TheJakartaPost
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An equivocal diplomacy on the doorstep
Australia therefore needs to think about its attitude towards Islam, and particularly how best to use what influence we have with Islam in Indonesia.
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Australia therefore needs to think about its attitude towards Islam, and particularly how best to use what influence we have with Islam in Indonesia. (Shutterstock/File)
R
ecently in Jakarta I was asked to compare Australia’s relationship with Indonesia today with that under the New Order. During the New Order, our problems derived mostly from former East Timor and from the different backgrounds of our countries. Our leaders generally tried to steady the relationship, and Keating and Soeharto sought to strengthen it. But Australians saw Indonesia as militaristic and corrupt. To Indonesians, Australia was a country cousin of the colonial powers but without their political savvy. These perceptions affected how we dealt with each other.
When Timor fell off the agenda and Indonesian democracy sprung open, the relationship arguably became more equable. It also became more complex.
Border issues, combatting terrorism, economic dealings, education and so on are constants in the relationship. However it is increasingly shaped by four overarching factors, discernible in 2000, but now more pronounced.
First is the rise of China and relative decline of the United States.
From the beginning of the New Order, Indonesia’s importance to Australia in regional security terms was that as a stable and pivotal member of ASEAN, it contributed to a benign security environment in South East Asia. But the guarantor of Australian security was the US.
It still is. But as doubts have grown about the durability of the American commitment to the region, so too has the view that regional security will increasingly revolve around a multipolar power structure in the Asia-Pacific and around closer security relationships between the more significant regional nations, of which Indonesia is one.
Indonesia’s security doctrines are self evidently different from Australia’s. While Indonesia sees advantage in the US presence in the region, it takes non-alignment seriously and eschews a public embrace of the US.
