RI-U.S. relations survive strains

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