The Philippines

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 to Corazon Aquino. Jakarta was the first capital visited by the Philippines' new president, unprecedentedly even before Washington, and Suharto took the opportunity to press the urgency of defeating the New People's Army. To show support for Aquino's government, Suharto insisted that the 1987 ASEAN Manila Summit meeting go forward despite apprehensions in other ASEAN capitals about the security situation. Jakarta was not displeased that Aquino was succeeded in 1992 by Fidel Ramos, who, as chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and later secretary of national defense, was well-known to ABRI's senior leadership.

China

Indonesia's diplomatic relations with China were suspended in 1967 in the aftermath of the 1965 attempted coup d'état. Beijing was suspected of complicity with the PKI in planning the coup and was viewed by the new ABRI-dominated government as a threat through its possible support of a resurgent underground PKI, both directly and through a "fifth column" of Chinese Indonesians. Jakarta repeatedly demanded an explicit disavowal by Beijing of support for communist insurgents in Southeast Asia as its sine qua non for a normalization process. Underlying the Indonesian policy was unease about China's long-range goals in Southeast Asia. The break in relations persisted until 1990, when, in the face of renewed mutual confidence, the two countries resumed their formal ties. The normalized relation boded well for resolving the status of some 300,000 stateless Chinese-descent residents of Indonesia and improving political and economic relations between the two nations. An exchange of visits by Chinese premier Li Peng to Jakarta in August 1990 and by Suharto to Beijing in November 1990 symbolized the dramatic alteration that had taken place.

On the Indonesian domestic scene, there was growing pressure for normalization in order to fully exploit the developing economic relationship with China. Even when relations were totally frozen, two-way trade had taken place through third parties, especially Singapore and Hong Kong. Indonesian businesses operating through the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Indonesia (Kadin) were anxious to maximize the value of the trade by cutting out third parties.

At the international level, at least three factors had intervened to change Indonesia's posture. First, Indonesia, as a vigorous diplomatic player in the Cambodian peace process, had a strong interest in a successful outcome. To achieve that goal, China, the Khmer Rouge's sponsor, had to be brought along, and Indonesia's mediating role was greatly enhanced by normalization of relations with China. Second, Indonesia's long-held ambition to become titular leader of the Nonaligned Movement was furthered by normalization of relations with China, the movement's largest member. Finally, Jakarta's claim to regional leadership could not be asserted confidently without normalized relations with Beijing. For example, it would have been impossible for Indonesia in 1991 to have interjected itself into the South China Sea territorial disputes as an "honest broker" in the absence of relations with China, the most powerful nation involved in the South China Sea . All of these motives were at work at a time when the overarching structure of great power relations in the region was undergoing significant change. As the Soviet Union disintegrated and the United States presence diminished, China's relative power was increased, and Jakarta's need to deal officially with Beijing overcame the worries of the last die-hard anticommunist and anti-China elements in ABRI.

Japan

The quality of Indonesia-Japan relations in 1992 was best measured by statistics on trade, investment, and the flow of assistance. Japan was the destination of more than 50 percent of Indonesia's exports, the single largest foreign investor, and by far the most important donor of development assistance. In return, as the dominant foreign economic presence in Indonesia, Japan was subject to all the expectations and resentments attendant on that status. For example, Indonesia sought greater technology transfer as part of investment. The association of Japanese firms with politically well-connected Indonesians led to charges of exploitation. With their memories of World War II and the antiJapanese demonstrations during Tanaka Kakuei's 1974 visit, the Indonesian leadership was keenly sensitive to the possibility of a disruptive anti-Japanese backlash.

In the long term, the critical issue for Indonesia in the early 1990s was access to Japan's markets for manufactured goods and the debt owed to Japanese lenders. Yet, Indonesia shared the ASEAN-wide concern about the implications for Southeast Asia of Japanese remilitarization and was ambivalent about Japanese military participation in UN peacekeeping operations in Cambodia. From Tokyo's point of view, there was only indirect linkage between Japan's economic presence and the political relationship between the two countries, but Japan was aware of Indonesia's geostrategic straddling of the main commercial routes to the Middle East and Europe. Possibly, this concern explained why Japan seemed the least concerned of Indonesia's major economic partners about the human rights issue in general and East Timor in particular and explicitly rejected the linking of human rights with economic assistance.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress