But make no mistake. The young audience paid attention to the speakers throughout the discussion. They listened, burst into laughter and gave big rounds of applause.

Their enthusiasm was visible, evident in the serious questions they raised.

There were several sessions held simultaneously during the annual Festival of Diplomacy, organized by the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI) on Dec. 2.

With the presence of the young students, you could sense the atmosphere of K-pop at the conference, requiring the speakers to adapt to the unique environment. You may find it difficult to believe my testimony.

The founder and chairman of the FPCI, Dino Patti Djalal, I and three other speakers discussed “Indonesia’s Free and Active Foreign Policy in the Jokowi Era: How free? How active?” in the afternoon session of the conference.

Also in the same panel were Poppy Sulistyaning Winanti, a young professor of international relations at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Philips J. Vermonte, the dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Indonesian International Islamic University and Aaron Connelly, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore.

Issues addressed during our session were: 1) Indonesia’s leadership in the regional and global context; 2) the balance of Indonesia’s relationship with China and the United States; 3) Indonesia’s approach to multilateralism and internationalism; and 4) the commitment to the principles of “free and active” foreign policy.

Dino, a former deputy foreign minister and Indonesian ambassador to the US, claimed the FPCI is the world’s largest grassroots foreign policy community. The festival is part of the organization’s busy agenda every year. 

The audience laughed when I answered how free and active Indonesia’s foreign policy was in the Jokowi era: “President Jokowi’s foreign policy during his first 2014-2019 presidency was very free but not active at all.”

When Jokowi came to power in 2014, he fully realized that, as a middle power, Indonesia should choose a multilateral approach but with a clear mindset that it should be economic-based diplomacy. Unlike his predecessors, who were very close to Japan, Jokowi came up with the idea of giving China top priority. But unfortunately, he lacked a comprehensive platform and his policy was based merely on spontaneity.

Jokowi should, first of all, have won the heart and mind of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who would have become his most important partner to realize his infrastructure development ambition. The problem was that Jokowi shifted the decades-long orientation almost entirely without a well-prepared vision and mission. It was more triggered by impulsive ambition.

The President intentionally picked China to build the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, much to the chagrin of Japan, which had completed a comprehensive feasibility study and had offered a comprehensive financing government-to-government scheme to Jokowi.

As we know, the pet project went through a disastrous process. It was completed four years behind its original schedule of 2019. The cost swelled by at least 23 percent, and its financing mechanism shifted to the government-to-government scheme, meaning the costs would be covered by the state budget.

President Jokowi has consistently upheld the free and active foreign policy as mandated by the Constitution. In practice, however, Indonesian foreign policy was very free but not so active because Jokowi focused more on domestic affairs.

In the first term, Jokowi entrusted his vice president Jusuf Kalla to handle the multilateral forum – but more in the sense of attending international forums without making any meaningful decisions.

Jokowi lacked a clear and detailed grand strategy in foreign policy. As he prohibited his Cabinet members from advancing their own vision and mission, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi’s role was reduced to a top bureaucrat rather than a top foreign policymaker.

Jokowi also envisioned Indonesia as global maritime fulcrum, but it was more rhetoric than a reality. One indication is his dearth of attention to the development of Indonesian Navy, although it is also true that he instructed Retno to take a leading role in formulating the ASEAN Outlook on Indo-Pacific (AOIP).

The reality is that although all major powers supported the AOIP, at the same time they attempted to steer the regional grouping’s direction.

For me, the biggest foreign policy achievement of Jokowi’s presidency is Indonesia’s role in realizing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world’s largest trade pact involving the 10 ASEAN member states and giant trading partners China, Japan, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand. The binding trade agreement covers a market of 2.2 billion people with a combined economic size of US$26.2 trillion, or 30 percent of the world’s total gross domestic product. Indonesia ratified the agreement only in August 2022, eight months after it came into force.

In his second term, Jokowi started to play a major international role. Indonesia held the Group of 20 presidency and hosted its summit in Bali in November of last year. The country also assumed the ASEAN chairmanship in 2023.

Under Indonesia’s chairmanship, however, ASEAN failed to achieve progress in its effort to end the crimes against humanity in Myanmar and force the junta leader Gen. Aung Min Hlaing to comply with the five-point consensus as the platform to bring peace and democracy back to the beleaguered state.

But Jokowi was not alone. Previous ASEAN chairs were also unable to help end the Myanmar crisis.

For Indonesia, the United States is a key partner in security and defense affairs. In public, ASEAN member states always try to strike a fine balance between the US and China. For them the Quad security cooperation involving the US, Japan, India and Australia and the formal military pact of Australia, the United Kingdom and the US (AUKUS) are generally welcome to counterbalance China. 

Indonesia’s ties with China have been put to the test by repeated incidents in Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone in the North Natuna waters. While Indonesia’s sovereign right there is recognized by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), China does not seem to care, saying the area has been a traditional fishing ground for its fishermen for thousands of years.

I have spoken at the diplomacy festival three times. I, as well as other speakers, felt the annual conference was not so different from a K-pop concert. I was amazed by the enthusiasm of the young audience to learn their country’s foreign policy.

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The writer is a senior editor at The Jakarta Post. He can be contacted at korpurba@gmail.com.