{"id":11682,"date":"2014-01-13T06:00:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-12T19:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=11682"},"modified":"2014-01-14T08:53:17","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T21:53:17","slug":"indonesia-blindspots-and-bullseyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/indonesia-blindspots-and-bullseyes\/","title":{"rendered":"Indonesia: blindspots and bullseyes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Prime<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the most curious cabinet papers released on 1 January this year was a submission on \u2018Australia\u2013Indonesia relations: prospects and approach\u2019<\/a> sponsored by the then Foreign Minister Bill Hayden and discussed in Cabinet on 6 October 1987. The paper set out a plan for rebuilding relations with Jakarta after a serious spat in 1986 when the journalist David Jenkins published a story<\/a> in the Sydney Morning Herald<\/i> entitled, \u2018After Marcos, now for the Suharto billions\u2019 reporting in detail on the President\u2019s hugely corrupt behaviour. Indonesia\u2019s response was to expel Jenkins and other Australian journalists from the country and freeze political relations. The challenge for Bill Hayden was how to put the relationship back on track. An attachment to the Cabinet submission details the challenges, strengths and weaknesses in Canberra\u2013Jakarta ties. It\u2019s a strange mix of incisive observation mixed with stubborn blind spots.<\/p>\n

Of course, the problems of 1987 resonate with the Abbott government\u2019s current challenges with Indonesia. At some point Julie Bishop will have to submit a similar paper to Cabinet. But before that happens, there are some lessons to learn from the 1987 experience.<\/p>\n

Hayden\u2019s submission says Australia needs a \u2018confident, business-like, non-inflammatory and well-coordinated approach\u2019 to Jakarta. It should try to strengthen economic links, encourage a moderate Indonesian foreign policy, have closer Ministerial-level contact and accept that differences between the two countries will put limits on how close ties can grow. Hayden urges Cabinet to \u2018avoid making so disproportionate an effort\u2019 to improve relations that Jakarta concludes it\u2019s Australia\u2019s job \u2018to make too many allowances for Indonesia.\u2019 \u2018Australia should avoid over-eagerness in our bilateral dealings\u2019, the paper concludes. This pragmatic assessment fits very closely with the approach taken by Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop and the aftermath of media reporting about intelligence gathering. While Abbott\u2019s cool-handed refusal to apologise was criticised both in Australia and Indonesia, it certainly followed Hayden\u2019s view not to make Australia look like it was desperate for Indonesian forgiveness. Several months after the intelligence story broke<\/a>, it appears Abbott\u2019s approach was the right call.<\/p>\n

Hayden\u2019s slightly stand-offish strategy was based on a high degree of confidence that little could change politically in Indonesia. The Cabinet submission was very confident that Suharto would remain in power, potentially for another decade, and that any successor would be much like him: \u00a0an oligarch backed by the military. \u2018This prospect would appear to serve Australia\u2019s regional interests well\u2026\u2019, the submission says. That judgement was both right and wrong. Suharto lasted until May 1998, but his departure after the Asian financial crisis also saw the collapse of the Indonesian political system and the rise of a democracy that had been altogether dismissed as a possibility by Hayden in 1987. In hindsight, it seems odd that an Australian government could find itself so comfortable in its support for, to use David Jenkins\u2019s words<\/a>, an \u2018irredeemably corrupt\u2019 kleptocrat and an individual who never hesitated to use violence to repress his own people. The Cabinet submission acknowledges that human rights violations would complicate the relationship, but only in so far as Australian NGOs would highlight them.<\/p>\n

On East Timor, the Cabinet submission says only that international concern about Indonesia\u2019s incorporation of the territory meant that Jakarta would \u2018continue to accord priority to the development of the province. Considerable material, health and welfare benefits have accrued to the East Timorese.\u2019 This was delusional, even in 1987.<\/p>\n

On defence matters, the submission says little other than to (correctly) point out that the Indonesian military had very little capability to present a threat to Australia. But there are some very curious comments about nuclear capability. The submission points out that Indonesia was constructing a \u2018sophisticated nuclear research facility.\u2019 It then says:<\/p>\n

Despite Indonesia\u2019s accession to the NPT in 1979, the element of national prestige in Indonesia\u2019s nuclear plans could lead in the longer term to an interest in the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With what can only be a masterful understatement, the paper suggested that Australia should establish \u2018a relationship with Indonesia in the nuclear area\u2019, but it notes that an Indonesian nuclear capability \u2018\u2026 could, however, become an emotional issue in Australia.\u2019 Well, true dat! (But hardly an adequate response to what would be a fundamentally game-changing strategic development.)<\/p>\n

PM&C endorsed the strategy in its coordination comments, \u2018avoiding as it does the risks of unilateral aspiration by Australia to a special relationship\u2019. Oddly, PM&C said that defence cooperation should be wound-down because it \u2018does not serve identifiable Australian interests.\u2019 Indonesian military capability still doesn\u2019t present a threat to Australia but no current assessment could be as dismissive as the 1987 study about Indonesia\u2019s future defence prospects or the value of Australian engagement with the TNI. It would have been helpful if PM&C\u2019s advice to not get wistful about building a special relationship could have been regularly repeated in recent years. Both sides of Australian politics have built high expectations about the importance of ties and the need for Canberra and Jakarta to have a \u2018strategic relationship\u2019. The clear message of the 1987 cabinet submission, reinforced by recent experience, is that it may not be possible to achieve that aim. And if that\u2019s true, as Bill Hayden said, it\u2019s best not to look over-eager.<\/p>\n

Peter Jennings\u00a0is executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Image courtesy of the official website of the President of the Republic of Indonesia<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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