Foreign affairs politics

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Fri, 06/15/2007 9:25 AM

Where were you when we needed you the most? The Indonesian government, particularly the Foreign Ministry, is entitled to ask this question of the public, especially Muslim leaders and politicians, after it took on France, the United States and other world powers at the United Nations Security Council this weekend by blocking a plan to admonish Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his remarks calling for the destruction of Israel.

This is one of those moments when the government, facing possible recriminations from the international community, could do with a little support from the people at home. Instead it got almost nothing. The events at the Security Council did not even get a mention in most of the national media. Yet criticism of Indonesia is already being felt in the diplomatic corridors around the world for taking such a position in defiance of the world powers. A statement at the council must have the support of all its 15 members, and Indonesia's lone dissension was enough to kill the draft statement from being adopted and issued.

Contrast this with the way the domestic public reacted when Indonesia voted for the Security Council resolution in March expanding international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear policy.

Then, the government came under a lot of criticism at home for turning its back on a fellow Muslim country. Muslim leaders came out with a lot of harsh words, and the House of Representatives set into motion the interpellation process requiring the government to explain its actions, a demand which President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has not been able to comply with to this day. Even the Iranian embassy in Jakarta, which was active in March entertaining press interviews and meetings with politicians and Islamic leaders, was unusually quiet this time.

Why the different treatment of an issue that is essentially the same?

There was not much that Indonesia could have done with the resolution in March since, as a non-permanent member of the Security Council, it does not have the veto power that the giant powers enjoy. It did, however, fight for the insertion of a few paragraphs to the resolution that should have made it more palatable to Indonesia and the domestic public. It eventually voted along with the resolution on the basis of Iran's failure to comply with the terms of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty of which Tehran, like Jakarta, is a member.

Unlike a resolution, however, Indonesia has the power to block at Security Council statement. The government did just that this weekend, arguing, among other things, that the purported statement by President Ahmadinejad was not correct, and that he had in fact called for the destruction of the Zionist state (therefore of the regime in Tel Aviv), and not the entire Jewish nation. It is not all that dissimilar to President George W. Bush's calling for the dismantling of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq in 2003, which was not a call for the elimination of Iraqis.

If critics accused the government of succumbing to the United States' in March, they are unusually quiet this week. It would have been too simplistic to say that this time around, the government tried to appease the Muslims at home after the bitter experience with the resolution in March. That is no way to conduct foreign policy. Instead, as we have seen above, the Foreign Ministry has been consistent in its actions at the Security Council. Support at home, particularly from the House of Representatives, is what has been erratic to the point of being unpredictable.

While we could attribute this partly to the failure of the ministry's public diplomacy, the reality is that foreign policy in Indonesia is also increasingly being dragged into the arena of national politics. The interpellation motion in the House, for example, has little to do with Muslim solidarity (Qatar, another member of the Security Council, does not have this problem even though it has consistently voted along with the United Sates) than with the dynamics of Indonesian politics.

While it is heartening to see that our politicians, and to a lesser extent the domestic public, are taking greater interest in international affairs, the way they pick and choose issues that are convenient to their political standing vis-a-vis the government can be counterproductive to Indonesia's overall international standing. If politicians are persistent in turning every other foreign policy action into a domestic political issue at their convenience, then we may as well send the principle of active and independent foreign policy, as mandated by the national constitution, out the window.

A  |   A  |   A  |    |   |    |    |    |  

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.