RI-U.S. relations survive strains

Some irritant issues have unfolded in Indonesia-United States relations in recent weeks, including the U.S. State Department's remarks on the Indonesian election and the cancellation of the F- 16 jets purchase. Vice Governor of the National Resilience Institute, Juwono Sudarsono, examines the issue.

JAKARTA (JP): In the past week, Indonesia has been the focus of American attention in three conferences held almost simultaneously at three different campuses.

The general consensus was that despite some harsh words exchanged about social, political and economic issues in Indonesia and in the United States, relations between the two countries remain strong.

At the National Defense University at Fort MacNair, Washington DC, on June 12, American specialists on the Indonesian military held a conference via satellite with academics from the Australian National University in Canberra, focusing on the rise of the new generation of Indonesia's Armed Forces.

On June 13 at Georgetown University, a conference incorporating American and Indonesian academics, government and business representatives, and non-governmental organizations discussed a wide range of political, economic, security and environmental issues.

Indonesian and American academics participating in the June 13 to June 15 Arizona State University conference focused on gender studies, the role of women, culture and human rights.

Many Indonesians believe that increased attention by U.S. congressional and NGO critics are an inevitable part of the whole gamut of globalized politics and economics. With the demise of the Soviet Union, Americans are now focusing on competition from abroad. While the U.S. is the world's premier market for economics and political ideas, the competitive links become enmeshed in the vagaries of the U.S. Congress.

Most U.S. congressmen face reelection every two years and therefore rely on the effectiveness and efficiency of single issues that can be manipulated into powerful and compelling symbols of "just causes". Over the past three years, China, Myanmar and Indonesia have become the perennial and favorite bogeymen of several U.S. Congressmen, the media and NGOs.

All three countries are easy targets of exploitation on a variety of issues, including prisons and child labor, intellectual property, freedom of association and the press and drug trafficking. American market leverage makes it difficult for these countries to present countercharges of unfairness and inaccuracies in reporting about what is really happening at ground level.

But according to one American academic, U.S. Congressmen simply cannot afford to stop criticizing Indonesia over the East Timor issue. Indonesia's "brutality, fear and repression" -- standard language of self-appointed U.S. Congressmen -- is their bread and butter, their surefire ticket to easy reelection. Demonizing Jakarta becomes a useful "raise-your-profile" industry.

In listening to some of the criticism about human rights abuses in Indonesia at the Georgetown meeting, the irony is sometimes lost on the Americans. Anecdotal evidence of alleged rights abuses by the Indonesian military and police, for example, were not balanced by a report published in the June 13 edition of the Washington Post -- the very day the seminar was in session -- of a black prisoner who had been beaten and inhumanely tortured by correctional officers at a federal prison in nearby Baltimore.

Perhaps the American participants were unaware of the report. More importantly, the Indonesian participants were too polite to bring it up as part of contemporary sound bite conference-speak.

Despite these perennial irritants, most American and Indonesian conference participants are optimistic that across-the-board cooperation in the training and education of Indonesian professionals will continue unimpeded.

U.S. corporations are increasingly aware of the need to broaden their social responsibilities in Indonesia.

A reservoir of goodwill remains among many Indonesians who still consider U.S. knowledge and know-how a key ingredient to their professional and social advancement.

It goes to show that despite the mutual recriminations about the recent cancellation of the F-16s purchase and the abrogation of the Extended International Military Education and Training program, U.S.-Indonesian relations remain, in that tried and true diplomatic parlance, "wide-ranging, healthy and firm".

East Timor -- Page 2