'Free and active' foreign policy no longer relevant

'Free and active' foreign policy no longer relevant

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia's "free-and-active" foreign policy is
no longer relevant because it was originally designed during the
Cold War, an expert in international relations said yesterday.

Now that the Cold War has ended and the New Order government
under President Soeharto has other foreign policy priorities,
Indonesia needs to reshape its foreign policy, Dewi Fortuna Anwar
said in a seminar on politics.

During the Cold War, Indonesia was concerned with containing
the spread of communism and maintained closer relations with the
West, said Dewi, who is a researcher at the Indonesian Institute
of Sciences (LIPI) and the Center for Information and Development
Studies.

"This means that the 'free-and-active' stance of the past,
which Indonesia used to its benefit during the rivalry between
the West and the East blocks, is no longer relevant," Dewi noted.

"Indonesia's options and initiatives in the international
context have become fewer nowadays than before," she said in the
seminar organized by LIPI.

The New Order administration has more opportunities to make
economic development its main priority and paramount
consideration in the international arena, she pointed out.

Dewi was discussing a paper presented by political scientist
Mochtar Mas'oed of Gadjah Mada University on the interaction of
global politics and the "ideals of the nation".

Mas'oed suggested that Indonesia develop a kind of nationalism
and a sense of belonging which people can feel for their country.

Now, Mas'oed said, the people are being treated as clients who
need to be served by various public services and policies in
return for their loyalty to the government.

Mas'oed also scrutinized Indonesia's weaknesses in the face of
global capital and its dependence on the industrialized
countries' capital, technology and market access.

Dewi added that global interaction has affected the Indonesian
people's struggle for democratization. During the Cold War era,
she said, the economic and political relations that the
government established with various foreign forces "hindered
democracy".

Using their campaign against communism here as justification,
Western countries and donor agencies chose to support the
government regardless of whether it was democratic or not, she
said.

"There was even a tendency for the foreign capital to support
non-democratic governments as long as they were against
communism," she said.

After the Cold War, the situation changed drastically.
"Democracy and protection of human rights became a major agenda
in the international economic and political relationship, and in
the donor agencies' means to apply pressure," she said, adding
that this was reflected in social clauses of their financial
assistance.

Noted economic observer Christianto Wibisono and businessman
Iman Taufik discussed economic democracy and conglomerates. They
debated whether conglomerates are an asset or a liability to
social, economic and political development.

Iman asserted that conglomerates are an asset, that they are
basically "good" and that it is only "their behavior that should
be checked". Problems such as collusion and corruption, he said,
cannot be blamed on the part of the giant businesses alone.

Indonesia probably needs to establish a code of ethics for
government officials to prevent them from colluding with big
businesses, he said. (swe)