Michael Vatikiotis, Singapore – It was a potentially sticky situation. There was Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda standing beside Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, on her recent visit to Jakarta, and the subject was Iran. The reporter asked: "Do you think the idea of an eventual Iranian nuclear bomb is inevitable?"
Given Jakarta's protracted efforts to restore close relations with Washington so that it may resume buying state-of-the-art military equipment and train its officers in the US, this was a potentially awkward moment.
But by Indonesia's top diplomat, it was taken as an opportunity to declare Indonesia's traditionally strong sense of independence. Like Iran, Indonesia is a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, he said. The treaty supports the rights of NPT parties to develop nuclear technology for peaceful uses, he added. Then he reminded Rice that he had recently visited Tehran and that the Iranian foreign minister had just visited Jakarta. On both occasions he had told the Iranians that Indonesia "would be among the first to tell Iran not to put their peaceful nuclear uses to developing nuclear weapons".
What on earth is Indonesia doing going anywhere near the Iran issue at a time when the United States is cheering, not chiding, Jakarta's counter-terrorism efforts and is considering negotiations toward a bilateral free-trade agreement? Why, too, would Indonesia go out of its way at a recent meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors in Vienna to ask that more time be given Iran to assure concerned parties that its development of nuclear technology is truly for peaceful purposes?
Welcome to the brave new world of Indonesian foreign policy. The international community has only just started to focus on Indonesia's successful democratic transition, the economy is only just recovering from nearly a decade of malaise and crisis, and the business community is waiting with genuine expectation for the government's "war on corruption" to be won. But President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is an impatient man – he wants Indonesia to make its mark on the world now.
"We are the fourth-most-populous nation in the world. We are home to the world's largest Muslim population. We are the world's third-largest democracy. We are also a country where democracy, Islam and modernity go hand in hand," Yudhoyono declared last May in his first major foreign-policy speech. "And our heart is always with the developing world, to which we belong. These are the things that define who we are and what we do in the community of nations."
In fact, what Yudhoyono aims to do is pretty ambitious. Bringing democracy to Myanmar comes high up the list. So, too, does helping Palestinians win their statehood from Israel. Then there is North Korea: the president wants to visit Pyongyang and has already sent an envoy to the hermit state to try to restart stalled security talks between the two Koreas. And if dealing with one end of the "axis of evil" isn't risky enough, Indonesia has also flagged its intention to help reconcile Iran with the West, exemplified by Wirajuda's visit to Tehran last month, and thereafter by at least two high-level visits by Iranian officials to Jakarta.
Talk to many Indonesians about Yudhoyono's foreign-policy objectives and they will argue that the country simply isn't ready to take on the world. There are too many priorities at home: sorting out the economy, combating corruption, resolving internal conflicts and curbing Islamic militancy, to name just a few. Realists and pragmatists such as former foreign minister Ali Alatas argue that Indonesia is weak and has no clout in the international community. "Who would listen?" Alatas asks, though he recently served as a special envoy to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Fortunately for Yudhoyono, the United States is listening. Indonesia's democratic and moderate Islamic credentials appeal to Washington, which is also on the lookout for a strategic counterbalance to China in the region.
"Your challenge now is to expand the peace, the opportunity and the freedom that we see in much of Southeast Asia to all of Southeast Asia," Rice said in a speech to an Indonesian international-relations forum during her mid-March visit to Jakarta. "The United States is eager to work with ASEAN through our new enhanced partnership, and we look to Indonesia... to play a leadership role in Southeast Asia and in the dynamic changing East Asia."
Perhaps of all the remarkable transformations Indonesia has made over the past six years, its return to the diplomatic stage is potentially the most significant for the rest of Asia. Indonesia's hard-won democratic credentials could help promote and defend democracy and human rights in the region, its non-aligned credentials can amplify the voice of the developing world and, last but by no means least, Indonesia's status as the largest Muslim democracy could have a positive impact on the Islamic world and help bridge the growing divide with the Western world.
It's often hard for the outside world to appreciate just how far Indonesia has come since the 1998 fall of former president Suharto. The 2004 presidential election in Indonesia crowned a six-year-long political transition to democracy. Widespread fears of communal violence and administrative chaos proved unfounded. Incoming President Yudhoyono quickly established a government with serious policies aimed at tackling corruption, improving welfare and cementing representative democracy in place. His ability and resolve to pursue these goals in the face of the tsunami that hit Indonesia harder than any other Asian country and of ongoing terrorist attacks is nothing short of remarkable.
In his first year in office, Yudhoyono made several tough policy choices, among them his decision to pursue peace in Aceh province. The Helsinki agreement signed last August brought a halt to almost three decades of conflict in Aceh and potentially helped to set a precedent for using local autonomy as a way to settle protracted irredentist conflicts in the wider region, including for insurgency-racked southern Thailand. Less obviously, the new Indonesian government has set about fashioning an active foreign policy that, if successfully implemented, could see Indonesia emerge as a strong advocate for global peace and other humanitarian issues. Yudhoyono says he wants to be "a peacemaker, confidence-builder, problem-solver, bridge-builder".
This activism is not new for Indonesia. Although obscured for much of the past 30 years, Indonesia has historically played a constructive role in world and regional affairs. In 1955 Indonesia connected Asia with Africa through the Bandung Conference, which in effect elevated the role of the developing world in international affairs. In 1967, Indonesia was instrumental in bringing the non-communist countries of Southeast Asia together to form the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In the 1980s, Indonesia initiated and helped see through the regional diplomatic effort that brought peace to Cambodia.
But the world has tended to view Indonesia through a rather different lens. The unfortunate history of Indonesia's occupation of East Timor after 1975 and the rough handling of internal conflicts in Aceh and Papua have seen tough military crackdowns on irredentism and widespread human-rights abuses, for which no one has truly been held responsible. Although Washington recently restored military-to-military ties, US officials are still waiting for Jakarta to prosecute the military officers culpable for the horrific violence that attended East Timor's separation from Indonesia in 1999. This kind of record doesn't easily make for credible peacemaking or bridge-building – and the recent upsurge of unrest in Papua points to obstacles ahead.
Then, too, there are plenty of domestic obstacles to effective policymaking. Yudhoyono's policy advisers are full of good ideas and intentions but lack the capacity to implement them. Indonesia's political culture militates against initiative-taking and effective delegation. Bureaucratic backbiting and petty jealousies plague the system and hinder creativity. Yudhoyono's team of talented advisers are constantly putting out small domestic fires and beating off damaging allegations of personal gain, which at times makes it hard to focus on complex foreign-policy issues.
However, there are distinct signs of change. Wirajuda has helped bring a measure of pride and prestige to the once-dispirited Foreign Ministry. He has promoted younger diplomats and given his aides more responsibility. Plum foreign postings are advertised and healthy competition for the posts is encouraged. Indonesia's new ambassadors to Australia and the United Kingdom are both relatively young high fliers.
Indonesia's new-age diplomats are also spending less time defending the indefensible. The armed forces have so far stayed out of sensitive political decisions and supported the Aceh peace process; as a rule the army and police no longer shoot demonstrators; and militants held responsible for acts of violence are being brought to justice through the courts rather than the streets. Some reflexive instincts are hard to change, though. The government is still barring journalists and human-rights workers from the restive Papua region.
Some initiatives are bearing fruit in modest ways. After Yudhoyono's controversial visit to Myanmar, that country's ruling military junta has announced that it will send its foreign minister to a newly established bilateral commission aimed at expediting Myanmar's slow progress to democracy. Human-rights activists have criticized the Indonesian government for engaging with the military regime in Yangon on the grounds that urgent issues such as the release of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi were not pressed. But the Indonesian Foreign Ministry argues that engagement and gradual persuasion are more effective agents of change. "If we become harder on Myanmar, they [will] close themselves even more," commented Foreign Ministry spokesman Desra Percaya.
It's a gamble because Myanmar's generals have proved skillful at using engagement as a delaying tactic. But this is not to say that Jakarta is turning soft on autocracy. In January Wirajuda called on the military junta in Myanmar to fulfill its pledge to introduce democracy. "Myanmar is disturbing the balance" of ASEAN, Wirajuda told the media in Jakarta. "And because of that we are asking it to show concrete steps toward democracy."
Indonesia's advantage as a pressure point on Myanmar is that it has no strategic interests at play on mainland Southeast Asia. Other nearby democracies such as Thailand and India find that economic and strategic interests inhibit them from advocating political change in Myanmar. Neither is Jakarta so closely bound to Beijing economically and culturally; its sheer size gives Indonesia something of a license to tweak the dragon's tail. Non-alignment may be out of fashion, but it was noticeable how Rice was greeted on her recent visit to Jakarta by editorials that positioned Indonesia as a friend, rather than an ally, of the United States.
Indonesia is also managing in a modest way to engage constructively with the more militant Islamic world. In the past few weeks Jakarta has hosted high-profile visits from the Iranian vice president and foreign minister. There are risks and opportunities for Indonesia: engaging with the militant fringe will fuel suspicions about Indonesia's own considerable fundamentalist problem. A recent poll in Jakarta revealed that more than 11% of people surveyed believe that suicide bombings against civilian targets can be justified. The opportunity is for Indonesia's moderate mainstream to start influencing the rest of the Muslim world.
On balance the latter is more important, as Indonesia's own struggle against conservative Islamic forces lends credibility to its push for tolerance and reform in the wider Muslim world. For this reason Indonesia's democratic transition could potentially be far more important than anything the administration of US President George W Bush can do in the Middle East to implant democracy.
[Michael Vatikiotis is a former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. He is currently a visiting research fellow at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.]