Nationalism on the rise?

Although there is no reason to be surprised at the mounting international pressure which Jakarta's ineffectual handling of the East Timor crisis has brought on this country, many Indonesians nevertheless seem to be unprepared to cope with the emergence of one particular by-product of this development.

Still numbed and worried by a never-ending economic crisis and petty political party squabbles, Indonesians seem to have long ignored their old nationalist penchant to denounce slurs and indictments aimed at their country from the outside and blame outsiders for anything that goes wrong.

The East Timor crisis, and particularly the open threats of sanctions and intervention, which not only the United Nations, but countries such as the United States and Australia have hurled at the government, have corrected this neglect, at least to a certain extent. A member of the House of Representatives, Yasril Ananta Baharuddin, for example, was reported as saying on Tuesday that in the case of East Timor, Indonesians should be wary of a possible international political scenario designed to destroy Indonesia's good standing in the eyes of the world -- one indication of the existence of such a plot being that the violence in East Timor was so difficult to suppress.

Pointing a finger at Australia and New Zealand in particular, Yasril said those countries could have an interest in keeping the discord seething in East Timor for the purpose of firmly planting their influence in the area. Yasril, evidently, is not alone in his opposition to such sinister foreign plots. The many -- if small -- protests that were held during past days, not only by pro-Indonesian activists in East Timor but in Jakarta and elsewhere outside the territory, attest to the fact that there are quite a number of Indonesians who are antagonized by what they see as foreign interference in Indonesia's internal affairs in the case of East Timor.

The problem, of course, is that Indonesians -- nationalists or otherwise -- at present must live in a world that is totally different from that of their parents and grandparents. In today's world, national borders are as good as gone, except to serve as functional delineations outlining the world's political- administrative regions.

International trade, communications, ideas and even interchanges between individuals occur almost freely, unrestrained by international boundaries. The economic crisis that spread across Asia during the past couple of years is clear evidence of such as truth. In such a world, the old mold of narrow nationalism -- and even more so, xenophobia, or the aversion to anything that is foreign -- is clearly out of place.

Yet, there is no denying that nationalism in its more broad- minded characterization has it uses, even in this age of globalization. Sukarno, this country's late founding president, used to refer to this kind of nationalism as "internationalism". It is the kind of nationalism that inspired his formulation of the Indonesian state ideology, Pancasila, in which the nationalist spirit is tempered by ideas of universal humanism.

What this column aspires to say by all this is that while nationalism has its place, care must be taken that it does not turn into a selfish, acquisitive ideology that disregards the recognized universal humanitarian values. No less important, Indonesians must realize that in this era of globalization, self- isolation and disregard of the accepted universal norms of international conduct can lead to political and economic devastation for the nation. This, surely, is not what any well- thinking nationalist anywhere aspires to achieve.