Few expected any policy shift when Marty Natalegawa was appointed foreign minister a month ago. As a prodigy of the Foreign Ministry, he was reared, as were most Indonesians, on the historic rudiments of national foreign policy.
Former vice president Mohammad Hatta’s “independent and active” principle, the pomp and circumstance of non-interference and non-alignment, the slogans of “concentric circles”, and the building blocks of ASEAN as the cornerstone of foreign policy —all wired into the national psyche, from grade school to a budding diplomat’s introductory foreign service course.
Tenets that served the country well. Embodiments of the nation’s proud spirit of independence.
But even Hatta understood that principles have to be couched in pragmatism.
Indonesia’s foreign policy “should be executed in consonance with the situations and facts it has to face,” he said in his historic speech to the Central Indonesian National Committee (KNIP) on Sept. 2, 1948.
Measured shifts occurred during the eight-year term of Hassan Wirajuda, but it was only in the latter half of his service as foreign minister that a more innovative outlook to foreign policy was perceptible.
Understandably so.
Hassan was very much a product of the New Order. Moreover, his era was one in which the country was undergoing, for all intents and purposes, a sociopolitical revolution.
Marty has less such baggage. He has freedom to expand on his predecessor’s groundwork with the advantage of a more robust domestic political infrastructure.
It was therefore encouraging that in one of his first major foreign policy speeches, Marty refreshed foreign policy priorities, or “taglines” as he put it, to engage in the pragmatism of a values-based democracy founded on the consolidation of Indonesia as the world’s third-largest democracy.
The strength of his remarks — made at a gathering earlier this week of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, under the aegis of Indonesia’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies — was not that it abandoned foreign policy doctrines, but in his infusion of new viewpoints that allow the traditional to underpin contemporary possibilities rather than be a barrier to them.
Despite the growing frustration with ASEAN by many in Indonesia’s foreign policy community, Marty in no way discarded its efficacy.
ASEAN, he stressed, is “a fact of life” not optional in nature.
However, he gave the strongest indication that Indonesia should not stop there.
The identification of new opportunities and desire to become a leading voice in regional architecture was no less significant.
In essence, we can potentially see a further branching of the course of foreign policy, where the days of ASEAN as the be-all and end-all, likely fading.
The continuing centrality of ASEAN vis-à-vis these new opportunities are largely dependent on the 10-member grouping’s delivery of the promises of Southeast Asian community building.
Most important, though, was the highlighting of a transformational foreign policy as part of the continuation of key “intermestic” issues — human rights, good governance — that shape foreign policy.
What Marty may have done really is outline a modern values-based pragmatism.
A foreign policy where the functional aspects of diplomacy do not defy the prevalent ideals of present-day democratic Indonesia.
Without such awareness, present and future diplomacy cannot succeed.
Indonesian diplomacy cannot be the pragmatism of Realpolitik or the acquiescence of regional solidarity.
Nor does it imply neutrality.
As a democratic state, Indonesia’s “independent and active” foreign policy should stand for something.
The foreign minister knows too well that the proliferation of stakeholders demands that such values guide behavior abroad.
Lest we forget, the formulation of an “independent and active” foreign policy in 1948 was in large part aimed at placating the East-versus-West debate among domestic actors in their demands for Indonesia’s foreign policy stance.
Hence the stress of values held by today’s domestic constituents on the shaping of diplomacy cannot be underscored enough.
Marty’s other “taglines”, which include removing domestic constraints on trade and investment along with the efficacy of Indonesia’s soft power in international “bridge building”, are dependent on the sense of ownership and participation of current domestic stakeholders.
Indonesia’s new foreign minister may not be able to speak so bluntly, but his remarks have raised hopeful expectation full of suggestion.
And if he faithfully carries out the vision as interpreted, Marty will be right when he privately remarks that the best of Indonesian diplomacy is yet to come!
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