Posts from the “International” Category

Japan-China relations and Indonesia’s Foreign Policy

Posted on April 24, 2015

When Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meet in Jakarta and Bandung this week, the shadow of the China-Japan rivalry will be marked by historical as well as contemporary issues. These define the changing circumstances that will influence Indonesia’s current priorities in its foreign policy initiatives toward Asia’s two giants.

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Xi carries the mantle of Zhou Enlai, China’s charismatic premier who wowed the Bandung and Jakarta crowds back in 1955 by solidly backing Indonesian president Sukarno in supporting Indonesia’s nascent anti-colonial stance, whilst at the same time seeking to maintain Sukarno’s attempts to accommodate Japan’s rise to recovery and its future role in an increasingly post-colonial Southeast Asia.

At the same time, Xi carries the burden of managing China’s increasingly complicated internal situation, most importantly curbing corruption within its rampantly uncontrollable bureaucracies in China’s diverse provinces.

Abe seeks to maintain Japan’s reliance on the protection of the U.S. Pacific Command while at the same time pursuing a more Asia-centric foreign policy to accommodate Japanese public opinion, which seeks a more independent role to play in East Asia and the Pacific.

Both leaders implicitly accept the fact that in the foreseeable future there is no real alternative to the future of China’s and Japan’s economic and exports future other than to rely on the American naval dominance over the sea lines of communication that link the export and import hubs of China and Japan’s vital communications straddling East Asia, the Indian and Pacific oceans and points beyond.

Indonesian foreign policy will have to deftly navigate and at the same time accommodate Xi’s desire to harmonize internal political and economic priorities at home with its assertive role in the East Asia region without threatening the current balance of forces in the Western Pacific.

Abe’s role is no less difficult. He must assure the Chinese government that Japan’s own version of a “peaceful rise” will not bring fears of a Japanese revival of the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of the early 1940s, which led to the Pacific War with the United States and its allies.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s role as an honest broker will be tested in the immediate aftermath of this week’s meeting to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Asian-African Conference in Bandung. His promise is to exercise foreign policy that is firm, focused and down to earth. Like Xi and Abe, Jokowi will ultimately be defined by his domestic performance at home.

While Xi is under pressure at home to be more assertive against Japanese revanchism and Abe is under pressure from Japanese nationalists who want their country to curb perceived unilateralism, Jokowi is under pressure from the ultras within his Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) who want him to be more assertive, injecting Sukarno-style populism into Indonesian economic and financial policy making.

For Jokowi the AAC commemorative summit comes on the heels of his trip to Tokyo and Beijing to forge Jakarta’s ties with its long-time Asian trading partners.

The time is opportune for Jokowi to raise questions about the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, which China has initiated and which has won global support. Jokowi can ask his Chinese counterpart, among others, whether the AIIB is feasible in terms of implementing a “clean, green and transparent” organization to include founding member status.

While major economies like the U.K., Germany and France have agreed to join the AIIB, Japan, which dominates the Asian Development Bank (as well as the U.S., which controls the World Bank) has expressed its wariness toward the AIIB.

Jokowi may also ask Abe to follow up on Japan’s commitment to assisting non-Java provinces to rebalance the Indonesian economy in favor of eastern Indonesia and rescue Indonesia from inequality and disintegration.

As for domestic pressures, they have much in common; Jokowi can persuade Xi and Abe that their performances at home need patience to adjust to current and immediate needs and expediencies.

Jokowi can remind Xi and Abe of the Asian adage on which all great Asian civilizations can rely; time will be on their side.

Those who try to hurry up history may find themselves trapped in the ancient tale of the hare who tried to outrun the turtle.

Categories: International

Living in a VUCA world

Posted on July 29, 2014

True to form, the US military has come up with yet another set of buzzwords to define the current policy confusion that confronts the situation facing American forces assigned to trouble spots around the world.

In the 1950s, it was SNAFU (Situation Normal: All F—-d Up). Now, in the wake of the political, economic and cultural crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, East Asia and a host of flare-ups in other regions of the world, US forces — the army, navy, air force and marines — face the thankless task of operating in some of the world’s most intractable trouble spots comprising wars, insurgencies and tribal conflicts, many of which were born out of local
rivalries but are often blamed (fairly or unfairly) on American involvement, or on American fears that such tribal or local wars may end up challenging America’s national security interests.

One of the outcomes of the investigation into the personal backgrounds of the 9/11 hijackers led to a broader question among Americans: “Why do they hate us?” This was a variation on the Cold War question of why were the Soviets so anti-American at the height of US-Soviet rivalry throughout the world.

American diplomats, aid agencies and military attachés who work in embassies continue to carry the burden of this cultural overhang. Those who specifically engage in “stability operations” in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq following the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 find themselves trying to figure out ways to confront today’s world of Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) at every level — in staff, field and theater operations.

How does one define a reliable war lord; an exile who commands sufficient leadership authority to follow through on an election cycle that guarantees a modicum of longevity to satisfy the desk jockey in charge of funding America’s programs, subject to periodic Congressional approval? Who guarantees the guarantor?

What level of support is given to covert operations that effectively make renditions in Asia or Latin America serve the US’ immediate policy goals across state, Pentagon and National Security Agency (NSA) levels?

How effective are experts in Islamic studies in gauging the proper pitch to ascertain American success? In the mid-1990s, the renowned scholar, Bernard Lewis, was invited by then US ambassador to Indonesia, Paul Wolfowitz, to dinner to meet Nurcholish Madjid. The consensus reached at the time was that Indonesia was a modern society destined to be a role model for other Muslim-majority countries, including in the Middle East.

Such was the belief in Pentagon circles that in March 2003, Wolfowitz was convinced, based on his experience as the ambassador in Indonesia, that the US invasion in Iraq would be welcomed by Iraqis who would be only too glad to oust Saddam Hussein.

No one in the Pentagon or in Jakarta, least of all in Iraq, realized that the VUCA world had arrived. In Iraq, stability operations fell apart, as political, cultural and especially sectarian differences rose their ugly heads and upended all notions of policy effectiveness.

The world has changed greatly from the Jack Ryan dramas depicted in Tom Clancy’s novels and the movies based on them.

Even the world post Osama bin Laden’s death in May 2011 (Zero Dark 30) is having to be constantly revised and updated.

Categories: International

The Quality of Humility

Posted on June 23, 2013

The Canadian author-historian, Margaret Macmillan, who wrote the seminal work “Paris 1919” on the 6-month long international conference in Versailles at the end of World War I, wrote of a Vietnamese kitchen assistant working at the Ritz Hotel in Paris who unsuccessfully sought to have his country recognized by the great powers among the swirling hustle of the major powers, including France, Britain and the emergent United States. The kitchen assistant, a gangly, thin but determined 28 year old, was Ho Chi Minh, who in September 1945, declared Vietnam independent following the surrender of Japanese forces to the US at Tokyo Bay.

Later, in the 1950s, as French colonial forces sought to regain control over Indo-China, Ho Chi Minh and his “rag tag of black pajama and sandals” guerillas defeated the pride of French intellectual, bureaucratic and military elite at the garrison of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, Ho Chi Min, aided by the military legend, Vo Nguyen Giap, rose to world wide political and military fame. Ho Chi Minh participated in the April 1955 Asian African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, along with Jawarhalal Nehru (India), Zhou Enlai (China) Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), and Sukarno (Indonesia).

In the early 1960s, Ho Chi Minh visited Indonesia and was conferred an honorary doctorate at Bandung. Ho Chi Minh spoke of the most important education he received was not from schools, colleges or universities but from “The School of Life” which tested his determination, resilience and moral strength. Indonesian president Sukarno, who attended the ceremony later spoke to students in Jakarta, which I attended as a second year student at the University of Indonesia. Sukarno spoke warmly about “this simple and humble man who never graduated from college or university” but possessed the determined quality of humanity that conquered the nation whose sin was to remind France to live up to its own commitment to Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite”. I have never forgotten that image of both Ho Chi Minh and Sukarno at that very moving moment of first generation leaders of Vietnam and Indonesia who wrested power rather than being granted independence by a stubborn yet receding colonial power.

I have often wondered how third and fourth generation Vietnamese, Indonesian,
and indeed African and Latin American, European and American leaders view the historical spectrum facing each country’s current predicament? Can they recapture the spirit that once moved their forbears into bring out the best of their intellectual courage and moral fibre to the fore? Can and will they reinvigorate the quality of public service in their personal, social and professional conduct as leaders? Can they withstand the forces of predatory financial power that erodes their determination to maintain political and cultural space that underlies the power of humility? Will they heed John F Kennedy’s call in his inaugural address more than 50 years ago that “those who do not allow peaceful revolution possible will make violent revolution inevitable?”

Categories: International, Nation