NO RESET YET

Stopover charm is not enough                                       

Instead of a long state visit Malcolm Turnbull used a ten-hour Jakarta stopover for his first official trip as PM to meet the northern neighbors. 

The much-reported reason before he dashed to Berlin was to ‘reset’ the relationship.

A ‘reset’ follows a circuit-breaker trip.  Flick a switch and if there’s no system fault the lights come on. Easy.

Not this time.

After a year in office we understand little about President Joko (Jokowi) Widodo other than he’s indecisive, believes shooting traffickers fixes drug problems and is powerless to stop regular illegal firestick-farming threatening world health.

We also know the leader of the world’s third largest democracy blows thought bubbles (which his ministers pop) on issues like joining the TPP, and appears awkward at international events.  The Jakarta Post explained this was his ‘contemplative nature’.

Much is scuttlebutt – that he doesn’t read documents, is beholden to oligarchs and bored by foreign affairs.  Newsclips of his meeting last month in the US with Barack Obama and business heads did nothing to erase these calumnies.

On the upside the nation has not been ripped by vengeful losers following the 2014 election. There have been health care reforms and fuel subsidies partially removed. The seventh president is not a military fascist. WYSIWYG, a plain man free of guile. 

His party patron Megawati Soekarnoputri once claimed he was too thin to be a real politician.  If girth equals graft then slender Jokowi should be whistle-clean.

This doesn’t help him wade through Jakarta’s political slimepit, but it endears him to the electorate, though love is on the wane.  Polls showing approval down from 70 to 50 per cent in a year reflect dismay that performance hasn’t matched promise.

He’s failed the smoke alarm test with the fires in Kalimantan; now another challenge looms – a rice shortage following droughts.  If prices rocket with imports the masses will not confine their rage to tweets.

Real warmth between the two leaders will probably remain elusive but Turnbull did well – he smiled a lot and it looked sincere.  Abbott-style pugnacity wins no friends in the Republic where personality trumps policy and visitors must be halus – refined, gracious and sensitive – and have a sense of fun. 

The PM and his wife Lucy obliged. Charm disarms.  Jokowi took Turnbull to the overcrowded Tanah Abang textile market for one of his trademark blusukan (walkabout among ordinary folk).

 Indonesian media described the informal scene as ‘hot, stuffy and boisterous’ but Jokowi was in his element, looking happier than usual.  Jacketless Turnbull, snapping selfies, seemed amused.

Certainly a few hours facetime is better than a diplomatic note, but change won’t come through speed dating.  This courtship needs to be Java-style - slow and seemly.

Turnbull seeking contact points spoke of both being in business. The link is slight.

The silvertail lawyer and banker grew up with vistas of Sydney Harbour; the provincial furniture trader was raised in a shack illegally pitched by the Solo River – not for the view but its ablution values.

One was a Rhodes Scholar – the other an unexceptional forestry graduate. Now the two men have to see each other’s perspective.

The other much thumped drum is that Indonesia is ‘our most important relationship. Absolutely – though the feeling is one-way.  More worrying is that Australian governments have long been hypocritical, disbelieving their own rhetoric.

If otherwise the Turnbulls would have spent relaxed days, not hours in Indonesia, reviving friendships built over long careers in public life.

There’d be no need for a ‘biggest ever’ 300-strong business delegation coming in Turnbull’s wake because substantial trade would have been built long ago.  Communications with Jakarta would be as stable as they are with Manila and Singapore.

No costly ephemeral PR exercise called Window on Australia because the image would already be benign. If that money had been put into scholarships the number of Indonesians currently studying in Australia (below 14,000) might overtake the Nepalese,

Jokowi’s pre-election statements included Nawacita (nine principles, mainly motherhoods) and Mental Revolution. This called for a strong military, food and energy independence and reduced reliance on foreign investment.  The delegation led by Trade Minister Andrew Robb might ask if these short documents are still valid.

Business opportunities are being crimped by Jokowi’s capricious approach to policy, a tumbling rupiah and the growth of strident nationalism and protectionism.

Earlier this year Melbourne University Professor Tim Lindsey told a Griffith Asia Institute forum that the Australian public was generally hostile and ill-informed about Indonesia.   The polls prove his point, and the situation is getting worse.

The government hasn’t seriously backed Indonesian studies which Lindsey predicted will be extinct within eight years. This isn’t a new universe in the galaxy – other educators have been observing the same for much of this century.

Presumably Robb’s mob is Asia-aware, but if the pessimists are right the next generation of Australian exporters and investors will know little about their market.

The Turnbull trip listed the standard trinity of topics favoured by visiting Australian politicians – trade, security and investment. All important but having no immediate impact on the daily lives of the toilers; they tend to see their neighbour seeking to control Christian Eastern Indonesia according to polls cited by Lindsey.

Window on Australia should help diminish ignorance about Australia, but doesn’t confront the absurdity of a secular sport-obsessed nation having neo-colonial ambitions.   Indonesians fought for four years to expel the Dutch; they can be seismometer-sensitive to real or imagined threats to sovereignty in ways Australians find hard to understand.

Edgy issues like the death penalty and visas were off the agenda. The problem of 11,000 asylum seekers stuck in the Archipelago while heading to Australia was apparently not addressed.  This was despite Indonesian kite-flying ahead of the leaders’ meeting which Turnbull kept stressing was about ‘jobs and growth’.  So the failed boat people’s fate remains a pebble in the shoe.

After the meeting came statements no-one could fault – the need for more cooperation, cattle breeding and tourism. No detail, no contracts, no aid packages.

Contrary to some media reports this was not Turnbull’s first overseas trip as PM.  His priority was tiny, placid New Zealand for two days last month. He’ll spend more time in Malaysia coming back from Europe than the nation where the relationship is allegedly so important.

Academics, businesspeople and others with long-term knowledge of Indonesia say building good connections needs time and personal engagement.  This trip says the government knows it knows better.

Indonesians are too polite to say so, but they recognize the realities:  The Australian PM comes across far better than Abbott. He appeared to have had a fun break. But his real mission was in Europe and elsewhere where he’ll meet 19 other world leaders.

No reset yet.  The system faults remain but the two men seem to have found a switch. Maybe the switch.

(First published in New Mandala on 13 November 2015 http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2015/11/13/stopover-charm-is-not-enough/

and The Canberra Times on 14 November 2015)

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LINKING PEOPLE

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.’

‘Why can’t the experience of an Indonesian student in an Australian university, or vice versa, be simply seen as an individual journey of discovery, rather than in terms of that person’s development as an agent for persuasion for his or her host country once he or she gets home?’ asked academics Jemma Purdey (left) and Antje Missbach (below, right)

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

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(First published in The Jakarta Post 27 July 2015)

TRASHING THE LOMBOK TREATY

The Indonesian military would be determined defenders but at present don't have the appetite or capacity to be invaders.

MARINES IN DARWIN: PROTECTION OR PROVOCATION?

In 2006 the two relevant Foreign Ministers, Alexander Downer and Hassan Wirajuda, signed the Australia-Indonesia Agreement on the Framework for Security Cooperation.

It took two years of negotiations to develop the document, which replaced the 1995 formal defense pact. What’s now known as the Lombok Treaty committed both nations to cooperation and consultation in defence and law enforcement, combating international crime and terrorism, and sharing intelligence.

The two countries also agreed they would not ‘in any manner support or participate in activities by any person or entity which constitutes a threat to the stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity of the other Party’.

Then suddenly last week Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama announced that up to 2,500 American Marines would be stationed in Darwin, the largest port in Australia closest to Indonesia. This newspaper described the news as a ‘bombshell’.

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa had apparently been alerted ahead of the announcement. Did this comply with the Lombok Treaty clause on ‘consultation’? Only if you embrace Australian newspeak where the word has become synonymous with informing others after a cast-iron decision has been made.

That wasn’t the only gulf in interpretation. It seems Australia’s decision to allow heavily armed foreign forces to dig in on the border doesn’t fall into the category of threatening the other's ‘stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity’.

Indonesia appears to differ. Dr Natalegawa, who was educated in the UK and Australia and is no slouch in understanding the subtleties of English, was reported as saying it could create “a vicious circle of tension and mistrust”. In plainspeak this is instability. The Treaty was designed to do the opposite.

Establishing a US base in northern Australia is meant to send a message to India and China, the two growing super-powers. But between those faraway places and the Great South Land lies a lovely archipelago, the world’s third largest democracy. This strategic zone will now have American warships, warplanes, submarines and helicopter gunships on a nearby beach – and Indonesians weren’t asked what they thought.

Perception depends on position. Living a few hundred kilometers northwest of Darwin I have a different view of plans to turn the Northern Territory into an armed camp than when I lived in Perth.

If I was still in my home state (and earlier state of ignorance about Southeast Asia) I might have thought the idea of beefy American soldiers between little me and the land-hungry masses of Asia to be comforting.

Most Australians know about their nation’s empty interior and over-populated neighbours. We’ve grown up fearing the menacing arrows of descending communism believing that only the gallant forces of the Free World could stop the evil Red Tide, just as they halted the Japanese in the 1940s.

But then we matured and it seemed that the gravity theory driving Australian foreign policy had been buried. Wrong. Last week it was exhumed and revived.

It’s been embarrassing trying to explain to Indonesians why a sovereign nation would allow foreign troops to be based on its soil, unless, of course, the host is weak, insecure and subservient to a colonial master.

That’s the obvious logic, and no end of rabbiting on about independent alliances and historical ties will shake local opinion. My friends are just a mite confused – why the US military and not the UK when Australia has the Union Jack on its flag and the Queen’s head on its currency?

It would be easier trying to explain cricket.

The Indonesian media response has been robust with commentators asking how the deal sits alongside the regular pleas for Australians to develop friendly grassroots relationships with the people next door. There’s been much talk of a new Pearl Harbor.

How would Australians react if Indonesia suddenly announced a similar number of Chinese troops being stationed in Bali? Would Canberra accept the “normal bilateral agreement” line? If our Javanese neighbors in suburban Malang invite Ambonese hardmen (the preman usually used for ‘protection’) to settle in and flex their muscles my family would be rapidly reappraising our community relationships.

Does Indonesia have territorial ambitions on Australia? It’s about as impossible to erase this deeply-embedded but absurd fear in the Australian psyche, as it is to convince the electorate that the US will not necessarily dash into the fray should the continent be attacked.

The Indonesian armed forces would be formidable defenders of their land, but don’t appear to have the equipment, funds, or enthusiasm to invade 7.69 million square kilometers. There’s no discernable political appetite for such an insane adventure. Terrorists occasionally add Australia in their visions of a Caliphate but these crackpots are on the fringe of the fringe.

The last test of US resolve in this region came during the 1999 East Timor Referendum crisis when Australia appealed for American involvement. Then president Bill Clinton manoeuvred a few warships but kept them over the horizon. The tension with Indonesia was an Australian problem, and no grunts’ boots were among the international peacekeepers that trod the turf of what is now Timor Leste.

The realpolitik is that future US policy will be based on that nation’s national interests at the time and having a US Marine base in Australia will make not a whit of difference. If Washington decrees these troops will be deployed elsewhere or sent back to their northern hemisphere home, Canberra’s agreements with the US will have no more value than the Lombok Treaty.

In the meantime we Australians have to remain in this region for the rest of our existence. Better Ms Gillard puts her government’s energies into encouraging us to understand and appreciate our neighbours than being matey with the Marines.

If we really must have a US presence, then invite the Peace Corps.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 23 Nov 2011
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