Foreign policy lacks ability to confront terror threats

Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia's foreign policy lacked the ability to cope with the regional shift in security threats, where transnational crimes like terrorism have overshadowed traditional threats from other countries, analysts said on Tuesday.

They said Indonesia was facing a more complex world with threats coming from organizations and individuals that do not represent their countries of origin.

Indonesia's foreign policy dated back to the Cold War era, while it needed one that was more responsive to changes, said foreign policy analysts during a seminar on regional security.

"Traditional security threats, such as wars between countries, are not significant within ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)," foreign policy analyst Dewi Fortuna Anwar of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) told reporters. "We (ASEAN) have a code of conduct to resolve friction, so it's hard to imagine two ASEAN countries at war."

C.P.F. Luhulima, another analyst and a senior fellow of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), commented, "We need to change our mind-set."

Indonesia's "free and active" or non-alignment foreign policy made sense in the Cold War era when the world was still divided into East and West blocks, he explained.

Back then, foreign policies assumed that other states were the main actors of a foreign security threat. "But if the actors are non-states, then it becomes difficult to apply the free and active foreign policy as before," he added.

The free and active principle forms the basis of Indonesia's foreign policy as stipulated in the preamble to the 1945 Constitution.

Former senior diplomat Wiryono Sastrohandoyo said that in the 1950s, Indonesia applied the policy to its benefit by flirting with either the U.S. or the Soviet Union.

The policy was neglected during the early 1960s when Indonesia strengthened ties with the Communist block. Soeharto's rise to power put an end to this orientation and Indonesia "almost instantly" entered the Western block, Wiryono said.

The fall of the Communist block gave rise to new and more complex threats. Piracy of vessels and cargo, money laundering, smuggling and terrorism were examples of transnational crimes that called for a new approach, the analysts said.

"For instance, Indonesian waters are seen as the most dangerous in terms of threats from pirates," said Dewi.

Such threats raised the insurance premium charged on vessels leaving or heading to Indonesia that made trading with Indonesia more expensive, she explained.

Foreign illegal fishing vessels roaming Indonesian waters, she added, was another example of how transnational crime was costing the country millions of U.S. dollars in potential revenues.

Indonesia's response to these changes was slow, said Dewi.

"This country still thinks conservatively," she said of the traditional approach to security threats that underpin Indonesia's foreign policy.

Most of the world had the same problem, though, she added, and said that the U.S. went to war against terrorism much in the same way it would have fought wars against other countries.

Wiryono said Indonesia cannot handle transnational crimes alone and as such, international cooperation had become more important than ever.

No country could face the threat on its own and thus, "it calls for closer regional and international cooperation, and the most appropriate forum would be the United Nations."

On the regional front, he said, this might require ASEAN members to also look into each others' domestic problems -- something that had long been taboo.

"Because what happens in one country, even in one that is far away, can effect the lives and interests of one's own country," he said.