Postcrisis a turning point in history

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): East Asian nations are bound to return to the main stage when global history is determined by the interaction of not just western powers, but all Asians as well.

This was an observation made by Australian writer Greg Sheridan, author of Asian Values, Western Dreams and foreign affairs editor of The Australian.

Sheridan stopped in Jakarta recently to address a function arranged by management consultancy firm the Castle Group, before rushing off to interview President Abdurrahman Wahid.

The message of colonialism was to consider Asian values and culture inferior to that of the West. If anything was going to knock Asian values off the rails it was the economic crisis, he said.

On the contrary, Asian values have stayed intact around the region, coping brilliantly in the challenge posed by the crisis and having even reestablished themselves, Sheridan said.

There is a tremendous sigh of relief coming out of the West because of the crisis. It is like "thank God East Asia is not going to challenge us after all". But Sheridan's conclusion is that Asian values are very much on the road.

"There is incessant talk of American and European values but the same leaders regard the discussion of Asian values as illegitimate. Why is that?" he questions.

He answers, "because the West is uncomfortable at the deeper historical process that is to bring East Asia back to the main stage of global history, a place it has not occupied for 500 years."

He said that the election of Abdurrahman from within the political elite as a compromise candidate for the presidency was a reflection on the culture of this country. Even a year ago the situation was unthinkable. The only alternatives at that time were B.J. Habibie and Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Then somehow the hand of God came down and selected Abdurrahman whose government has now established international legitimacy, which his whirlwind travel schedule only reinforced.

Sheridan feels that this is a message that has not gotten out internationally enough, and that the Indonesian political elite and culture deserves credit for having come up with this sensible and so far working compromise.

"I am full of praise for the President who has proven to be performing much better than we had any right to hope or to expect." Sheridan feels that western analysts who tend not to recognize complex human beings or societies are just about making up their mind that Abdurrahman is a hero and an enormous asset for a country to have.

Sheridan said western analysis of the initial crisis all over the region was extraordinarily poor, especially of Indonesia, and was mainly due to a lack of understanding of the country's historical, cultural and political peculiarities.

The economic crisis was certainly the most dramatic in Indonesia. Sheridan continued, "Western intervention into Indonesia was more or less catastrophic and the fewer western helpers the country had seen in that period the better off it would have been."

He termed Australia's policy toward Indonesia in the last few years as a series of strategic miscalculations and one blunder after another.

The strategic intimacy that existed in the past was destroyed, making it a net loss for Australia, Indonesia and the region.

Many in the West, he said, implied that the crisis had swept away Asian values and that this was the time to produce liberal democracy that would look just like California in due course.

However, what was seen in Indonesia was the durability and resilience of Asian values, he said.

The dynamics for political change were already there in Indonesia, and all intelligence assessments in Australia in the mid-1990s concluded that the New Order regime of former president Soeharto was on its last legs.

What is absolutely tragic is that the move from authoritarianism to democracy was not gradual, but had the character of a revolutionary movement, largely due to Soeharto's reluctance to face up to the question of succession.

Sheridan recalled the first time he met Abdurrahman more than a decade ago when the then Indonesian ambassador to Australia introduced him as the next president of Indonesia.

"At that time there was an ironic, jocular quality to the introduction, because who could imagine in those days anyone challenging Soeharto?"

And yet even then it was clear, he said, that forces were moving to change Indonesia fundamentally and that the trend toward greater democracy was going to accelerate, not because the West imposed it, but because Indonesians wanted it.

Sheridan describes the crisis as a combination of structural imbalances in the economies affected combined with the way international financial institutions operate.

While changes are taking place in most countries in East Asia, there is no evidence to show that reforms are also taking place in the international financial architecture as well.

What worries Sheridan most is that when the sense of crisis subsides, will the impetus to reform also be gone?