Promoting U.S.-RI partnership important: Ambassador

Promoting U.S.-RI partnership important: Ambassador

The following is an excerpt of remarks made by the United
States Ambassador to Indonesia J. Stapleton Roy at a party hosted
by the United States-Indonesia Society on May 10.

JAKARTA: Having seen in this century the consequences of
withdrawing into isolationism, we are trying to do something that
we have never successfully accomplished in our history. That is,
to continue playing a leadership role in non-bipolar world that
now lacks the stark security that marked the Cold War.

We will withstand the pressures in the United States to focus
on our domestic affairs to the detriment of our international
relationship. U.S alliances in the Pacific enjoy bipartisan
support. Some of us focus on political alliances, others on
economic, others on strategic, and still others on moral
alliances. But all of us recognize that those alliances need
strengthening. The question is how to prioritize our objectives.
Recent developments in this region, including President Clinton's
visit to Japan and Korea, illustrate that the mood in the United
States is not to pull back from Asia.

At the same time, we also face another challenge, which is to
adapt the style of our diplomacy to dealing with the more fluid
global situation that has emerged in the post-Cold War world. The
United States may be the strongest individual country both
economically and militarily, but we have neither the desire nor
the capability to dominate the world, and it would be foolish and
costly to try to meet potential future security challenges on our
own. Rather, with its preeminent power, the United States is the
single country best positioned to maintain both global and
regional power balance that will provide the stability essential
for continued growth and economic development.

The United States recognizes that our military presence in
East Asia is essential to maintain the region's security and
prosperity. As a result, President Clinton has stated that we
will maintain 100,000 troops in Asia, a number roughly equal to
our troop presence in Europe. As an Indonesian analyst wrote in a
recent article in The Jakarta Post. "The U.S. presence is vital
to the maintenance of a minimum balance of power in the region.
In that sense, the U.S. military presence is not a temporary
phenomenon, but a fundamental part of the strategic development
of the Asia-Pacific in the future..."

The United States has the will and resources to play a
confidence-building role, but we are not, nor do we aspire to be,
policemen. We seek a close, collaborative relationship and
peaceful engagement with all Asian-Pacific powers, not the
establishment of sentry posts.

To play this role effectively in the post-Cold War world, the
United States must pursue a form of enlightened pragmatism that
avoids the extremes either of sanctimonious moralism or cynical
realpolitik that does not suit the American character. Ideals and
principle must be related to our longer term goals, and not used
as restrictive tests for the practical measures that will
maximize our ability to foster the trends most compatible with
our interests.

Secondly, we need to give greater attention to the problems
and challenges faced by developing countries. During the Cold
War, our paramount security concerns provided the underpinning
for our close relationship with developing economies such as the
Republic of Korea and Taiwan whose domestic political systems
were repressive and authoritarian. With our relationship
stabilized in this fashion, the rapid economic growth in these
economies, sustained over three decades or more, helped spawn
political transformation that made their political systems more
compatible with American values.

In the post-Cold War world, however, security arguments are
less compelling as the basis for tolerating the systemic
inadequacies that characterize much of the developing world. This
undercuts the U.S. ability both to stabilize our relationship
with countries struggling with problems of development and to
play the balancing role that our interests require during this
promising but potentially dangerous transitional period in world
affairs. With our own exceptionally stable political
institutions, we sometimes give too little attention to the
interrelationship between stability and economic development that
lies at the heart of the development process.

Thirdly, in dealing with giant developing countries such as
Indonesia, we need to ensure that our perspective does not become
dominated by too narrow viewpoints. Crises and acts of violence
make headlines and shape perceptions. The United States-Indonesia
Society can play an important role in promoting the broad,
informed mutual understanding that must underpin long-term
cooperation between our two countries.

Indonesia for its part also faces important challenges as it
looks toward the 21st century. With the world no longer divided
into the blocs that marked the Cold War, the significance of the
Non-Aligned Movement, in which Indonesia has played such a
leading role, will inevitably change, just as the military
alliances that helped stabilize the Cold War are facing
readjustments and reexamination. While it would be premature to
advocate simply discarding such tested relationships because
circumstances have changed, prudent thinkers will recognize that
they cannot continue in their old forms.

Indonesia is well positioned for such readjustments because of
the dramatic success of ASEAN in providing a focus for
cooperation in Southeast Asia and more broadly in the Asia-
Pacific region. Indonesia's recent defense agreement with
Australia indicates that the country's leaders are indeed
adapting Indonesia's diplomacy to the changing world scene. This
is a positive development that can pave the way for the emergence
of a new type of cooperative partnership between Indonesia and
the United States that can promote stability and prosperity.

Secondly, Indonesia faces the challenge of contributing to and
helping to sustain the open global trading system without which
the East Asian economic miracle would not have happened. Free and
open trade among nations is in the interest of all countries,
developing and developed alike. The United States is fully
committed to the APEC goal of free and open trade and investment
in the region by 2010/2020, and President Clinton strongly
supported President Soeharto's initiatives at Bogor in 1994.

As Indonesia succeeds, so does the United States. Indonesia's
dynamism creates enormous new markets for our products. We have
learned that prosperity is a two-way street; our best suppliers
are also our best customers. In 1995, Indonesia exported US$7.4
billion worth of goods to the United States, an increase of over
70 percent in just three years. In the same year, the United
States exported $3.3 billion to Indonesia, an increase of 20
percent in just one year.

Indonesia's rapid economic growth has been based on the
comparative advantages it enjoys in world trade: low labor costs,
an extraordinarily rich range of natural resources, and an
important strategic location at crossroads between two continents
and two oceans. Building on this strong base, Indonesia has taken
a number of positive steps to improve its competitive position,
but so have other countries. More remains to be done.

The Indonesian experience has shown that the fastest way to
improve economic productivity is by improving the business
climate, thereby attracting both domestic and foreign investment.
Deregulation plays a crucial role in this process. In 1993,
foreign investment approvals came to only $9 billion. In 1994,
the year of deregulation, investment approvals soared to $23.7
billion. And last year, the government approved $39.9 billion in
foreign investments.

Improving the transparency of government decision-making on
economic and business issues is another critical element in this
strategy. Investor's perceptions -- a country's reputation as a
place to do business -- is a critical factor in deciding what
kind of business gets done -- and where.

The same considerations apply to protecting intellectual
property rights. A recent International Finance Corporation
report noted that improved intellectual property protection laws
and their effective enforcement are likely to translate into
significantly larger inflows of foreign direct investment. This
issue is of great importance to the United States, and we welcome
Minister/State Secretary Moerdiono's recent announcement of plans
to intensify enforcement of existing anti-piracy laws and to
update these laws as well.

Indonesia also faces a third challenge faced by all rapidly
growing countries; that is managing the social and political
changes that are an inevitable and essential part of the
development process, while avoiding the extremes of instability
or repression. Strengthening the rule of law and respecting human
rights is a common interest of all of us. Moreover, in the modern
world, countries conduct their domestic affairs in the full glare
of the international publicity that is an inseparable part of the
information age. Infractions of human rights, whether in East
Timor or in America's inner cities, attract instant attention
around the world and can have far reaching impacts on
relationships.