Indonesia and the future of ASEAN

Indonesia and the future of ASEAN

The following article is based on an address by Rodolfo C.
Severino, Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations, at a conference on "ASEAN Into the New Millennium: The
Road Ahead" sponsored by the Indonesia Council on World Affairs
in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia
and the ASEAN Secretariat. This is the first of two articles.

JAKARTA: During the one and a half years that I have been
ASEAN Secretary-General, I have spoken to many audiences all
around ASEAN, in Australia, in New Zealand, in Japan, in Hong
Kong, and in the United States. I have talked about what ASEAN is
and what it is not, what it aims to do and what it cannot do,
about ASEAN's origins and accomplishments, what it has done, what
it is trying to do and what it has failed to do, its hopes and
its vision and the course that it has set for itself. I have
talked about the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA), ASEAN
Industrial Cooperation Plan and ASEAN Investment Area (AIA),
ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation
(TAC), Zone of Peace Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) and
Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (SEANWFZ).

Surprisingly, however, aside from a talk that I gave to a
private club in Jakarta more than a year ago, this is the first
time that I am speaking before a largely Indonesian audience. I
thank the Indonesian Council on World Affairs for giving me this
chance to set aright this state of affairs, to speak before
Indonesians in Jakarta, where ASEAN's headquarters is.

In this light, I wish to discuss about the place of Indonesia
in ASEAN's history and about its role in ASEAN's future.

Ever since President Soeharto was replaced as Indonesia's
leader in May last year, the media and others have often asked:
Now that President Soeharto is no longer in power, and now that
Indonesia is in transition, what will happen to ASEAN? President
Soeharto, after all, was the last of ASEAN's founding fathers to
leave office, and Indonesia under the New Order was perceived as
ASEAN's leader.

My answer to such questions has been this: ASEAN is already a
going concern. It no longer depends, if it ever did, on
individual leaders. In the case of Indonesia, the policies and
attitudes that Indonesia under Soeharto brought to ASEAN have
been long in place. There is no sign that these are changing. At
the working level, ASEAN has not missed a step as a result of the
change of leadership in Indonesia. Indonesian participation in
ASEAN has not diminished.

I have not had a chance to elaborate on this answer - until
today.

Indonesia, indeed, has been and continues to be important to
ASEAN, but not in the shallow and simplistic terms in which many
commentators present it today, not in the superficial sense of
Indonesia being ASEAN's leader because of its size and the
qualities of its leader.

What Indonesia brought to ASEAN at the time of its birth was
something that gave ASEAN weight, strength and direction,
something indeed that made ASEAN possible. This was the
transformation of policy and attitude that Indonesia underwent
and that brought it in step, along with the rest of non-communist
Southeast Asia, with the demands of the times. Indonesia, by
1967, had transformed its economic policies and its attitude
toward its neighbors and the world at large. The new priority was
development, and whatever it took to achieve it, domestically or
internationally. A large dose of pragmatism was the order of the
day.

From a statist, mercantilist, import-substituting economy,
Indonesia's economy had started to move to one that was market-
driven, export-oriented and open to foreign trade and investment.
Its foreign policy had shifted from one that was confrontational
toward its neighbors and defiant of the West to one that placed
great value on cooperation with its neighbors and good relations
with the world beyond, including the West.

Without such a transformation of economic and foreign policy
in Indonesia, ASEAN as we know it would not have come about. If
Indonesia had maintained a relatively closed economy, relying on
commodity exports, resorting to import-substitution and dominated
by state enterprises, the degree and kind of ASEAN economic
cooperation and integration that we have today would not have
been possible.

ASEAN would not have been open to and plugged into the global
economy the way that it is now. If Indonesia had kept to its
narrowly nationalistic posture toward the world and retained its
suspiciousness toward its neighbors, the level of mutual trust
and regional identity that are the key to ASEAN's success could
not have been attained.

This is the importance of Indonesia to ASEAN, rather than one
man's leadership or Indonesia's size alone. There is no sign that
this basic policy orientation of Indonesia or its fundamental
commitment to regionalism has diminished despite the political
changes that the country is undergoing.

At the same time, after the turmoil of 1965 and 1966,
Indonesia made clear its continued adherence to a national policy
of ethnic, racial and religious tolerance, of unity in diversity,
that had kept -- and continues to keep -- the nation together.

This had a reassuring effect on its would-be partners in
ASEAN, all of whom, in one form or another, to one degree or
another, were blessed with ethnic diversity and threatened by
ethnic division.

Any erosion of this policy of tolerance in Indonesia would
have ignited fears of contagion in its neighbors, which might
have led them to seal themselves off from Indonesian influence.
Divisiveness in Indonesia might thus have led to unbridgeable
regional divisions in Southeast Asia.

Moreover, Indonesia, in its wisdom, allowed itself to wield
its already considerable weight in the world in the new context
of ASEAN. In this way, ASEAN has been able to avoid the problem
of some other regional associations, which are hampered and
burdened by the dominance of their largest members.

Instead, Indonesia's international influence, prestige and
activism, magnified by its new internationalist posture, were to
be placed in ASEAN's service -- at the United Nations, in the
Non-Aligned Movement, in the Group of 77, and in other
international forums.

In terms of style and approach, the Indonesian insistence on
musyawarah and mufakat firmed up the preference of the other
Southeast Asians for consultation and consensus as the mode for
regional decision-making. Any other mode would have made
agreement in ASEAN much more difficult, if not impossible, rather
than easier and more quickly, as some superficial media and
academic commentaries assert these days. This has come to be
known as the ASEAN way, which has put its stamp on the ASEAN
Regional Forum and APEC.

The Indonesian concept of national resilience and regional
resilience reinforcing each other strengthened the Southeast
Asian conviction about the close linkage between political
stability and economic development at both the national and
regional levels.

Thus, responding to the demands of development, the five
founding members of ASEAN -- Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore and Thailand -- gave primacy to economic
considerations in their domestic and external policies.

As a matter of basic economic policy, they opted for a stance
that favored market forces, albeit with a significant measure of
state intervention, an enlarged role for the private sector, the
export of processed goods as well as commodities, the import of
capital goods and industrial raw materials, openness to foreign
investment, and an active quest of foreign grants and credits.

They chose to advance the security of the region, as well as
their own national security, by forging constructive relations,
both among themselves and with the rest of the world, rather than
by taking sides in the cold war or by a posture of confrontation.

They decided that, for the sake of regional solidarity, they
would isolate any bilateral disputes from their overall relations
with one another. They sought economic progress and political
stability in significant measure through regional cooperation and
solidarity.

This was to be the basis for ASEAN's eventually robust
viability, and it was made possible by Indonesia's reversal of
its fundamental policy orientation prior to ASEAN's founding.
Similar reversals were to open the way for the membership in
ASEAN of other countries in Southeast Asia.

The road that ASEAN took led to a degree of success that even
its founders dared not envision. ASEAN has been able to manage
the immense diversity of Southeast Asia, with its host of
bilateral disputes, so that conflict between its members has
become all but unthinkable. The Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapons-
Free Zone is now in effect, with consultations going on for the
accession of the nuclear-weapon states to its protocol. The ASEAN
Regional Forum is now a going concern.

ASEAN has achieved a substantial level of economic integration
despite the skepticism of many through the years. For the six
original signatories to the AFTA treaty, which are ASEAN's
leading trading nations, the ASEAN Free Trade Area will be
completed in less than two and a half years.

ASEAN members have decided to open up their manufacturing
sectors to ASEAN investments and to extend national treatment to
such investments. They have agreed on a common set of incentives,
in addition to their respective national measures, for
investments from outside the region.

Over the years, ASEAN has developed networks of cooperation
that have been increasing its capacity to deal with growing
transnational problems involving the environment, transnational
crime, human resource development, and the promotion of social
safety nets. It has achieved a high degree of coordination in the
councils of the world.

The recent financial crisis has put ASEAN to its severest test
in decades, and for now ASEAN seems to have overcome the worst of
it. Commentators outside and even in Southeast Asia, many of whom
should have known better, predicted that ASEAN would fall into
disarray, if not break up, as a result of the crisis. Contrary to
these instant predictions, ASEAN has pushed forward the
integration of Southeast Asia's economies.

It has accelerated the completion of ASEAN Free Trade Area.
ASEAN members have agreed to open up their economies further to
ASEAN and other foreign investments. They have been cooperating
closely on financial matters, particularly through the economic
surveillance process. They have resolved to help one another to
cushion their societies from the severest impact of this and
future crises.