Ease foreign diplomacy

Zatni Arbi, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Jakarta

Who is to blame if Indonesia has lost its influence in ASEAN? The big irony, if we think about it, is that Indonesia's former president Soeharto was -- and is still -- considered one of the founding fathers of this regional association. When he was toppled in May 1998, Indonesia's role in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations began its rapid downturn. Today, Indonesia has less and less clout in this regional organization, which it built together with the four founding nations more than 35 years ago.

And who is to blame if we have increasing diplomatic entanglements even with our closest neighbors? Issues such as people-smuggling and illegal immigrants, and now terrorism, have increasingly strained our relationship with them. Fortunately, the ASEAN Spirit, which has been one of the main strengths of ASEAN, can still contain the problems we have with fellow ASEAN members.

As a nation, one of the biggest mistakes that we have made time and again lately has been to be extremely reactive when a more reserved attitude would be a better option. On the other hand, when quick and definite responses are badly required, we opt for inaction.

Looking back, what did we do when the region was covered with the haze from the fires that burned our forests blanketed the region, for example? Year after year, the haze created severe health hazard not only to our people but also to the people in the neighboring countries. It created so much economic burden, because airplanes were unable to land and take-off and people were not able to carry out their daily business. It gave us so much embarrassment at the international level, yet we did hardly anything.

On the other hand, when Indonesia was said to be a haven for certain terrorist cells, we reacted with a loud uproar. Our demonstrators went as far as burning other countries' flags and the effigies of their government heads. We justified this action, which is considered improper by international standard, by stating that it was an expression of our nationalism. We were a sovereign nation, we said.

When the Australian authority raided the residence of Indonesians living on their soil, we immediately exploded with rage. We felt very offended, and we refused to walk a mile in their shoes. And, to show our Indonesian solidarity, even our hackers launched concerted attacks to various institutions and organizations in Australia by defacing and hacking their homepages.

One could not help wondering, unfortunately, where was our nationalism when Indonesia was listed as one of the most corrupt countries in Asia by the Pacific Economic Risk Consultancy? Why did we fail to do anything when our human resource was ranked one of the lowest in the world? When our hackers, for example, placed indecent pictures and our Sang Saka flag on the foreign homepages that they were attacking, what good did it do in demonstrating our nationalism?

Nationalism will not help much, when so many conflicting voices are heard from our government officials, legislators, party leaders, public opinion makers and even scholars. It is not a secret that behind all these conflicting statements is the frantic effort to gain public popularity as these power-oriented figures jockey for positions in the 2004 election.

The problem of conflicting statements and the "too much talk" by our officials has been extensively discussed and criticized by political observers, scholars and practitioners alike. The end result to our foreign diplomacy is the same. We are no longer a credible state in the eye of the international community.

It is very easy to blame our Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the failure of our foreign diplomacy and for the continued deterioration of our image as a nation and a state. However, what could our diplomats do, if the rest of the country does not share a single vision and does not collaborate to support their mission? How can this department serve as an effective public relations body for Indonesia, if the rest of the government and the people continue to launch their own campaigns that are counterproductive to our foreign diplomacy?

It is a very difficult task, indeed. One thing that we can do, if we want to start to rebuild the relevance of Indonesia at the international level, is to be more careful and thoughtful in responding to whatever external development that affects us as a state.

Pushing the government to break diplomatic ties with other countries, for example, is just an impulsive reaction that will not only lead to worse damages but, more importantly, will not reflect the wisdom of a great nation that we would like to portray.

For many years, the job of our foreign ministers has not actually been something that too many of us really envy. Today, it is time to help ease the perils of our foreign diplomacy by exercising self-control and knowing better which international developments we really have to react to -- and in what way.