Following the handling of revelations that Australian spies tapped the phones of Indonesia’s president and his inner circle, Canberra’s links with Jakarta are in limbo. This is in no small part because of a tacit belief within its current leadership that Australia can dictate the terms of the Australia–Indonesia relationship to suit domestic political agendas and interests without taking account of Indonesia’s agendas and interests.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has said that full cooperation with Australia won’t be restored until a ‘code of conduct’ between Jakarta and Canberra has been agreed to and implemented. Little has been said in public about what he has in mind. It is hard to be optimistic that a new agreement of any kind would do much to help the management of this inherently complex relationship. After all, the last attempt to set the terms of the relationship—the Lombok Treaty of 2007—has done nothing to help manage the current problems.
But Australia faces the more immediate question of how long it will take to reach an agreement that will allow its relationship with Indonesia to get back to ‘normal’. For Jakarta the whole idea is to punish Canberra for collecting intelligence and for responding so ineptly to Jakarta’s concerns once the story leaked. Indonesia will thus seek sweeping undertakings from Australia both about future intelligence activities against Indonesia and perhaps more broadly about the management of the relationship, which will be intended to tie Canberra’s hands and in effect acknowledge its past wrongdoings.
Moreover Jakarta may well adopt a ‘take it or leave it’ negotiating posture. President Yudhoyono probably feels under no pressure to close a deal. One of the key lessons from the whole affair is that ructions in the relationship now worry Jakarta much less than they worry Canberra. Unlike Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot, President Yudhoyono has never said that this relationship is Indonesia’s ‘most important overall’.
It will not be surprising if the Australian leader’s response to President Yudhoyono’s demands prove to be determined primarily by domestic political calculations. One must conclude from the tone of Prime Minister Abbott’s initial response.
(in the Australian Parliament) to Indonesia’s concerns that it was intended primarily to present an image to Australians of their prime minister as a staunch champion of Australian interests against foreigners, and nothing he has said since suggests a shift in priorities.
What then will shape the Australian government’s sense of the balance between domestic political advantage and conciliating Jakarta by agreeing to its code of conduct?
Some will hope that economic factors will weigh heavily in Prime Minister Abbott’s calculations. It seems that, in the short term, sensitive export markets like live cattle are at risk as the relationship drifts. Moreover the Australian prime minister has acknowledged that Indonesia’s economy will soon enough ‘dwarf’ Australia’s, suggesting that he should recognise major longer-term imperatives to build trade there as quickly as possible. But he also claims to believe that trade can be quarantined from political differences, so that current economic consequences may be too small, and future ones too distant, to affect the calculations much.
Stopping the boats is of course a different matter. It now seems clearer than ever that Prime Minister Abbott’s whole ‘Jakarta not Geneva’ approach to foreign policy was driven primarily by the domestic agenda on people-smuggling, and clearly in Jakarta they expect this to be their best pressure point. How well that works depends on what happens over the next few weeks. Boat arrivals and interceptions have fallen very sharply in recent weeks, but it is hard to say how much that has been the result of the new government’s policies, including the now-suspended deeper cooperation with Indonesia, and how much it results from former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s ‘PNG solution’. The more Rudd’s policies have caused the drop, the less effect Indonesia’s suspension of cooperation will have in driving the number of boats back up again, and the less pressure the Australian government will be under to sign up to Jakarta’s code of conduct. And that means the longer the limbo may last.
Of course eventually, one way or another, the current crisis will pass and the relationship will return to ‘normal’. But it will not be without cost or consequences. The inherent fragility in the relationship, so well described by President Yudhoyono himself in 2010 before the Australian Parliament , has been confirmed. Distrust has been deepened. The pattern of regular crises has been repeated. The goodwill of a pro-Australian Indonesian president has been squandered. The opportunity to start afresh, building the kind of relationship Australia needs with Indonesia as its wealth and power overtakes Australia’s, has been lost yet again, and time is running out.
Australia has had the same problem with Beijing, too. The Australian government’s recent comments about China’s East China Sea air defence identification zone presuppose that Australia can say whatever it wishes about issues in which China’s interests are engaged without consequences for its relations with Beijing. They are certainly wrong about that, too.
As long as old-world assumptions about an Anglosphere-led world order frame Australia’s view of its Asian neighbours—although they are not the only assumptions in the contest—Canberra will continue to find itself embroiled in more crises like those of recent weeks.
Hugh White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University.
Syntax/grammar – ‘Still CRUEL Australia’s dealings’???
There is a usage of cruel as a verb (as in cricket) that justifies what might appear strange to you Peter. See: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/cruel.
Writers who describe SBY as ‘pro-Australian’ invariably fail to mention his withdrawal of his ambassador in 2006 in protest over the arrival of Papuan refugees. He followed this up by refusing to meet Mr Howard’s special envoy. SBY has now recalled a second ambassador. It is important to remember that no previous president ever took this step, despite the sharp tensions that arose between the two countries during Confrontation and at various times during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor.
Withdrawing an ambassador is a serious, unfriendly act. One thing that has never been clear, at least in the public domain, is whether SBY has been influenced by a lingering distrust of Australia because of our intervention in East Timor, where he once served.
If, as is widely assumed, Joko Widodo, the governor of Jakarta, contests and wins next July’s presidential election, such a possible legacy of East Timor-derived distrust will probably dissipate, as Jokowi is a civilian with no experience of the lost province.
2014 will be an epochal year for Indonesia and, very likely, a humiliating one for SBY. His Democrat Party’s reputation is in tatters. Whatever success he has achieved in combatting corruption in state institutions, SBY has failed dismally in rooting it out of his own party. As a result, not only will his party probably perform poorly in the April parliamentary elections. Any hope he may have nourished of establishing a political dynasty through the election of his brother-in-law as president will also be dashed. Facing such a domestic scene fraught with peril, SBY will see little urgency in normalising relations with Australia.
Fortunately, the Abbott government should be able to make something of a fresh start if Jokowi wins next year. His party, the PDIP, still led by Megawati, is admittedly at least overtly more nationalistic than SBY’s party, but Jokowi’s own views on foreign relations are still largely unknown.
Whatever emerges in Indonesia’s crucial election year, however, it will be helpful if Australian politicians stop calling Indonesia the most important country for us. They should also stop quoting unprovable predictions about how big Indonesia’s GNP will be twenty or thirty years from now.
Seriously … you’re belittling us too much. Mr Ward. Although SBY’s party was in tatters, he personally he is still regarded as the cleanest one in Indonesia at the helm to date . Modern indonesian politics was never easy nor was it too hard to predict, yet there is always an element of surprise at the edge, especialy when it comes to the grass roots perceptions
And as for economic matters … well , since Indonesia accounts for 60 per cent plus share of ASEAN economy … obviously you have to deal on our terms if you want to bite a litle bit of the ASEAN economic pie
The title of the article seems to me a bit strange. Contemporary Australian- Indonesian relations are part and parcel of the new world , viz, of China’s geo-economic embrace of the East Asian region. In this new world, Australia is putting itself in the service of US global interest in East Asia/ ASEAN. The UK is doing the same in Atlantic Europe/ European Union: both governments position their countries as a regional bridgehead in the US global order.
Henk sums it up perfectly