Some years before that, 11 American sailors and airmen were saved and sheltered for five years by local Dayak tribespeople after their planes were shot and crashed into what is now North Kalimantan.

“When a US Embassy team visited the area in March to commemorate the rescue, one of the original Dayak rescuers – now 82 – told them it was the Dayak people’s respect for American values of fairness, integrity and tolerance that motivated this unlikely partnership,” Donovan said in his speech.

There were many more in the “amazing collection of individuals” that the envoy said had worked hard throughout the 70 years of formal ties to make the partners’ shared futures better based on shared values.

This year, Jakarta and Washington celebrate decades of what one US Embassy spokesperson in Jakarta described as a “broad and deep” relationship, despite concerns over a perceived lack of access at the highest levels.

The two sides reached a milestone with a deal to resume military relations during acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan’s visit to Jakarta last month. Washington had cut all ties with the Indonesian Army’s Special Forces Command (Kopassus) in the 1990s following alleged human rights abuses in then Indonesian-occupied Timor Leste and during the 1998 crisis. Under the new agreement, the two forces would engage in joint combat medic exercises that Shanahan had hoped to start in 2020.

This achievement, however, has not shielded Donovan – who began serving in Indonesia from right around the start of Donald Trump’s presidency in 2016 – from criticism over him keeping a relatively low profile compared to other envoys, such as Chinese Ambassador to Indonesia Xiao Qian, former British ambassador Moazzam Malik and Japanese Ambassador Masafumi Ishii.

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