Lingering problems: TNI, the state, the nation

Lingering problems: TNI, the state, the nation

Damien Kingsbury, Senior Lecturer, International Development,
Deakin University, Victoria, Australia

Just before he died, in 1998 the architect of the military's
middle way, Gen. Abdul Haris Nasution, said that he regretted the
military's development of the dual defense and political
function. He said that this was because the dual function had
come to exceed his intentions for a civil role for the military,
and because the military had become a law unto itself.

Gen. Nasution was not the only one to regret the military's
political role. The outpouring of public frustration in the last
couple of years of Soeharto's rule and just after indicated that
there was deep and widespread discontent with the dual function.

The fall of Soeharto, and the partial winding back of the
military's political function, was greeted by the vast majority
of Indonesians with relief. This was the era of reform.

Just a few short years later, very few people still talk about
the reform process as a contemporary event. Most now say the
process has halted, and many even say that some of its gains are
being wound back.

Most worrying in this changing political climate is the use of
political correctness. The military formerly required public
obedience to the ambiguous five principles (Pancasila) of the
state. Now the military requires public obedience to the even
more vague mantra of "nationalism", encapsulated within the term
of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI).

This new political correctness has most clearly been seen in
relation to the current military operation in Aceh. It has also
seen the reintroduction of restrictions on what is arguably the
greatest reform achievement, a free press, which is now being
cajoled, threatened, and worse.

But this new NKRI mantra has two fundamental problems. The
first problem is a basic confusion of ideas.

Nationalism implies a sense of belonging to a political group
in which constituent members voluntarily identify with each
other. That is, they identify in common as members of a broad
form of united political expression.

The nation, therefore, refers to people, and its equivalent
word in Indonesian is bangsa. Yet the term NKRI clearly refers to
the state (negara), which in this case is defined as both unitary
and republican. The state implies a spatial territory and the
laws and institutions that govern it.

The commonly aspired to political model for formally modern
states is as a nation-state. States that are based on national
identity, such as most of those of Europe and North America, can
claim to be nation-states. The advantage of the nation-state is
its relative sense of voluntary cohesion and hence stability.

However, those states not formed around a pre-existing
national identity have greater difficulty in staking a claim to
being a nation-state, and consequent problems with stability.
Some states can and do move towards constructing a national
identity, and Indonesia has been an example of this process.

Its exercise in "nation creation" has been relatively
successful, especially when considered against the odds of a
culturally diverse basis across a non-contiguous territory and
drawing upon the geographic rationale of the conquests of a
colonial empire.

However, this created sense of "nation" does not exist amongst
all in the state, and the imposition of national identity has
only succeeded in so far as the state has had the will and the
capacity to enforce it.

Such imposition of "nationalist" corporate statism has most
commonly been identified with variations of fascism. Political
analysts have long noted the philosophical origins of the
Indonesian state, and in particular of the TNI, both of which
were deeply influenced by European organicism and Japanese
militarism, both of which were fascistic.

These malignant influences found their fullest expression
under Soeharto. One very important consequence of this was that
many people included in the still emerging state, and who might
have been warming to the idea of nation, were alienated from it.

Instead of the corporate state welcoming and encouraging its
citizens in all their diversity, it too often imposed harsh
repression, lost their trust and goodwill, and ultimately drove
them away from the idea of "nation".

The clearest examples of this now exist in Papua and in Aceh,
although it was also explicit in East Timor, and finds varying
degrees of expression in places like Maluku, Riau, West and
Central Kalimantan, and parts of Sulawesi.

The answer to this "nation-failure" has been state violence,
organized and perpetrated by the TNI, or its proxies. This then
leads to the second problem with the NKRI mantra.

An earlier case of opposition to the organization of the
state, the PRRI- Permesta Rebellion, was crushed by the TNI's
military forerunner. It then used this military success as the
rationalization for its political role, via Gen. Nasution's
"middle way", which ultimately created the corporatist state
under Soeharto. It was here that Gen. Nasution realized he had
unleashed a self-perpetuating monster.

Instead of corporate statism, however, the state's response to
grievances should have been to listen, to recognize their
legitimacy and to help resolve them. This would have encouraged
dissenters to feel they are part of a national family, rather
than outcasts only fit for punishment.

After 1998, there was a brief shift away from the "punishment"
model, recognizing that, in large part, legitimate grievances
could only be answered by increasing local control over local
affairs. "Local autonomy" was offered as a sort of "federalism
lite".

Yet the recent rhetoric of "special" autonomy for the worst
affected regions -- Aceh and Papua -- has never sounded sincere.
Now, in both cases, "autonomy" rings truly hollow. If separatists
in either place rejected this shallow and limited offer of
autonomy, such rejection now looks to be fully justified. Papua
is being dissected, and Aceh is being destroyed.

There has been no thought to further pursuing a political
solution to these problems, even though such solutions remain
potentially viable in both Aceh and Papua. That is, a solution
remains viable if there is the political will, and the capacity
to assert civilian authority over recidivist military
reactionism.

The risk -- and the likelihood -- is, however, that the
ascendant TNI will continue to define the response of the state
to the question of the nation. In this respect, it will continue
to assert the state by opposing the nation, and consequently
alienating it, or parts of it.

The TNI is therefore now sowing the seeds of future dissent
and conflict. As a bureaucratic institution, it is also
conforming to the logic of self-perpetuation. And it is re-
establishing the groundwork for again rationalizing a role for
the military in civil political affairs.

Watching the performance of the TNI in Aceh, and Papua, and
listening to its mantra of NKRI as the definition of nationalism,
one is struck by a most valuable adage. And that is, those who
forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat its
mistakes. Gen. Nasution would be turning in his grave.

Dr Damien Kingsbury is head of Philosophical, Political and
International Studies at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia,
and is currently writing the third edition of his book, The
Politics of Indonesia (Oxford).