After Obama’s state visit: What next?

Despite its relatively short duration, Barack Obama’s visit to Indonesia can be said to have worked out smoothly. The question we now need to ask ourselves is what benefit we can gain from this visit.

In the field of public diplomacy, a head-of-state visit is considered the premier way a country can nurture its relationship with another country. The visit underscored the two reasons why Indonesia has strategic importance to the US’ international agenda.

First, the visit sent a clear signal to Indonesia — the world’s largest Muslim-majority country — and to international audiences that the US would continue its policy of mending relations with the Muslim world.

Second, Indonesia holds a strategic position in the Pacific region due to its role in ASEAN and the G20.

The nation has evinced strong and robust economic performance over the last several years, making it a strong potential partner to the US.

This visit served both symbolic and substantive purposes. Symbolically, Obama made an excellent impression of friendship to the nation. During his address to more than 7,500 students and faculty at the University of Indonesia, Obama repeatedly spoke in the Indonesian language and told stories about how wonderful his childhood was. Wrapped in this tone of friendship, his address on democracy, development and religion was received enthusiastically by the audience.

He also took time to visit the Istiqlal Grand Mosque, the country’s largest, since the mosque is a strong indication of the spirit of pluralism and tolerance in Indonesia that the US seeks to promote.

Substantively, the visit led to the launch of a comprehensive partnership between Indonesia and the US.

The nations agreed to cooperate in the fields of diplomacy, security, economics, development, culture, education, science and technology.

Most experts agreed that the main benefits of Obama’s visit were the increased visibility of Indonesia in the international arena and an improved opportunity for us to pursue our country’s interests in bilateral affairs.

However, the level of benefit we receive will depend on the level of effort we put in following up on the visit. To that end, Indonesia must be more proactive at international and bilateral talks and stake firm positions to ensure our national agenda will be secured after the visit.

On the international front, the visit may be an excellent stepping stone for Indonesia to affirm our position on many issues. Obama’s statement, given the context of a formal head-of-state visit, can be considered the US’ official position and indicative of the unwritten commitment of his administration.

His words may very well be a liability that we can utilize internationally to promote democratization at the UN, reform of international financial institutions and in other areas emphasizing the importance of democracy and development of world institutions.

We can demand that Obama be consistent when after he eagerly stated that democracy was a necessary condition for development while at the same time the US has remained silent on democratizing  world institutions. We do not see democracy at the UN, with the security council’s veto system, nor at the IMF, with its contribution-based voting system. We want to see how Obama shall live up to this test.

On the bilateral front, we can utilize the resulting commitment to deal with barriers. The comprehensive partnership can provide an umbrella for more intense negotiations with the US on many unresolved issues. Again, we can compare Obama’s words on the importance of liberalizing trade with his government’s policy on trade protection.  Many Indonesian products, particularly agricultural products, face barriers from illiberal US trade policy.

On the economic front, we can also use the agreement to improve our trade balance by, for instance, promoting trade under the partnership. Bilateral trade has increasingly shifted to our detriment over
recent years.

This is evident by relatively stagnant exports from Indonesia, which increased from US$9,868 million in 2005 to only $10,850 million in 2009 with imports from the US, which have doubled from $2,878 million in 2005 to $7,083 million in 2009.

We may stand to benefit from Obama’s visit only if we can capitalize on the potential opportunities of the visit. To do that, Indonesia must first stake more firm positions by using Obama’s word as an unwritten commitment and the partnership agreement as an umbrella to develop more intense bilateral ties.

After that, we should be pro-active and follow up the visit with rigorous bilateral and international talks that promote our national agenda in both the bilateral and international arenas.

S. Haryo Suwahyo is deputy director of bilateral cooperation and Evan Oktavianus is a senior desk officer at the Finance Ministry’s Center for International Cooperation Policy.