JP/3/Insight

JP/3/Insight

Paul Wolfowitz: A friend of Indonesia

Jusuf Wanandi
Jakarta

I met Paul Wolfowitz for the first time when he was head of
Policy Planning at the State Department, and then again as
Assistant Secretary for East Asia and the Pacific in the early
80's. We became close friends when he was ambassador in Jakarta
from 1986 to 1989. He remains a friend of Indonesia, although he
has not had the opportunity to visit Indonesia many times since
he left Indonesia and joined the government. He was one of the
best U.S. ambassadors in Indonesia since I have been following
U.S. affairs when Marshall Green was ambassador in 1965.

Not only was he an official representative of the U.S.
President, dealing with the Indonesian government and
bureaucracy, but he was also actively engaged with Indonesian
society. Everything he did was full of enthusiasm. He has shown
his empathy for the Indonesian people and its diversity in his
dealing with many groups in society. He showed his empathy to the
Indonesian people when, at his farewell address, he mentioned the
need for flexibility and openness in the Indonesian political
system under president Soeharto.

This has created strong reactions among the elite and the
Indonesian government particularly. He was one of the few Western
ambassadors who kept a close relationship with Muslim groups and
was the first Western ambassador ever to have been invited to
give a lecture at Muhammadiyah University in Jakarta. He was
delighted to learn about their progressive ideas and
interpretation of Islamic teachings.

He was especially close to Abdurrahman Wahid, former
Nahdlatul Ulama chairman, and Nurcholish Madjid, president of
Paramadina University, two stalwarts for Islamic reforms and
modernization. He always made the time to meet them in Washington
D.C. during his busy schedule as deputy secretary of Department
of Defense.

After he left and joined the Bush Sr. Administration in 1989,
he still kept contact with Indonesia and Indonesians everywhere.
When he was dean of SAIS at Johns Hopkins University during the
Clinton Administration he was a regular visitor to Indonesia,
especially in the transition period when Soeharto stepped down in
1988.

He also headed USINDO (US-Indonesia Society) as chair of the
board until he became deputy secretary of defense. He received
many guests from Indonesia, although he was busy as Deputy
Secretary, especially after Sept. 11, 2001. He publicly exposed
his admiration for both Turkish and Indonesian Islam, which have
been generally compatible with modernization and democracy. He
stated this, among other things, at an important speech he gave
at the Brookings Institute in 2002. He has helped President
Megawati, when she was struggling to get her act together after
Sept. 11, and asked for patience from his colleagues in the U.S.
Administration.

He was definitely behind the quick response from the U.S.
forces to the tsunami disaster in Aceh. When he visited Jakarta
after his trip to Aceh in February, a lot of his old friends met
him and had an open exchange with him. They were more bewildered
by Paul's ideas on Iraq and the Middle East than negatively
critical of him. He answered them quite openly and admitted some
of the mistakes made at the beginning of the post-war nation
building in Iraq because of misinformation about the expected
problems that followed a war that was very short.

The U.S. was more prepared for refugees and hunger than on the
security problems they would face. It could be argued that many
Indonesian Muslims are against his policies, especially towards
Iraq. But they would like to hear from him themselves. He did
plan to come to Jakarta in early December 2003 for a conference,
but had to cancel it because his boss Secretary Rumsfeld went to
Afghanistan and Iraq. He would have met a lot of Muslim leaders
organized by Muhammadiyah to hear from him about U.S. policies to
have a debate with them.

Will he be good for Indonesia as the World Bank president? For
sure, he is a person that has great empathy towards a developing
Muslim country that is trying hard to make democracy work and
would like to modernize the country by efforts to alleviate
poverty, educate the people and keep them healthy.

We might argue about his methods to achieve democracy in the
Middle East, especially Iraq, but he has the right idea that
change has to happen in that region towards modernization,
democracy and economic development. With the elections in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine, a start has been made, but the
outcome is still a question mark. So many things still have to
fall in place, and they need luck in the future to secure
sustained freedom and democracy, peace and modernization. This
has already started and let us hope that real progress will
happen in those places.

Perhaps Paul's shortcoming was that he was not listening
enough to a wide range of expertise that could make his
approaches to achieve his goals more acceptable. He can do that
now as head of the most important international finance
institution to lay down the foundation for modernization,
development and progress in the developing world.

The author is Co-founder, Member, Board of Trustees and Senior
Fellow of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS) in Jakarta.