This post has been adapted from a recent ASPI panel discussion ‘Australia and Indonesia: getting back on track’. The full video of the event is available here. 

Notwithstanding the evident abilities of our foreign service officers—and they are considerable—Australia’s politicians aren’t natural diplomats. The recent imbroglio regarding Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran put on display Tony Abbott’s and Julie Bishop’s lack of international relationship management skills. Nor were Indonesian President Joko Widodo or his Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi any better.

For the sad truth is that government-to-government relations are conducted at the tactical level, with little evidence of a long-term strategy.

Our bilateral relationship with Jakarta tends to be driven by the vagaries of events, incidents and issues rather than the pursuit of common interests or long-term goals.

Three attitudes characterise Australia’s approach to Indonesia. First, we have a strong sense of Indonesia’s ‘otherness’—a trait identified by Ratih Hardjono in her insightful 1992 book Suku Putihnya Asia: Perjalanan Australia Mencari Jati Dirinya (the White Tribe of Asia: Australia’s Journey to Find its Identity). Second, there’s little sensitivity to the cultural dynamics. For Australia, everything is black and white, whereas for Indonesia there are only shades of gray. And, finally, the instinct of Australian politicians is to play to the domestic audience. Hence the megaphone as Australia’s preferred diplomatic instrument.

And four attitudes characterise Indonesia’s approach to Australia. First, Indonesia is uncertain about what it is and what it stands for. Self-doubt is a national trait. Second, there’s an evident tendency to national introspection. Third, continual suspicion regarding Australia’s motives, to the point of paranoia. And finally, the consequent emergence of a vocal and xenophobic nationalism. Australians are bule (the equivalent of ‘honky’), which has distinct racist overtones.

Among the Jakarta elite, the knockdown nature of Australian politics is just another symptom of the fact that Australians are kurang ajar—Indonesian for ‘boorish—with little appreciation for subtlety. And Julie Bishop’s confession that she exchanged heated words with her Indonesian counterpart only served to reinforce that impression. Halus (meaning ‘refined’) isn’t a term that Indonesians normally associate with Australia.

The core problem in the bilateral relationship is the absence of trust. Generally speaking, governments are not good at building trust, principally because they are more transactional than transformative, driven by the immediate rather than the important, and by the ephemeral rather than substantial long-term goals.

Trust between nations is hard to build, because it is not a consequence of personal relationships between political leaders, but is largely dependent on the strength and integrity of the national institutions—the judicial system, the financial system, the parliament and other representative institutions including the media.

Strong institutions reflect high levels of social capital, and actually contribute to the further generation of social capital.

Australian governments need to focus more on working with Indonesia to strengthen its national institutions. A great KPI for Australia would be to cooperate with Indonesia to lift its Corruption Perception Index from 107th in the world to, say, 50th (equal to Malaysia). And just in case anyone feels smug, Australia ranks 11th—after New Zealand (2nd) and Singapore (7th).

The goal of enhancing the integrity and transparency of the Indonesian armed forces (the TNI) has long driven Australia’s approach to the difficult issue of bilateral military relations. To the extent that the TNI remains subordinate to the Indonesian Parliament, and that it accepts the major premises of civil–military relationship management, Australia’s security is actually enhanced.

But we do need a broader view of ‘security’ if we are to build a stronger and more functional bilateral relationship over time. National security is essentially an artefact of essential internal factors—human security (both personal and community), social security (effective safety nets that reduce social unrest), economic security, the rule of law and the exercise of fundamental freedoms—and critical external factors that derive from a rules-based international system.

If there’s one area in which Australia and Indonesia should cooperate in the security and economic interests of both countries, it’s climate change. This would be low cost/high yield investment. Increasing sea levels and changes in ocean acidity and salinity will have a profound impact on archipelagic states. Work on both mitigation and abatement would reap good returns.

But what has the Australian government done instead? At a time when we are firing rockets into vehicles operated by the ISIS forces in northern Iraq to the tune of over $1bn per year, we cut the development assistance budget.

Of course, the government would be right to say that trust cannot be bought. But it can be invested in. To do so requires strategy and constancy, qualities that have been sadly absent from the Australia–Indonesia relationship over the past decade or so. Indonesia is too important to Australia for things to continue to drift.

This post has been adapted from a recent ASPI panel discussion ‘Australia and Indonesia: getting back on track’. The full video of the event is available here. 

As a born optimist, I share Benjamin Franklin’s sentiment—misquoted yet true—that beer and wine are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Further, I submit, champagne proves that God has an elegant sense of humour.

Take this as a conceptual framework for Australia–Indonesia relations. Optimism tempered by hangovers.

Making Australia and Indonesia neighbours shows the Almighty’s droll side. Talk about yin and yang, chalk and cheese, the odd couple of Asia. This relationship could drive you to drink.

As Indonesia’s President said in Canberra in 2005:

‘Our relations are so complex and unique that it can be pulled in so many different directions, and it can go right as often as it can go wrong.’

Indonesia can direct Australia’s regional dreams or dominate its nightmares. Just as Papua New Guinea shapes the way Australia thinks about the South Pacific, Indonesia frames Australia’s view of Southeast Asia.

But—and here’s the optimist reaching for the glass—our nightmares about Indonesia tend not to arrive. We get more champagne than we anticipate, or often acknowledge.

On this, see the thoughts of one the smartest people around here. Be not misled by Rod Lyon’s gentle, delphic smile; sharpness lurks. And Rod offers a typically to-the-point judgement on how Indonesia has answered more of our dreams, despite those nightmares.

First, here’s his setup:

‘The basic trajectory of Indonesia—towards the consolidation of democratic institutions and steady economic growth—bodes well for the future bilateral relationship. Moreover, Australia and Indonesia are the two largest powers within the sub-region. But our relationship is still a fraught one, frequently marred by controversy and misunderstanding. And the Jokowi government in Indonesia doesn’t seem to be the vehicle for a broader reform movement: political power does not, at first glance, seem more widely shared, nor corruption much diminished.’

Sounds like the usual Oz lament about the hangovers—fraught, controversy etc. Then the sun breaks through and that dry realist Rod Lyon manages a glass-half-full moment. Australia, he notes, has been waiting a long time for the ‘Indonesia gone bad’ scenario to unfold, and it ain’t happened. Pop the corks. Here is Rod’s toast:

‘Today Indonesia looks more like our strategic partner than it ever has before.’

The Defence White Paper in August will make the same point as Australia shakes off the latest hangover. The enthusiasm over partnership will be muted by the political trauma of the execution of two Australians by an Indonesian firing squad. The Abbott government is feeling jaundiced about Jakarta. But the trend line and the aspiration will be what matters for a White Paper peering out decades at an Indonesia becoming bigger and stronger.

The extraordinary, vibrant and now raucously democratic neighbour to our north can be Australia’s strategic partner .We’ve just got many miles to go before we can add in descriptors like steady or established or even reliable. That way lies the place Paul Dibb aspires to: Indonesia as Australia’s ‘strategic shield.’

Australia enjoyed a growing sense of partnership with Indonesia because of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s presidency. It was the best decade we’ve had from an Indonesia president. It might be the best we’ll get. SBY was positive about Australia—still an unusual thing in the Jakarta elite. The SBY effect saw the Gillard government’s 2013 Defence White Paper declare: ‘Australia’s strong partnership with Indonesia remains our most important strategic relationship and the partnership continues to deepen and broaden in support of our significant shared interests.’

The concept of ‘strategic partnership’ has become part of the common coin of international relations; so common the worth and weight of such partnerships can fluctuate like currency movements. Gillard also proclaimed a strategic partnership with China to clinch the deal for an annual leadership summit. As Foreign Minister Bob Carr’s diary records the moment in Hainan in April, 2013, Gillard ‘uses the words “our strategic partnership”, which is the shorthand description of what they want from us and what we will agree to in order to get them to give us guaranteed annual leaders’ meetings.’

Let us, then, toast the process and aim of strategic partnership with Indonesia while hoping its meaning doesn’t fluctuate too much.

We need to acknowledge the SBY effect in the recent appreciation of partnership. An example was Barack Obama’s announcement in November, 2011, that the US Marines were heading for Darwin. The initial Jakarta reaction was negative. The Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa, warned that the Marine announcement risked setting off nasty responses, causing ‘a vicious circle or tensions and mistrust or distrust.’

Such language was straight out of the old Jakarta playbook. Imagine how Suharto would have done it—he would have been chilly while Benny Murdani went ballistic. Indonesia would have quietly pocketed the strategic benefit of the Marines while blasting Australia, playing the standard nationalist, ASEAN and non-aligned cards.

Not so SBY. The President ignored his Foreign Minister and gave the Marines the thumbs-up. Then came the Javanese blessing. In July, 2012, SBY flew to Darwin for a three day visit and talks with Julia Gillard. The symbolism was that in going to Darwin, SBY was following Obama who’d also gone there with Gillard. Indonesia’s President flew to a Darwin where Marines were doing their first training rotation.

Did we take full advantage of the good times and build all the things with Indonesia that SBY would have made possible? Did we build on and grow and entrench and make as solid as possible the security framework SBY signed up to with the Lombok Treaty?

Probably not. But it was still a good enough structure not to be swept away by the diplomatic hurricane caused by Australia eavesdropping on SBY and his wife—and it was the structure used to incorporate a code of conduct on surveillance and intelligence to close off that dispute.

Turning the other cheek on the spying fiasco was SBY’s last gift to Australia.

So the ups and downs and hangovers will keep coming, precisely because Indonesia is our frame for Southeast Asia and looms large in the foreground. Ironically, however, we often lift our eyes further afield. Oz political, economic and diplomatic discussion of Asia is of a place that sits further north, beyond the archipelago.

Australia’s strategists and defenceniks spend more time looking at maps. They never forget the existential moment the Japanese visited on us. If any threat comes, it will arrive ‘from or through’ Indonesia. Strange that our gaze drifts.

Indonesia is the same—looking north not south. The old Jakarta joke: Australia is like your appendix, you only think about it when it hurts. This is a form of geopolitical astigmatism, where the view of the other gets hazier, even as they get closer. Call it reverse beer-goggles.

As John Garnaut laments, Australia and Indonesia fail to treat each other as serious nations, which is strange given the way our strategic interests are increasingly aligned:

‘When Australia and Indonesia think about serious things like security, technology and money they both look further north. The parochial politics of asylum seekers, or drug smugglers, or being seen to act tough towards each other, keep getting in the way, despite some herculean individual efforts on both sides. Each nation has shaken off its colonial and post-colonial baggage – except when they face each other.’

To their credit, Australians understand a lot of this. The poll by the Lowy Institute following the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran found Australians had a strong preference for a restrained diplomatic response.

‘Private diplomatic protests’ was the course most favoured by those surveyed, with 59% voting for private diplomacy. On the recall of the Australian ambassador, only 42% agreed Australia should pull back Paul Grigson.

Such results suggest Australians understand the happy-to-hangover cycle that afflicts this relationship. They might not go near the language of strategic partnership and converging interests. Instead there’s a pragmatic sense of the many things the odd couple must share. Cheers!

It appears that, in the end, nothing could have saved Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran—and, incidentally, six other drug convicts—who were executed by firing squad on the Indonesian prison island of Nusakambangan early yesterday morning.

But the temporary stay of execution for Filipina drug courier Mary Jane Veloso may say more about President Joko Widodo—and where he’s coming from—than anything else in this whole unhappy saga.

Veloso is a poorly-educated maid, the one class of person bound to attract the sympathy of even Widodo, who has made the welfare of Indonesia’s domestic workers—many from his own Javanese hinterland—a central pillar of his foreign policy.

His decision to proceed with the executions was made in his first month in office and appears to have been his alone. Widodo’s chief of staff Luhut Pandjaitan says he was never consulted on the issue.

Some analysts believe the president was anxious to show he wasn’t a prevaricator like his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Later in his presidency, SBY claimed an opposition to the death penalty but never took the next step.

Yudhoyono allowed 15 executions in the four years after he took office in 2004, including two Nigerians for drug trafficking. Then followed a four-year moratorium before a Nigerian, a Vietnamese and a Pakistani paid the ultimate price for the same offence, along with three murderers.

And in 2014 there were none. Compare that to Widodo, whose mild-mannered Attorney General, Muhammad Prasetyo, declared on the eve of this week’s executions: ‘Don’t force us to cancel or postpone the executions. If we do, we will be perceived as weak.’

More importantly, the president would also be perceived as giving in to foreigners—in this case, Australian leaders who know better than anyone that megaphone diplomacy doesn’t work with Jakarta, but nonetheless have to show they’re trying to save their citizens.

When Prime Minister Tony Abbott perhaps unwisely raised the issue of Australia’s help in the devastating 2004 Aceh tsunami disaster as a reason for Widodo halting the executions, the look of indignation and anger on Pandjaitan’s face was palpable.

Like it or not, Indonesians hate being pressured; countries that do so find they have precious little leverage to call on when the nation’s nationalist hackles have been raised above a certain level.

President Suharto demonstrated that adequately enough, first with the Australia and its media in the mid-1980s, and then with the Dutch and the Americans in the 1990s over the East Timor massacre and Indonesia’s poor human rights record.

More recent is the case of marijuana smuggler Schapelle Corby, who should have received a five-year sentence, but got 20 years instead because the judges were clearly unhappy with the Australian media’s claims that she didn’t get a fair trial.

Yesterday’s execution brings the number of foreigners who have died on Widodo’s watch to 14, with as many as 14 more slated to follow in their footsteps this year alone.

Why is Widodo trying to look so tough? Some critics suggest he’s trying to make up for his failure to protect the Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK) from an all-out assault by police and politicians; it has seen the president savaged in the polls over recent months.

Others say it’s easier to blame foreigners for drug trafficking than to address the more difficult tasks of going after corrupt policemen and big-time Indonesian dealers responsible for starting and sustaining the drug ‘emergency’ Widodo likes to talk about.

Too many people have also been seduced into thinking this walkabout president is what they wanted him to be: a knight on a white horse, spreading reform and change and good cheer. As they are discovering, he’s not like that at all.

A harder side of Widodo is now in evidence, and so is the realisation that someone who was born poor and spent most of his 53 years in central Java hasn’t been exposed to the moral debate over the death penalty that other leaders have been.

Many if not most educated Indonesians abhor the death penalty; one described it to me as ‘sadistic and barbaric’. But the general population—easily influenced at the best of times—accepts it without much thought and would like nothing better than to extend it to corruptors.

Religion does play a role in this mentality. After all, even with Indonesia missing from this year’s list, 13 Islamic nations led by Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh were among the 25 countries that had the highest number of state-sanctioned executions.

Indonesian Muslims say the fact that the death penalty is applied for serious crimes in Islamic law only reinforces the principle of an eye-for-eye entrenched in the Indonesian psyche, exacerbated as it is by social injustice and a weak rule of law that encourages extrajudicial killings.

Indonesian writer and philosopher Goenawan Mohamad (whose father was executed by the Dutch) points to how the country’s history of violence forms the way its people think about death. As he wrote in a recent column: ‘We need a history that is more peaceful, a history which enforces justice because justice is not easy to enforce.’

Indonesians aren’t given to introspection but if the diplomatic storm over the eight executions achieves anything, it may be to start a debate within the political elite over the whole issue.

The executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran will leave most Australians dismayed by President Joko Widodo’s refusal of clemency, angered by the clumsy, ugly execution process and jaundiced by the attitudes of a number of Indonesians on killing two of our countrymen.

This latest downturn with Indonesia will make us reflect—again—on what we should do. Make no mistake, it will deeply affect Australian perceptions of Jokowi through the rest of his tenure, and more widely, of Indonesia for years to come.

Don’t blame the Australian Government. It tried its best to save its nationals. We have often made mistakes with Indonesia; this time, however, Indonesia got it wrong.

Don’t see the executions as primarily an Australia–Indonesia issue, either. By year’s end, Jokowi would have overseen a significant number of executions. Two involve Australians. We need perspective.

But Indonesia dismissed our representations and we have no choice but to react with uncompromising displeasure. We should withhold bilateral visits by ministers while executions continue or for the rest of the year. We can’t have high-level business as usual.

That said, we shouldn’t compromise our own interests to the extent of jeopardising the web of civilian and military exchanges that are at the heart of the relationship, or cut our aid program in response to the executions—intended to improve the lives of ordinary Indonesians. We should keep our Ambassador in Jakarta because communication matters.

Our longer term challenge requires two shifts in our approach towards Indonesia.

First, our country—amongst others—often sees diplomacy in terms of relationships. Wrong. It’s about interests.

In recent decades we’ve framed our dealings with Indonesia within various forms of ’special relationship’ only to see our interests suffer when illusions shatter.

Our political class and external policy establishment must develop a mindset that dealing with Indonesia is a management task as much as a political one—keeping things stable and pushing our interests through unglamorous grunt work—part of which involves accommodating, where appropriate, Indonesian interests. But interests must be the basis of our relationship, not the reverse.

Second, we have to recognise that the Australian foreign policy challenge is different to that of most Western democracies. With the exception of New Zealand, our neighbours have different political systems and traditions, levels of development and postcolonial experiences from our own. This cultural gap is most salient with Indonesia. It impedes stability in our dealings. Australians see Indonesians as callous, militaristic and corrupt. Indonesians see Australians as insensitive and condescending. Politicians in each country react to their own national prejudices in their dealings with the other. And so it continues.

This isn’t a new problem for us. To lessen it, we must take a bipartisan path, which will require Australians to understand Indonesia and Asia more widely through education and practical exposure, and build the people-to-people and institutional relationships which encourage equilibrium in our international dealings. In the past we have gone enthusiastically down these paths only to be stalled by lethargy and partisan bickering.

Understandably, Australians can wonder whether Indonesia really matters or is worth the trouble. It does and it is. Indonesia straddles many of our northern approaches. It is the prime mover within ASEAN. It will play a role in the ongoing evolution of new power structures in the Asia–Pacific. Its policies on terrorism and transnational crime impact directly on us. Its size and growth mean that it will soon be the dominant economy in Southeast Asia. We mustn’t allow anger or disappointment to cloud our judgement.

This is particularly important because managing the relationship with Indonesia may become harder still.

Since the sixties, we have dealt with two long-term, stable regimes in Indonesia: Suharto’s and Yudhoyono’s (SBY). We had our difficulties with Suharto—not least over Timor—but his strength meant a certain, if sometimes unwelcome, reliability. SBY took us seriously. Habibie, Gus Dur and Megawati all demonstrated pluses and minuses but listened to what Australia had to say.

Jokowi has a weak domestic base which in any country cuts across sound foreign policy. His world view seems to be shaped by the need to attract investment from big players like China, Japan and the United States—complemented by some outdated non-aligned perspectives.

We may now be entering a period in our dealings with Indonesia which is less sure than the Suharto era, less positive than the Yudhoyono years and lacking the ease of communication which we enjoyed with Habibie, Gus Dur and Megawati. It will require lowering expectations, and greater persistence and patience.

During the Timor period, Indonesians of good will—of which there are many—used to say ‘neither of us can choose our neighbours, but we have to coexist’. It’s not euphoric advice, but they may be right.

This week on The Beat; terrorism financing in Indonesia from Australia, ACC report on ‘ice’ use, cybercrime to cost US$400 billion, witness in Alexander Litvinenko inquiry, and metadata.

Indonesian terrorism funding from Australia

New reports state money thought to be financing terrorism is flowing into Indonesia from Australia. The deputy head of Indonesia’s Financial Transactions and Analysis Centre (PPTAK), Agus Santoso, stated that the funds were being directed to a variety of organisations, and that Indonesia was working closely with Austrac to trace the funds.

Austrac has been working with partners to counter this issue, citing the serious threat it poses to Australian at home and abroad. This 2014 report outlines Austrac’s counterterrorism financing framework and activities, both domestically and overseas. Read more