Indonesia in America's regional policy

Indonesia in America's regional policy

What's behind the hints towards better U.S. ties with
Indonesia? Lecturers at Deakins University in Australia, Dr.
Damien Kingsbury, a co-editor of 'Reformasi': Crisis and Change
in Indonesia, and Scott Burchill who teaches international
relations, discuss the issue.

GEELONG, Victoria (JP): Following the visit by U.S. Secretary
of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
security issues in the region are starting to look much clearer.
A widespread belief that Indonesia is edging towards
disintegration should now be laid to rest.

It has become a truism of secessionism that, to be successful,
it often requires the support of an active external sponsor. Some
examples of successful secessionism, or fragmentation, include Panama
from Columbia (supported by the United States), Bangladesh from
Pakistan (India), the Soviet satellites and states, and
Yugoslavia (U.S. and NATO) and East Timor (Portugal and the
United Nations).

Indonesia has numerous trouble spots but only two, Aceh and
West Papua, officially Irian Jaya, have the clear goal of
secession. Dissent in Riau, near Singapore, is largely rhetorical
and the recreation of Republic of South Maluku in Ambon is a
faint echo of the secession movement of 1950 amplified by
communal conflict.

It has been suggested, however, that the success of one
secessionist movement in Indonesia could, domino-like, trigger
more. This raises the issue of external support. The only country
that has the capacity to support secession is the U.S. To do
this, the U.S. would require that its strategic and economic
interests were best served by such secession.

On his recent visit to Indonesia, Rumsfeld said that he would
like to see renewed military aid to Indonesia's armed forces, the
TNI. This is despite a lack of meaningful reform of the TNI and
indeed its reinvigorated political influence, as well as the
fading of an already dim prospect of trial for those responsible
for the carnage in East Timor in 1999.

The reason for the support of the U.S. for the TNI is because
the Bush administration has decided that, as a part of its
renewed focus on East Asia, the unity of Indonesia serves a
greater strategic purpose.

Despite the superficial friendliness of the visit to Beijing
by Powell and Rumsfeld, China is now seen by the U.S. as the
major strategic threat, not just to Asia but to the world.
Russia, India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan already flank China,
and Southeast Asia completes the circle.

There has long been a view in Southeast Asia that an
economically enhanced China would, almost by definition, throw
its weight around in a region it has historically considered its
"backyard". Hence the states of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations developed the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), as well
as a less formal strategic coalition. The lynchpin of ASEAN, and
of a China-containment coalition, is Indonesia. And Indonesia has
been a useless strategic partner since 1997.

Within Indonesia, if Aceh and West Papua were successful in
their bids for independence this would not necessarily destroy
the core of the state. However, as two of the biggest sources of
state revenue, from oil and minerals respectively, their loss
would further damage Indonesia's still moribund economy.

Even more so than East Timor, their loss would send
Indonesia's political elite into a rage, which despite all else
has remained committed to the idea of maintaining a united (and
unitary) state. This sentiment remained strong under the
presidency of Abdurrahman Wahid, and has been further enhanced by
the election of Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Should another country support secession in particular in
Aceh, Indonesia could be expected to call into question the
repayment of existing U.S.-backed loans from the International
Monetary Fund and would bring the ARF undone. It would also
further limit the compromised use of the Straits of Malacca, and
probably close the main Indian-Pacific Ocean nuclear submarine
passage of the Ombai-Wetar Straits in East Nusa Tenggara.

To this end, a united Indonesia with a mollified political
elite all under the watchful eye of a re-armed TNI fits the
larger U.S. game plan much better. Australia's primary concern in
this is securing the border between East and West Timor, and this
was no doubt part of Powell and Rumsfeld's trade-off with the
TNI. Thus assured, Australia is further strategically beholden to
the U.S. As such, Australia is likely to become more conservative
on the Aceh and West Papua issues.

As with support for Soeharto's New Order during the Cold War
such a political scenario will not resolve Indonesia's many
regional problems, but rather screw the repressive political lid
back down again. In the greater strategic game, it seems, there
remains a school of thought that believes repression is
acceptable.