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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 ...

Although a contiguous state and an ASEAN partner, Indonesia's relations with the Philippines were more distant than with its other immediate neighbors. The Philippines' aligned status with the United States and its simmering territorial dispute with Malaysia over the sovereignty of Sabah inhibited a close relationship with Indonesia and other ASEAN members. Most worrisome for Jakarta was the seeming inability of the Philippines' government to put an end to its internal wars. Indonesia viewed the growth of the communist New People's Army as destablizing for the region. Moreover, the Muslim insurrection in the Philippines' south had implications for regional territorial integrity as well as Indonesian Muslim politics. As the Ferdinand Marcos regime came to an end in 1986, Jakarta associated itself with the other ASEAN states in welcoming a peaceful transfer of power...

The most problematic of Indonesia's neighborly relations were those with Australia. The tension inherent in the population differential between the two countries in such close geostrategic proximity was exacerbated by the very different political cultures. Criticism of Indonesia in the 1980s and early 1990s by the Australian press, academics, and politicians provoked angry retorts from Jakarta. For example, a story in the early 1980s about corruption in the president's family in the Sydney Morning Herald led to a temporary banning of Australian journalists from Indonesia. The implicit long-term Indonesian "threat," as it appeared in Australia's defense planning documents, underlined a latent suspicion in Jakarta that Australian policy toward Indonesia was based on fear, not friendship. This perception constantly had to be allayed by official Australian visits t...

Singapore, ASEAN's own ethnic Chinese newly industrialized economy (NIE), is geostrategically locked in the often suspicious embrace of its Indonesian and Malaysian neighbors. Twenty-five years after the end of Confrontation, a racially tinged, jealous Indonesian ambivalence toward Singapore, had been replaced by a fragile new economic and political warmth. Rather then see Indonesian economic development as part of a zero-sum game in competition with favored Singapore, Jakarta now sought to harness Singapore's capital, technology, and managerial expertise to its own abundant resources of land and labor in an economically integrative process of a growth triangle. Although the scheme theoretically included peninsular Malaysia's southernmost Johore state, the dynamic action of the growth triangle was on the islands of Indonesia's Riau Province--Batam, Bintan, and Karimun- -to th...

Since Papua New Guinea's independence in 1975, the 760- kilometer-long border between it and Indonesia's Irian Jaya Province was a focus for mutual suspicion. Indonesia sought through diplomacy and intimidation to prevent Papua New Guinea from becoming a cross-border sanctuary for OPM separatists. Port Moresby's policy on the border situation was conditioned by fears of Indonesian expansionism and sympathy for West Papuan efforts to defend their cultural identity against Indonesianization. The Papua New Guinea government was also keenly aware of the military imbalance between the two countries. Talks to draw up a new agreement to regulate relations and define rights and obligations along the border culminated in the signing on October 27, 1986, of the Treaty of Mutual Respect, Cooperation, and Friendship. The treaty was, in effect, a bilateral nonaggression pact in which ...

Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mochtar Kusumaatmadja was chairman of the ASEAN Standing Committee in December 1978 when Vietnam invaded Cambodia, initiating what some observers called the Third Indochina War (1978-91). Mochtar's response, which became the official ASEAN response, was to deplore the Vietnamese invasion and call for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Cambodia. Indonesia and other ASEAN members immediately placed the issue on the agenda of the UN Security Council. It was not long after the invasion, however, that deep differences between Indonesia and Thailand, the "frontline state," regarding the long-term interests of ASEAN were revealed. Although compelled to make a show of solidarity with Thailand by its interest in sustaining ASEAN itself, Indonesia began to see the prolongation of the war in Cambodia, the "bleeding Vietnam white"...

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 nonal...

Political Considerations The internal dynamics of Indonesian politics in the last half of the twentieth century was linked to an external environment that both the Old Order and the New Order perceived as inherently dangerous. Foreign policy had as its most important goals security of the state and territorial integrity. The jurisdictional boundaries of the state were greatly expanded with the incorporation of the "archipelago principle" into the new international law of the sea regime. This new regime was codified as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982. The "archipelago principle" effectively territorialized all ocean space inside straight baselines drawn from the farthest points of the most distant islands of Indonesia, thus giving new sanction to the Indonesian doctrine of the political and security unity of archipelagic land and sea space ( wawasa...

At the fortieth anniversary of the Indonesian Journalists Association in 1986, Suharto congratulated the media for their commitment to the Pancasila. It was a commitment that was grudging. Article 29 of the constitution states that freedom of the press shall be provided by law. Indonesian press laws made controlling the media an instrument in the government's strategy of stability and development. Thus, the notion of a "free press," let alone an opposition press, contradicted the government's need to control the flow of information. The acronym SARA-- suku (ethnicity), agama (religion), ras (race), and antargolongan (social relations)--listed the prohibited subjects, to which could be added less than adulatory references to the president and his family. Moreover, the government had at its disposal an enormous information machine consisting of state television, r...

The central concerns of establishment politics under the New Order in the early 1990s were stability and development. A broad array of other issues, reflecting both the changes brought about in the society by development and the penetration of the political culture by issues of global concern, set the agenda of a growing number of Indonesian private voluntary associations. These associations articulated interests ranging from human rights and the rule of law to issues of corruption and environmental degradation. The proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the late 1970s and 1980s was an indicator of both the increased diversity of society and the growth of a modern middle class. It was precisely these middle-class-inspired groups that represented most vocally the grievances of Indonesia's "floating masses." NGOs were independent of government and political part...

The considerable policy achievements of the New Order government cannot be overstated. Whether compared with the Old Order or with other large and culturally plural Third World nations, Indonesia's record of political stability and economic growth since 1966 was viewed by its leaders as the empirical justification of the system of government put in place by the military in 1966-67. Despite keterbukaan , there was no retreat from dwifungsi . Suharto and the military elite seemed united in their belief that there would be no turning back from the principle of dual function which ABRI considered a historical necessity. The spectacle of the ethnic disintegration of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was a sobering example of what can happen when authority is lifted in ethnically plural states. Beyond the agreement on dwifungsi , however, the relationship between the president and AB...

Organized political party structures promoting Islam were disciplined to the requirements of Pancasila democracy in the PPP, and Islamic organizations, including the Muhammadiyah movement and Nahdatul Ulama, were subjected to government regulations flowing from the Mass Organizations Law. Muslim critics of the regime in the early 1990s claimed that the government policy toward Islam was "colonial" in that it was putting in place in modern Indonesia the advice of the Dutch scholar and adviser to the Netherlands Indies government, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. As an adviser between 1891 and 1904, Snouck Hurgronje advocated tolerating the spiritual aspects of Islam but containing rigorously Islam's political expression. The goal was the same in the colonial period and during the presidencies of both Sukarno and Suharto: to see to it that the business of government and admin...

Openness In his 1990 annual National Day address to the nation, Suharto confirmed his mandate for more openness in political expression. "We must no longer be afraid of the multifarious views and opinions expressed by the people," he declared. This new tolerance was first given attention in the domestic political dialogue that began after his inauguration for a fifth term. The year 1989 saw an outpouring of opinion, discussion, and debate as keterbukaan (openness) promised a breath of fresh air in what many felt was an atmosphere of sterile platitudinism and sloganeering. There was in 1989, according to American political scientist Gorden R. Hein, "a dramatic expansion in public discussion of important political and economic issues facing the country." Officials, politicians, retired generals, nongovernmental organizations, and student leaders expressed their vi...

When Indonesians went to the polls every five years to elect members of the DPR, it was not with the expectation that in casting a vote they could effect any real changes in the way Indonesia was governed. The system was not designed for opposition. The PDI and PPP did not present competitively alternative platforms to Golkar's government platform. The parties' candidate lists were screened and individual candidates approved by the government. For the 1992 elections, 2,283 candidates were on the lists for the 400 seats at stake. The elector did not vote for a particular candidate but for the party, which if it won would designate the representative from the party's list. The elections were organized by the government-appointed election commission headed by the minister of home affairs. All campaigns were conducted in the framework of Pancasila democracy, which meant that ...

The Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) was created from a fusion of the two Christian parties: the Indonesian Christian Party (Partindo) and the Catholic Party (Partai Katolik); and three secular parties: the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI), the League of the Supporters of Indonesian Independence (IPKI), and the Party of the Masses (Partai Murba). The PNI, the largest of the PDI's five parties, and the legatee of Sukarno, had its base in East and Central Java. IPKI had been strongly anti-PKI in the Old Order in contrast to the once-leftist Partai Murba. Even more heterogeneous than the PPP, the PDI, with no common ideological link other than the commitment to the Pancasila as its sole principle, was faction-ridden and riven with personality disputes, held together only by direct government intervention into its internal affairs. It was only under the auspices of the minister of home ...

The United Development Party (PPP; also sometimes referred to as the Development Unity Party) was the umbrella Muslim grouping that developed when the four Muslim parties were forced to merge in the 1973 restructuring of the party system. The four components were Nahdatul Ulama, the Muslim Party of Indonesia (PMI), the Islamic Association Party of Indonesia (PSII), and the Islamic Educational Movement (Perti). The PPP's constituent parties neither submerged their identities nor merged their programs. As a result, no single PPP leader with a platform acceptable to all the sectarian and regional interests grouped under the PPP umbrella emerged. Despite their manifest differences representing divergent santri streams, however, the PPP's parties had the common bond of Islam, and it was this that gained them the government's close attention. The dominant partners were Nahdatul Ulama ...

The government's chosen instrument for political action was Golangan Karya (Golkar), the ABRI-managed organization of "functional groups." Golkar had its roots late in Sukarno's Guided Democracy within the left-dominated National Front as an army-sponsored functional grouping of nearly 100 anticommunist organizations. These groups had a diverse membership, from trade unionists and civil servants to students and women. As a political force to balance the weight of the PKI and Sukarno's PNI, this Golkar prototype--the Joint Secretariat of Functional Groups--was ineffective, but it provided a framework for the military to mobilize civilian support. After 1966 it was reorganized by Suharto's supporters, under General Ali Murtopo, head of ABRI's Special Operations Service (Opsus), as an ostensibly nonpartisan civilian constituency for the New Order's authority. G...

The Multiparty System ABRI viewed the pre-1967 multiparty system as unsatisfactory. The army had been an ally of Sukarno in the emasculation of competitive party politics under Guided Democracy. In a regime in which consensus and mobilization of human and material resources for development had the highest priority, partisan politics was viewed as divisive and wasteful. Yet the parties, with the notable exception of Masyumi and the PKI, had made the transition from the Old Order to the New Order and expected to play an expanded role. The Muslim political parties, in particular, felt they should be rewarded for enthusiastic participation in crushing the PKI and alleged communist sympathizers in 1965. The civilians who had thronged to alliance with ABRI under the banners of various anti-Sukarno action groups also felt they had earned an autonomous stake in building Indonesia's futu...