politics. For Indonesia, depending on the outcome, its regional policy goals are at risk. All signs are that Indonesia’s hopes and expectations (dreams?) that ASEAN’s Political and Security Community can be an effective structure through which Indonesia’s strategic interests can be secured are, in fact, mirages. Indonesia’s preferred outcome is a regional order which President Yudhoyono and Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa have repeatedly referred to since 2009 as a “dynamic equilibrium”. This is a paradigm in which there is no preponderant power. It would be based on enmeshing all of the state actors in a network of inclusive overlapping and interlocking multilateral structures. The cement would be mutually reinforcing interests where all countries can gain and prosper.14 In such a structure, according to President Yudhoyono, the middle and smaller states, which would not have to have a foot in one camp or the other, could contribute to the

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management of stable and cooperative relationships between China and the United States on the basis of geo-economics rather than geopolitics.15 Rather than a traditional balance of power, an all-inclusive — the “more the merrier” according to Marty — Asia-Pacific regional architecture would emerge from the multiple foundation pillars. It would be strengthened by the growing number of bilateral comprehensive partnerships. In an unconsciously “constructivist” mode, Yudhoyono mused, using the East Asia Summit (EAS) as an example, that from this web of relationships, “morally binding” rules and norms of peaceful and cooperative state behaviour would be in place.16 He added a most important caveat to this: “if adhered to”. At this point in time, at least in my understanding of it, the key to the realization of the Indonesian concept of a “dynamic equilibrium” is a peaceful, stable, and cooperative China–United States relationship. It is unclear whether this is a prerequisite or a result. Nor is it clear what kind of proactive foreign policies the middle and small powers should pursue to help manage that relationship. Neither the Indonesian president nor his foreign minister has suggested Indonesian policies directed to that end. There is a kind of deus ex machina at work in the Indonesian paradigm: that the assumed blind forces of interdependence will be able to overcome the expressions of great-power political and strategic ambitions and interests, particularly China’s, and not only in the South China Sea. Indonesia, and here it would be joined by the ASEAN chorus, also insists that in the “dynamic equilibrium” the “centrality” of ASEAN must be maintained. What political or strategic meaning the concept of centrality might have has never really been specified. How can ASEAN without its own coordinated, cohesive, and coherent positions on critical issues of regional politics, security, and strategy pretend to be central to great- and middle-

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power discourse? If centrality, which has been called a “muddied multilateral strategy” (Ho 2012, p.7), simply means ASEAN as a hub or institutional locus for regional institutions such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) or the EAS to have meetings, there is little other than carefully massaged non-offensive speeches by member states that ASEAN as a grouping adds. There is no ASEAN voice. If centrality implies decision making or political agenda setting for those outside the centre, i.e., the U.S. and China, this is unreal. Defenders of the idea of ASEAN centrality insist on its importance as a platform for dialogue. But other than in scoring points with ASEAN rotating chairs, in terms of substantive policy outcomes it is difficult to attribute any real significance to the multiplicity of dialogues that have become obligatory dates on the calendars of ASEAN’s dialogue partners. To have, for example, President Obama and his Chinese counterpart talk past each other to show the ASEAN leaders that ASEAN is important to them is incidental to U.S.–Chinese relations. The meaningful dialogues are bilateral; not process through ASEAN “talk shops”.

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Chapter III

Democracy in Indonesian Foreign Policy Indonesia’s newly recognized status as a democracy has qualitatively changed its international relationships. It can now claim a seat at the table with the liberal democracies of the world while posing as a role model for the less-than-democracies of its cohort in ASEAN and elsewhere in the developing world. The democracy that is being consolidated in Indonesia is a real democracy, not just electoral machinery rolled out at stipulated occasions to give an aura of legitimacy to essentially undemocratic governments. Indonesia is now one of 90 polities, out of 195, in the world that is ranked as “free” in Freedom House’s annual classifications, and the only one in ASEAN.17 The criteria by which it is judged “free” include open political competition, respect for civil liberties, a significant independent civic life and an independent media. Acknowledging that the working of Indonesia’s democracy has well-publicized problems of religious tensions, ethnic strife, and corruption — as do other democracies — the consensus is that, with halts and starts, the domestic political processes begun in 1999, by President Yudhoyono’s second term, have resulted in a relatively stable democracy in which democratic values conform to the normative basis of the state: the Pancasila and the stipulations of the Indonesian constitution.18 21

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Accepting that Indonesia is a democracy and that Indonesia proudly flourishes its democratic credentials to the world, the question here is how the democratization of Indonesia has affected Indonesian foreign policy in terms of both its domestic base and its international interests and objectives. There is no question that Indonesia assiduously projects its democratic image to enhance its standing globally. Democracy has been part of Indonesia’s new status in global multilateralism and its bilateral standing with liberal democratic communities. It is a consciously adopted foreign policy strategy which depends on the domestic political order. Foreign Minister Marty, in his first major address on taking office in 2009, praised his predecessor, Hassan Wirajuda, for the “democratization” of Indonesian foreign policy”.19

Foreign Policy Making Foreign Minister Marty discusses “democratization” of foreign policy in terms of process and substance. By democratizing the process, Marty meant engaging a broader array of stakeholders in formulating policy including think-tanks, the academic community, parliament, and elements of civil society. By democratizing the substance, he meant widening the concerns of foreign policy to include democracy, human rights, and good governance. He underlined the fact that the democratized foreign policy would reflect Indonesia’s domestic democratization. One area of democratization he did not discuss is that enlarging the number of stakeholders also creates new constraints on foreign policy. Foreign policy to date has not figured importantly in presidential elections. The explosion of Indonesia’s social media and the sophisticated uses of it by special interests, in particular Islamists, suggest that growing attention to issues that touch Muslim sensitivities will have greater political impact. Already,

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so-called secular political parties adjust their agendas for better outreach to Muslim voters. One approach to interpreting the interaction between the domestic and the international foreign policy “process” is to consider Indonesian foreign policy in the theoretical framework of a two-level game in which the government is playing simultaneously at the domestic and international levels. In a twolevel game, as originally laid out by Robert Putnam (1988), the government — in theory essentially viewed as a unitary actor — has to negotiate to accommodate domestic pressures and interests while at the same time minimizing adverse consequences in the international arena, thus attempting to satisfy both constituencies. During the Suharto period the game was simpler, since input and accountability at the domestic level were essentially limited to a small group of stakeholders, largely a military and crony elite. In Indonesia’s democracy, however, as Jörn Dosch (2006, p. 45) argues, democratization has altered the rules of the game in both the formal and informal institutional settings of foreign policy making. One clear difference is that a narrowly conceived view of security in a military sense no longer overshadows the array of other interests. The monopoly of the state in defining interest and the policies to pursue interest now faces competition. Once powerless civil society actors have greater access and influence and even roles in shaping foreign policy. Rather than a unitary, relatively autonomous actor mediating between the demands of the domestic and international levels in foreign policy making, the decision-making mode is becoming pluralist. In fact, the state itself no longer has a monopoly on transnational relations. International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) are linked to domestic counterparts. Mass Muslim social organizations such as Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah have relations

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independent of the government with the like-minded in the Muslim world. Sukma and Alles (forthcoming) argue that the emergence of important transnational Indonesian nonstate actors, particularly Islamic ones, has introduced agendas paralleling the government’s in ways that can reinforce, compete with, or even contest official policy. The Indonesian parliament, the DPR (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat), has enhanced its position as an institutional player in foreign policy. We can agree with Ann Marie Murphy (2012, p.87) that “the parliament has unprecedented oversight over foreign policy decisions”. Oversight, however, does not necessarily mean input into the foreign policy process. The DPR has neither the constitutional powers nor the institutional capabilities to challenge seriously the executive’s foreign policy monopoly. Within the membership of parliament, riddled as it is with celebrities, nepotistic seat warmers, and no-shows, there are few MPs truly informed on foreign policy issues.20 The oversight is constraining, not controlling. It is most effective when the DPR’s concerns are translated into the intra-cabinet politics of coalition governments. This was the case in 2007–08 United Nations Security Council votes on Iran sanctions. As a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council in 2007, Indonesia voted in support of Security Council Resolution 1747 imposing sanctions on Iran for non-compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This caused a storm at home. The lack of fraternity with a fellow Muslim country was seized upon as an example of an Indonesian foreign policy beholden to Western interests, particularly American. An open breach between the president and the party élites, even those represented in his cabinet, was magnified when Yudhoyono refused to appear for the DPR’s so-called “Iran interpellation” (Gindarsah 2012). The political lesson was clear. When it came

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time in 2008 for the Security Council to vote on Resolution 1803, which added more sanctions, Indonesia abstained. As revealed in a WikiLeaked cable, Alwi Shihab, SBY’s point man on the Middle East and formerly President Wahid’s foreign minister, told the American ambassador that the decision to abstain on UNSCR 1803 was because of domestic politics and the 2009 elections. Shihab added that it was the criticism from the DPR of the government’s support for UNSCR 1747 that led to “essentially the first time in Indonesian history that an administration was called to account by the DPR on a foreign policy issue”.21 It was also an early flexing of Muslim political muscle. As part of the resolution of the DPR–executive confrontation, it supposedly was agreed that the government would “consult intensively” with the DPR before making decisions on major foreign policy issues (Gindarsah 2012, p.430). However, there is no institutionally structured consultation mechanism.22 The exchanges are informal and ad hoc. The parliament has its own transnational links through the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA), formerly the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Organization (AIPO). Its Myanmar caucus had feedback to national parliaments and through them to governments. The government can be embarrassed — if not moved — by legislative goings-on. For example, the Indonesian policy establishment has been chagrined by the DPR’s unwillingness to ratify the 2002 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution. The “haze” is a euphemism for the blanket of smoke that spreads over Singapore, Malaysia and beyond from forestclearance fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan. In 1998–99, the haze caused an economic and public health disaster prompting the ASEAN action. It continues to recur regularly. Indonesia’s ASEAN partners view Indonesia as having neither the capacity nor will to attack the root cause. Despite pressure from Kemlu in 2008

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and 2011, the DPR has refused to ratify the agreement, which makes Indonesia, the main source of the problem, the only ASEAN country that has not. A number of reasons have been adduced to explain the reluctance of the legislators to redeem the president’s pledge to his ASEAN colleagues, including pressure from the palm oil planters and corruption involving the illegal logging industry. Simon Tay (2008, p.234) argued that the key variable in the politics of ratification is nationalism and an unwillingness to subordinate Indonesian interests to its neighbours’. In the DPR, Komisi-I has jurisdiction over foreign affairs and defence. Through the right of interpellation both the Komisi and the full parliament can question officials of the executive branch, but both presidents Wahid and Yudhoyono successfully claimed they were not answerable to the DPR. Komisi-I has a penchant for junkets, with “working visits” in 2012 to Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Malaysia, Spain, the United States and Germany. Since 2010, Komisi-I has been chaired by Mahfudz Siddiq, a senior official of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKB), an Islamic party now in parliamentary opposition. Mahfudz shares the Muslim élites’ general suspicion and distrust of the perceived “antiIslam” policies in the West and the United States in particular.23 Commenting on American President Obama’s re-election to a second term, Mahfudz stated that it had no significance for Indonesia since Obama’s policies in the first four years were no different than previous presidents’ — a stance quite at odds with the government’s embrace of the Indonesian–American Comprehensive Partnership.24 The issues Komisi-I politicians tend to seize upon for publicity advantage are those that have already created a public stir. An oft-cited example is the furore over the 2008 Indonesian unilateral decision to shut down the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit Two (NAMRU-2) team housed in the Indonesian Health Ministry. Its

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tropical medicine research, including the Asian flu virus, was irresponsibly demonized as assisting the United States in creating weapons of biological warfare (Murphy 2012, pp.106–10). The attack had nothing to do with science. It was interpreted by the U.S. as an attempt by ambitious politicians to mobilize nationalist and popular support in the run-up to the 2009 elections.25

Indonesia’s Global Projection of Democracy Given that at the domestic level democratization has led to new constraints on Indonesian foreign policy, what can be said about democracy as an interest that is supported by Indonesian foreign policy? Rizal Sukma (2011) has made a crucial distinction in Indonesian foreign policy between projecting democracy as a model or image and promoting democracy through policies designed to effect democratic change. Indonesia projects democracy but does not promote it. At the global level, Indonesia’s projection of its democratic image was first registered in its membership in the Community of Democracies (CD). This is an intergovernmental grouping of democratic governments whose goal is to strengthen and deepen international democratic norms and practices. Other than being a signatory and attendee at the biennial meetings, Indonesia has had a low profile in the CD. It is not a member of the core group on the governing council. As with other members, the initial enthusiasm for the project faded over its first decade and high-level governmental participation has fallen off. One of the problems according to a senior American official has been the inability of the CD to transform its purposes into tangible and measurable real-world results.26 Indonesia’s relative lack of real involvement in the CD may reflect a reluctance to fully engage with a proactive American lead in the organization.

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Indonesia was one of the eight founding members of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in response to American President Obama’s challenge at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2011 for countries to unite to promote transparency, fight corruption, and take other measures to empower their citizens. Fifty other countries have made commitments to the OGP, with country plans in place or in preparation to give effect to the commitments. In the country programmes’ emphasis is given to civil society partnership. Indonesia is a member of the OGP steering committee and in 2012 was a co-chair to the United Kingdom’s lead chair, while in 2013 Indonesia is the lead chair to Mexico’s co-chair. The Indonesian government has shown rhetorical support for ostensibly non-governmental global democracy initiatives. It supports the World Movement for Democracy, which was initiated by the American congressionally-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The goal is to build a global civil society network to promote and strengthen democracy and democratization. In 2010 President Yudhoyono gave the keynote address to the Sixth Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in Jakarta. In his speech to democratic activists from around the world, Yudhoyono reiterated the lessons of Indonesia’s democratic experience: that nations do not have to choose between democracy and economic development; that democracy contributed to political stability; and that democracy must include good governance. He underlined what has been the theme of Indonesia’s projection of its democracy, that Islam, democracy, and modernity can grow together.27 Indonesia has also “flirted” at the Asian regional level with U.S. government-sponsored intergovernmental democracy promotion projects. At the September 2007 APEC meeting, American President George W. Bush called for an Asia-Pacific Democracy

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Partnership (APDP) to promote and support democracy, rule of law, and civil society in the region. The idea of a partnership of democratic countries originated in the U.S. State Department and was seen as consistent with the Community of Democracies’ encouragement of the development of regional democracy partnerships.28 Indonesia signed on and was represented at the first APDP planning session in Ulaanbaatar in July 2008 and the first APDP Senior Officials Meeting in October 2008. As conceived by the U.S., the APDP was to be “action oriented” in its democracy promotion. As a practical matter, however, its work focused on providing election observers where invited in a few regional elections. Any enthusiasm there may have been for the original proposal for an “informal” coalition of democracies in Asia has waned. It has not been a feature of the Obama administration’s Asian agenda. Although a partner, Indonesia’s association with the APDP was always at a distance. From the outset, Indonesia was concerned about the grouping’s exclusivity. Half of the members were military allies of the United States. While Indonesia in ASEAN was trying to create inclusive regional architectures into which China could be integrated, by definition China was excluded from the APDP. Thailand’s participation as an observer even though its democratic credentials were suspect only sharpened Indonesia’s perception of American strategic interests as well as democratic interest in building the APDP. In the CD, Indonesia could safely “row between two reefs” in the flood of the more than 100 members, but in the APDP it stood exposed in what China might perceive as another element of America’s effort to contain China. A second important factor in Indonesia’s lukewarm endorsement of the APDP is that it seemed to pre-empt Indonesia’s own projected inclusive multilateral democratic initiative that

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would star Indonesia as the important democracy in the region.29 This was the Bali Democracy Forum (BDF), to be discussed below. Since it had reservations, one can ask why Indonesia joined the APDP. In its efforts to project a democratic image it would have been difficult to turn down an invitation to join other regional democracies in supporting democracy. More important, and probably controlling, given Indonesia’s desire to maintain its broader array of real interests in the bilateral U.S.–Indonesia relationship, bowing to the pressure to accede was a relatively low-cost ideological gesture. In a WikiLeaked Jakarta cable, the U.S. assured Indonesia that the APDP and the Bali Democracy Forum were complementary initiatives and that the U.S. gave “highest priority” to Indonesia’s participation in the APDP.30 The pride of place in Indonesia’s public commitment to democracy is held by the Bali Democracy Forum, an annual gathering on the resort island of Bali. The purpose of the BDF as stated by Kemlu, which manages it, is “to promote and foster regional and international cooperation in the field of peace and democracy through dialogue-based sharing experiences and best practices that adhere to the principles of equality, mutual respect and understanding” [boldface in original].31 A brainchild of Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, it was seized upon by President Yudhoyono as an international stage for Indonesia’s democracy. Planning sessions began in 2007 and the BDF was established, with its first meeting in November 2008. The BDF is so closely associated with Hassan, who is still Yudhoyono’s democracy adviser, and President Yudhoyono himself, that it is reasonable to ask if presidential enthusiasm for the project will carry over into the next administration.32 The BDF is a politically inclusive regional forum whose membership seems to be based on willingness to participate rather than bona fide democratic credentials. The assumption, although

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not tested, is that participants like China, Myanmar (before 2011), the Lao PDR, Vietnam, Brunei and others, were at least theoretically aspiring to become more democratic. Participation has grown over the years. Conceived as a ministerial meeting, it attracts heads of state burnishing their relations with Indonesia as well as their democratic or aspirant democratic credentials. The BDF — which Indonesia proudly describes as the largest democracy meeting in the Asia-Pacific — while still centered on the Asia-Pacific region now draws delegates and observers from all regions of the globe. In a sense its extra-regional reach was represented in the BDF V’s theme: “Advancing Democratic Principles at the Global Level”. By this Indonesia meant, as interpreted in President Yudhoyono’s opening address, attacking problems of global governance. Specifically he pointed out the need to reform the UN Security Council so multilateralism rather than unilateralism could be strengthened.33 In evaluating the evolution of the BDF, Yudhoyono noted that the growth in participation was proof that the BDF has secured its purpose of strengthening democracy in the region through sharing experiences and best practices, thus learning from one another. Although he acknowledged that there was no study to show an impact of the BDF on advancing democratic principles, the president was confident that the BDF had made important contributions in its five-year history. He argued that the BDF was a “substantial and strategic platform” for partnerships in the promotion of democracy and political development in the region, making it “an important part of the democratic architecture” of the Asia-Pacific. Certainly the BDF has shone the spotlight on Indonesia as a leading democracy, not just in Asia but in the world. However, as a “forum”, not an organization with institutional structure and programmatic activity with measurable outcomes, it is difficult to avoid thinking of it as other than a

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“talk shop”. This was the undiplomatic conclusion of a proponent of a new Mongolia–South Korea backed Asia-Pacific Initiative for Democracy (APID) who, when asked what would be the difference between APID and the BDF, answered that the BDF was “just another conference. It seems every year that’s it. No action. No real practical work to promote democracy.”34 One of the strengths as well as a weakness of the BDF is its inclusiveness. This is based on Indonesia’s relativistic position with respect to the meaning of “democracy” as an ideal framework for governance. “There is no single model of democracy,” according to Yudhoyono, “one that fits for all.”35 Democracy must be “homegrown”. In this view democracy is a process evolving from the particular historical and cultural contexts that are country-specific. What is important is not a particular model but whether there is pluralism, openness, and freedom. It leaves open the question as to what a “home-grown” democracy would look like. One of the criticisms of the BDF is that it gives domestic non- or anti-democratic leaders a false international democratic legitimacy. This was on view at the BDF V when Iran’s President Ahmadinejad found a congenial platform to lash out against the corruption of democracy in the West. When questioned about Iran’s status at the BDF, Yudhoyono said flatly, “This is not a forum for democratic countries; BDF is a forum to discuss the issue of democracy.”36 The irony is that Indonesia’s effort to bind the diverse members of the intergovernmental BDF through a consensus that democracy is “home-grown” excludes the democratic civil society activists and NGOs that might bring real issues of democracy building to the table. From a constructivist theoretical vantage point it could be argued that Indonesia’s idea of shared experiences and best practices in the BDF’s common learning process is a first baby step towards building a regional democratic community. If we

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look to ASEAN as an example, however, even though it claims democratic norms and values — largely at Indonesia’s instigation — there is no evidence that what might be called the regional symbolic internationalization of Indonesia’s domestic democratic agenda has altered the non- or anti-democratic domestic politics of the majority of its ASEAN partners. If the Indonesian democratic transition has not had a transformational impact on political change in Southeast Asia, how can it be expected to anywhere else among the numerous non- or undemocratic BDF participants along for the Bali sojourn and to win diplomatic points from Indonesia but not to sign up for democracy? As far as “best practices” are concerned, Indonesia’s own record is spotty. Post-Suharto Indonesia consistently joined its ASEAN colleagues in trying to defend the bloody Myanmar junta in the UN General Assembly and its Human Rights Council. While Indonesian officials may privately criticize the thuggish Hun Sen government in Phnom Penh for its atrocious record on rights and justice, not a word of official condemnation or criticism is uttered. Indonesia has remained silent as other democracies press the Laotian government on the disappearance of Magsaysay Award-winner Sombath Somphone. Indonesia’s failure to respond to the egregious political and human rights violations in the region cannot be explained simply by reference to its position that democracy cannot be imposed from outside. Being officially cognizant of abuse is not intervention to remedy abuse. Indonesia’s unwillingness to challenge Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, or Vietnam on democratic rights issues reflects its foreign policy priorities, in this case ASEAN solidarity. Indonesia itself is just as sensitive as its ASEAN partners to external criticisms of its democratic and human rights record. Indonesia rejected the 30 recommendations that were made as a result of the May 2012 UN Human Rights Council’s quadrennial

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review of its rights record. Indonesia’s position was that human rights had to give way to local traditions and religious practices.37 Jakarta also refused to allow UN special rapporteurs on indigenous and minority groups.

Indonesia, Democracy and ASEAN The exception to the general proposition that Indonesia projects democracy but does not actively promote it is its decade-long struggle to make democracy a salient feature of ASEAN. Since its own democratic transition Indonesia has promoted in the ASEAN normative framework the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The pledges and commitment to a democratized ASEAN are enshrined in the 2007 ASEAN Charter and the Blueprint of the ASEAN Political and Security Community. The problem for Indonesia has not been having principles accepted but in finding mechanisms for accountability. The only way consensus on democratic principles could be reached was to subordinate them to the principles of sovereignty and noninterference. This effectively has meant keeping state-related issues and incidents off the ASEAN agenda. Rights-violating states can bask in the glow of ASEAN democracy without fear that they will be forced to practise it. Meanwhile, democratic Indonesia, which calls ASEAN its “home”, has to share this home with Cambodia, Laos, and other less-than-democratic governments and be internationally tarnished in the democratic world by its ASEAN cohort. Article 14 of the ASEAN Charter promised a “human rights body” but left the terms of reference for such a “body” to the foreign ministers. The inclusion of the promise of the protection and promotion of human rights was one of the most contentious areas of charter building. It took two years for the foreign ministers

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to agree to the establishment of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) in 2009 largely through the persistence of Indonesia’s foreign minister Hassan, who in the struggle for a human rights mechanism has declared, “I was alone.”38 To date, the AICHR, charged with “promotion” but not protection of rights, is a powerless sop to demands of democracy and rights advocates. The AICHR has no power to investigate or to review the rights record of an ASEAN state. It has neither an office nor a staff. All of the commissioners — except the Indonesian — are government officials. The Indonesian commissioner is a human rights advocate with NGO background, but he is stymied by the ASEAN workings of the commission.39 The only real achievement to date has been the drafting of an ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) which was adopted in November 2012. Embedded in the AHRD are the ASEAN principles of noninterference in the affairs of the sovereign state. While trumpeted as proof of ASEAN’s commitment to democracy and human rights, the AHRD has been viewed critically by the international rights community as undermining international human rights standards and justifying continuing violations.40 There is little doubt that in some ASEAN countries like Cambodia and Laos rights records as judged by the AHRD have worsened, not improved. To Indonesia’s despair, the democratization process in Myanmar is threatened by attacks on its Muslim minority and military campaigns against the Kachin minority. What more might Indonesia do? During Indonesia’s 2011 chairmanship of ASEAN, Foreign Minister Marty continued Hassan’s lonely battle to make the AICHR a more effective vehicle for fulfilling its normative mandate, but to little avail. Although Indonesia can rightfully claim some success in pushing a reluctant ASEAN to acknowledge the existence of democratic norms, it has

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been unsuccessful in bringing democratic accountability to its ASEAN partners. To do this, following Jon Pevenhouse’s (2005) empirical model of regional organizations and democratization, it would have to share those norms with other strong democratic members of ASEAN who would be willing to assist other members in a transition to democracy. However, there is no critical mass of democracies in ASEAN that together could apply pressure, incentives, conditionality, approval and resources to assist in democratization. This kind of democracy from above would first require the decision from below — that is national authority — to initiate and carry through on the move to democracy. There is little reason to expect any such outcome in the near or intermediate future, especially if Indonesia’s crusading democracy spirit should wane post-2014.

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Chapter IV

Islam in Indonesian Foreign Policy A major element in the Indonesian international image promoted by the Yudhoyono government is the fact that its democratic framework embraces a Sunni Muslim population of more than 215 million. Not only does Indonesia have the world’s fourth largest population, making it the world’s most populous Muslim country, but also — and very important for its international identity — the world’s most populous Muslim democracy. For Indonesia, this is proof that adherence to Islam and political democracy are not mutually exclusive and that democracy can flourish in a Muslim political culture. From this foundation, President Yudhoyono and his government have proposed that Indonesia’s democratizing experience can be a model or template for Muslims worldwide. Moreover, Indonesia asserts that as a moderate modernizing Muslim democracy, it can become a bridge between the West and an antagonistic Muslim world, harmonizing, as it were, the clash of civilizations. This would seem to give special value to Indonesia’s international relations as an alternative face of Islam (Anwar 2010, p.49). A bridge, however, is made to be crossed. An exchange has to be made. The same kind of issues that were raised in the discussion of Indonesia’s reluctance to proactively operationalize a 37

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“democratic” foreign policy have to be addressed when discussing the factor of Islam in Indonesian foreign policy. The basic question is whether in fact the Indonesian experience is transferable to other Muslim countries and what kind of foreign policies and strategies could operationalize it. The Indonesian “bridge” may be a bridge too far.

The Indonesian Model Certainly there is now little doubt that for Indonesian Muslims their religion is compatible with democracy. Muslim leaders and social groups have been part of the democratization process in which legitimacy is to be measured by good governance, not religion (Barton 2010). Data from the Indonesia Survey Institute (Lembaga Survei Indonesia [LSI]) support this proposition. In a 2006 LSI poll, 82 per cent of the Muslim respondents agreed that democracy was the best political system for the country.41 The preference for democracy as opposed to political Islam is reflected in parliamentary and presidential elections. The political parties whose platforms were avowedly Islamist won no parliamentary representation and the four so-called moderate Muslim parties have over the years had declining support. All of the more recent electoral data are consistent with Mujani and Liddle’s (2009, p.590) conclusion that “secular political parties and secular politicians now dominate Indonesia’s politics and look set to do so for the foreseeable future”. Looking towards the 2014 legislative election, an October 2012 survey showed that if a general election were to be held then, the secular parties would garner 62 per cent of the votes and the four large Muslim parties would only get 21 per cent of the popular vote.42 The democratic legislative outcomes provide a weak parliamentary basis for Islamic political parties to challenge government foreign

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policy. The term “secular parties” is misleading. Its voters are Muslim and there has been a shift towards Muslim interests as represented by party membership and the requirement of broad appeal to Muslim constituencies. As sharing partners in a democratic government, the moderate Islamic parties strengthen the image of the peaceful coexistence of Islam and democracy promoted by the government. The government’s ability to navigate between the reefs of Islam and a secular state has been facilitated in part by the fact that there is no unified Islamic voice to give policy direction to Indonesia’s fragmented political and social groupings. It is this relationship between the state and the ummah that is touted as the pier on the Indonesian side of a possible bridge to a democratizing Muslim world and the West’s hope that the Indonesian experience could be replicated in the fruition of the Arab Spring. The problem with the Indonesian model for the Middle East or even South or Southwest Asia is the absence of a cultural, historical and political fit. Indonesian Islam has always been on the intellectual and theological margins of mainstream Islamic thought. Indonesian Muslims’ easy adaptation to a non-Islamic democratic state is facilitated by a unique religious culture in which syncretic and pluralistic elements of traditional culture became part of Indonesian Islam. The peculiarly Indonesian cultural expression of Islam is, in Van Bruinessen’s words (2012, p.136), “perhaps too inherently local to be exportable”. Indonesia’s vision of democracy with its rights agenda as a vessel for Islamic aspirations is demonstrably not shared by the leading elements of political change in the Muslim world. In terms of the Muslim world’s bridges, it can be argued that in effective political fact the Islamic bridge that has been built by democracy in Indonesia is a one-way bridge: not from Indonesia to Muslim countries but from the Arab world

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to Indonesia, giving a contemporary example of being on the receiving end of intellectual impulses from the Muslim world, with little to offer in return.43 Across the bridge to Indonesia that has been opened by freedom of speech, press and assembly now flows powerful support to Indonesian radical fundamentalists’ mosques, schools, publishing houses and Internet from the Arab world. The message attacks the very foundation of Indonesia’s Muslim democracy. In the foreign policies of Indonesia’s predecessors, from Sukarno to Megawati, the active promotion of Islamic interests was never a priority. Rhetorical or symbolic expressions of support for international Islamic causes were designed in large measure to strengthen the government’s legitimacy in a Muslim majority country. In the two-level game, successive governments had a delicate balancing act in accommodating at a minimum level of commitment domestic Muslim sentiments while maintaining their critical political, economic and security ties to the liberal democratic West. Furthermore, in asserting a leading role in ASEAN, an Islamic face to Indonesian foreign policy would have been disruptive rather than contributing to solidarity. Perwita (2007, p.179) described Indonesia’s response to issues pertinent to the Muslim world as a “policy of ambiguity” as a result of trying to balance domestic policy with international conditions. Rizal Sukma, in his important study of Islam in Indonesian foreign policy, concluded that “Islam has entered Indonesian foreign policy in form rather than substance” (Sukma 2003, p.140). Although Islam can be invoked as a constraint on Indonesian foreign policy, it has never been viewed as a primary national interest in formulating policy. What kind of bridges to the wider Muslim world can Indonesia build on “form” and “ambiguity”? In dealing with foreign policy issues that are relevant to Muslim interests, Indonesian policy-makers work within the

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framework of bebas dan aktif. Even issues that Muslim mass organizations and street mobilizers have framed to excite and inflame the public are treated in terms of Indonesia’s secular constitution, the Pancasila ideology, and international law and obligations. The Indonesian approach counsels quiet diplomacy and avoidance of direct intervention and, where possible, making its points through multilateral frameworks. One way in which the Indonesian model is being projected into the Muslim world is its membership in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) where, although not a Muslim state, its Muslim population and growing influence make it an important member. In the OIC, Indonesia navigates between the reefs of Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim blocs while maintaining its bebas dan aktif options. This has meant going with the flow on the Arab world’s Middle East agenda, particularly the Palestine question, but articulating its understandings in terms of UN principles and international law rather than Islam. Indonesia views the OIC with reference to the South nations and the NAM. In the OIC, Indonesia has a large international platform from which it can relate its Muslim visibility to its domestic audience but without having to be out in front in any activist way that would strain relations with the liberal democracies. It has played the two-level game skillfully in this foreign policy field. What the Yudhoyono government has brought to the OIC is its emphasis on social and human rights as well as pressure for greater economic cooperation and development assistance from the richer Muslim states to the poorer. Dissatisfied with the lack of interest in real economic cooperation and coordination by the Arab state drivers of the OIC, Indonesia joined seven other like-minded Muslim states to initiate the Developing-8 (D-8) grouping to enhance their economic interactions.44 As originally proposed, the D-8 was to be founded on Islamic principles, but the explicit religious base was rejected as a price of Indonesian

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membership. With the D-8, Indonesia has another platform to showcase its rising middle-power importance. Indonesia’s intention to bring a more democratic agenda to the OIC is highlighted by its support for the establishment of an OIC human rights mechanism. The historical posture of the OIC on human rights was stated in the 1990 “Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam” in which the only source for human rights is shari’ah.45 This is not Indonesia’s position based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other rights covenants. With other religiously moderate states, Indonesia pressed for adherence to global norms. Although resisted by the Arab conservatives and watered down in necessary compromises, in 2012 an OIC Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission (IPHRC) was established. Its statute acknowledged universally recognized human rights instruments “in conformity with Islamic values”.46 Although the IPHRC’s mandate is limited and its role is “consultative” to “approving” states, Indonesia sees it, like the ASEAN human rights commission, as a step forward. The IPHRC held its first meeting in Jakarta in February 2012. This was recognition, according to Foreign Minister Marty, of Indonesia’s significant role in promoting human rights at the global level.47 The first head of the 18-person commission is a female Indonesian expert on Islamic law and human rights. As of 2013, a permanent location for the commission is unsettled. Indonesia has offered to be host government while, incongruously, Saudi Arabia and Iran have bid for it. Until a final decision is made, the IPHRC’s business will be handled by the OIC secretariat in Jeddah.

Indonesia and ASEAN’s Muslim Minorities In the Philippines, Thailand, and Myanmar the issues of majority – Muslim minority relations centred on political and

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human rights have become a matter of international concern in the Muslim world and ASEAN. In framing its policy responses to ongoing violence and insurgent separatist conflicts, Indonesia has sought to address them in regional political terms, not religious. Indonesia’s stated interests in the status of the Muslim minorities are regional security, stability, and human rights — not defence of co-religionists. While Indonesian Islamic groups and organizations have expressed support for the minorities and their struggle, with rare exceptions, there has not been the ardency of protest for the cause of the suppressed Muslims in Southeast Asia as compared to that which can be mobilized for the far distant Palestinians. This may be changing, however, as Islamists in Indonesia become more conscious of the plight of their coreligionists in neighbouring countries. With to date little pressure from civil society, the government has refrained from confrontational approaches. In terms of regional political stability, an Islam-centred breakdown in ASEAN’s solidarity would not be in Indonesia’s interest. Jakarta conveys its concerns through the quiet diplomacy of bilateral channels and the multilateral structures of ASEAN and the OIC. Citing its own experience in the settling of the Aceh conflict, Jakarta has offered, if requested, support in reaching peaceful settlement of Muslim-state conflicts.

Rebellions in the Philippines On 15 October 2012, a “Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro” was signed in Manila between the Government of the Philippines (GPH [formerly GRP]) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) establishing the parameters for the creation of a new autonomous Bangsamoro political entity. It was hoped that after more than four decades of separatist Muslim insurgencies, with more than 150,000 people killed, a permanent peace could come

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to the Muslim majority areas of Mindanao and the other islands in the Philippines’ south. Indonesia welcomed the agreement, saying it was ready to provide support and assistance in the creation of a comprehensive peace.48 Beyond Indonesia’s general interests in the rights and welfare of the Muslim minority as well as regional political stability, Indonesia has had a direct security interest. The years of unrest and violence in Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago created a breeding ground for Islamic radicals and terrorists with al-Qaeda links as well as the feared Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). Al-Qaeda agents and the ASG provided facilities for the training and infiltration to Indonesia for terrorists linked to Indonesia’s Jema’ah Islamiyah and other groups such as the Laskar Jundullah in Sulawesi. The peace agreement between the MILF and Manila was hammered out in negotiations facilitated by Malaysia that began in 2001. The process first paralleled and then displaced the Indonesian-facilitated peace process between the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) led by Nur Misuari and the Philippines government. The Suharto government played an instrumental role in converting the general terms of a 1976 MNLF–Philippines peace agreement into a 1996 Final Peace Agreement (FPA) that created an Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Indonesia’s role was institutionalized in the OIC as chair of the OIC’s Peace Committee in the Southern Philippines (OIC-PCSP). The MNLF has had official Islamic organization status in the OIC since 1977. In the OIC, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur were able to insulate their ASEAN partner from OIC sanctions even while diplomatically pressing the Philippines for concessions to Muslim aspirations. Indonesia has supported the inclusion of the Philippines in the OIC as an observer state but this has been opposed by the Middle East nations. Rejecting the ARMM, dissident Muslim forces broke away from the MNLF to continue to fight under the banner of the

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MILF. To them, the ARMM betrayed the goal of independence. Misuari’s MNLF went back into revolt in 2002, accusing Manila of failure to deliver on its promises to the ARMM. However, effective leadership and forces in the armed struggle had passed to the MILF. Even though after 2001 peacemaking had shifted to the MILF–Malaysia–Manila triangle, as a kind of sideshow, Indonesia as chair of the OIC-PCSP continued to be engaged with the MNLF. An Indonesia-facilitated GPH–MNLF meeting in November 2007 agreed to rejuvenate the 1996 FPA. Meaningless in terms of the weakened political capabilities of the MNLF, it was the kind of dealings by Manila that the MILF viewed as trying to play the Moro factions off against each other. The 2012 agreement is only a first step on a road facing significant political, legislative, and judicial hurdles as the “Framework” is given structural detail. Not the least of the problems is the relationship between the MILF and the MNLF. The MNLF was not part of the negotiations that led to the agreement and has derided it, calling it illegal since the Philippines was bound by the FPA. The OIC now sees the task as how to reconcile and coordinate the two Moro groupings in a way that allows the “Framework Agreement” to be linked to the FPA. One concern is that the MNLF could play the role of a spoiler, particularly if the obstacles on the Philippines government side slow or impede transfer of powers to the Bangsamoro Political Entity. A resumption of hostilities in the Philippines Muslim south would put new strains on Indonesia–Philippines relations in both Jakarta’s OIC role and ASEAN commitment. Questions have been raised about possible MNLF backing of the March 2013 armed Filipino incursions from Sulu into Sabah. The impact of the ferocious Malaysian government response on the attitudes of the nearly a million Filipino migrants in Sabah has yet to be measured. Moreover, the revival of the not-completelydormant Philippine claim of sovereignty over North Borneo is

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a new complicating factor in intra-ASEAN relations. Indonesia is alert to what is happening north of its Kalimantan borders. President Yudhoyono described the “Sabah crisis” as a “sensitive issue” to which Indonesia could not be indifferent. He hoped that Brunei, as ASEAN chair, would be proactive (which it was not), and did not rule out Indonesian diplomatic approaches of its own.

The Muslim Insurgency in South Thailand The long-simmering resistance of the Thai Malay Muslim 80 per cent-majority population in Thailand’s four southern provinces (Pattani, Narathiwat, Yala, and four districts in Songkhla) burst into insurgency in 2004. Absorbed into the Thai state in 1904, the Muslim population carries grievances growing out of historical perceptions and administrative practices which are viewed as flowing from the political and cultural oppression of the Buddhist Thai state. The initial flashpoint of a developing civil war was coordinated raids in January 2004 on government targets including an army barracks in Narathiwat. The political goals of the insurgents range from forms of autonomy to separatism. In the decades since then, spiralling rounds of deadly violence have taken more than 5,000 lives as administrative and social institutions have come under siege. The southern region’s insecurity is aggravated by the abridgment of freedoms and human rights abuse under the imposition of draconian measures justified by successive “state of emergency” decrees. Even as the Thai governmental regime in the south has become increasingly militarized, the rebels have become stronger. For ASEAN’s Muslims the wake-up call for what was happening in South Thailand was the Tak Bai “massacre”. On 25 October 2004, a Muslim protest at the Tak Bai police station in Narathiwat

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was broken up by the police and military. Hundreds of protesters were stripped and piled on top of each other in the backs of trucks for a five-hour trip to a detention facility. On arrival, 78 of the prisoners were dead. President Yudhoyono and Malaysia’s prime minister Badawi tried to place the problems in Thailand’s south on the agenda of the November 2004 Vientiane 10th ASEAN Summit meeting. Their position was that the conflict in South Thailand created a security situation requiring regional attention. An angry Thai prime minister Thaksin threatened to scuttle the summit if a matter of Thai internal affairs was raised. Rather than see the summit fail, with its implications for future ASEAN solidarity, Yudhoyono and Badawi backed off, agreeing to Thaksin’s demands that there would be no mention of the violence in Thailand’s south in an ASEAN official setting.49 ASEAN’s continuing organizational non-involvement does not mean that the issue has been ignored in bilateral political exchanges. Indonesia and Malaysia have offered support and assistance to Thailand in finding a peaceful settlement through which the religious and cultural autonomy of the Thai Muslims will be guaranteed within the territorial framework of the Thai state. Neither Indonesia nor Malaysia supports the separatist demands of the most hard-line Islamist insurgent groups. During the September 2012 state visit to Indonesia by Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, President Yudhoyono told her that Indonesia fully supported Thailand’s territorial integrity in its southern areas. In the same breath, he called for political efforts to solve the problems there and increase the people’s welfare.50 The OIC has taken up the issue of the violence against Thailand’s southern Muslims. While it has no special institutional structure like the OIC-PCSP for the Philippines, it has through its secretary-general officially dialogued with Bangkok. Thailand, unlike the Philippines, has been an official OIC observer state since

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1998. The political baseline for the OIC — and Indonesia — is the Joint Statement in May 2007 between the Thai government of Prime Minister Surayad Chulanont and the OIC secretarygeneral. In it, Thailand committed to a solution that would allow the Thai Muslims “to assume responsibilities over their domestic affairs through a decentralization process that allows the people to practice their own cultural and linguistic specificity and manage their natural resources in full respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Thailand”.51 The key, of course, is what structural outcome is connoted by any decentralization process. For Bangkok — although not officially offered — this seems to mean some kind of special administrative zone. This is not likely to satisfy the more radical Thai insurgent groups. In its dealings with the OIC, Thailand has acknowledged the centrality of Indonesia’s role as “interpreter” of Thailand’s policies to the Muslim world. In September 20l2, the Thai foreign minister again expressed his appreciation to his Indonesian counterpart for Indonesia’s position.52 This was in anticipation of the OIC’s 2012 Council of Foreign Ministers Meeting. In that forum Indonesia’s support for Thailand was not enough to stave off a tough resolution. The Thai government reacted angrily to the wording of the OIC resolution. Through its deputy foreign minister it warned that “if the OIC wants to continue cooperating with Thailand, it should realize the fact that Thailand has made a lot of progress in the South. Otherwise we might not cooperate in the future.”53 If Thailand were to stonewall the OIC, Indonesia’s capability to buffer Thailand against the Arab world would be diminished and its possible contribution to a peaceful settlement limited. This would be especially true if the OIC should adopt a harder line in its future dealings with Thailand. Since 2006 sporadic secret contacts and talks facilitated by intermediaries have taken place between representatives of the

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two sides. One early meeting between the contending Thai sides that garnered rare public attention took place in September 2008 at the Bogor, Indonesia, presidential palace.54 It was hosted by then-Indonesian vice-president Jusuf Kalla, whose conflict mediation skills had been tested in East Indonesia and Aceh. The South Thailand delegation was led by the chairman of the Consultative Council of the Pattani Malay People, an umbrella organization for the insurgents. It is unclear whether the council in fact has a leading role in the conflict. The Thai side was led by a retired former commander of the Thai army’s Southern Command and adviser to the defence ministry. President Yudhoyono met personally with the two delegations in separate receptions. Although a future session was planned, there is no public record that it ever took place. The Thai government denied any involvement in the Bogor meet and maintained that it had not asked for Indonesian mediation. Kalla, now a private citizen and head of the Indonesian Red Cross (Palang Merah Indonesia — PMI), has been coy about any possible role in a Thai mediation process. In 2010, when asked about any plans to go to South Thailand, he replied, “I cannot comment on that right now.”55 This was at a forum sponsored by the Geneva-based Henri Dunant Center for Humanitarian Dialogue. The HD Center had an active role in the Aceh settlement and possibly is the mysterious international NGO engaged in the secret ongoing Thai peace dialogue taking place in foreign locations. Kalla’s peacemaker credentials have been emphasized by Indonesian parliamentarians urging the government to offer its good offices to Thailand as a mediator. A stir was created when the former Indonesian vice-president was one of the earliest foreign visitors received by newly-elected Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra in September 2011. Afterwards Kalla refused to tell reporters what the topic of the conversation was.56

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In January 2013, Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung traveled to Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta for confidential discussions on a peace process, with “sources” reporting that Chalerm would invite Indonesian mediation.57 A possible Indonesian role seems to have been prompted by Malaysian-facilitated talks that began in February 2013 in Kuala Lumpur between the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) and the chief of the Thai National Security Council. It is unclear as to the BRN’s status within the insurgent factions. After two rounds of talks through April 2013 there had been little or no progress. There has been no surcease to killings. The BRN has pressed for Malaysia’s role to be enhanced to mediator. This raises two questions. The first is whether now, with the general election behind him, Prime Minister Najib feels a need to be more deeply involved. The second is whether, unlike the MILF–GPH mediation, Malaysia’s geographic and cultural proximity to the Malays of South Thailand makes it more of a stakeholder than an independent agent. The Thai position is that Malaysia is strictly a facilitator. As the Thai insurgency takes on the trappings of civil war, Muslim political voices in Indonesia may begin to insist that the fate of Thailand’s Muslims is more important than ASEAN solidarity. If the Malaysia-brokered talks should break down, Indonesia remains as a possible alternative facilitator. How Indonesia could proactively support a peace process remains a moot question until a Thai government is willing to concede substantial political autonomy and Malay cultural integrity as an outcome. A widening of the war in the Thai south strains not only Thailand’s political resources in ASEAN, but ASEAN itself.

The Plight of the Rohingya The Rohingya are a Muslim minority group living in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State (formally Arakan). Numbering an

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estimated 800,000, the Rohingya are not only religiously different from the majority Buddhist population of Myanmar but are ethnically related to the people of Bangladesh rather than the Burmese. Myanmar’s official position, based on the former junta’s 1982 Citizenship Law, is that the Rohingya, once nationals under British colonial rule, are illegal Bengali Muslim immigrants, even if their families have been in the state for generations. Deprived of citizenship and civil rights, the stateless Rohingya have long been victims of governmental and popular discrimination and persecution. The plight of the Rohingya reached a new crisis in mid-2012 when violent riots in Rakhine State pitted Rohingya against local Burmese backed by Myanmar security forces. The viciousness of the government’s campaign to restore order was reminiscent of the military’s tactics against ethnic insurgents in the pre-democracy days. Relatively defenceless, thousands of Rohingya became internal refugees while others fled the country as boat people. To Naypyidaw’s dismay, the communal problem in Rakhine was Islamicized in the Muslim world. In Jakarta and elsewhere, there were large demonstrations in support of the Rohingya and strident demands that Indonesia act to protect them. In Indonesian streets Myanmar was accused of genocide. There were calls from Muslim parties and politicians to expel the Myanmar ambassador. More radical voices called for a jihad against Myanmar. The popular anti-Myanmar sentiment could not be ignored by the government. In addition, there was the problem of a new flow of Rohingya refugees to Indonesia adding to the existing problem of illegal migration to and through Indonesia from South Asia. For the Indonesian government, as opposed to the angry Muslim crowds, the Rohingya problem also had to be viewed in the larger context of the consolidation of Myanmar’s democratic gains. To press Myanmar President Thein Sein too hard on concessions could be counterproductive in a pushback undermining the reform process. Furthermore, there

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were the inhibitions placed by the need for ASEAN solidarity as well as the ASEAN golden rule of non-interference. This was not Indonesia’s first encounter with Myanmar’s Rohingya problem. In early February 2009, boats of desperate Rohingya refugees began streaming across the Andaman Sea. Those who landed on Thailand’s coast were harshly treated and pushed back out to sea to try to reach Malaysia or Indonesia. Without mentioning Myanmar by name, then-foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda called on their countries of origin to respect the human rights of minorities and refugees; a position echoed by the presidential palace, which criticized “towing out to sea” — an obvious jibe at Thailand — as transferring the burden to other regional states.58 Indonesia brought the issue to the February 2009 14th ASEAN Summit. Paragraph 43 of its Chairman’s Statement stated that the problem of “illegal immigrants” — ASEAN’s adoption of Myanmar’s definition of the refugees — required a larger context such as the Bali Process Ministerial Conference or a contact group of the affected states.59 Indonesia did take the issue to the April 2009 Third Bali Process ministerial meeting. It was not discussed in the plenary sessions, but the final statement of the Indonesian–Australian co-chairs took pains to note that even though the ministerial meeting had not been convened to deal with the issue of refugees, the humanitarian needs and legal rights of legitimate refugees were not prejudiced by anything in the statement.60 Indonesia’s official reaction to the 2012 Rohingya problem came in late July from Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa. He emphasized that Indonesia was against any kind of human rights violations including those against the Rohingya — thus a rights question, not religious. Obviously smarting from the demonstrations of public support for the Rohingya, Marty insisted that Indonesia would not stand idle while western Myanmar

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burns. “It’s not true,” he said, “that we don’t care. Our silence doesn’t mean that we don’t care.”61 While there may have been public silence, Marty claimed that Indonesia had always brought the issue to multilateral and bilateral discussions with Myanmar. He also noted that the Rohingya problem had been on the Indonesian foreign policy agenda since 2010 when Indonesia dispatched envoys to Bangladesh and Myanmar because violence against them spurred Rohingya refugees to embark on the perilous voyage to Indonesia. In addition to bilateral exchanges about Indonesia’s concerns, Marty stated that Indonesia would raise the problem at the OIC’s 4th Extraordinary Islamic Summit in August which, of course, made it a religious question. President Yudhoyono, for his part, sent a letter to his Myanmar counterpart calling for a quick resolution to the conflict between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya.62 He asked Thein Sein to accept international observers to review the situation. In discussing his letter, Yudhoyono said that Indonesia could offer Myanmar expertise in solving communal conflict. This seems reflected in Yudhoyono’s tapping former vice-president Kalla as envoy to aid the Rohingya because of his experience in dealing with sectarian conflict in Indonesia.63 Yudhoyono said that sending Kalla was an expression of “solidarity with our Rohingya brothers”. In Myanmar, Kalla signed a September cooperation agreement between the Indonesian Red Cross and its Myanmar counterpart that established a PMI mission in Rakhine State for humanitarian relief and post-conflict reconstruction. The Rohingya problem was raised when President Yudhoyono met Thein Sein on the sidelines of the November 2012 ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh. According to Yudhoyono’s spokesman, the Myanmar president welcomed Indonesian assistance in resolving the crisis, with the Indonesian president acknowledging that it was a communal, not religious, problem.64

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At the August Saudi Arabia-hosted Islamic Summit, Myanmar was denounced for its policy of brutalization and violence exercised against the Rohingya Muslim community by the Myanmar state. In his remarks at the summit, Foreign Minister Marty emphasized the need to promote and protect the rights of the Rohingya in Myanmar in the context of Myanmar’s reformation and democratization.65 The summit established an OIC Contact Group on the Rohingya Muslim Minority that included the three ASEAN members of the OIC. The Contact Group was tasked with finding ways, means, and mechanisms to halt the human rights violations against the Rohingya minority and to restore their citizenship rights. The first fruit of the OIC’s initiative was the signing of an OIC–Myanmar Memorandum of Cooperation that would have established an OIC Humanitarian Office in Myanmar to oversee the distribution of humanitarian aid from OIC donor nations to the distressed Rohingya. This was aborted. October protests led by Buddhist monks in Yangon and Mandalay against an OIC presence in the country led President Thein Sein to block the opening of an OIC office because “it is not in accordance with the people’s desires”.66 As one of the few foreign agencies permitted to work in Rakhine State, Kalla’s PMI has acted to facilitate humanitarian aid from Turkey and the OIC. ASEAN, caught up in the South China Sea diplomatic crisis (discussed below), was slow to act on the Rohingya problem. An Indonesian-proposed August special ASEAN foreign ministers meeting to address the issue was cancelled because of the negative Myanmar reaction to the prospect of such a meeting. Myanmar’s role in ASEAN was sensitive since it had been named the 2014 Chair as a sign of the members’ support of its democratic progress. Already embarrassed by the South China Sea diplomatic fiasco at ASEAN’s July 2012 Ministerial Meeting, ASEAN found its

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international credibility again at stake as the UN, the OIC, and — with the exception of China — ASEAN’s major dialogue partners looked to the grouping to take the regional lead on the worsening human rights and humanitarian conditions. Foreign Minister Marty persevered in an effort to draft a consensus statement that would express an ASEAN position that would be acceptable to Myanmar but would demonstrate ASEAN’s concern. One political objective was to allow ASEAN’s three Muslim states to articulate their interests in the fate of the Rohingya through religiously neutral ASEAN multilateralism and not just the OIC. The ASEAN Secretariat released on 17 August 2012 a “Statement of ASEAN Foreign Ministers on the Recent Developments in the Rakhine State, Myanmar”. In the statement, essentially Indonesiaauthored, the ministers reaffirmed their strong support for Myanmar’s democratization progress. In that positive context, the ministers were closely following the developments in Rakhine State. They encouraged Myanmar to continue and enhance the steps it was taking to bring humanitarian relief to the affected communities and offered, if requested, further assistance. The statement further underlined that the national solidarity and harmony among the various Myanmar communities was an integral part of the country’s reform process. Foreign Minister Marty summed up the situation on the sidelines of the November 2012 ASEAN–Europe Summit in Laos, acknowledging that the matter of the Rohingya was an issue of concern for ASEAN and individual ASEAN countries. It was his desire that the Myanmar government tackle the problem in the same positive way it had the democratization process.67 Indonesia’s active diplomacy both in its bilateral links to Myanmar and through the multilateral channels of the OIC and ASEAN has contributed to meeting the humanitarian needs of the displaced Rohingya. There is nothing in the record from

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the Myanmar side, however, that would yet indicate that any Indonesian model of communal or sectarian conflict resolution has made an impression on Naypyidaw. Throughout the crisis, the Myanmar government clung stubbornly to its claim that the Rohingya were illegal immigrants. As far as the displaced thousands of internal refugees were concerned, the government’s position as articulated in its exchanges with the UNHCR is that the refugee agency has three choices: repatriation to Bangladesh; building larger UNHCR camps; or resettlement in third countries. Bangladesh, which over the past 20 years has taken in over 200,000 Rohingya refugees, firmly rejects what Naypyidaw calls repatriation. Foreign Minister Marty has made Indonesia’s position clear. For him a core issue in resolving the problem is citizenship for the Myanmar Rohingya.68 Without attacking the political origins of the refugee flight, the refugee flow will continue with the burden it puts on the transit and destination states. The global international pressure being put on Myanmar as it seeks to consolidate its new democratic credentials may be bearing some fruit. A letter from Thein Sein to UN secretary-general Ban Kimoon on 16 November 2012 suggested a softening of Myanmar’s adamancy that the Rohingya were illegals.69 This may have been prompted more by the impending visit of American President Barrack Obama than UN, OIC, and ASEAN pressure. In the letter, the Myanmar president condemned the “criminal acts” that caused “senseless violence”, and he said that the government would address contentious issues of resettlement of displaced populations and the granting of citizenship. Although Ban Ki-moon saw the letter as a “step forward”, the Myanmar president made no promises of a timetable or how far the government was willing to go to normalize the status of the Rohingya community. This will be a matter of balancing the international pressure and domestic political limits.

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On 7 January 2013, Foreign Minister Marty made a flying visit to Myanmar “to deal with the issue of Rohingya on the invitation of the Myanmar government”.70 He indicated that he would bring up the issue of citizenship for the Rohingya. He brought with him a US$1 million humanitarian aid package for Rakhine State. On concluding his visit he stated that a solution to the problem was part of Myanmar’s democratization process. He noted that the Myanmar authorities “have confidence in Indonesia’s capacity to understand the situation in an objective manner”. At the February 2013 OIC Summit in Cairo, President Yudhoyono reported to his peers that Indonesia was actively promoting a peaceful solution to ending the conflict in Rakhine State and that due to Indonesia’s efforts Myanmar’s government was cooperating with the OIC and the UN.71 Even as Indonesia tries to remain upbeat, the will and capability of the Myanmar government to respond to Indonesia’s and the OIC’s concerns are still in doubt. In March and April 2013, central Myanmar was the seat of organized Buddhist attacks against Muslims led by Buddhist monks. The sectarian violence was no longer simply an ethnic Rohingya issue. President Yudhoyono warned that unless Myanmar addressed Buddhist-led violence against Muslims it could cause problems with Muslims in the region.72 This was dramatically illustrated in Jakarta where not only were there demonstrations but also a thwarted bomb plot against the Myanmar embassy. For Indonesia and ASEAN the time frame for Naypyidaw to act is bounded by when Myanmar assumes the ASEAN chair in 2014. If the outrages against the Rohingya and other Muslims — as well as other minorities in Myanmar such as the Kachin — continue, there will be further erosion of ASEAN’s international image as the credibility gap between its norms and actual behaviour widens. Commenting on his January 2013 quick trip to Myanmar, Foreign Minister Marty made Indonesia’s position

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clear, noting that “we were also part of the process where Myanmar eventually got the ASEAN chairmanship in 2014, in return for certain expectations to take place”.73 Doubts that Thein Sein can fulfill ASEAN’s expectations pose internal political questions for ASEAN as 2014 looms.

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Chapter V

Indonesia, ASEAN and Regional Political Stability and Security In its original incarnation, the five-member ASEAN had two regional political and security functions. The first, and most immediate, was to reintegrate post-confrontation Indonesia into a peaceful regional framework as a non-threatening partner in cooperative activities. The second was to detach the region as a region from the pressures of the Cold War, despite the fact that two of the founding members — Thailand and the Philippines — were military allies of the United States and supporting the U.S. in the war in Vietnam. The second function was a prerequisite for Indonesia’s joining since it clung firmly, in spirit at least, to its non-aligned credentials. In a declaratory manner this was accomplished through the proclamation of a Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) and a Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ). From its debut, then, ASEAN has had a political and security subtext below its preferred narrative of functional cooperation. The subtext, however, headlined the collective response of ASEAN’s five members to Vietnam’s Soviet-backed 1978 invasion and occupation of Khmer Rouge-led Cambodia. ASEAN’s diplomatic opposition to Vietnam’s fait accompli was 59

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accompanied by support, aided by China and the United States, to a Thailand-based armed Khmer resistance (Weatherbee 1985). As what became known as the Third Indochina War dragged on, Indonesia became concerned about the long-range implications of a bleeding stalemate. From Jakarta’s perspective the continuation of the war threatened Indonesia’s security. First, the only winner would be China and, second, a wasted Vietnam could not serve as a front line against future Chinese ambitions. Frustrated by what Indonesia saw as ASEAN’s diplomatic dead end, Foreign Minister Mochtar unilaterally opened a channel to Hanoi to begin to find a way out (Weatherbee 1986). Faced with Mochtar’s initiative, ASEAN gave it an ex post facto blessing by naming Indonesia its interlocutor with Vietnam. Two lessons might be drawn from the diplomacy of ending the Third Indochina War. The first is that when Indonesia perceived that its security interests were not served by ASEAN, it acted unilaterally to defend them. In the Third Indochina War case, Indonesia’s leadership in ASEAN was such that its partners had to follow suit or risk ASEAN’s collapse. It remains to be tested if that would be the case today. The second lesson, unexplored here, is that ASEAN diplomacy was not the key to ending the war. The key was the decoupling of the Southeast Asian conflict from great-power interests following Sino-Soviet reconciliation capped by the Gorbachev–Deng Xiaoping 1989 Beijing summit. In the wake of the 1991 Cambodian peace agreement, ASEAN agreed to expand the grouping to include the three Indochina states in its membership. Brunei had been admitted in 1984 on gaining independence. Vietnam’s 1995 inclusion was the carrot that had been proffered as part of the Third Indochina War peace deal. Laos and Cambodia were part of a package that, on Malaysia’s insistence, included Myanmar. Laos and Myanmar joined in 1997, but Cambodia’s induction was stalled until 1999. This was because of the coup by Cambodia’s co-prime minister Hun

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Sen against his fellow co-prime minister, the royalist Norodom Ranaridh, upsetting the governing framework put in place by the United Nations. It showed early on the nature of Hun Sen’s ruthless antidemocratic regime that persists today. The expansion of ASEAN in the ‘90s from six to ten was celebrated as a fulfillment of the 1967 ASEAN Declaration’s statement that it was open to all Southeast Asian states subscribing to its aims, principles, and purposes. However, like all ASEAN decisions, membership is not automatic. It requires a consensus. Timor-Leste, indubitably a Southeast Asian state, after a decade of independence still is not a member. Indonesia’s heavy lifting on Timor-Leste’s behalf has not produced a consensus. Singapore has yet to be convinced that Dili is prepared to take on the burdens of membership. An important part of the ASEAN consensus was that Southeast Asia’s security environment would be enhanced if it were united in an organizational framework that would promote the integration of the Indochinese states into the global political economy. Furthermore, it would expand the geographic scope of ASEAN’s security-related endeavours such as the Southeast Asia Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), ZOPFAN, and SEANWFZ. In the case of Myanmar, the regional security interest was more specific. It was argued that Myanmar’s membership in ASEAN was necessary to keep it from becoming a Chinese client state and, thus, strategically outflanking ASEAN. While the inclusion of the CLMV countries may have made political and strategic sense at the time, in terms of ASEAN community building it presented a score of problems that persist today. Economically, ASEAN became two-tiered, with ASEAN forced to make adjustments and allowances in its integrative efforts to accommodate the lagging CLMV countries. Politically, the undemocratic and human rights-abusing CLMV countries mocked ASEAN’s ideological — if not practising — commitment

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to democracy. Strategically, ASEAN’s borders were now at the Chinese border.

Politics, Security and the APSC The establishment of ASEAN’s Political and Security Community prompts consideration of what a real security community is, an academic pursuit going back at least to Karl Deutsch (1957) and his collaborators more than half a century ago. For Southeast Asia, the literature suggests that a security community is “a group of states that have developed a long-term habit of peaceful interaction and have ruled out the use of force in settling disputes among other members of the group” (Acharya 2001, p.2). ASEAN has been called a “cooperative security regime” for conflict avoidance and management (Emmers 2003, p.10) and a “security complex” based on patterns of security relations generated by the local states themselves (Buzan 1988, p.2). The common feature of the theoretical approach to intra-ASEAN political and security relations is that the pattern of broad common interests converges to reduce substantially the possibility of armed conflict among them — to reduce, but not eliminate. In addition to interests, it is argued in a “constructivist” mode that value-based norm building has been reinforced by institutional and informal mechanisms to mediate and limit intra-ASEAN conflict with reference to the TAC and the provisions of the ASEAN Charter. A security community is a condition of predictable peaceful relations among a defined group of states in which there is no expectation of the threat or use of force. It is the absence of force in interstate relations that proves the condition exists. The ASEAN Charter and the TAC propose such a community for Southeast Asia in the pledge to peaceful settlement of disputes without recourse to force. This is the norm which ASEAN’s dialogue partners,

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including China, have accepted in their adherence to the TAC. However, such a condition does not yet exist in Southeast Asia or within ASEAN or between ASEAN and its dialogue partners, the most relevant in terms of security being China. ASEAN has now added to the political and security mix the APSC. Even though political stability and regional security cooperation continue to be the watchwords of the ASEAN of ten, the evolution of the APSC does not seem to offer any new initiatives that would change ASEAN’s approach from conflict avoidance to conflict resolution. Although its blueprint is filled with good intentions and future programmes, the APSC is largely a reshuffling of an existing bureaucratic deck with lines upwards to other bureaucratic elements and few, if any, horizontal integrative lines. Rather than viewing a political and security community as a condition, ASEAN’s managers have essentially seen the APSC as an institutional structure within which the principles of sovereignty and non-interference will be safeguarded. Indonesia, the chief proponent of an ASEAN security community, had the initial responsibility for turning the Bali Concord II’s generalizations about political stability and security into draft proposals providing concrete measures that if accepted would lead to ASEAN actions as well as words. Indonesia saw this as an opening for retaking the lead in ASEAN. Its starting point was the insistence that ASEAN members should accept that community interests should prevail over national interests in matters that affect the community, particularly in cases where domestic issues and conflict spill over onto the other members. Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda called for openness and transparency in the community in which ASEAN would be “enabled to discuss with candour sensitive issues and to resolve them amicably instead of relegating them to the back burner”.74 The Indonesian draft for the APSC contained 70 specific proposals that would have set

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ASEAN on a new course for comprehensive security cooperation including political and human rights. When the Indonesian concept of the APSC was laid before the ASEAN foreign ministers in June 2004, their response was “thank you, but no thanks”. The plan of action for the APSC that was adopted was one massaged by the ASEAN Senior Officials to reach the prevailing level of consensus, which essentially meant rearranging the status quo so that rather than community interests, national interest would continue to prevail. One item from the Indonesian draft that did survive was its proposal for an ASEAN human rights structure which, as the AICHR described above, was established in 2009. The AICHR is tucked under the APSC umbrella along with the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM), the ASEAN Law Ministers Meeting (ALAWMM), and the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC). As the APSC is presently constituted, the focus of the activities gathered under its bureaucratic wing is on norm creation, rule making, and confidence building. Nowhere in its founding documentation is non-compliance with norms and rules dealt with, let alone conflict resolution. It is business as usual. The rejection of Indonesia’s programme for the APSC raises the question of Indonesia’s leadership. Barry Wain (2004), commenting on the ASEAN foreign ministers’ gutting of Indonesia’s APSC proposals, ventured the opinion that Indonesia’s ASEAN partners “appear to regard its energetic promotion of an ASEAN Security Community as a blatant and unacceptable bid to reassert itself over the rest of the region”. The Jakarta Post questioned Indonesia’s capability to provide “necessary and effective” leadership to ASEAN.75 This prompted a reply by Marty Natalegawa, then the Ministry of Foreign Affairs director-general for ASEAN. He claimed that Indonesia’s “bold and visionary”

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ideas were designed to stimulate response from other ASEAN countries.76 Marty’s comment can be compared to a comment by former foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda in April 2013. When asked what “leadership” Indonesia could give ASEAN, Hassan answered, “intellectual”.77 These remarks seem to divorce leadership in the sphere of ideas from leadership through action. Real leadership would involve the use of Indonesia’s soft power to mobilize support within ASEAN for policies to build a security community rather than floating intellectual balloons to have them shot down. Or, is soft power not enough?

Intra-ASEAN Conflict The notion of an “ASEAN way” describes what is claimed to be the region’s distinctive approach to interstate relations. It assumes a common interest in a peaceful, harmonious, and stable regional order. In this order, ASEAN states will interact with one another on the basis of their shared acceptance of common behavioural norms, including the renunciation of force. The assumption underpinning the ASEAN way ignores an important variable: national interest. A realistic analysis must take into account not only converging interests in ASEAN making for a peaceful international order, but the fact of diverging political and security interests which lead to confrontation and conflict with the threat and use of force. The persistence of intra-ASEAN disputes and conflicts in which force is in the background raises questions about ASEAN’s capability to move to the higher level of political integration that would be necessary for a real security community. ASEAN’s record shows that despite its norms and rules, the emphasis on state sovereignty is the political context for interstate relations in ASEAN, not the norms of community. The way ASEAN states

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behave towards each other is not really different from relations among states in any world region. They are governed by calculations of national interests and relative power, particularly when historic and ethnic passions buttress modern nationalisms. The tools that ASEAN’s sovereign states have used for dispute resolution are the traditional tools of statecraft, by no means uniquely ASEAN: suasion, diplomacy, mediation, coercion, and force. Where third-party intervention has been sought, it has been external to ASEAN: the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The years of the ASEAN way have been punctuated by bilateral disputes that in many cases remain unresolved. The Philippines claim to Sabah still roils ASEAN waters as the March 2013 military campaign against the so-called invasion of Sabah by Sulu Filipinos showed.78 President Yudhoyono called on the Brunei ASEAN chair to intervene and offered Indonesian diplomatic intervention.79 Indonesia itself is involved in a dispute with Malaysia over maritime zones in the Sulawesi Sea which in 2005 led to naval confrontations between the two countries. At stake were potential energy resources. It took summit diplomacy between Yudhoyono and Malaysia’s prime minister Abdullah Badawi to cool down the situation. Indonesian nationalism already was inflamed by the ICJ’s award to Malaysia of the disputed islands of Sipadan and Ligitan, and fear of domestic political reaction led to an uncompromising Indonesian position. In 2013, while intermittent talks continue, so do the naval patrols and air surveillance. A centrepiece of Indonesia’s failed effort to institutionalize conflict resolution in ASEAN through the rejected draft for the APSC was an ASEAN peacekeeping role as the backbone of a security community. An underlying interest may have been in creating a regional capability so as to minimize the possibility of extra-regional influence and intervention. The immediate regional

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security problem at the time was seen as terrorism. In addition to practical problems of command and control, a fundamental question was whether, in the case of intervention, a consensus decision was necessary including agreement of the affected state. No other ASEAN country signed on, and peacekeeping disappeared from the agenda at the March 2004 ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting. The most serious threat confronting intra-ASEAN political stability and security has been the 20ll Thai–Cambodian border war. The standing dispute between Cambodia and Thailand over the status of the ancient Khmer temple ruins at Preah Vihear on the Thai–Cambodian border turned into armed conflict in spring 2011. The temple itself was awarded to Cambodia by the ICJ in 1962 but left unsettled was what territories in the vicinity of the temple pertained to it. In 2008, Cambodia applied to UNESCO to have Preah Vihear declared a World Heritage Site. This would include land around the temple itself. The prospect of a Cambodian land-grab fanned the Thai flames of anti-Cambodia nationalism. The long history of Thai–Cambodian animosity — unreconciled to the ASEAN way — had already been stirred to violence in 2003 when, because of an alleged Thai slight to Cambodia, anti-Thai mobs in Phnom Penh attacked Thai business properties and torched the Thai embassy. Thai troops and transport rushed to Phnom Penh to assure the evacuation of Thai citizens. The border was sealed and diplomatic relations frozen. This unparalleled crisis, contradicting the raison d’être of ASEAN’s political and security assumptions, never made it to the ASEAN agenda. In 2008 Thai opposition politicians seized the Preah Vihear issue to accuse the incumbent Thaksin-backed government of country-selling by accepting the Cambodian UNESCO proposal. The border problem became a part of the domestic political conflict and was used to bring down the government. Trapped

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in their own rhetoric, the new Democrat government escalated the intra-ASEAN issue by militarizing the border area. In the twolevel game, the anti-Thaksin forces won at the domestic level at the cost of greater risks at the international level. This was the case again in 2009, when the April ASEAN Summit chaired by Thailand was disrupted by anti-government demonstrations. The building border tensions became military clashes in February 2011. Cambodia appealed for ASEAN intervention against Thai aggression. Indonesia held the ASEAN Chair and Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa called for a truce. Bangkok insisted that the issues were bilateral while Cambodia’s prime minister Hun Sen demanded third party intervention. Hun Sen, sensing no support from ASEAN, made a direct appeal to the United Nations Security Council. He informed Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that “these are not armed clashes. This is war.”80 Not bound by ASEAN consensus rules, and over Thai opposition, the UNSC took on the issue. Voicing “grave concern”, the UNSC expressed support for ASEAN and encouraged Thailand and Cambodia to cooperate with it.81 Armed with a UNSC mandate, but not an ASEAN consensus, Marty convened a special foreign ministers meeting at the end of February at which Thailand and Cambodia agreed to avoid further violence and begin bilateral negotiations. Thailand grudgingly accepted a role for Indonesian truce observers — but specifically not peacekeepers — on both sides of the border. This was not accepted, however, by Thai nationalists, who railed against Indonesian (i.e. ASEAN) interference, or the Thai military command. The frailty of the Indonesian-brokered truce agreement became apparent when wider-scale fighting broke out along the border in April. Cambodia appealed to the ICJ for an interpretation of the meaning of the 1962 statement that “the Temple of Preah Vihear is situated in territory under the

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sovereignty of Cambodia”. In the interim, the court ordered a withdrawal of all military forces from a provisional demilitarized zone. Unarmed Indonesian military observers were to have access to the demilitarized zone, but to date no Indonesian truce team has been deployed. Control of the border is in the hands of the Thai military who view the management of the issue as a Thai–Cambodian affair regardless of the ICJ or ASEAN. In April 2013, arguments were made at the ICJ on the substantive issue of territorial control raised by Cambodia. It is expected an opinion will come down late in the year. The question is how Thailand will react to an award to Cambodia. The Thai–Cambodian border war was an existential threat to ASEAN, which haltingly met the challenge. This was because the crisis came with Indonesia in the chair. It is doubtful that a Chair other than Indonesia would have had the influence and soft power backing that Marty had. It was not until Marty had the mandate from the UNSC, however, that the dispute was “ASEANized”. Furthermore, it was Hun Sen’s frustration with ASEAN that led him to the UNSC. Finally, we would add that implementing ASEAN’s and the ICJ’s role for Indonesia as a neutral truce observer depended on the assent of both Thailand and Cambodia. Thailand has not said yes. Rather than a case study of an ASEAN success, the Thai–Cambodian border war is an illustration of the gulf between the “paper” ASEAN and the real ASEAN where national political and security interests are involved.

South China Sea Issues ASEAN’s dysfunction as a political and security “community” is epitomized in its so far failed efforts to restrain China’s unilateral appropriation of sovereign rights and jurisdictions in the South

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China Sea. Beijing’s expansive jurisdictional claims, backed by threat and use of force, now overlap land territory, EEZs and continental shelves of five ASEAN states: Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. China’s unequivocal position is set forth in a 7 May 2009 communication to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UNCLCS) in which China stated that it had “indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and their adjacent waters and enjoy sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the relevant waters as well as the seabed and subsoil thereof (see attached map)”.82 The attached map in question showed the infamous nine-dash line that encloses what the Chinese insist are their historic waters covering 80 per cent of the South China Sea, with its southernmost point reaching north of Indonesia’s Natuna Islands, slicing into Indonesia’s EEZ and over its continental shelf. The legal basis for the nine-dash line has been challenged (see below) but China is undeterred in its enforcement efforts. China’s polemical insistence on defending what it now calls “core interests” in the South China Sea is matched by the growing capabilities of its maritime enforcement armada. Ultimately, this is backed by naval and air capabilities surpassed in the region only by the United States.83 China has wrapped its pursuit of hegemony in the South China Sea in the banner of ultra-nationalism but the real stakes are economic: fisheries and potential oil and gas resources. The principal targets to date of China’s intimidation and use of force have been Vietnam and the Philippines. The Philippines and Vietnam have become an ASEAN front line in this dispute-riven maritime domain, but with little political support from their community partners. China has generally withheld its verbal fire and threats of force from the other maritime ASEAN states in the hope of preemptively forestalling any unified maritime ASEAN coalition. Manila has been the prime

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mover in attempting to “ASEANize” its sharpening territorial and maritime disputes with China. So far, it has been unsuccessful in getting specific references to threatening Chinese advances on the ASEAN agenda. There are two reasons for ASEAN’s reluctance to unite behind their China-threatened partners. Unlike the ASEAN that rose in coordinated support of Thailand when it was menaced on its borders by Vietnam in 1979, today’s ASEAN members have no common strategic view, nor the kind of leadership given by Indonesian foreign minister Mochtar Kusumaatmadja in mobilizing ASEAN to support Thailand.84 The second reason is the perceptions of the economic and hard power asymmetry in the ASEAN–China relationship. This has meant that the ASEAN consensual voice on the South China Sea has been a muted one, and that ASEAN diplomacy has been studiously nonconfrontational. Confrontation has been the case with Vietnam and China and the Philippines and China on the front line in the South China Sea where incidents and provocations have degraded the regional security environment. At the 2011 East Asia Summit President Obama stated that the United States has “a powerful stake in maritime security in general and the resolution of the South China Sea issue specifically — as a resident Pacific power, as a maritime nation, as a trading nation and as a guarantor of security in the Asia Pacific”.85 What “guarantor” might mean in the South China Sea context remains undefined, but in the background is the fact of the Philippines–United States military alliance. The forceful language used by the American president, secretary of state, and other officials coupled with the announced American military pivot or rebalance to the Pacific certainly heartened ASEAN’s front-line states, even as China launched a psychological warfare campaign in ASEAN to the effect that the U.S. did not have the staying power to back its commitment.

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The evolution of the South China Sea issues has forced the threat to regional peace and political stability to the top of the ASEAN agenda. If ASEAN is to maintain its claim of centrality in the security architecture of the region, then it has to be a platform on which threats to a member state involving an external power can be addressed. President Yudhoyono’s statement that Indonesia’s policy is one of “a thousand friends and no enemies” could suggest that within ASEAN peace is divisible. If so, it is not ASEAN that is central, but the individual national state in its power relationship with friends or enemies. Rising American strategic concerns about Chinese actions and intentions in the South China Sea have been coincident with the escalation of China’s imposition of measures giving real substance to its claims of sovereignty and jurisdiction. The introduction of the element of the future role of the United States has raised what China would prefer to view as bilateral disputes to the level of great-power relations. The TAC states that in disputes likely to disturb regional peace and harmony the contracting parties shall seek a peaceful resolution and not resort to threat or use of force. China acceded to the TAC in 2009, but the TAC has had no role in the South China Sea disputes. For ASEAN as a force for regional stability and security, the South China Sea conflicts show again that norm-based declaratory instruments such as ZOPFAN or even treaties, especially the TAC, are not security mechanisms unless or until (unlikely) ASEAN as a political and security community is willing to act to hold states accountable. For Indonesia, the evolving tension-laden greatpower relations with their links to ASEAN states in the South China Sea challenge the fundamental strategic goals mentioned above: a commanding voice in regional affairs; prevention of alterations in the regional status quo negatively impacting Indonesia; and limiting great-power presence that might present an alternative leadership to Indonesia’s.

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As China sets sail for preponderance in the South China Sea, SBY’s quest for a “dynamic equilibrium” seems even more illusory. Another effect of the South China Sea issue has been the growth of military budgets in maritime Southeast Asia spurring spending on weapons platforms and modernization.86 Indonesia has not been left behind. Its last two defence budgets have been geared to a process of bringing its military on par with its ASEAN neighbours, although with respect to Singapore this seems unlikely. Nevertheless, the prospect of future enhanced Indonesian military capabilities, especially if linked to stronger nationalist leaders, might give pause in cases where soft power might not be enough to achieve Indonesia’s foreign policy ends.

The Code of Conduct: An ASEAN Dead End Even though ASEAN has left its front-line states isolated in their encounters with Chinese maritime expansion, ASEAN has reached a consensus, grudging though it might be for some members, that spiralling tensions do present a possible threat to regional peace and stability. In trying for more than two decades to come to grips with the South China Sea disputes, ASEAN’s strategy has focused on drafting a Code of Conduct (CoC) for parties in the South China Sea. The lengthy dialogue between ASEAN and China about the CoC divorces the seemingly insurmountable problems of settling the contending claims from the behaviour of the claimants pending settlement. Such a code in ASEAN’s view would contribute to regional peace and stability. That is, of course, only if it were to be observed. The record shows, however, that this is unlikely. China’s vitriolic assault on the Philippines’ effrontery in challenging the nine-dash line is apposite in this regard. On 22 January 2013, the Philippines announced a “notification and claim on the West Philippines Sea [South China Sea]” in

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which, based on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), it requested that the ITLOS establish what legal basis there was for China’s nine-dash line.87 This is a show of resoluteness that its security partners in ASEAN do not have. China vehemently rejected the Philippines’ initiative, accusing Manila of trying to steal Chinese sovereignty and claiming that the maritime disputes are not covered by UNCLOS. China’s refusal to participate has not prevented the process from moving forward. In April 2013, a five-member arbitral panel had been appointed. There is no expectation, however, that China will take cognizance of any opinion that might be rendered. Although Indonesia has been silent about the Philippines démarche, its position on the nine-dash line is similar to Manila’s. Indonesia raised the question nearly two decades ago, in 1994, when Foreign Minister Ali Alatas had a note delivered to China asking what the legal basis of the line was. There was no answer. Two years later, Ali, on a visit to China, inquired after the status of the note. He was told it was being considered, but there was never a reply.88 Indonesia’s definitive statement on the ninedash line is contained in an 8 July 2010 submission addressed to the UN secretary-general that stated that the nine-dash line map “clearly lacks international legal basis and is tantamount to upset the UNCLOS 1982”.89 Indonesia itself has experienced China’s determination to enforce its claimed jurisdictions. In 2010, an attempt by Indonesian maritime police to arrest Chinese fishing vessels inside Indonesia’s EEZ was prevented by a Chinese maritime enforcement vessel. Indonesia’s contemporary reticence perhaps reflects its probably unwarranted hope that it can facilitate peaceful dispute resolutions between China and its territorial rivals. In ASEAN’s search for a CoC, principles for such a code had already been laid out in the 1992 “ASEAN Declaration on the

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South China Sea”. It called for the resolution of all sovereignty and jurisdictional disputes by peaceful means and for the exercise of restraint, and stipulated that the conflict resolution principles of the TAC should be the basis for a code of conduct. To help promote an atmosphere conducive to peaceful settlement it encouraged cooperative activities in a variety of transnational functional areas such as environment, navigation, piracy, and drug trafficking. Indonesia took the lead in crafting a vehicle establishing a framework for functional cooperation. On the initiative of Dr Hasjim Djalal, Indonesia’s point man on law of the sea issues, an Indonesia-hosted “Workshop on Managing Potential Conflict in the South China Sea” began annual meetings in 1990. Officially non-governmental so as to attract Chinese participation, the goal was to find areas of functional cooperation that would lead to confidence-building measures and habits of cooperation that could eventually produce an atmosphere conducive to finding solutions to territorial disputes. In 2013, after 23 years, there have been no achievable results in fashioning such cooperative measures and habits that could be translatable to the political problem-solving level.90 The “talk shop” process, however, goes on. The Workshop is an example of ASEAN’s mantra of “confidence building”, none of the measures of which have slowed China’s forward advances in the South China Sea. It took a decade for ASEAN to negotiate Chinese adherence to its 2002 non-binding “Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea” (DoC) that built on the earlier ASEAN Declaration. In the interval, China’s assertive, forceful, forward policy had been demonstrated again when in 1995 it seized and then fortified Philippines-claimed Mischief Reef in the Spratlys. This act was clearly recognized as a violation of the spirit of the declaration. Moreover, it signified that China’s willingness to use

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force was not limited to its territorial quarrels with Vietnam, which in 1988 lost 64 sailors in a naval clash at Johnson Reef. The 2002 DoC begins with a commitment to the normative frameworks of the United Nations, UNCLOS, TAC, and other principles of international law. It then elaborates on the behavioural themes addressed in the 1992 document: peaceful resolution of disputes through consultation and negotiations by sovereign states directly concerned; no use or threat of force; self-restraint in activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and security; and engagement in confidence-building activities. In its final paragraph, ASEAN and China agreed to work on the basis of consensus for the eventual attainment of a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea. China’s willingness to sign off on the DoC was on the condition that it was a general non-binding statement of intentions, did not reference China or any specific case (Mischief Reef), and was not self-denying in terms of future activities. Importantly for China, the consensual statement that dispute resolution was to be sought through consultation and negotiation by “sovereign states directly concerned” [italics added] seemed to indicate an ASEAN acceptance of China’s consistent position that the contested territorial and jurisdictional issues had to be settled bilaterally between China and the other claimants. From Beijing’s vantage, neither ASEAN — not a sovereign state — nor non-claimant states have any reason to be involved — particularly the United States. China also has a broader strategic purpose in the dialogue with ASEAN over a CoC. It is from China’s perspective an essentially cost-free statement that political regulation in the South China Sea is an ASEAN–China undertaking that excludes the United States. In the diplomacy of ASEAN and China, the DoC was not selfexecuting. Fast forward another decade, and we find that it was

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not until July 2011 that draft guidelines for the implementation of the 2002 DoC were ready, let alone a CoC. In that decade, China’s aggressive pattern of harassment and intimidation of its rival Southeast Asian claimants was unrestrained. If anything, China’s unilateralism has, to use the DoC’s terms, complicated and escalated disputes and affected peace and stability. China’s lack of restraint has become even more flagrant as demonstrated in 2012 by inclusion of the Spratlys in Chinese administrative structures, and the de facto annexation of Scarborough Shoal deep in the Philippines’ EEZ, as well as the 2013 unprecedented naval exercises at the limits of the nine-dash line, at which time the Chinese sailors pledged to “defend the South China Sea, maintain sovereignty and strive towards the dream of a strong China”.91 For the first time at an ASEAN-hosted venue, over vigorous Chinese objection the 2011 East Asia Summit hosted by Indonesia had a “robust” discussion of South China Sea issues at its “leaders retreat”. The discussion was made possible by the firm hand of the chair, President Yudhoyono, who ruled that such a discussion was appropriate and important for the EAS. In a veiled warning to the ASEAN participants in the discussion, and in contradiction of SBY, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, speaking last, asserted that the EAS was not the right forum for a discussion of the South China Sea, adding that the relevant parties — that is the ASEAN states — should do something more conducive to mutual trust and cooperation. The 2012 ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting in Phnom Penh, chaired by Cambodian foreign minister Hor Namhong, stripped away any remaining veneer of ASEAN solidarity when, for the first time in the 45-year history of ASEAN, no final chairman’s statement was issued. The stumbling block was the insistence of the Philippines and Vietnam that the communiqué refer to recent events in the South China Sea and the importance of

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the DoC. For Vietnam the immediate concerns were Chinese incursions into its EEZ and continental shelf. The Philippines was still smarting over the Scarborough Shoal incident. The issue boiled down to, if we cannot defend the DoC, what is the value of a CoC? Indonesian foreign minister Marty, seconded by his Singapore and Malaysian counterparts, argued that the communiqué should express the common concerns of all the ASEAN members about the situation in the South China Sea. This was not to be countenanced by the Cambodian chair and, as no consensus could be reached, no final statement was offered.92 Of course, this meant that other considerations in the communitybuilding project went unreported. The diplomatic disaster was instructive in at least four regards. It was a clear example of the maritime–continental strategic division in ASEAN. It underlined how important the role of the ASEAN chair is. It also confirmed for all that Cambodia was China’s voice and veto in ASEAN. Finally, it suggests that Indonesia’s regional political and security interests do not find realistic loci in ASEAN given China’s influence in Cambodia and Laos and growing influence in Thailand, the official coordinator of ASEAN–China relations. Following the 13 July ministerial breakdown and essentially displacing the Cambodian chair, Indonesia’s foreign minister Marty undertook a solo 36-hour flurry of shuttle diplomatic activity between Manila, Hanoi, and Phnom Penh that salvaged a new consensus, the CoC dialogue, and perhaps ASEAN itself.93 In the statement, the foreign ministers committed themselves to (1) the full implementation of the DoC; (2) the guidelines for the DoC; (3) the early conclusion of the CoC; (4) full respect for international law including UNCLOS; (5) the continued exercise of restraint and non-use of force; and (6) the peaceful resolution of all disputes in accordance with international law and UNCLOS.

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Although hailed as a renaissance of Indonesian leadership in ASEAN, the six points in fact restate the principles of the 1992 and 2002 declarations, adding nothing new. It must have been a bitter pill for Manila and Hanoi to swallow to be willing to accept this at Marty’s behest to save the ministerial meeting. Point 5 must have been particularly galling to them as Marty tried to clothe the emperor. To suggest that the parties continue to exercise restraint and non-use of force simply ignored the Chinese lack of restraint and use of force in the events of which the Philippines and Vietnam wanted ASEAN to take official note. Indonesia’s frustration at lack of progress in formulating the CoC has been expressed in uncharacteristically blunt words by SBY, who said in August 2012, “Things do not necessarily have to be this slow,” adding, “We need to send a strong signal to the world that the future of the South China Sea is predictable, manageable, and optimistic.”94 No such signal has been sent.95 Marty himself has worried that events are outpacing progress and that the DoC itself may become a “dead letter”. For the Chinese, time is on their side. The stock answer from Beijing is that a CoC could be concluded “when the time is ripe” with no indication of a calendar. Meanwhile, the dialogue continues. At the 2012 ASEAN–China Summit, the leaders, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the DoC, resolved to continue the momentum of dialogue and consultations on the adoption of a CoC based on consensus.96 The mentioned “momentum” is glacial. The April 2013 ASEAN–China Senior Officials Meeting again took up the implementation — after 11 years — of the DoC and recommitted to work towards a CoC. The April 2013 ASEAN Summit in Brunei again tasked the ministers “to continue to work closely with China on the way forward to the early conclusion of the CoC”. It had been hoped in ASEAN, without foundation, that the change of leadership in China might lesson tensions in the South

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China Sea. This apparently was wishful thinking. Xi Jinping comes out of the same nationalism mould as his predecessors, and as recent actions in the South China Sea and the East China Sea show, China’s policies may become more assertive as China defends its “nonnegotiable” core interests in the South China Sea. The two sides — the carrot and stick — of China’s “peaceful rise” were demonstrated in Jakarta during Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to Indonesia in early May 2013, where he agreed to start talks with ASEAN on a CoC.97 The process will begin with the formation of an Eminent Persons Group (EPG) and a governmental ASEAN–China working group to discuss measures for a CoC. Naturally, before work can commence there will have to be negotiations on membership and, especially, terms of reference. Even if at some future point a non-binding consensus-based Code of Conduct for Parties in the South China Sea should be agreed to, few in ASEAN expect China to abide by it. Beijing’s track record in respecting the DoC is proof of this. Why would China be willing to accept the norms and rules of a voluntary CoC, when it already states that international law including UNCLOS does not apply to its sovereign jurisdiction over the South China Sea? Logically, from China’s vantage, it could be argued that the CoC would only apply to Southeast Asian signatories as they venture into what China insists are its sovereign South China Sea waters. It is noteworthy that ASEAN as a grouping has never challenged China’s sovereign claims nor its nine-dash line. It has been left to the individual states directly affected to resist China’s overweening territorial and jurisdictional intrusions while ASEAN onlookers like Thailand hope they do not rock the China boat.98 So much for the assumption of the APSC that the members of ASEAN regard their security as fundamentally linked to one another.99

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If the prospect of a CoC that will in fact restrain China seems so remote or in practical terms a dead end, why has ASEAN fastened on the CoC with such tenacity for 21 years with no real progress? There are several reasons. ASEAN had to give some kind of security blanket to Manila and Hanoi no matter how tattered and moth-eaten it might be if any semblance of solidarity were to be maintained. Furthermore, to simply abandon the frontline states would accelerate the polarization of ASEAN in the China–U.S. great-power competition. With respect to the longdrawn-out CoC process, ASEAN’s only real goal is to keep China engaged in a dialogue. Basically, it has become a dialogue for the sake of dialogue. ASEAN fears that to confront China on South China Sea issues would spark a Chinese walkout. So a sterile dialogue persists, with no concessions from China and Vietnam and the Philippines left to self-help and higher profile bilateral security relations with the United States. This was not ASEAN’s desired outcome. Finally, the dialogue persists because ASEAN feels there is no alternative if ASEAN solidarity is to be maintained. In essence, solidarity was the political purpose of Foreign Minister Marty’s July 2012 last-ditch effort to patch together a consensus statement on the South China Sea after the failure of the Cambodia-led foreign ministers meeting. Although it did not advance the agenda or offer new initiatives, it papered over the cracks in ASEAN and, to be colloquial, kicked the South China Sea can down the road for another year. However, after 2014, Marty probably will not be around to repeat such diplomatic heroics. The fact that ASEAN feels that there is no alternative to what will prove to be an unrewarding dialogue is in part because of the way that ASEAN has framed it. The dialogue is centred on law and norms. Foreign Minister Marty has even suggested a new, higher layer in his 2013 proposal of an all-inclusive “Indo-Pacific” treaty

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modeled on the TAC.100 He left unstated why a treaty modeled on the TAC would be any more effective in curbing China then the TAC itself. The real issues, however, are political as national interests compete. China and its greater power seem to have the advantage in this competition. China uses the importance of the ASEAN states’ bilateral relations with China to influence the ASEAN collective response to China’s activities in the South China Sea. ASEAN, however, is unable to use in an aggregate fashion the wide array of interests that China has in the ASEAN domain to demonstrate to Beijing that it has interests at risk in the competition.

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Conclusion At an earlier point in this paper four questions were posed with respect to Indonesia’s relationship to ASEAN, particularly in the framework of the ASEAN Political and Security Community. The questions were related to Indonesia’s self-image as the leader of ASEAN. The first question was in what direction Indonesia wanted ASEAN to go. As has been discussed, for at least a decade Indonesia has sought to transfer its experience in democratization to ASEAN. It also has tried to move the grouping towards a strategic coherence and political solidarity that would be necessary to make ASEAN an effective actor in shaping its regional security environment. In short, Indonesia, of all the ASEAN states, has tried the most to make real the pledges and promises of the ASEAN Charter and the Bali Concord II’s vision of community. Indonesia has kept ASEAN upfront in its foreign policy even at the cost of compromising its own national foreign policy interests. Indonesia has been singularly unsuccessful in putting an Indonesian stamp on ASEAN. If anything, it is just the opposite. The ASEAN stamp has been put on Indonesia in terms of the dilution of the bebas dan aktif quality of its foreign policy in deference to lowest-common-denominator consensus and inaction. This answers the second question. As the pages above have shown, ASEAN as an organization does not follow Indonesia’s lead in any real sense. While ASEAN may be willing to give expression 83

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to Indonesia’s intellectual or conceptual ideas and values in the ASEAN boiler-plate prose of declarations and resolutions, the member nations are at no risk that they will be forced to adhere to them or put what is promised into practice. It serves only, as Narine (2012) argued, to add a surface credibility and legitimacy to ASEAN’s image. ASEAN’s organizational structure, internal politics, and members’ external linkages are such that no country can really lead ASEAN in the sense of directing its course of action to conform to a particular country’s interests, real or ideal. To answer the question of whether soft power is enough, certainly soft power cannot prevail in ASEAN when the least powerful hold the trump card of preventing a consensus. This does not mean that Indonesia’s soft power capabilities are unavailing. Indonesia may have been unable to reshape or redirect ASEAN in an organizational way, but in times of ASEAN political crisis Indonesia has taken a lead and the organization has followed. Foreign Minister Marty stepped into the breach in July 2012 to rescue the South China Sea consensus. With Indonesia as ASEAN Chair in 2011, Marty aggressively intervened in the Thai–Cambodian border war, pulling ASEAN behind him. Marty’s capability and influence in these cases were not based on ASEAN status but on the fact that he spoke for Indonesia. Indonesia’s role as primus inter pares is based on factors of power that are not functionally relevant in the ASEAN procedural settings but reflect Indonesia’s relative power position in Southeast Asia. If Indonesia has not been able to lead ASEAN, why then does it continue to subscribe to the consensus? It can be argued that the continued existence of ASEAN has been added to the calculations of interest and ASEAN solidarity as an interest in itself. The intensity of that interest varies among the members with Indonesia perhaps giving it a higher priority than most. For example, it is Indonesia’s interest in ASEAN qua ASEAN to which it has sublimated its interest in a democratizing Southeast Asia.

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Indonesia’s continuing investment in ASEAN is based on a number of factors. A collapse of ASEAN would be regionally destabilizing. It has become a fixture in the regional international system. Also, it is through ASEAN that Indonesia can project a non-threatening image to Southeast Asia, mindful of latent concerns among its neighbours stemming from the Sukarno years. This can be combined with the feeling by some ardent Indonesian nationalists that its neighbours disrespect it. In terms of Indonesia’s regional strategic goals focused on its own centrality to regional politics and security, ASEAN has been a suitable vehicle for its show of soft power. The ASEAN question facing Indonesia’s new president and his foreign minister in 2014 will probably not be the collapse of ASEAN. Even though the political and strategic rifts among its members have set the ASEAN Community’s APSC pillar on a foundation of quicksand, the other two pillars, the AEC and ASCC, are more firmly grounded. The ASEAN Secretariat will continue to minister to the many activities that carry an ASEAN designation, and Indonesia will continue to participate. The AEC, and to a lesser extent the ASCC, have a momentum that does not depend on ASEAN high politics. The ASEAN experience contradicts the integration theorists in the sense that there has been little, if any, spillover from economic and social functional cooperation into the political domain. This is true for the areas Indonesia has pressed in ASEAN: democratization, human rights, good governance, and a single ASEAN political and security voice. The real question for Indonesia’s incoming government is how great an investment of new political capital it will want to make in an ASEAN that is an empty shell as far as promoting real Indonesian political and security interests. The bankruptcy of ASEAN as a security community is demonstrated in ASEAN states’ behaviour as contrasted to the Bali Concord II assertions noted earlier. There, the foundations of the APSC were that the

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ASEAN members “regard their security as fundamentally linked to one another and bound by geographic location, common vision, and objectives”. In reality, as opposed to ASEAN-speak, all four of these security assumptions are demonstrably false. For ASEAN, security is divisible by 10, with each sovereign state responsible for managing its own security policy and problems. A threat to one is not a threat to all. Rather than binding the members of ASEAN together, geography now acts to divide them into two strategic zones, continental and maritime, with Vietnam bridging them. Within ASEAN there is neither a common vision nor common objectives. With each member state marching in directions dictated by perceptions of national interest, Indonesia cannot close the ranks. The first test of entrusting bebas dan aktif to ASEAN in the future will come in the South China Sea conflict zone. Will the new president and foreign minister be willing to simply go along with ASEAN in the interminable CoC dialogue while China salami-slices the maritime space of its ASEAN partners? Even though Indonesia does not have a territorial stake like the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei, as noted above, China’s nine-dash line encroaches on Indonesia’s EEZ and continental shelf. It overlaps in part Indonesia’s East Natuna gas-rich Block D-Alpha. Even though China has not actively pressed its claim of jurisdiction against Indonesia, preferring to keep Jakarta in the ASEAN neutral mode as the Chinese salami slicer moves south, Indonesia does have concerns about future Chinese intentions. If there are interlinked security interests in ASEAN, they can only be found among the ASEAN states in the South China Sea zone. They all, including Singapore, face the same strategic challenge from China. However, like the ASEAN grouping as a whole, they have no common strategy. In part, this is because of the political value Indonesia has assigned to solidarity. Yet,

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when the CoC dialogue comes to its future end what will have been achieved? Any consensus CoC that might be adopted will not include a Chinese retreat from its claims of sovereignty and jurisdiction. The nine-dash line will not have been erased. The CoC will implicitly ratify the changes to the status quo that China has made and will continue to make as long as the dialogue continues. Finally, it will not deter China from pursuing its strategy of rearranging the Southeast Asian strategic environment. This is not an outcome that supports Indonesia’s long-term strategic goals. It is the likely outcome, however, as long as the CoC dialogue is the political backbone of China–ASEAN relations. It will not be unless or until Indonesia disengages itself from the theatre of the CoC to engage China directly on the basic issues, which have been obscured in the CoC dialogue, that Indonesia can take the lead. In its “natural” leadership role outside of the consensus framework of ASEAN, Indonesia could work to build a strategic consensus among the maritime states. This would give the developing patterns of military cooperation among them a political framework. The basis for such a consensus would be that China’s maritime threat to one is a threat to all. The most immediate foreign policy impact would be political support for the Philippines and Vietnam on the basis of international law and UNCLOS. In the same vein, a common position on the illegality of the nine-dash line could be enunciated, thus backing publicly the lonely Philippines’ appeal to ITLOS. All of the maritime Southeast Asian states have “limited alignment” security relations with the United States. Heightened intraregional security cooperation based on a common strategic view and objectives in addition to the bilateral links to the U.S. would enhance Indonesia’s soft power capabilities in a different kind of dialogue with China than ASEAN’s. What kind of dialogue would that be? It would focus on Chinese aggregate economic

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and political interests in the maritime subregion as part of the stakes in addition to the territorial and jurisdictional disputes. Of course, the links to the United States would be in the background. It could be pointed out to the Chinese interlocutors that they were engaged in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Although the Chinese object to a higher U.S. security profile in the region, their provocative acts in the South China Sea invite it. The burden would be on China to demonstrate in action that its interests in the region went beyond simply imperium over the South China Sea. If Indonesia thought passive neutrality in ASEAN on the territorial and jurisdictional issues in the South China Sea would allow it to play a facilitator or honest broker role, events have made this very unlikely.101 Just as unlikely are the hopes that ASEAN’s “centrality” can bridge or mediate the tensions between China and the U.S. The roots of the tensions are not in ASEAN. A new Indonesian government, escaping the ASEAN cage and eschewing a global reach linked to democracy, may look at the Southeast Asian region in more traditional security terms. There is no ASEAN security blanket. ASEAN solidarity is an excuse for inaction. As the SBY era is drawing to a close, new thinking is emerging which would abandon reliance on ASEAN, would view a posture of a thousand friends and no enemies as international irrelevance, and would consign “dynamic equilibrium” to the scrapbook of old slogans. In their place, we might suggest that in Southeast Asia, Indonesia’s future stance could be strategic independence.102 Strategic independence would put bebas dan aktif in play again. Decisions would be made pragmatically in terms of national interests without the self-constructed obligations of ASEAN solidarity and consensus. In its strategic independence, Indonesia could through its natural leadership capabilities give a new dimension to centrality in the region. How this might be used, of

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course, would depend on the leaders. A strategically independent Indonesia at the centre of a core of like-minded maritime states could change the structure of the regional balance of power. The usual view has a subject ASEAN depending on the United States in a balance of power with China. In a regional balance of power, a strategically independent Indonesia could become a balancer in its relations with both China and the United States.

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Addendum Professor Weatherbee gave a seminar at ISEAS in May 2013, titled “ASEAN: A Crumbling Corner Stone of Indonesia’s Foreign Policy?”, on the subject discussed in this monograph. Presented below is an edited version of some of his observations during the unscripted Q&A session after the seminar. As far as possible Prof Weatherbee’s own words have been retained.

ASEAN, China and the South China Sea As I argue in my paper, if the code of conduct is a dead end, I think the whole question of the South China Sea is an ASEAN existential crisis. ASEAN has got to face this challenge or forget about its security community. ASEAN has allowed China to play on the interests of the ASEAN states in their relationship with China and to hold an important background role in the intra-ASEAN negotiations. ASEAN as ASEAN has not played on China’s interests across a broader array of subjects that China has in ASEAN. It has not linked them to peace and some kind of settlement on the South China Sea. ASEAN has not said to China: Look, you have all these interests. Are you willing to risk all these over this issue? ASEAN has not been able to put this on the table. Probably Cambodia’s and Laos’s special interests with China override any interest they might have in ASEAN. I think 91

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ASEAN could take a different negotiating position, if Indonesia could move them to it. Let me go even further. This is not in my paper, but I have been thinking about it. If the ASEAN policy towards China is being dominated by the Mekong sub-system’s interest in China, then maybe it’s time to have another sub-system in ASEAN, for example, the maritime sub-system, to start consulting among themselves. If ASEAN can’t present a common front, perhaps Indonesia could help. This is what I mean by its autonomous action. Perhaps Indonesia could help move the other maritime actors towards a different kind of negotiating front towards China. It is just an idea of mine.

Islam in Indonesia’s foreign policy I fully expect Indonesian foreign policy to reflect, more than it does under SBY, Islamic interests. And this would be outside the framework of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), where Indonesia is one of the proponents of the OIC independent human rights commission, with its first chair held by an Indonesian lady who is trained in Islamic law and human rights and the first meeting of the commission held in Jakarta. I think it’s very clear that it’s wrong to talk about Indonesian political parties as secular parties — or as secular parties and Muslim parties. All parties are Muslim parties, in the sense that they all appeal to the 80% of the population that is Muslim. They are the votes. I think it is clear, if we look at the activities of the parliament and the views of the parliamentarians, that they are responsive to alarms and excursions that take place in a broader Muslim public. And I say, from being a relatively passive population with respect to the Muslim minorities elsewhere in the region, they have been aroused. That is going to be a part of the carry-over from SBY.

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Now Islam is a factor in Indonesia’s relations with Myanmar for the first time. When Marty went up in January this year, the word Islam did not come into the dialogue. It was simply human and civil rights and humanitarian crisis. But a few months later, after the outbreak of violence between Buddhists and Muslims in central Myanmar, SBY said that Myanmar should address the violence against Muslims and that it could impact Muslims in Indonesia. If he hadn’t, he would have been criticised at home for not doing so. That is just one straw in the wind. I fully expect the next president to move away from the centre towards being more Islamic and the Islamic issues will be important electoral issues. I mean we have Prabowo right now helping to finance certain Muslim groups, thugs and gangsters. So, yeah, that’s what I am suggesting. It’s going to reflect Islam much more so than SBY has or Marty has.

Indonesia and ASEAN One of the central thrusts of my argument is that Indonesia has been unable to move ASEAN in the direction of being actually a unitary actor in the region. Its voice is a voice of lowest common denominator consensus, which is not a policy voice. Indonesia in a sense is trapped as long it sees its obligations to ASEAN as more important than the pursuit of independence for its national interests outside of ASEAN — and I think this is going to change. For example, in the recent unpleasantness in Sabah caused by the armed infiltrators from southern Philippines, the Indonesians were very concerned. They were concerned at two levels. At one level they were concerned of spillover into Indonesian north Borneo, Kalimantgan Utara. And then there was the concern about disruption in ASEAN itself. SBY was uncharacteristically outspoken as he comes to the end of his term when he publicly

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expressed Indonesia’s concern about what was happening in Sabah and said he hoped that the Chairman of ASEAN would do something about it, which the Chairman didn’t. But then he said that Indonesia was considering its own diplomatic initiatives outside of ASEAN. In other words, the idea being that if ASEAN does not do anything, Indonesia will do something. And Marty’s role as crisis manager back in 2011 in the border war between Thailand and Cambodia was not a function of ASEAN: rather, it was a function of the Indonesian Foreign Minister and it was the influence and soft power of Indonesia that made him able to intervene, if you will. He intervened before ASEAN acted. And ASEAN acted only after the UN Security Council acted. When Marty went back to the conflict region, he had the mandate of the Security Council, not the ASEAN mandate. And when Marty made his peregrinations through Southeast Asia in the third week of July last year to get those famous six points, he had no ASEAN role. He was not the Chairman of ASEAN. He displaced the Chairman. Now, he is the only foreign minister in ASEAN that could pull that off. Not because of ASEAN but because of Indonesia. If Indonesia wants to flex diplomatic muscle, it can flex and I am suggesting a new administration is going to come with a stronger sense of nationalism and what Indonesia’s national interests really are. I had a long talk with a senior Parliament member in the Indonesian parliament (the DPR), whose task within the parliament is to manage politics, foreign policy, law etc. And I asked him what were the challenges he saw for Indonesian foreign policy. You know what he talked about? He didn’t talk about South China Sea. He didn’t talk about ASEAN. He didn’t talk about China and the US. The challenges were Indonesian domestic workers abroad, Malaysia stealing Indonesia’s cultural

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heritage and an extradition treaty with Singapore. These are nationalist agendas. And I think that the new government after the elections will be more reflective of this kind of thing. This is what I said in the paper, that Indonesia (is) going to be more willing to work outside of simply solidarity in ASEAN for the sake of solidarity.

Indonesia’s projection of democracy and its effects on the rest of Southeast Asia Indonesia’s single most important international activity in democracy projection is the Bali Democracy Forum, the BDF. The BDF 5 took place last November and 56 countries were there, many of them not democracies, of course. This was Hassan Wirajuda’s brainchild and I asked Pak Hassan when I was in Indonesia: Pak Hassan, is the Democracy Forum going to survive SBY’s presidency? And his answer was yes. I talked to some others. They said, well, as long as Pak Hassan is still around to force the issue. But I don’t think democracy will be as out front after 2014 as it has been in the last five years in particular. The Indonesian position is that democracy has to be homegrown, that democracy cannot be imposed from outside and that there is no single model for democracy. Again, this is Indonesiaspeak which is almost the same as ASEAN-speak. It doesn’t tell you very much. Indonesia does not believe, as some countries, including my own do, in intervention, sanctions or other devices to try to move countries to democracy. Indonesia for some reason thinks it can lead by example. I don’t argue in this paper, but I have argued elsewhere, that there is no empirical evidence that Indonesia’s democratisation experience has been in any sense transformational in South East Asia.

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Indonesia’s management of its relations with the US and China Indonesia has managed its relations with the US by demonstrating to the United States how important Indonesia is to the United States. Now, what I’m suggesting, as I said earlier, what ASEAN should do is to demonstrate to China how important ASEAN is to China and link the importance of ASEAN to China to the overriding existential issue of the South China Sea and China’s unilateralism in the South China Sea despite dialogue over the COC. This is the way to begin to manage the relationship with China so that “interests” are not a one-way street. Interests are a two-way street. Indonesia has been very successful in doing that in Washington. And Indonesia has a very high profile now in official Washington and not just because of the comprehensive partnership.

The Islamic factor in Indonesia’s relations with the US Will the rise of the Islamic factor in Indonesia’s foreign policy be counterproductive to its relations with the United States? Right now, Indonesia gets a pass in the United States on Islamic issues. We accept that Indonesia is going to follow the Islamic line on the Middle East. Indonesia’s policy on Palestine has been consistent for fifty years and that is not going to change — an independent Palestine and a two-states solutions, even though that’s being undermined by some parliamentarians who have their contacts with the Hamas people who do not want a twostates solution. There is concern in the US about the blasphemy law in Indonesia, the pornography law, Indonesia’s support for a UN

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blasphemy law. But it still gets a pass from the US government, in part because of Indonesia’s very hard line on terrorism and the efficient work of Detachment 88. There is concern in NGO circles in the US about the treatment of religious minorities, uncontrolled church burnings, attacks on Ahmadiyah and so on; and the seeming inability of the central government to step in to stop it. But this is a very complicated subject, having to do in part with the nature of the devolvement of power from the centre to the regions and the authority that the regions have and the difficulties that the central bureaucracy has in implementing policies from the top. If you add up the pluses and the minuses, the pluses still outweigh the minuses in terms of the American perception. This is the official perception, not that of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International.

Conclusion Let me just conclude. Six years ago, I wrote a piece which appeared in Daljit Singh’s Southeast Asian Affairs called “Indonesia Foreign Policy: A Wounded Phoenix”: that the Indonesian garuda was trying to climb out of the ashes of the economic crisis and the downfall of the Suharto regime. This was right at the end of Megawati’s presidency. I now have another piece called “A Garuda in Flight”; that the Indonesian phoenix, in fact, has climbed out of the ashes and is in flight. This is a very visible Indonesia. What I am suggesting in the paper I’m working on is, yes, but the garuda is in a cage, and the cage is ASEAN.

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End Notes   1. Unless otherwise noted, all ASEAN documents cited in the text can be accessed through links at .   2. Barry Desker, “Is Indonesia Outgrowing ASEAN?” RISI Commentary, no. 25/2010, 29 September 2010.   3. The generalizations in this paragraph are largely based on the author’s discussions with a wide variety of Indonesian officials, analysts, journalists, etc. in Jakarta, 21–28 April 2013.   4. Testimony of Joseph Yun, Acting Assistant Secretary of State, East Asia and the Pacific, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, 26 February 2013 .   5. See, for example, Murphy 2012, p. 87.   6. .   7. .   8. Author interview with Dewi Fortuna Anwar, 24 April 2013.   9. Mohammad Hatta, Mendajung diantara dua karangan: keterangan pemerintah diupatjapakan dimuka siding B.P.K.N.I.P. di Djokja pada tahun 1948. Jakarta: Kementerian Penerbangan Republik Indonesia, 1951. 10. Carlyle A. Thayer, “Australian Perceptions and Indonesian Realities”, Lecture at the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs (Dunedin Branch), University of Otega (12 May 1988) . 11. “Australia, Indonesia boost security ties”, Jakarta Post, 4 April 2012. 99

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12. “Muslim group wants Densus 88 dissolved over rights abuses”, Jakarta Post, 10 March 2013. 13. “2013 Annual Press Statement Dr. R. M. Marty M. Natalegawa, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia”, 4 January 2013 . 14. Comments by Foreign Minister Marty to the Council on Foreign Relations (New York), 20 September 2010 . 15. President Yudhoyono’s address to the APEC CEO Summit,   12 November 2011 . 16. President Yudhoyono keynote speech, IISS Shangri-La Conference, 1 June 2012 . 17. Freedom in the World 2013 . 18. The Pancasila’s five principles of the state are: belief in God, just and civilized society, unity of Indonesia, democracy, and social justice. 19. Remarks by H.E. Dr. Marty Natalegawa at the 7th General Conference of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific,  16 October 2009 . 20. Yoes C. Kenawas and Fitrani, “Plenty of celebrities, lack of credentials”, Straits Times, 10 May 2013. 21. . 22. Author’s interview with Priyo Budi Santosa, Deputy Speaker of Parliament — Politics and Foreign Policy, 26 April 2013. 23. For an empirical study on Indonesian Muslim élite attitudes, see Novotny (2010). 24. “Komisi I DPR: Kemenangan Obama tak Beri Pengaruh ke Indonesia.” . 25. “Namru Issue Mired in Political Ambitions” . 26. See the November 2011 statement by Samantha Power, Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs, [U.S.] National Security Council, 

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27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

33.

34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

101

in the transcript of the Carnegie Endowment for International Affairs conference, “Is the Community of Democracies Coming of Age?” . Yudhoyono’s speech as given in the report of the WMD Sixth Assembly . The background to the APDP was laid out in a WikiLeaked State Department cable to the American embassies in the countries expected to participate . For a more extended discussion of Indonesia and the APDP, see Kelly Currie, “Mirage or Reality? Asia’s Emerging Human Rights and Democracy Architecture”, Occasional Paper, Project 2049, November 2010 . . . When asked this question in an interview on 22 April 2013, Hassan answered “yes”. Others said it depended on Hassan’s relationship with the next president. Opening Statement of President Yudhoyono at BDF V . Remarks by Ambassador Suren Bradel at the Carnegie Endowment conference, “Is the Community of Democracies Coming of Age?” . “President of RI: BDF progress is evident”, 8 November 2012  . Ibid. “Human rights must conform to local values”, Jakarta Post,   25 September 2012. In an interview with the author, 22 April 2013. Author’s discussion with Rafendi Djamin, Indonesian AICHR commissioner, 25 April 2013. . Lembaga Survei Indonesia, “Prospek Islam Politik”, October 2006 . For analysis of the poll results see “Islamic parties lose relevance”,

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43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

End Notes Jakarta Post, 15 October 2012; “Islamic parties at crossroads”, Jakarta Globe, 19 November 2012. Bruinessen (2012, pp.117–19) discusses Indonesia’s relative invisibility in the Muslim world. Besides Indonesia, the D-8 includes Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey. The D-8’s website and activities can be accessed at . The declaration can be accessed at . The IPHRC can be accessed at . “Islamic countries recognize RI’s global human rights role: Marty”, Jakarta Post, 20 February 2012. “Government Welcomes the Agreement between the Government of the Philippines and the MILF”, Kemlu News, 9 October 2012. “PM’s ‘Gag Order’ respected”, Bangkok Post, 30 November   2004. “Yudhoyono and Yingluck Meet, Discuss Thai Territorial Integrity”, Jakarta Globe, 12 September 2012. As cited in Res. No. 1/35-MM on Safeguarding the Rights of Muslim Communities and Minorities in Non-OIC Member States. Thirtyfifth session of the OIC Council of Ministers, 18–20 June 2008  . “Thailand asks Indonesia to explain its policies to OIC”, ANTARA News, 2 September 2012. “Government bristles at OIC resolution”, Bangkok Post, 30 November 2012. “President Receives South Thailand Delegation to Bogor Peace Talks”, ANTARA News, 22 September 2008. “Kalla looks to champion global peace efforts”, Jakarta Post,  10 March 2012. “Kalla meets Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra”, Jakarta Post,  10 October 2011. “Bringing an end to the southern insurgency”, The Nation (Bangkok), 9 January 2013. “Indonesia criticizes Burma over Rohingya”, ABC Radio Australia, 9 February 2009. The Bali Process is an Indonesian–Australian 2002 initiative

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60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76.

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establishing a forum formally known as the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crimes. The “Final Statement of the Co-Chairs of the Third Bali Regional Ministerial Conference on People Smuggling, Human Trafficking and Transnational Crime” . “RI ready to fight for Rohingya”, Jakarta Post, 3 July 2012. “Yudhoyono writes to Thein Sein over Rohingya issue”, ANTARA News, 4 August 2012. “SBY Turns to Ex-Veep on Rohingya Issue”, Jakarta Globe, 18 August 2012. “President U Thein Sein asks President Yudhoyono to help settle Rohingya problem”, Jakarta Post, 21 November 2012. Marty’s OIC statement . “Myanmar blocks world Islamic body office after rallies”, Channel News Asia, 15 October 2012. “ASEAN concerned by Myanmar’s Rohingya”, AFP as cited in , 12 November 2012. “Thein Sein Pressed on Rohingya Citizenship”, The Irrawaddy,  6 November 2012. “Secretary-General outlines letter received from President of Myanmar pledging to deal with perpetrators of ‘senseless violence’ ” . “Indonesia pledges US$1m in aid to Myanmar’s Rakhine state”, Channel News Asia, 4 January 2013. President Yudhoyono’s speech at the 12th Summit of the OIC,  6 February 2013 . “Yudhoyono urges Myanmar to act on violence against Muslims”, Today (Singapore), 24 April 2013. “Rohingya, Rakhines need to rebuild trust, says Indonesia foreign minister”, Channel News Asia, 8 January 2013. “Keynote Address by H.E. Hassan Wirajuda, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia at the Opening Session of the Fourth ASEAN-UN Conference”, 24 February 2004 . “Leading ASEAN”, Jakarta Post, 2 March 2004. “Leading ASEAN”, Jakarta Post, 13 March 2004,

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77. Author’s interview with former foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda, 22 April 2013. 78. Simon Tay, “Does Sabah merit ASEAN’s attention?” The Nation (Bangkok), 13 March 2013. 79. “President Yudhoyono hopes Sabah problem to be resolved soon”, ANTARA News, 8 March 2013. 80. As quoted in “Cambodia, Thailand to face UN over border dispute”, Channel News Asia, 9 February 2011. 81. “Security Council Urges Permanent Ceasefire after Recent ThaiCambodian Clashes”, UN News Service, 14 February 2011. 82. . 83. Kor Kian Beng, “China’s navy flexes muscle in South China Sea”, Straits Times Asia Report, 28 March 2013. 84. In a 1989 interview with the author, in speaking of ASEAN’s reaction to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, Mochtar said, “All I had to do was pick up the telephone.” 85. “Background briefing by a Senior Administration Official on the President’s Meetings at ASEAN and the East Asia Summit” . 86. “Military Spending in Southeast Asia: Shopping Spree”, The Economist, 24 March 2012, p.100. 87. The “Notification and Claim” can be accessed at . 88. Author’s interview with Dr Hasjim Djalal, 23 April 2013. 89. The text of the Indonesian submission can be accessed at . 90. Author’s interview with Dr Hasjim Djalal, 23 April 2013. 91. “Daring Show of Force by PLA Navy”, South China Morning Post,  27 March 2013. 92. Carlyle A. Thayer (2012) had access to the notes of a participant in the July 2012 ASEAN Foreign Ministers Retreat that describe the internal debate. 93. The author could not find the statement on the ASEAN website. A copy can be found on the site of the ASEAN Studies Centre at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies as sourced from the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.   94. As quoted in “We need ocean code of conduct, Yudhoyono says”, South China Morning Post, 14 August 2012.   95. Ibid.   96. “Full text of ASEAN–China Joint Statement”, Xinhua, 20 November 2012 .   97. “China to start code of conduct talks with ASEAN soon”, Straits Times, 3 May 2012.   98. Kavi Chongkittavorn, “Thailand walks a tightrope on South China Sea”, The Nation (Bangkok), 7 May 2013.   99. This is stated in paragraph A.1 in the Bali Concord II. 100. Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, “An Indonesian Perspective on the Indo-Pacific”, Keynote Address to CSIS Indonesia Conference, 16 May 2012 . 101. Nelson (2013) has suggested that an Indonesian policy of “strategic neutrality” would allow it to become a regional mediator or facilitator in all regional disputes. 102. I use the term “strategic independence” with respect to independence from the ASEAN consensus. Supriyanto (2012) used strategic independence in relationship to China and the United States.

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