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Macron must engage Indonesia and new capital to build global peace

Macron's France needs to reach out to Indonesia to protect its Indo-Pacific interests.

Phar Kim Beng (The Jakarta Post)
Kuala Lumpur
Fri, May 6, 2022

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Macron must engage Indonesia and new capital to build global peace

W

ars begin "in the minds of men", as in the preamble of the United Nations Education, Culture and Science Organization (UNESCO). When Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned of the possibility of nuclear war on April 25, 2022, every leader should have heeded those words, especially the newly reelected French President, Emmanuel Macron.

Any risk of a nuclear war in Europe, which will not spare the Indo-Pacific of any radioactive fallout either, deserves the joint attention of President Macron and President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. Neither are mere members of the Group of 20, and just as the European Union has a seat in the G20, Indonesia has a seat in ASEAN.

The current ASEAN chair is Cambodia, headed by Prime Minister Hun Sen. But come next year, the ASEAN chair returns to Indonesia, where President Jokowi will be faced with the same question.

Any attempts to preach to Indonesia are considered overbearing, as in who they should invite or not invite to the G20 summit in November. To Indonesia, moderation is a virtue, even in a time of global tension.

By inviting Ukrainian President Vlodimir Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the summit, a path to cessation of hostilities may not be guaranteed, but becomes at least plausible.

Russia's economy is projected to contract 11.2 percent this year. Ukraine's gross domestic product (GDP) has taken a hit of US$100 billion a day. The price spirals they are causing in the whole world are but a teaser of worse things to come.

President Macron's responsibilities include reaching out to ensure a powerful Indo-Pacific actor, which is Indonesia, to help close the difference between Russia and Ukraine.

Of all leaders in the world, at 44, Macron is closest to the average age of Indonesians of 29, compared to US President Joe Biden at 79. Meanwhile, 69-year-old Putin is a year shy of Chinese President Xi Jinping at 68, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is 64 and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is 59.

The generational gap matters. Russia knows this as it arming its troops based on what it can draw from the Far Eastern Military Command, its eastern Siberian flank closest to Vladivostok, the location of its Pacific fleet.

This area has been the concern of Russia since the heydays of the Soviet Union. When there is a war in Europe, Mother Russia’s Far East region immediately lies exposed.

Therefore, France must immediately grasp what is Indonesia and Nusantara, especially as Putin pushes for a massive offensive against Donbask in Ukraine by May 9, 2022, a date that marks the Soviet Union’s victory day parade against the Nazis during World War II.

These details matter, especially if France wants to defend its Indo-Pacific interests. That said, this begins with knowing Indonesia and Nusantara.

Although Nusantara is the name President Jokowi has chosen for the city that is to replace Jakarta as the future administrative capital of the Republic of Indonesia, it has its own romance that goes well beyond the combination of the two words, nusa and antara.

As Hans Pieter Evers, a seasoned visiting professor at the National University of Malaysia’s Institute of Ethnic Studies, affirmed, "In 1334, Gadjah Mada, the chief minister of the Majapahit Empire, used [Nusantara] to refer to the maritime fringes of the Majapahit Empire. During the anticolonial struggle, the term captured the imagination of writers, novelists, poets, and politicians in Indonesia and in British Malaya".

But it also disappeared from public debate, only to resurface in the 1990s with the emergence of the Nusantara youth culture and the politicized Nusantara Islam in Southeast Asia. President Macron, together with President Jokowi, must engage the youth of Indonesia to inspire hope.

Once again, what then is the relevance and causality of Nusantara and the reelection of Macron?

The answer is the latter's conviction that France is an "Indo-Pacific power", a phrase that Macron used twice last year and is officially accepted by the French Ministry of Armed Forces as its Indo-Pacific strategy, though other ministries can have their own accentuation. But something is missing.

France, astonishingly, is not an ASEAN dialogue partner. On most occasions, it gently exerts influence on the Indo-Pacific strategy (IPS) and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) through the role of the EU, which is an ASEAN dialogue partner.

France's budget outlay on the IPS and the FOIP was a mere US$2.5 million in 2021.

Rhetoric alone is not sufficient. France must invest in Indonesia's future to strengthen its own interests in the Indo-Pacific.

The preferred way of Indonesia, or Nusantara, is also to live and let live. Can President Macron bring something new to the table with Indonesia?

Since ASEAN and France are trading nations in the widest sense of the word, Macron must now be an active suitor of ASEAN on various platforms. Three factors are key.

First and foremost, granted that the EU is pursuing the Global Gateway Initiative with ASEAN, which it estimates to be worth 300 billion euros ($318.76 billion), Macron cannot promote French interests through the axis of the EU and ASEAN, or for that matter, only at the biennial ASEAN-Europe Meeting (ASEM).

Ideally, France has to also be a part of the 18-member East Asian Summit (EAS), which is held back-to-back with the ASEAN-related summit at the end of the year. Indonesia is the ASEAN chair in 2023.

Second, while France may have an Indo-Pacific strategy, it has not been part of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) since the pan-regional organization's establishment in 1987. Why not? At least France joined APEC as an observer first.

Third, France is not part of the 15-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Agreement (RCEP) agreed in November 2020, either, despite the fact that it is touted as the largest free trade agreement in the world.

Invariably, as the power with the largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the world, of which 93 percent is located in the Indian and the Pacific oceans, France must now work with Indonesia. Why?

Indonesia has the largest EEZ in the whole of maritime Southeast Asia. Thus, both Paris and Jakarta, and in due course, Nusantara, must help various contentious parties in the Indo-Pacific arena to learn to put “swords to plowshares”.

***

The writer is the president of Echo Strategic Insight and an associate fellow at Edx.org. The views expressed are personal.

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