RI's foreign policy priorities: Regional or global?

JAKARTA (JP): Where should Indonesia's foreign policy priorities lie? With the region or with the world?

International relations experts said on Saturday that Indonesia must maintain a comprehensive approach in its foreign policy, by engaging in the activities of both regional and global organizations with equal intensity.

"In a world that is increasingly more global... we have to take part in everything," remarked Juwono Sudarsono of the University of Indonesia.

Sudarsono, who is also a deputy governor of the National Resiliency Institute, said global competition was a reality and that participation in various multinational organizations was one way of meeting the challenges that globalization entailed.

Dorodjatun Kuntjoro-Jakti, an expert staff member at the office of the Executive Assistant of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), said that inter-regional organizations, such as NAM, were an important asset in Indonesia's foreign policy.

Regionalism is more practical, he said, but all available networks must be used.

These comments were made during and after a seminar entitled "NAM at the Crossroads" which took place on Saturday. At the seminar, J. Soedjati Djiwandono, a director of Jakarta's Centre for Strategic and International Studies, argued that ASEAN should be Indonesia's main priority.

"The most valid foreign policy approach at the moment is regionalism," Soedjati said, adding that ASEAN should be the country's main focus of Indonesia's foreign policy.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a socio- economic regional grouping comprised of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

Juwono agreed that ASEAN should be one of Indonesia's foreign policy spearheads, but he maintained that many issues went beyond the boundaries and interests of regional groupings.

"From a perspective of regional and geographic proximity, of course ASEAN (should be the focus), because it is the most important one. But there are challenges which are cross-regional, such as economic issues of workers' rights, investment and trade," he said.

Global interdependence and inter-relations had reached a point, Juwono said, at which "there is no such thing as a national economy anymore, there is only national policy."

Interest

Legislator Theo Sambuaga argued that, apart from Indonesia's constitutional duty to help create a just and peaceful world, Indonesian foreign policy was also aimed at safe-guarding the national interest.

He agreed with Soedjati that, although NAM may not be the country's chief foreign policy priority, if Indonesia neglected organizations such as NAM it could not hope to accomplish much in the international arena.

Theo said that with the disappearance of super power rivalry, NAM members now faced a tendency towards political and economic domination from the world's more powerful countries.

Dorodjatun said a nation could not be defended by the armed forces alone, but also had to rely on diplomacy.

He spoke of the capital and technological advantages enjoyed by the developed countries as compared with the developing ones and said that this relative weakness was a common factor among NAM members.

He said that NAM could help to redress the imbalance, adding that Indonesia had a moral responsibility to take part in that task.

In October, Indonesia will hand over its three-year chairmanship of NAM to Colombia.

During its tenure as chairman, Indonesia has focused much of its efforts on promoting programs to help the developing nations which make up the bulk of NAM's membership.

It has called to attention the burgeoning debt problem and has pushed for increased South-South cooperation as a means of exchanging development experience, particularly for the less developed nations of Africa.

Indonesia has also attempted to revive the North-South dialog to foster a better framework of understanding and cooperation between the developed and the developing worlds.

"NAM is important because it is part of the humanistic concept," Dorodjatun said.

"It is important that we do not lose our concern (for NAM) once we are no longer chairman," he said. (mds)