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Indonesia Participation in ASEAN
Since its founding on August 8, 1967, ASEAN has been a
major
focus of Indonesia's regional international relations. In
ASEAN
Indonesia, together with Brunei, Malaysia, the
Philippines,
Singapore, and Thailand, helped construct a regional
multinational framework to facilitate economic
cooperation,
diminish intra-ASEAN conflict, and formulate ASEAN
positions
regarding perceived potential external threats. From the
point of
view of Jakarta--the site of ASEAN's general
secretariat--ASEAN's
predecessor organizations had been flawed. The Southeast
Asia
Treaty Organization (SEATO)--established in 1954 and
composed of
Australia, Britain, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the
Philippines, Thailand, and the United States--included
only two
Southeast Asian members. Established as part of the
network of
United States security alliances, SEATO was seen as
violating the
principle of nonalignment. The Association of Southeast
Asia
(ASA)--established in 1961 and composed of Malaya (as
Malaysia
was then known), the Philippines, and Thailand--was seen
by
Jakarta as suspect because of the overlapping SEATO
memberships
of two of the members. In 1963 the proposed nonpolitical
confederation Maphilindo (for Malaya, the Philippines, and
Indonesia) was, for Jakarta and Manila, a tactic to
prevent or
delay the formation of the Federation of Malaysia. Manila
had its
own claim to Sabah (formerly North Borneo) and Indonesia
protested the formation of Malaysia as a British
imperialist
plot. When Maphilindo failed, Indonesia turned to
political and
military Confrontation, an attempt to undermine the new
state of
Malaysia. Sukarno's radical anti-Western rhetoric,
combined with
the growing strength of the PKI, marked Indonesia as a
disturber
of the regional international order rather than a
cooperative,
peaceful contributor to it.
By 1967 Indonesia's disruptive stance had changed.
ASEAN
provided a framework for the termination of the
IndonesianMalaysian Confrontation, allowing Indonesia to rejoin the
regional community of nations in a nonthreatening setting.
Furthermore, the five founding members of ASEAN (Brunei
became a
member in 1984) now shared common policies of domestic
anticommunism. The ASEAN process of decision making by
consensus
allowed Indonesia to dictate the pace of change within
ASEAN.
Some observers asserted that ASEAN moved only at the pace
of its
slowest member, which often was Indonesia. With ASEAN
increasingly seen as a symbol of regional peace and
stability,
its maintenance became an end in itself in Indonesian
foreign
policy. Suharto became ASEAN's elder statesman by the time
of
ASEAN's 1992 Fourth Summit in Singapore. He was the only
head of
government at ASEAN's 1967 establishment or at the 1976
Bali
First Summit who was still head of government in 1992.
Within the ASEAN framework, Jakarta was hesitant about
committing itself to permanent structures and agreements
that
would facilitate functional integration. In particular,
Indonesia
was resistant to market sharing, fearing that its market,
by far
the largest in ASEAN, would be swamped by the exports of
its more
competitive ASEAN partners. It was only reluctantly that
Indonesia agreed to accept in principle the ASEAN Free
Trade Area
(AFTA) contained in the fourth summit's document,
"Framework
Agreement on Enhancing ASEAN Economic Cooperation."
Although
committed to AFTA in theory, Indonesia, again as ASEAN's
slowestpaced member, won a fifteen-year delay of the
implementation of
AFTA, and the mechanism of the Common Effective
Preferential
Tariff was adopted as the instrument of transition. This
measure
meant that a future exemptions list would dictate the
economic
significance of items in the Common Effective Preferential
Tariff's broad trade categories
(see Direction of Trade
, ch. 3).
Moreover, there was some question as to whether
Indonesia was
outgrowing ASEAN in terms of economic cooperation.
Indonesia
invested the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)--a
grouping
of ASEAN members and major East Asian and Pacific trading
countries established in 1989--with greater significance
than
some of its ASEAN partners. It was Indonesia's desire to
promote
broad multilateral forums, such as APEC, that led it to
resist
more narrowly based schemes such as the East Asia Economic
Grouping proposed by Malaysia, which in its original
formulation
had the exclusive trading bloc characteristics of
Japan-based
general trading companies. The Malaysian plan was
downgraded at
the Singapore ASEAN summit to a proposed caucus and
referred to
committee.
Although Indonesia was the last member nation of ASEAN
to
embrace fully the organization's economic potential, its
leaders
saw early that ASEAN could be used as a vehicle to promote
a
regional political identity. Through ASEAN, Indonesia
became the
most articulate advocate of a Southeast Asian Zone of
Peace,
Freedom, and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) and a Southeast Asian
NuclearFree Zone (NFZ). The ZOPFAN ideal was enshrined in the
1971 Kuala
Lumpur Declaration and given lip service by all ASEAN
members.
Since the July 1984 Seventeenth ASEAN Ministerial Meeting,
Indonesia insisted on giving the ZOPFAN ideal high
priority.
Between the third (1987) and fourth (1992) ASEAN summits,
a major
alteration in the regional political-military power
presence of
the former Soviet Union and the United States lessened the
urgency for such a treaty. Although the Fourth Summit's
Singapore
Declaration of 1992 stated that ASEAN would continue to
seek the
realization of a ZOPFAN and NFZ, it would be done "in
consultation with friendly countries, taking into
account
changing circumstances [emphasis added]."
Indonesia's vigorous push for these zones involved a
number
of foreign policy interests that corresponded to other
policy
goals. As a leading nonaligned power, one of Indonesia's
consistent policy goals was to reduce regional dependence
on
external military powers. Second, the zones would improve
the
prospect of integrating Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos into a
wider,
peaceful Southeast Asian international order. The zones
responded
to the residual xenophobic element of Indonesian
nationalism. The
accomplishment of a nuclear-weapons-free ZOPFAN would
heighten
Indonesia's profile as a middle power with international
aspirations. One of the reasons why some ASEAN nations
were
reluctant to embrace the zones fully was the perception
that one
outcome might be to enhance a regional hegemonic role for
Indonesia. The question of Indonesia's future regional
role was
made more pertinent once the need for ASEAN solidarity on
the
issues posed by the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of
Cambodia in 1978 passed.
Data as of November 1992
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