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Indonesia Relations with the United States
Indonesian relations with the United States were
generally
warm and cordial after the establishment of Suharto's New
Order
government. In many respects, the United States during the
Cold
War was the least threatening superpower, assisting the
economic
recovery of the country both bilaterally and through the
IGGI. In
1991 United States trade with Indonesia was greater than
its
trade with all of Eastern Europe. Despite its professed
nonalignment, Indonesia also recognized the importance of
the
United States military and political presence in Southeast
Asia
in maintaining the regional balance of power. There were
issues,
however, which divided the two countries in the early
1990s. The
United States rejected Indonesia's archipelagic claims to
jurisdiction over the vital deepwater straits linking the
Pacific
and Indian oceans. During this period, the United States
also
vigorously opposed Indonesia's efforts to promote the NFZ
through
ASEAN. On the other hand, Indonesia, like other developing
countries in the region, was troubled by what it saw as
creeping
protectionism in United States trade policy. This concern
led to
a bruising diplomatic contest over the issue of the
protection of
intellectual property. Ultimately, Jakarta bent to the
implied
threat of sanctions specified in United States trade law.
The human rights and East Timor issues continued to
irritate
political communication between Jakarta and Washington.
Indonesia
resented the attention given to this issue by the United
States
Congress, which in turn was roused to action by human
rights
advocacy groups. For Indonesia, the persistent allegations
belied
the sincerity of United States protestations about
Indonesia's
contributions to regional peace and security. Efforts to
sanction
Indonesia by cutting off military assistance or
threatening its
Generalized System of Preferences status were viewed in
Jakarta
as anti-Indonesian. The official United States government
position, as stated in March 1992 by Deputy Assistant
Secretary
of State Kenneth M. Quinn, was that cutting ties, "would
not
produce the desired results which we all seek and could
have
negative consequences: for United States Indonesia
relations; for
our limited influence in Indonesia; and most importantly,
for the
people of East Timor." While the United States government
wished
to work cooperatively with the Indonesian government to
promote
development and respect for human rights in East Timor, it
also
had to be able to work productively with the Indonesian
government on a broad range of issues because it was an
important
regional power and one with a growing extra-regional
voice.
The United States Congress seemed more reluctant than
the
executive branch to separate the issue of broader
interests with
Indonesia from the problem of human rights. Congressional
and NGO
critics argued that United States policy rested on an
out-of-date
view of Indonesia's strategic importance now that the Cold
War
that had ended. Furthermore, these groups asserted that
the
United States should use its influence to push a
democratic
agenda. Later in 1992, United States legislation was
discussed
that would have terminated all of Washington's aid and
trade
concessions to Jakarta and required the United States to
oppose
World Bank loans to the country. In reality, only
Indonesian
participation in the International Military Education and
Training (IMET) program was cut--a relatively
insignificant
sanction in terms of its functional impact on Indonesia's
military, but one fraught with negative symbolic value as
an
expression of United States interests in the bilateral
relationship
(see Foreign Military Relations
, ch. 5).
In 1996 Indonesia will have ended the third decade of
New
Order government. By that time, more than halfway through
the
1993-98 presidential term of office, the issue of
presidential
succession might be resolved. This could unblock the
political
logjam that in the early 1990s seemed to stall the process
of
domestic political change--keterbukaan--set in
motion by
the government's development policies. A May 1992 World
Bank
report stated that by the end of the decade Indonesia
would be a
middle-income country. This prediction seemed to be on
target.
Indonesia was beginning to play a middle-power role
regionally
and even globally in some interest areas. More and more
Indonesians were likely to be socialized to the country's
modern
political culture, which increasingly resembled the newly
industrialized economies. The trends seemed to indicate
that the
stability deemed so necessary for development will depend
upon a
government more responsive to diversified public interests
than
simply to those of the ABRI-bureaucracy-presidential
palace
elite.
* * *
The dominance of the military in Indonesian government
and
politics has attracted great scholarly interest. Standard
works
include Ulf Sundhaussen's The Road to Power: Indonesian
Military Politics, 1945-1967, Harold A. Crouch's
The Army
and Politics in Indonesia, and David Jenkins'
Suharto and
His Generals: Indonesian Military Politics, 1975-1984.
Journal articles, such as John B. Haseman's "The Dynamics
of
Change: Regeneration of the Indonesian Army" and Harold A.
Crouch's "Military-Civilian Relations in Indonesia: The
Late
Soeharto Era," are representative of the breadth of
discussion
and analysis of the military's potential role.
General surveys of contemporary Indonesian politics
include
Leo Suryadinata's essay in Diane K. Mauzy's Politics in
the
ASEAN States, Ulf Sundhaussen's "Indonesia: Past and
Present
Encounters with Democracy" in Democracy in Developing
Countries, 3: Asia, and "Indonesia" in Clark D.
Neher's
Southeast Asia in the New International Era.
Richard
Robison's Indonesia: The Rise of Capital has become
the
classic statement on the political economy. The political
party
system is treated in both David Reeve's Golkar of
Indonesia:
An Alternative to the Party System and Leo
Suryadinata's
Military Ascendancy and Political Culture: A Study of
Indonesia's Golkar. Two collections of papers from
Australia's Monash University's Center of Southeast Asian
Studies
concentrate on the modernizing secular trends operating on
Indonesian politics: Richard Tanter and Kenneth Young's
The
Politics of Middle Class Indonesia and Arief Budiman's
State and Civil Society in Indonesia. R. William
Liddle
gives a succinct overview of Indonesian political culture
in
Politics and Culture in Indonesia. Benedict R.O'G.
Anderson's provocative work on Indonesian political
culture,
including his seminal "The Idea of Power in Javanese
Culture,"
are collected in Language and Power: Exploring
Political
Cultures in Indonesia. As statements on Islamic
political
culture in Indonesia, a conference paper by Howard M.
Federspiel,
"The Position and Role of Islam in Suharto's New Order at
the
21st Year," can be contrasted with Ruth T. McVey's "Faith
as an
Outsider: Islam in Indonesian Politics" in James P.
Piscatori's
Islam in the Political Process. One of the most
current
books is Indonesian Politics under Suharto by
Michael R.J.
Vatikiotis.
Human rights and East Timor have attracted attention,
some
from scholars but most from advocacy groups. Of general
note is a
work commissioned by the International Commission of
Jurists:
Hans Thoolen's Indonesia and the Rule of Law: Twenty
Years of
"New Order" Government; Asia Watch's Human Rights
in
Indonesia and East Timor, edited by Diane F.
Orentlicher; and
the annual Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices
prepared for the United States Congress by the Department
of
State.
Michael Leifer's Indonesia's Foreign Policy
remains
the only full treatment in English. A political economy
perspective is given by Dwight Y. King's "Indonesia's
Foreign
Policy," in David A. Wurfel and Bruce Burton's The
Political
Economy of Foreign Policy in Southeast Asia. Dewi
Fortuna
Anwar's Indonesia and the Security of Southeast
Asia is an
up-to-date book-length study on Indonesian foreign policy.
Annual surveys of Indonesian political events can be
found in
the February issues of Asian Survey each year and
the
annual Southeast Asian Affairs [Singapore]. For
current
politics, the Far Eastern Economic Review [Hong
Kong] and
the Asian Wall Street Journal [Hong Kong] are
extremely
useful. (For further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of November 1992
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