Foreign policy: Think globally, act locally

J. Soedjati Djiwandono, Political Analyst, Jakarta

President Megawati Soekarnoputri's visit to North Korea has been highlighted in the media coverage of her visit to four Asian countries, including China, South Korea and India. From the beginning, this particular visit seems to have been injected with the idea, or at least the expectation, that President Megawati would carry with her a special mission. This mission was to persuade President Kim Yong-il to return to the negotiating table.

She would thus embark "on possibly the most important diplomatic mission of her brief presidency as she flies to Pyongyang carrying an invitation for North Korea to again engage in peaceful dialog", as this paper put it.

If successful, that diplomatic mission, which, according to the newly appointed spokesman for the foreign office in a dialog on television, was in line with the expectations of the "regional powers", perhaps referring to Southeast Asia or East Asia, would certainly boost the image of Indonesia's active foreign policy.

It would give it an aura of grandeur and glory, something which at the moment is seemingly so badly needed by a Megawati government and an Indonesian people that have been increasingly losing their self-confidence as a result of the never-ending crisis. In fact, there have been hints that none other than President George W. Bush of the U.S., besides President Kim Dae- jung of South Korea, conveyed such an invitation for President Megawati to carry to Pyongyang.

Indeed, the President's visit to North Korea has provided a rare occasion of what looks to be a neat cooperation in public relations, if not by design, between the government and the media, which has often been blamed by the foreign office, along with its own less-than proactive diplomats, for its failure to paint a good image of Indonesia overseas.

While the President herself has mostly been reticent about her mission, public opinion, or at least published opinion, in both the print and electronic media, strengthened by government public relations maneuvers, has succeeded in turning what may have been a mere myth into what many believe to be a reality.

Unfortunately, Indonesians seem to be somewhat notorious for their penchant for myths. Again for the sake of grandeur and glory, and perhaps for purposes of nation building. For instance, as a nation we tend to cherish the myth that we obtained our independence by revolutionary means rather than above all by diplomacy. We love to hear praise from foreign countries that Indonesia was a pioneer of the Non-Aligned Movement, whereas in fact first president Sukarno was opposed to it from the very beginning.

He preferred, rather, the extension of the unity and solidarity among the newly independent Afro-Asian nations, beginning with the Afro-Asian/Bandung Conference of 1955, so as to include Latin American nations and the socialist countries into the "new emerging forces" as opposed to the "old established forces" of the industrialized West.

Indeed, if President Megawati should be interested in learning from her late father's increasingly megalomaniac tendencies in his foreign policy, she should learn more from his mistakes than from his flamboyant style and demagogy. Dizzy with his success, to borrow Stalin's words, in his strategy to recover West Irian by using the Soviet saber to seduce the U.S. role in his favor, he carried over too far into embarking on a confrontational policy that finally led to his downfall.

It thus seems doubtful if references to the Bandung Conference of 1955 and to Megawati's memories of her childhood encounter with the present North Korean leader are of real relevance to the present-day diplomacy. `In the meantime, one should consider Megawati's lack of diplomatic experience and her untested competence in such a complex diplomatic undertaking, not to mention the possible lack of Indonesian diplomatic credibility because of the acute crisis that has beset the country so as to render it one of the pariahs of today's world.

Therefore, much as we Indonesians would love to see our own country play a meaningful and constructive role in the regional and even world arena, there seems to be hardly any asset that could sustain such a role with sufficient credibility and ensure any degree of success. Indonesia is the largest archipelago and now the fourth largest nation in the world in terms of population, but that greatness has yet to be translated into economic and military strength, and thus political influence.

Indeed, in a world still dominated by nation-states as the main state actors, despite globalization, it continues to be a valid maxim in international relations that a nation's foreign policy is primarily motivated by what it perceives as the priority of its national interests, however defined, at a given moment.

For the moment, the top priority of Indonesia's national interests should be economic recovery. And to that end, it badly needs credibility in the eyes of foreign creditors and investors. To regain that credibility, however, the Megawati government must be able to resolve continuing communal conflicts in the country in order to restore domestic peace and stability, and to establish law and order.

In a nutshell, Indonesia must above all be able to put its house in order first. All the efforts of its foreign policy, at whatever level, ought to be focused on that top priority. The President may think globally, but for some time to come she should primarily act locally.