Author: Peter Drsydale

The flurry of leaders’ visits — by Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to Canberra this week and American President Barack Obama to Canberra and Jakarta a little over a week later — signals an elevation in the triangular relationship between the United States, Indonesia and Australia, not merely the growing depth of their bilateral relations. Indonesia is one of the world’s newest democracies, a secular state with a predominantly Muslim population, of immense importance to Australia and America in securing Southeast Asian stability and openness. Indonesia and Australia are members of the new G20 group and have deep and common interests in working with America to entrench the G20 as the pre-eminent and enduring forum for global economic governance. Indonesia, with its pivotal role in ASEAN, and Australia, an anchor in trans-Pacific security, are close confidants on America’s re-engagement with Asia under the Obama administration.

American conceptions of security in Asia and the Pacific do not routinely comprehend Southeast Asia. They are heavily focused on China, Japan and the Koreas and even Australia seems incidental to those core Northeast Asian interests. Obama’s key advisors bring the same mindset and preoccupations to Asian security affairs. There is no automatic understanding in Washington of Australia’s crucial role in Northeast Asia’s economic and resource security — Australia alone supplies 25 per cent of Japan’s energy, and by this measure is more important than Saudi Arabia to Japan’s energy security. Nor is there appreciation of Indonesia’s remarkable success in political transition and as an exemplar of international pluralism — its role as a huge asset in preserving and building regional stability. This is an opportunity, as Andrew MacIntyre suggests this week, for connecting the diplomatic dots.

Re-shaping regional architecture will be an important sub-text in triangular diplomacy over the next week or two. Over recent months, Washington has been consumed with the debate over whether the US should join the East Asian Summit (EAS), on which we shall have more later. That move makes little strategic sense, quite apart from the impractical logistics of getting US Presidents regularly to EAS meetings or getting them there any time soon. What does make strategic sense — and this will be very much on the agenda of discussions between America’s, Indonesia’s and Australia’s leaders over the coming weeks — is making the effort to reposition regional architecture so that there can be an effective dialogue between America and key EAS leaders, including China, encompassing security as well as economic affairs. And that is where Australian Prime Minister Rudd’s Asia Pacific Community idea will certainly get a run.