Riding the rollercoaster
‘Soft power diplomacy’ sounds
contradictory, like ‘tough love parenting’.
Till recently it was a diplomatic favorite,
sold to the world as Indonesia’s smiley-face foreign policy by former president
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono [SBY]. This
was his explanation:
“We become a nation that is respected, not
feared, a nation that is respected, not avoided, a nation whose voice is heard
because we are voicing something of value.’
Warming indeed – but what do the honeyed
words really mean and how can the laudable goals be achieved? ‘Soft power’ wasn’t exclusive to the
Republic: It’s been served up to Australians by their government, though with a
different definition involving people-to-people exchanges.
However when a phalanx of PhDs at a major
conference finds the term confusing and a mite worrying, the electorate needs
to be suspicious. The scholars, ever
wary of government propaganda, feared soft power was ‘being adopted without a
rigorous appraisal of its efficacy as a tool in the bilateral relationship with
Indonesia.’
These and other concerns were raised at
last year’s Asian Studies Association of Australia biennial conference in Perth,
billed as ‘the largest gathering of expertise on Asia in the Southern
Hemisphere’.
At the time of the talkfest relationships
were heading downhill with revelations that Australian spies were tapping the
phones of SBY and his wife Ani. Prime Minister Tony Abbott refused to apologize
and Ambassador Nadjib Riphat Kesoema was recalled to Jakarta.
Pushing Indonesian fishing boats full of
asylum seekers back to the shores of the Republic also antagonized – a policy that’s still in place despite
protests. Nothing soft about this
power.
The faults weren’t all Australian. New
President Joko Widodo refused to exercise clemency to two reformed Australian
drug traffickers facing the death penalty distressing millions from PM Abbott
down to Bali holidaymakers canceling their flights. Raw power exercised ruthlessly.
Two nations so close and yet so far. Will the differences, suspicions, myths and
misunderstandings stand between us forever?
To help resuscitate the relationship Purdey
and Missbach have gathered and edited 13 papers from the conference, published
as Linking People.
On the ASAA conference agenda was the
question Australia-Indonesia relations: How to stop the roller coaster?
The discussion was held before the Presidential election when no one knew the
metaphorical fairground ride was about to plunge further with the executions at
Nusa Kambangan.
However the book, in a rare example of
speedy academic publishing, includes an epilogue updating the story to April
this year.
Foreign affairs can be an esoteric and
ponderous discipline. Fortunately the
authors have recognized that there’s more to international relations than
playing word games with treaty documents.
There are chapters on law and order,
economic relations and education and cultural exchanges – including some
intimate insights into the lives of intercultural couples.
The arts and the media are covered, though
tourism hasn’t been tackled in depth.
Along with the annoying lack of an index this is a curious omission;
every year almost a million Australians visit the archipelago and form ideas
and attitudes about Indonesia. Not all
do so through the bottom of a glass in a Bali bar.
What do they think of their neighbors? And
what do hospitality workers say about the blonde loud-mouthed giants who invade
their lush island? There’s a niche here for some sober research.
Also absent are Indonesian commentators.
Only Professor Bob Sugeng Hadiwinata from Bandung’s Parahyangan Catholic
University gets into the book with a study of the non-government Australian
Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies that’s been running for 20 years.
The editors say others were invited but
didn’t respond, suggesting interest in relations with the southern neighbor
isn’t high in Indonesia.
Another reason could be the dearth of
academic papers in Indonesia where the Western tradition of publish or perish
has yet to take hold and where university staff can maintain tenure without
conducting original research.
[According to the academic journal database
Scopus, in the past decade Australian academics have published 430,000 research
papers in the life sciences. During the
same period Indonesian scholars have produced 17,000. The Malaysia figure is 92,000.]
A common criticism is that Australians are
forever stuck in a monocultural view of the world.
For lecturer Alistair Welsh (left) the cure is
clear: Engaging in ‘intercultural spaces’
can have ‘transformative effects’.
Translated out of academic jargon this means the way to better
relationships is through long-term face-to-face encounters.
He should know. Last decade Dr Welsh and
his wife Julienne taught English at a pesantren
[Islamic boarding school] on an Australian Volunteers International
project.
They spent two years at Probolinggo on the
north coast of East Java. They refined their Indonesian language skills,
learned a lot about Islam and are now passing on their wisdoms to school and university students in
Geelong, Victoria.
Dr Welsh is no fan of short-term study
tours, which he says are becoming popular through the Australian Government’s
flagship New Colombo Plan to help Australian undergraduates better understand
the Indo-Pacific region.
His message? Stay long term. Live and
eat with the locals, not your white-skinned mates. See the world through Indonesian
eyes. Appreciate differences. Learn that not all values are exclusively
Australian; many are universal.
Equally appropriate advice for Indonesians
in Australia.
Linking People
Edited by Antje Missbach and Jemma Purdey
Published by Regiospectra, 2015
298 pages
##
(First published in The Jakarta Post 27 July 2015)
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