Introduction
Attempts to define the Southeast Asian region have often emphasized its flow of people, commodities, and ideas – its ‘fluid pluralism’ in Reid's words (Reference Reid2000: 10). With the rise of globalization and trans-national flows throughout the world, calls have been made to consider whether useful approaches to the study of regionalism or region-building can be derived from the Southeast Asian model (Nordholt, Reference Nordholt, Ravi, Rutten and Goh2004). It is unlikely that the Southeast Asia case study is any more ‘useful’ in this regard than other parts of the world, despite its unique characteristics. It can be argued, however, that considering both ‘fluid pluralism’ and colonialism are a shared experience for much of the region, Southeast Asia is a useful model to explore the link between post-colonialism and ideas of regionalism.
In terms of theory, this paper examines the intersection between established approaches to international relations and a theoretical discourse adjacent to international relations – postcolonialism. For want of a better turn of phrase, the approach of this article can be labelled as a search for a ‘Postcolonial International Relations’. This article is theoretically underpinned by the vast body of discourse associated with the interaction between the First, Second, and Third World, the North and South, or earlier between colonizer and colonized. This discourse encompasses postcolonial theory as well as its related discourses, including studies of decolonization and globalization, recently epitomized by Hardt and Negri's Empire (Reference Hardt and Negri2000), which explores the ongoing colonial relationship between the First, Second, and Third World, blurring the distinction between the colonial ‘center’ and ‘periphery’.
In terms of structure, the first part of this article examines the relationship between postcolonial theory, international relations, and regionalism.Footnote 1 The second part takes into account early ideas of region and regionalism in the post-independence period. This section includes an analysis of Sukarno's ‘neutralist’ foreign policy, culminating in Indonesia's hosting of the Bandung Conference, as well as Suharto's endorsement of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The third and final section examines Indonesia's foreign policy orientation and practices in the post-authoritarian period. This section aims to highlight how and in what different ways changing conceptions of Indonesia's regional imaginary are affecting its regional engagement. This analysis will suggest that with its embrace of democracy in the post-New Order era, Indonesia appears to be increasingly prepared to expand its regional engagement concentrically beyond the immediate Southeast Asian region. The question of the ‘imperial’ role of the US – which has its own foreign policy ambitions in the region – is instrumental in this regard, and can be usefully understood from a postcolonial framework.
Postcolonial theory and the international relations of Southeast Asia
Postcolonialism is eminently useful in approaching the international relations of Southeast Asia on the one hand and ‘ideas’ of regionalism on the other. This is because Southeast Asia was not immune from the impact of colonialism, despite the disparate nature and range of characteristics of colonial policy and practices in the region. Moreover, the reverberations of the colonial encounter continue to be felt today in the region. For instance, it has been argued within the region that the globalized trans-nationalism of the postcolonial era is as rife with the trappings of imperialism as the colonial era. Indeed, some would argue that in many ways the postcolonial era barely differs from the colonial era. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, for instance, has consistently argued that globalization is an imperial instrument for re-establishing Western colonial control over the developing world:
[Developing] countries are faced with globalization, a single world in which they know they will have little say, their voices drowned, and their interest ignored in the pursuit of global interests and objectives as defined by others . . . History would have turned a full circle within just two generations. Fifty years ago the process of decolonization began and in a space of about 20 years was virtually completed. But even before all the colonies of the West have been liberated, indeed before any had become truly and fully independent, recolonization has begun. And it is recolonization by the same people. (Mohamad, Reference Mohamad1996)
This viewpoint is not a recent phenomenon, is not limited to Mahathir and for that matter is not limited to Malaysia or Southeast Asia. For example, in the words of the Moroccan writer, Muhammad ‘Abid al-Jabari: ‘In addition to being an economic system, globalisation is an ideology that serves this system. Americanization and globalization [al-‘awlama] are highly interconnected’ (Foot et al., Reference Foot, Gaddis and Hurrell2003: 269). Similarly, Rahhalah Haqq (Reference Haqq2000) argues that globalization is a euphemism for Westernization (more specifically, Americanization). Evidently, in this ideological framework for many in the Third World, globalization becomes the logical conclusion of market forces, where multinational corporations, international banks, the state, and the interstate system are the guarantors of the workings of market logic. Moreover, along with many others in the world, Muslim figures such as Mahathir suspect that the connection between globalization and Americanization is not benign.
As with other newly independent nations, such as Pakistan and Egypt, Indonesia found that independence did not bring parity with its former colonial masters. Newly independent states, in particular predominantly Muslim states, such as Indonesia, struggled to compete with the political and economic power of the West (Riddell, Reference Riddell2008). In the following decades, the phenomenon of globalization was crucial in this respect. According to Riddell, many Muslim thinkers and activists came to see Western-driven global dominance as ‘the greatest obstacle’ to the advancement of Muslim nations (Riddell, Reference Riddell2008: 128–9). Consequently, just as the Arab diaspora sought ways to strengthen Southeast Asian Islam in the face of non-Muslim dominance at the height of the colonial era, Riddell argues that both Muslim and political leaders in Southeast Asia have sought to compete more effectively with the global West on the international political, economic, and cultural stage. Indeed, the transition from the colonial enterprise to the postcolonial nation-state is still very much a work in progress in Southeast Asian nations, such as Indonesia. Moreover, in the region globalization is widely regarded as simply the latest example of cultural and economic imperialism. This continuation of the colonial process, albeit in new forms, is germane in this article's attempt to explore the link between postcolonialism and Indonesian conceptions of region and regionalism.
Historically, the combination of IR and postcolonial theory has been under-utilized and the two disciplines, for the most part, have passed each other by, like ships in the night. Nevertheless, over the last decade there have been calls at the margin of international relations for an engagement with postcolonialism. These calls have been coupled with indictments of the IR discipline ‘for its complicity in the maintenance of a neo-imperial order, for its racism, and for its erasure of colonial violence and dispossession’ (Darby et al., Reference Darby, Goonewardene, Ng and Obendorf2003: 3). Some have argued that international relations, which is by definition about a global system, is nevertheless ‘Western and parochial’ in appearance (Seth, Reference Seth, Fry and O'Hagan2000). Thus a modest amount of IR scholarship engaging with postcolonialism has emerged (Basu et al., Reference Basu, Chatterjee, Ghosh and Sen2008; Chowdhry and Nair, Reference Chowdhry and Nair2002; Darby, Reference Darby1997, Reference Darby1998; Darby et al., Reference Darby, Goonewardene, Ng and Obendorf2003; Ling, Reference Ling2002; Seth, Reference Seth, Fry and O'Hagan2000), as well as several studies examining postcolonialism in the Southeast Asian context (Alatas, Reference Alatas, Ravi, Rutten and Goh2004; Chio, Reference Chio2005; Chong, Reference Chong2008; Day and Foulcher, Reference Day and Foulcher2002; Foulcher, Reference Foulcher1995, Reference Foulcher2008; Jedamski, Reference Jedamski and Jedamski2009; Nordholt, Reference Nordholt, Ravi, Rutten and Goh2004).
Many of the studies focussing on the postcoloniality of the Southeast Asian region emphasize that around the turn of the twentieth century, colonial expansion and state formation in the region – signalling an era of high imperialism and growing nationalism – resulted in clearly demarcated national borders. Yet, by the same token, colonialism had little impact on the various flows of trade, capital, and labor across the freshly drawn lines on the map. In the post-independence era, the transnational flows of people, goods, money, and information continue unabated, suggesting that we need to emphasize the model of the Southeast Asian region as an open system. According to Nordholt (Reference Nordholt, Ravi, Rutten and Goh2004: 47), ‘in this conception, which resembles to some extent the old pre-modern world of Southeast Asia, national states no longer seem to be extremely relevant’. What does appear to be relevant, however, is the importance of the shared postcolonial condition of the region and the need to concentrate on the region as a whole and members of the region, such as Indonesia, as part of this whole.
It seems sensible to utilize post-colonial theory in an examination of the regional imaginary of a nation such as Indonesia. This is because Indonesia has certainly experienced colonization and its associated legacies, such as cultural dislocation, cultural appropriation, and hybridity. European domination took root in Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century and imperialism reached its height at the turn of the twentieth century. During these centuries, Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch, with brief interregnums by the British and the Japanese. But many have argued that postcoloniality and its associated colonial paradigms do not end with the moment independence is declared or obtained; rather, postcoloniality can even be at work in societies that have not even been officially colonized (Jedamski, Reference Jedamski and Jedamski2009: xv). In the words of Foulcher (Reference Foulcher1995: 151), subaltern discourses can be ideologically, not temporally, constituted, and they can ‘shadow colonial paradigms at all historical stages of the colonial experience’. This paper is based on the notion that post-independence Indonesia's foreign policy orientation has been shadowed by colonial or anti-colonial paradigms up until the present day, even when it has appeared to be particularly pro-West, or rather pro-US, from time to time. The dark underside to Indonesia's foreign-policy orientation – enduring undercurrents of anti-Westernism or anti-Americanism – can also be considered as a function of the postcolonial experience.
If we consider recent Islamist discourses on globalization emerging from Indonesia, it can be argued that the present era is simply the latest stage of the colonial experience. For example, in Muslim Southeast Asia, after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, anti-Americanism has grown in the region. The US-led invasion of Afghanistan was perceived by many in Indonesia as a war against Islam, and the Iraq war – a pre-emptive strike against a Muslim majority country – was universally condemned in Indonesia and triggered anti-US demonstrations (Murphy, Reference Murphy2010: 271–2). Meanwhile, antagonism towards Western-driven globalization has also led to a surge of activities aimed at countering globalization, or rather enhancing a form of Islamic ‘alternative globalization’. These activities include the increasingly widespread use of Islamic calendars, the promotion and study of Arabic script in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, the rise of Islamic popular culture, films and music in Southeast Asia, the prevalence of wearing head-covering by Muslim women, greater Islamic solidarity in trade, and increased promotion of Islamic banking principles and practice (Riddell, Reference Riddell2008). In addition to this, anti-West or anti-US sentiments are shared by many Islamists in the Southeast Asian region, including radical anti-Western Islamists in hardline groups such as Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front), which is ubiquitous in post-Suharto Indonesia. If we want to get to the roots of these types of attitudes, which to some extent have played a role in the ongoing development of the Indonesian regional imaginary, we need to explore the nexus between the colonial encounter and its foreign policy aftermath. In an attempt to better understand the changing conceptions of postcolonial Indonesian ideas towards national and regional identity, the next section is a preliminary attempt to conduct such an examination.
Postcolonial conceptions and practices of region and regionalism
Considering Indonesia's colonial background, it is ironic that Indonesia's post-independence foreign policy has been generally oriented toward the West. From the outset of Indonesia's independence, Indonesia opted to develop a strong relationship with the West and the United States in particular. Initially, this was primarily as a means of retaining sovereignty in the face of a possible return of the Dutch (Hadiwinata, Reference Hadiwinata2009: 62). Consider the following argument by Prime Minister and concurrently Foreign Minister, Sutan Sjahrir, in 1945, which highlights the importance of a strong and friendly relationship with the US:
Indonesia is geographically situated within the sphere of influence of Anglo Saxon capitalism and imperialism. Accordingly, Indonesia's fate ultimately depends on the fate of Anglo Saxon capitalism and imperialism . . . It is clear that till now Dutch power has simply been a pawn in a political chess game that the British have been playing. But we must recognize that Dutch power here has by no means the same significance for American as it does for British foreign policy. In this fact lie possibilities for us to win a new position for ourselves in harmony with the political ambitions of the Giant of the Pacific, the United States. (Leifer, Reference Leifer1983: 8)
In the following years Indonesia opted for a supposedly ‘neutral’ position by introducing the concept of Politik Luar Negeri Bebas Aktif (Independent and Active Foreign Policy), signifying that it would not take sides in the Cold War between the US-led Western bloc and the Soviet-led Eastern bloc. Instead, according to Dewi Fortuna Anwar (Reference Anwar, Tan and Acharya2008: 184), Indonesia intended to chart its own course in international relations, based on its own perceptions of its national interests. Throughout the multiparty Parliamentary period (1950–57), however, Indonesia's foreign policy orientation was often contested. On the one hand, ongoing efforts were made to forge a close relationship with the US, at least until the early 1960s. On the other hand, these efforts were endangered by President Sukarno's growing hostility towards countries spearheading what he called NEKOLIM (neo-colonialism and imperialism) by establishing the so-called NEFOS (new emerging forces). Not surprisingly, this stance caused a decline in relations with the West (Hadiwinata, Reference Hadiwinata2009: 62). The next section will briefly chart post-independence Indonesia's ambivalence in its external relations orientation.
Tensions between Indonesia and the West were particularly prominent in the period after the Bandung Conference of 1955, which signified the desire and confidence of African and Asian countries to play a more autonomous role in international politics, transcending the Cold War ideological divide. According to Herb Feith, ‘as the US government saw it, Indonesia had moved fast from a friendly neutralism to one which was pregnant with hostility’ (Reference Feith1978: 391). Moreover, the US government had become convinced that Indonesia was moving towards communism when the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) came fourth with 16.4% of the vote in the parliamentary elections in September 1955, the first ever democratic elections in Indonesia (Anwar, Reference Anwar, Tan and Acharya2008: 188). This was seen as a blow to US interests in the region. Throughout the 1950s, the United States had been trying to persuade Indonesia to join in the anti-communist alliance that Washington was trying to forge, which was aimed at containing China and preventing communist forces from gaining political power in newly independent nations, such as Indonesia.
Historians have been in general agreement that Sukarno was never a communist, but rather a nationalist who was strongly opposed to colonialism and imperialism. His flirtation with China and the Soviet Union, as well as his trenchant anti-Western rhetoric, did not necessarily mean that he was leaning towards communism. Rather, according to Anwar (Reference Anwar, Tan and Acharya2008: 188), it was most probably an attempt to put pressure on the United States to push the Netherlands towards the negotiating table on the issue of West Irian. As far as the Netherlands was concerned, when sovereignty over the Dutch East Indies was formally transferred over to the Republic of Indonesia in 1949, the province of West Irian was not included in the transfer. Thus, the Netherlands was reluctant to engage any further in the dispute, especially as the United Nations had already voted on the issue, albeit with an undesirable result for Indonesia. The United States, who did not wish to alienate the Netherlands, which was a valuable NATO ally, was also unwilling to be involved. Sukarno's brinkmanship, therefore, ensured that Indonesia continued to reject US pressures to align itself with Washington, except for a brief period in the early 1950s.
Before moving on, it is instructional to briefly consider the seemingly ‘aberrant’ case of the early 1950s. According to Dewi Fortuna Anwar (Reference Anwar, Tan and Acharya2008), during the Sukiman cabinet (April 1951–February 1952), dominated by politicians from the Islamic Masyumi Party who were avowedly anti-communist, Indonesian Foreign Minister Subardjo secretly signed an agreement in Washington, DC, in January 1952, in which Indonesia would accept US economic and military assistance under the terms of the 1951 Mutual Security Agreement. Disclosure of this agreement, however, caused controversies that led to the fall of the Sukiman government in the following month. ‘From then onward’, says Anwar, ‘no Indonesian government would take the political risk of formalising a security tie with the United States’ (Anwar, Reference Anwar, Tan and Acharya2008: 185). The consequent idea to hold an Asian–African conference, proposed by Prime Minister Ali Sastroamidjojo, was aimed at not only promoting greater autonomy for Asian and African countries in international politics but also to distinguish his administration from the previous pro-US government. Indonesia's general disavowal of the US, coupled with Sukarno's increasingly strident anti-colonial rhetoric, led to Indonesia's lukewarm response to the US-backed Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), which was a Southeast Asian counterpart of NATO, which included Pakistan, New Zealand, Australia, and England, with Thailand and the Philippines as the only Southeast Asian members. Sukarno also tried to pull out of the United Nations and Indonesian foreign policy veered to the left, becoming closer to communist China. It was in this context that two short-lived regional organizations were established: the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA) in 1961 and MAPHILINDO in 1963. The ASA (196166) consisted of Thailand, the Philippines, and what was then known as Malaya. MAPHILINDO (1963–6) consisted of Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Both groupings failed, for a variety of reasons, but much of the blame can be placed at Sukarno's feet.
ASA, for instance, was undermined from the start by its inability to persuade Indonesia to join. The ASA was the initiative of Malaysia's (at that time Malaya's) President Tunku Abdul Rahman, a vehement anti-communist. The Philippines President Garcia was also a staunch anti-communist. Southeast Asia's communist states, moreover, were not invited to join, giving rise to the perception within the region that the organization was less than independent, not unlike like the US-backed SEATO. To add to this impression, Soviet propaganda presented ASA as an appendage of SEATO, that is ‘a means for enticing Southeast Asian neutral states into SEATO’ (Tarling, Reference Tarling2006: 114). Indonesia's President Sukarno could not see in ASA anything but ‘an Anglo-US plot to subvert the newly independent states of Southeast Asia’, and consequently he claimed he would not ‘touch ASA with a barge-pole’ (Ba, Reference Ba2009: 46). A postcolonial approach to these statements, the attitudes that gave birth to them, and the intra-regional consequences, I would argue, can potentially provide us with a fresh insight into the complexity of Indonesia's regional imaginary, particularly in the years preceding the establishment of ASEAN.
A postcolonial approach can also reveal a great deal about the regional reverberations to Sukarno's antipathy to what he called ‘neo-imperialism’. For instance, both ASA and MAPHILINDO were unable to cope with the intra-regional disputes between the Philippines and Malaysia, let alone the subsequent Konfrontasi (Confrontation) between Indonesia and Malaysia. The focus of the latter controversy was Kuala Lumpur's planned incorporation of the Borneo territories into a new Federation of Malaysia, known as ‘Greater Malaysia’. Indeed, in 1960 Tunku Abdul Rahman raised the question of enlarging the Federation to include not just North Borneo (Sabah), but also Singapore, Sarawak, and Brunei (Tarling, Reference Tarling2006: 112). Sukarno saw the proposed creation of Greater Malaysia as a challenge to Indonesia's regional leadership and his own particular plan for a pan-Malay confederation, and he described the federation as a British ‘neo-colonial plot’, aimed at the ‘encirclement of Indonesia’ (Ba, Reference Ba2009: 46). Jakarta, and therefore Sukarno, was also unhappy about Kuala Lumpur's failure to consult its neighbor, with its plans seen as a sign of disrespect for Indonesia's leaders. The creation of Malaysia became the pretext for Indonesia's three-year campaign to ‘Ganyang Malaysia’ or ‘Crush Malaysia’ (September 1963 to August 1966), involving a series of confrontational policies and actions. In effect, this led to a low-level war against Malaysia, characterized by a mix of naval blockades, organized rebellions, and subversions, Indonesian paratrooper landings on Malaysian soil as well as an international campaign to exclude Malaysia from Third World gatherings (see Jones, Reference Jones2002).
As for the Philippines, who supported Indonesia's ‘Crush Malaysia’ campaign, their opposition to Malaysia focused on North Borneo, which the Philippines also claimed (Tarling, Reference Tarling2006: 112). The Philippines, according to the new President in 1963, Diosdado Macapagal, had ‘a valid and historic claim to North Borneo. In addition, the pursuit of the claim itself is vital to our national security’ (Tarling, Reference Tarling2006: 115). The Philippines, like Indonesia, were also keen to make an anti-colonial nationalist stand against the United States, which had given its support for Malaysia's incorporation of the North Borneo territory. It is also worth pointing out that Macapagal's claim to North Borneo was lodged in the context of a proposed ‘Malayan Confederation’. This was to initially involve the Philippines and Malaya, and then involve Indonesia as well. Such a proposal, it was felt, ‘would boost the Philippines’ anti-colonial image, at the same time responding to a longstanding pan-Malayan element in Filipino nationalism’ (Tarling, Reference Tarling2006: 115). These arguments were at odds with ASA, which was associated with Macapagal's predecessor. Ultimately, the Malaysia plans, besides provoking Indonesia and the Philippines, stood in the way of developing ASA. Consequently, MAPHILINDO, which was doomed by the lack of a working relationship between Indonesia and Malaysia, suffered the same fate. Nonetheless, both ASA and MAPHILINDO were ‘of’ and ‘by’ the region, and these organizations ‘provided indigenous foundations, albeit not terribly deep ones, for the establishment of ASEAN in 1967’ (Beeson, Reference Beeson2009: 19). Ultimately, and thus returning to the key premise of this article, it can be argued that the shadow of the colonial experience has directly shaped the emergence, and subsequent failure, of the organizational precursors to ASEAN. This, in turn, played its part in the birth of ASEAN.
Developments between 1965 and 1967 opened a window of opportunity for fresh thinking about regional relations and regional organization. Sukarno's ouster in Indonesia was the most important element in the equation. According to Ba (Reference Ba2009: 53), given that Sukarno had been so associated with the radicalization of Indonesian foreign policy toward its neighbors, if there were to be any sense of redirection or change in the overall pattern of Southeast Asia's intra-regional relations, his removal was essential. With the new government in Jakarta, under Suharto's leadership reconciliation between Indonesia and Malaysia was eventually achieved. As a consequence, the possibility of Southeast Asian political integration greatly improved. Other factors leading towards fresh possibilities in Southeast Asian regionalism included the election of a new president in the Philippines and a consequent reparation of the relationship with Malaysia, a problematic US war in Vietnam, and confirmation that the United Kingdom would be completely withdrawing from Southeast Asia. Each of these factors is important, but the marked improvement in the Indonesia-Malaysia relationship was perhaps the primary factor in the initial establishment and consequent success of ASEAN.
ASEAN's founding members were Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore. ASEAN's initial statement of purpose, Beeson describes (2009: 19), is ‘remarkably bland, open-ended and non-specific’. This had much to do with the perception within the region that Indonesia – under the charismatic but erratic leadership of Sukarno – was widely regarded as a potentially destabilizing regional presence. The Konfrontasi with Malaysia and the attempts to undermine the new Malaysian Federation seemed to confirm this. The ASEAN declaration's emphasis on the promotion of ‘peace and stability through abiding respect for justice and rule of law’ is consequently, in Beeson's words, ‘entirely understandable’ (2009: 20). Similarly, when asking why ASEAN achieved so little tangible progress in its first decade of existence, Beeson (Reference Beeson2009: 20) emphasizes the need to place ASEAN in its historical context: ‘The newly independent states of Southeast Asia were preoccupied with promoting domestic economic development, internal political stability and the complex array of processes associated with nation-building.’
In many ways, a large part of the common glue that brought the countries of ASEAN together in the first place was not a shared history or culture but rather a shared need to govern newly independent and often fragile states, many of whom were still traumatized by the colonial encounter. This commonality of experience and explicit preoccupation with promoting domestic economic development and internal political stability also insulated states in the region from external involvement in, or external criticism of, domestic affairs. In these circumstances, any sort of intra-regional engagement or cooperation would have been potentially problematic. In contrast to the deeply integrated political structures and the pooling of sovereignty that had developed in Western Europe under the auspices of the European Union, when the ASEAN states joined forces they were far more concerned about protecting and reinforcing their often fragile sovereignty, rather than pooling it. In a nutshell, this is what Suharto concentrated on throughout his three decades in power: to step up regional diplomacy, primarily through the non-confrontational ASEAN prism, whilst safeguarding his most basic concerns – the security and integrity of the Indonesian nation (Sebastian and Lanti, Reference Sebastian, Lanti and Acharya2009). The roots of this conservative foreign policy stance, it can be argued, lie in the trauma of Indonesia's colonial experience and the domestic and regional instability associated with the radical anti-colonial attitudes that had come to dominate Sukarno's presidency.
The post-New Order regional imaginary
With Indonesia's embrace of political liberalism – otherwise known as democratization – in the post-New Order era, ideas of region and empire, the latter which encompasses contemporary manifestations of imperialism and colonialism, continue to be important. This is because as Indonesia's level of democratization incrementally improves, albeit in fits and starts, it is also becoming increasingly international in its outlook. An international outlook is not a new phenomenon, of course. As discussed earlier, during the 1950s there was a strong international orientation among the political elites of Southeast Asia and Indonesia in particular (Nordholt, Reference Nordholt, Ravi, Rutten and Goh2004). This tendency was illustrated by Indonesia's hosting of the Bandung conference of 1955, which was an effort to establish bonds of solidarity among the so-called non-aligned countries (Tan and Acharya, Reference Tan and Acharya2008). The New Order era, as discussed earlier, led to a slightly more insular conception of Indonesia's regional imaginary, where the idea of ‘region’ was confined to the immediate Southeast Asian context and the practice of region-building was focused on supporting the leading regional organization, ASEAN. Nevertheless, so great was the New Order's will for political stability and economic development, regionalism and region-building took a back seat to domestic concerns.
Ten years on from the Asian financial crisis, post-authoritarian Indonesia is moving away from the unquestioning pro-ASEAN insularism of the New Order era. With the relaxation of laws against the freedom of speech, commentators on Indonesian foreign policy are also keen to speak out. Rizal Sukma (Reference Sukma2009), for instance, suggests that Indonesia should no longer blindly praise ASEAN, considering its many well-documented shortcomings: ‘We should stand tall and proclaim that enough is enough. It is enough for Indonesia to imprison itself in the “golden cage” of ASEAN for more than 40 years.’ Besides the factors already discussed, there are a number of other important reasons for Indonesian dissatisfaction with ASEAN. For instance, ASEAN has not been as successful in fostering peace in the region as it would like. The Philippines continue to dispute Malaysia's sovereignty over Sabah, and Malaysia's relations with Thailand are also frequently strained due to border disputes. Thailand and Cambodia also share cross-border tensions, as well as Singapore and Malaysia on the one hand and Indonesia and Malaysia on the other. Long before the recent Indonesian criticisms, Colbert (Reference Colbert1986), and later Narine (Reference Narine1998), argued that the continued existence of intra-regional territory disputes disqualified Southeast Asia from being a security community.
Divisions between member states – the borders of which, we must not forget, were a direct legacy of the colonial encounter – have continued to undermine ASEAN's supposed unity (Sukma, Reference Sukma2009). For example, as is often reported in the Indonesian media, Indonesia and Malaysia have long held differences of opinion over many issues, including the ill-treatment of Indonesian citizens in Malaysia (see, for example, Santoso, Reference Santoso2008). The Malaysian media, on the other hand, regard Indonesian migrant workers as an ongoing irritant. ‘Foreign workers’ – as Indonesian migrants are euphemistically referred to – have often been regarded as a prime source of criminality and even terrorism (Arifianto, Reference Arifianto2010). The maritime border between Indonesia and Malaysia and the land border between Thailand and Cambodia have also become ongoing sources of conflict. These border conflicts are often reported in Indonesian newspapers. Moreover, the government and mass media of maritime Southeast Asian countries, such as Indonesia and the Philippines, are far less tolerant of the military junta in Burma than mainland ASEAN members. This hard-line stance, borne out of frustration with ASEAN's good-neighborly attempts to pressure the ruling regime, is understandably causing some disquiet within the region. I will return to the issue of regional criticisms shortly.
Besides being increasingly critical of ASEAN, Indonesia has rediscovered a strong international orientation. In his most recent Independence Day speech, the President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), declared that Indonesia is now ready to embrace an ‘all directions’ foreign policy where Indonesia can achieve its aim of ‘a million friends, zero enemies’ (sejuta kawan, tanpa musuh) (Yudhoyono, Reference Yudhoyono2010). Paving the way for these statements, besides success with the G20 and the United Nations Climate Change Conference of 2009, Indonesia has earned itself great kudos for establishing the Bali Democracy Forum, with its goal of nurturing the practice of democracy and good governance between the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. Also, in March 2010, SBY addressed the parliament of Australia, one of very few foreign leaders to ever do so, and his warmly received speech was broadcast live across national television. The highlight of his speech was his call for Australia and Indonesia to add more depth and nuance to their bilateral ties, in order to have a more ‘fair dinkum’ relationship (Yudhoyono, Reference Yudhoyono2010). This use of a uniquely Australian turn of phrase in particular struck a chord with the gathered politicians and media. Few other nations in the region are making such positive diplomatic waves in the way in which Indonesia is currently enjoying.
In terms of practical initiatives, Indonesia has willingly embraced its role as Southeast Asia's sole representative on the influential G20. Indonesia has also given much greater consideration to its self-perceived ‘global obligations’, such as the adoption of international human rights standards and increasing its contributions to global efforts to mitigate climate change and support more sustainable paths to development. Indonesia is also pressing ahead with its ongoing involvement in the global war on terrorism. Indeed, reflecting this success, the new Indonesian ambassador to Washington has recently boasted that Indonesia's counter-terrorism efforts to capture and neutralize terrorist networks have been ‘an outstanding success’ (Sheridan, Reference Sheridan2010). This is important because, according to some international terrorism experts, Southeast Asia is the second front if not the global epicentre of international terrorism (Thayer, Reference Thayer and Chong2008). In Thayer's words (2008: 257), ‘Islam in contemporary Southeast Asia undoubtedly has been influenced by global Islamic political currents shaped by modern communications and technology.’ Although preliminary in scope, this paper's call for a consideration of the link between Indonesia's colonial past and its contemporary foreign policy outlook needs to be considered, as Islamic strains of anti-Westernism have co-existed in the region for centuries – indeed ever since the Europeans arrived. The impact of the colonial experience needs to be factored into the equation, especially as according to the polls conducted by the PEW Institute over the past few years, anti-Western sentiments are rising drastically among Muslims all over the world, especially, but not exclusively, in Southeast Asia (Kivimaki, Reference Kivimaki and Chong2008). As a result, radical Islam and political terrorism are often seen as counter-forces against globalization, which is assumed to be a Western-led phenomenon.
Indonesia's counter-terrorism effort is also part of a global effort. In the words of Kivimaki (Reference Kivimaki and Chong2008: 231), ‘international terrorism and international counter-terrorism are two parts of a global battle between two very different coalitions applying global opportunities for the promotion of their goals against each other’. Nevertheless, with specific reference to Southeast Asia, global discourses such as the US ‘global war on terrorism’ must be tempered by local specificities. As Fealy and Thayer observe, domestic factors are crucial when evaluating the nexus between international and regional terrorist organizations: ‘a single template cannot be used to view different jihadist groups across the many regions of the world’ (Fealy and Thayer, Reference Fealy, Thayer and Tow2009: 227). Adding an extra layer of complexity to the situation, once again I return to the key argument of this paper: the impact of the postcolonial condition also needs to be taken into consideration. Indeed, the much-maligned Huntington ‘clash of civilizations’ metaphor was useful insofar as it highlighted both the widespread hostility of the Islamic world towards the West as well as the initial well-spring of the Islamic challenge: colonialism. According to O'Hagan, the Islamic hostility to the West is often ‘conceived of as embedded in ancient cultural and religious antipathy aggravated by envy of Western success, the legacy of imperialism and the social dynamics of contemporary Islamic societies’ (O'Hagan, Reference O'Hagan, Fry and O'Hagan2000: 141). In Indonesia, there are long-standing undercurrents of antipathy and envy towards the West, the roots of which no doubt being the centuries of often harsh Dutch colonial rule. The various legacies of imperialism are also centuries-old, even if many old-timers actually look upon the Dutch with nostalgia. The social dynamics of contemporary Indonesian Muslim groups, of course, are complex, and there can be no doubt that a subtle (and sometimes none-too-subtle) strain of anti-Westernism peppers the average Muslim sermon delivered on a typical Friday lunch time.
Despite the challenge of Indonesia's radical Islamist groups, who are essentially anti-West, the various initiatives described above, it could be argued, are designed to garner the favour of the US. Indonesians, who are as a nation unabashed admirers of US President Barack Obama (who spent several years of his childhood living in Menteng Dalam, a suburb of Jakarta), were keenly awaiting the on-again–off-again 2010 Presidential visit. This visit finally occurred in November 2010 and was universally regarded as a success. Moreover, films, novels, art exhibitions, statues, and numerous essays and edited collections devoted to commemorating ‘Barry’ Obama's Jakarta sojourn have emerged in the last few years. Besides the President's well-known personal reasons for a return to the Indonesian archipelago, the US is anxious to shore up its previous hegemonic standing in the Pacific and the Southeast Asian region in particular, which fits in neatly with the logic of critics of the supposedly ‘imperialist’ behaviour of the US, its military, and its administration. The contemporary discourse of empire, of course, is a phenomenon borne out of the Bush era of US foreign policy, which led to many critics of its practices of international affairs and the way in which the US administration treated its allies and foes.
With Indonesia's more global orientation, other countries in the region are beginning to raise their eyebrows. Singapore is increasingly uncomfortable with Indonesia's growing stature on the world stage, seemingly at the cost of an ASEAN focus. For Singapore, an ASEAN without Indonesia – which by implication would mean the death of ASEAN – would be a major calamity, as ASEAN has served Singapore's business and security interests well, as well as allowing Singapore to play a major strategic role in the region. Burma, in contrast, is unimpressed by Indonesia's increasingly blatant criticism of its poor human rights record. Thailand, meanwhile, must remain silent in the face of Indonesia's outspokenness, as it shares important cross-border trade links with Burma and its allies such as Laos. The soft-authoritarian Malaysia has long grown accustomed to patronizing its much larger neighbor, and the occasional barbed comment is thrown in Indonesia's direction regarding the ‘haphazard’ nature of Indonesia's democratic consolidation.
In general, there are questions in the region regarding Indonesia becoming ‘too big for its boots’, especially as Indonesia – as the world's third largest democracy and largest regional power in Southeast Asia – was invited to represent the region in the G20, as well as act as the Southeast Asian host for the 2010 visit of US President Barack Obama to the region. The fact that Hilary Clinton, the American Secretary of State, made a visit to Indonesia in February 2009 so soon after taking office, as well as the widely reported fact that Obama spent four years as a boy in Jakarta, has added to Indonesia's gloss. Moreover, earlier in his career, Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono completed military training programs in the US, at Fort Benning and Fort Leavenworth, and earned a Master's degree in management from Webster University in St Louis. According to Emmerson (Reference Emmerson2009), no previous Indonesian head of state has had such a close prior association with the United States. President Obama, for his part, still has very positive memories of Menteng Dalam, the leafy semi-rural Jakarta neighbourhood where he lived in 1967–71 between the ages of six and ten. According to his teachers, neighbours, and close friends – many of whom I interviewed as part of my research for this paper – Obama once spoke Indonesian quite fluently, and even today he speaks a smattering of Jakarta slang, accent free. When his Jakarta visit eventually occurred, he greatly enjoyed eating his favourite Indonesian dishes and the many speeches, receptions, and blanket media coverage marking the occasion were a testament to his enduring popularity. As mentioned earlier, his visit was deemed a remarkable diplomatic success.
It should be of no surprise that there is a growing sense of ‘why not me too?-ism’ in the region, as a visit from the globally popular President Obama would do wonders for the domestic politics of comparatively weak leaders such as Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak. In Singapore's case, a visit from Obama would be widely regarded as a positive vote of support for Singapore's soft-authoritarian realpolitik approach to foreign policy and security, albeit an approach, according to Acharya (Reference Acharya2008), nuanced by efforts to develop economic interdependence and regional institution-building. Of course, many have conjectured on the fact that had Barack Obama not cancelled his visit to Australia in June 2010, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would have remained as Australia's Prime Minister until the next election. This was an election that objective analysis suggested Rudd was poised to win. As it was, he was removed from office by his own governing Labor Party in the week or two after Obama's proposed visit. The role of the US in the domestic and regional politics of the Southeast Asian region, and indeed the Pacific Rim, cannot be underestimated. Moreover, as China's power grows, its relationships with the US will change and that will change the international relation of Asia and the way the US asserts itself in Asia. Indonesia's typically fluid regional imaginary will, no doubt, adapt to these tectonic power shifts. More importantly, the question, moving into the future, will be: what role will Indonesia's postcoloniality play in a future regional constellation dominated by China? Although beyond the scope of this paper, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that the postcolonial shadow over Indonesia's regional imaginary will remain, whether or not China or the US is the rising power of the Asia-Pacific.
Conclusion
Despite the many compelling reasons for weaving a postcolonial perspective with the International Relations discipline, there has been a reluctance to conceptualize or envisage postcoloniality in the field of international relations. This has been a lost opportunity. This is particularly so given the popularity of books like Hardt and Negri's Empire (Reference Hardt and Negri2000), which highlight the manner in which globalization has transformed the world in ways not unlike the colonial encounter between the First, Second, and Third World. As Pelizzo notes, ‘in the course of the so-called War on Terror, which involved, among other things, military attacks on or, if one takes a more benevolent view, military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, the word “empire” emerged from oblivion’ (Pelizzo, Reference Pelizzo2010: 248). Consequently, given widespread unhappiness with the US administration both within and outside the US, it is not surprising that ‘empire’ quickly became associated with the US and in many respects represented a banner of anti-Americanism. Yet at least one of the authors of Empire has been at pains to argue that the US is not the ‘empire’ they had in mind, but rather the combination of globalization and global capital, which is quite different to the old, state-based forms of imperial domination (Negri, Reference Negri2008). Instead, it is de-territorialized and non-state based, operating through global instruments of collective capital. As we have discussed, Malaysia's former Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, has been presenting similar arguments for several decades.
This paper has not argued that the US is imperialist. This paper has also not argued that the US has played a colonial, or neo-colonial, role in post-colonial Southeast Asia. Instead, what this paper has attempted to do is make a preliminary attempt to re-consider the historical vectors of Indonesia's love-hate relationship with the United States as a function of Indonesia's colonial past. Such an approach is increasingly important because as time goes by the US is becoming more closely associated with the global instruments of collective capital discussed in this paper, such as the IMF, the WTO, and the World Bank, each of which have played crucial roles in the domestic politics of Southeast Asia. The ongoing influence of the US in Southeast Asia, as well as the negative regional impact of US aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, suggests that the role of US primacy must be incorporated into contemporary studies of both the international relations and postcoloniality of Southeast Asia.
At the very least, the US was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the establishment of the organizational precursors to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, such as SEATO. Yet ASEAN, which emerged from the ashes of SEATO and other organizations such as ASA and MAPHILINDO, has proven to be much more critical than the US in forging a modest degree of regional cooperation in Southeast Asia, despite ongoing criticism. This article suggested that the shared colonial experience and the resulting drive to de-colonize the region was a crucial element in its establishment. It was also argued that the formation of ASEAN was in large part a consequence of a regional desire to resolve the destabilizing tensions generated by the Konfrontasi between Indonesia and Malaysia as well as an effort to foster collective strength against external threats. In addition to these unique historical circumstances, however, it must be reiterated that the ASEAN grouping was established in the light of a common experience: the need to build internal security in order to domestically reinforce the governments of fragile, newly independent postcolonial states. In this sense, the establishment of ASEAN was a consequence of both external and internal circumstances, with the colonial experience the common link.
Finally, I argued that Southeast Asia's postcolonial condition – which is as much a product of globalization and the crisis (or ‘hybridity’, to borrow postcolonial parlance) of the nation-state as it is a product of the traumas of European colonialism – is also an impulse that must be reckoned with. Although pre-colonial indigenous concepts and practices have been used to conceptualize and describe regional relations in the region, such as the concept of Indonesia being part of a pan-Malay Nusantara or ‘Archipelago’, the immediate post-independence period was dominated by discourses such as nationalism, decolonization, and the anti-Westernism of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno. The New Order foreign policy orientation was focussed on endorsing the formation of ASEAN in 1967, in a new policy initiative explicitly based on the lessons drawn from Indonesia's confrontational behavior under Sukarno. Just as Indonesia under Suharto sought to establish domestic stability after the social and political chaos of the immediate post-colonial period, Indonesia also sought to turn ASEAN into a regional ally to promote regional stability, thus minimizing potential threats to national security. The post-New Order period, however, has seen Indonesia concentrically expand its foreign policy outlook beyond its immediate region, with a particular eye to US approval. As this paper argues, post-authoritarian Indonesia's postcoloniality – albeit a condition more related to the cultural and economic imperialism of high capitalism and American expansionism than the trauma of the Dutch colonial era – continues to play an important role in the ongoing development of its regional imaginary.
About the author
Marshall Clark is a Senior Lecturer in the School of International and Political Studies, Deakin University, Melbourne. His primary research interests lie in the culture and politics of Southeast Asia, with a specific focus on Indonesia. His book, Maskulinitas: Culture, Gender and Politics in Indonesia (Monash Asia Institute) was published in 2010 and he is writing a book with Juliet Pietsch (Australian National University), Indonesia's Relationship with Malaysia: Culture, Politics and Human Security (Routledge).