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Secretary Blinken, since when do platitudes push the needle?
Even as two countries that share many values, there is little to dispel the sense that the United States, like China, is not an entirely reliable partner.
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Indonesian President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo (right) meets US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (center) and US ambassador for Indonesia Sung Kim at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta on Dec. 13. Blinken was visiting Indonesia as the first leg of his ASEAN tour. (AFP/Agus Suparto/Presidential Office)
U
nited States Secretary of State Antony Blinken must have made his debut in Indonesia this week with a number of clear goals in mind: (1) Get some good Kodak moments with President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo that will be analyzed ad nauseam, (2) soft-sell what he thinks is an Indo-Pacific vision that Jakarta might be compelled to swallow and (3) look into areas of cooperation that are convenient enough for Washington to make deeper ties worth pursuing.
On all accounts he seemed to achieve these goals, while also managing to leave the Indonesian side dumbfounded.
Out of the many opinions that have been formed since Blinken’s stopover in Jakarta and Depok, there are two ways of seeing things that seem to be most indicative of the state of relations between the two strategic partners.
One presumes that Indonesia has been deftly playing the Indo-Pacific game of musical chairs, doubling down on its balanced foreign policy approach that allows the country to continue engaging with the US and its allies and adversaries like China or Russia without much blowback.
This might have been the case on Monday when Jokowi hosted Blinken and top Russian security official Nikolai Patrushev in back-to-back meetings, undoubtedly aware of the fact that the Group of Seven advanced economies just issued a resolution on Ukraine that has riled up Moscow.
Patrushev met with senior security minister Mahfud MD to push for a 2022 date to have Russia and Indonesia elevate their ties to a strategic partnership, putting it on par with the current US-Indonesia relationship.
Or it could be obvious in the way the government keeps score on how Jakarta had been visited by all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council this year, after hosting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in January and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in July, United Kingdom top diplomat Liz Truss and France’s Yves Le Drian in November and finally Blinken in December.
