T

he world in which we live now and in the future is a hybrid one. On the one hand there is the world we are all familiar with, which is a geopolitical and geoeconomic world and consists of various nationstates. On the other hand, there is the new world, a '€œnetworked world'€, a world that is much more inhabited and galvanized by non-state actors and which is very influential and persuasive in interstate life.

State boundaries that conventionally separate human activities face increasing challenges from these new actors, with their emphasis on democracy and human rights, markets that should produce socially desired goods and integrated production-bases.

From this viewpoint, it has become much more difficult to speak of a nation'€™s foreign policy in the conventional sense. It is currently more accurate if we think and talk about various foreign policies within a state, which has become more disaggregated and dynamized by augmented activities of non-state actors. In line with this trend, at the state level various ministries and government institutions have their own objectives in international relations, albeit within an overall state'€™s policy, and participate autonomously in the international network. Consequently, the division between '€œdomestic'€ and '€œforeign'€ has become more indistinct.

The primary goal of our life as a nation is to '€œimprove public welfare, to educate the life of the people and to participate in the establishment of a world order based on freedom, perpetual peace and social justice'€ (Preamble, 1945 Constitution).

If we convert these long-term goals into our foreign policy, then the objectives can be formulated into two phrases, i.e. to achieve a prosperous and just Indonesian society oriented toward a just and civilized humanity and progressing toward a networked world that is also peaceful and just.

However, Indonesia'€™s foreign policy also comprises a wider geographical extent. It also comprises a foreign policy of developing ASEAN. In 1966, Indonesia declared an '€œintegrated'€ Southeast Asia, which became manifest in ASEAN. Thirty-seven years later, the Bali Concord II proclaimed the establishment of an ASEAN Community, a manifestation of an '€œintegrated'€ ASEAN, constituted of three distinct pillars: politics and security, economics and socio-culture.

On Jan. 1, 2016, Indonesia and the other ASEAN countries should begin to materialize this community. The road maps of the ASEAN countries aim to achieve an ASEAN Community that is prosperous and just and democratic in a networked and peaceful world. Here too the '€œdomestic'€ and '€œforeign'€ policies of states within the ASEAN Community become indistinct.

Indonesia is ASEAN'€™s de facto leader; that has been acknowledged and respected. Hence, the building of common understanding at the level of ASEAN is a sine qua non. Indonesia'€™s next president needs to not only construct a multiparty coalition in a presidential system of government, but he will also have to create a common understanding among all ASEAN leaders to build the ASEAN Community as a base for expanding his economics and politics.

As a first step, Indonesia will have to start to build a common understanding among the founding member states '€” Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Brunei Darussalam '€” and then with the peninsular ASEAN members, starting with Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Cambodia'€™s closeness to China and the Philippines'€™ to the United States should be balanced by a more assertive ASEAN stance in building solidarity, a stance of '€œASEAN First'€, particularly in the South China Sea.

Hence, Indonesia and the other ASEAN states will have to be better structured and institutionalized parallel to the buildup of leadership in the endeavors of consolidating ASEAN'€™s integration, strengthen '€œASEAN'€™s centrality and role as the driving force in charting the evolving regional architecture'€. This endeavor has to be done by simultaneously building up an Indonesian strategic culture and in the process an ASEAN strategic culture.

The norms underlying ASEAN'€™s strategic culture are epitomized in TAC and the ASEAN Charter, which strategize the amity and cooperation among members.

This strategic culture, as a set of equipment of confidence, stance and action should be directed toward the build-up of strength and power, both hard and soft, and their utilization for the interest of Indonesia and other ASEAN members in assessing the wider strategic environment.

The development of a firm stance of a self-confident ASEAN can only be accomplished by the ASEAN Summit, '€œthe supreme policy-making body of ASEAN'€ (ASEAN Charter) to increase Indonesia'€™s and the other ASEAN members'€™ significance, to strengthen their ties and solidarity in order that a more solid and harmonious regional architecture can materialize.

The expanding dimension of Indonesia and the other ASEAN members will simultaneously facilitate ASEAN to dynamize an ASEAN centrality and its other foreign policy objectives, such as fighting for a more balanced geopolitical dynamic in the Asia-Pacific region, balancing China, India, Japan, the US and Russia through the East Asia Summit and ASEAN'€™s imprint on the management of the South China Sea.

ASEAN'€™s strategic culture should also be directed toward progressively reducing ASEAN as a dependent variable and convert it into an independent variable, to strengthen its struggling and competitive power, and reduce the possibility of national sovereignty and non-intervention slackening ASEAN'€™s regional life. Is it not the main objective of the ASEAN Community in its three major fields of cooperation? This cultural strategy will have to be developed on the basis of values and norms of building an ASEAN Community toward a more flexible intergovernmental approach, and hence not judging national sovereignty and non-interference as non-negotiable.

In order to accomplish these series of policy lines with fidelity it is very crucial to create and appoint a functionary who specifically handles ASEAN affairs in the government, a '€œMinister for ASEAN Affairs'€ (René Pattiradjawane), who is to simultaneously cultivate an ASEAN strategic culture.

The writer is a researcher at the Center for Political Studies, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Jakarta.