John Walker – As Australian policy makers attempt to analyse the implications for Australian-Indonesian relations of the bomb attacks on Bali, it is important that they maintain a realistic appreciation both of the nature of our immediate region and of Australia's longer term strategic interests.
The tenor of some public comments by ministers and commentators alike suggests that this will not be easy to achieve.
Within days of the Bali bombings, the Defence Minister, Robert Hill, openly canvassed his preparedness to reconsider the question of the Australian SAS training with the Indonesian special forces, Kopassus. Opposition leader Simon Crean called for a regional summit to discuss measures to combat terrorism in South-East Asia.
Notwithstanding the grief of relatives and the hyperbole of politicians, there is no evidence yet that the recent simultaneous bombings in Bali and Sulawesi have changed Australia's strategic environment. It is unfortunate that only after the deaths of so many Australians have our political leaders and policy makers recognised that Indonesia has been the target of terrorist attacks for some time. Some estimates put the number of significant explosions in Jakarta during the past two years at 20, with targets including the Jakarta Stock Exchange and shopping centres.
These attacks, as much as Australia's support for President George W. Bush's "war on terrorism", provide the context for analysing the Bali attacks.
Although many of the victims of the Bali bombs were Australian, a principal target of the attack is likely to have been the processes of democratisation and liberalisation in Indonesia itself.
Political violence was used to destabilise the presidency of Abdurrahman Wahid and has continued to confront the authority of his successor, Megawati Sukarnoputri. Terrorist attacks in urban centres, as well as organised mass violence in Ambon and other areas, are aimed at stalling the processes of democratisation and liberalisation. The reported links between some elements of the Islamic organisation Laskar Jihad and some former senior military officers suggests that, in political violence and in other elements of Indonesian public life, the military is ever present.
This should surprise no-one: it is the inevitable result of a doctrine of dual function which has ensured that no part of Indonesian society, legal or otherwise, is quarantined from military influence. Some commentators have contrasted the apparently increasing chaos in Indonesia with the "stability" and "order" of the New Order regime of President Suharto.
For such analysts the lessons are clear: Indonesia is a turbulent giant which requires a "strong" hand to preserve all our securities. Such views are premised on the assumption that the New Order was stable. It was not.
Like all authoritarian regimes it was able to resist pressures for change by progressively increasing the threat and use of violence against its citizenry.
And like other authoritarian regimes, pressures for change eventually overwhelmed it. Australia's longer-term strategic interests require that Australia supports Indonesia's attempts at achieving greater democracy and pluralism, the rule of law and the subordination of the military to civilian control. The easiest policy response the Australian Government could make, bolstering support for the military, including Kopassus, would be the most destructive to our longer-term interests.
Kopassus's record of human-rights abuses in Papua, East Timor and Aceh ought to remove any possibility of a resumption of Australian military training. One response of proponents of increased military cooperation to these criticisms is to suggest that Australian training and cooperation might increase Indonesian military professionalism and military understanding of and respect for human rights.
Our previous cooperation and training clearly failed to have this affect, and there is no reason to suppose that such expectations would be realised in the future. Indeed, any Australian expectation that our neighbours need only to associate more with us to assume our values is at best patronising.
When soldiers torture and kill civilians, it is already in the knowledge that they are abusing their power and others' rights. Human-rights abuses are used as tactics: they are not the result of an oversight.
Although it is too early to identify the perpetrators of the Bali attacks, the possibility that members of Kopassus or other military elements were involved should not be discounted. Many commentators suspect that elements of Kopassus were implicated in this year's assassination of the Papuan leader Theys Eluay, whilst Kopassus is also believed to have been behind the recent ambush and murder of two US citizens and an Indonesian near the Papuan town of Tembagaputra.
The other main policy response from the Australian Government to the Bali attacks has been to encourage President Megawati to tighten political controls.
Megawati is proud of her father's political legacy. Almost 40 years after Sukarno's removal from office it is easy to forget that part of that legacy was the creation of authoritarian ideologies and power structures that subsequently were used so effectively by President Suharto.
It should be a matter of concern to Australian policy makers that President Megawati last week created by presidential decree powers for her Government to arrest and detain without trial suspected terrorists. Any retreat from the reform process to more authoritarian modes of government will detract from the longer-term security of Indonesians, Australians and our region.
[John Walker teaches South-East Asian politics at the Australian Defence Force Academy, University of NSW, and is co-organising an international conference on regionalism and identity in Indonesia and Malaysia at ADFA next month.]