Joko Widodo’s intense nationalism stalls regional leadership

By Rowan Callick

Many foreign affairs experts hope — even believe — the wounds of the Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran executions will heal and that Indonesian President Joko Widodo will work his way into Australian respect, if not affection.

Then he may even venture a full-scale official visit — his previous brief trip here as President was for the G20 summit in Brisbane last October. He spent three days in Papua New Guinea last week — where the two countries share a sometimes problematic 820km land border — so he will surely come here too in time, so this thinking might go. But maybe he won’t. Ever.

In PNG he failed to publicly address the big issue between the countries — the way their fellow Melanesians are governed in the provinces on the western half of New Guinea island, in Papua and West Papua. It was left to PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill to spell out new arrangements involving the Melanesian provinces.

David Camroux, co-editor of the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, has written a telling paper — published by the Australian National University’s East Asia Forum — that says: “Joko’s foreign policy represents a return to the guided democracy period of Indonesia’s founding president, Sukarno.”

Of course, it helps this thesis that Joko’s political patron, and the least effectual among his predecessors as Indonesian presidents, is Sukarno’s daughter Megawati Sukarnoputri.

Camroux cited Joko’s speech last month at the 60th anniversary celebrations for the Asia-Africa Conference as underlining this lineage: “While there was not the same lofty anti-colonial rhetoric, the thrust of the speech was the same — that is, the need to break away from the Western economic order.” A fortnight earlier, Megawati gave a speech at her party’s congress stressing its core economic nationalism platform.

Joko is well aware of Indonesia’s need for foreign investment, so he effectively compensates in another area of public policy by his especially vigorous nationalism, resisting foreign pressure over the death penalty for drugs offences.

And on the international stage, Camroux adds, Joko, “like Sukarno for most of his presidency, is essentially his own foreign minister. Compared to her predecessors, Indonesia’s current Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, seems to be an intellectual lightweight.

“It would appear that Megawati pushed for her appointment for symbolic reasons — she is Indonesia’s first female foreign minister,” as Megawati was the first woman president. But the Foreign Minister has not been given much room to burnish her own credentials.

Another foreign policy focus of Sukarno that overlapped domestic policy was his emphasis on protecting maritime sovereignty — a ready route to restore popularity, through for instance blowing up illegal fishing vessels and, more controversially, “turning back the boats” filled with desperate Rohingyas.

Aaron Connelly, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute, says Joko’s foreign policy emanates from “his conviction that Indonesia’s dignity depends upon the state’s ability to defend itself from multifarious attempts to weaken it from within and without”. He thus wishes to revive the authority of the state — though as in China, the question then arises as to whether this involves strengthening the rule of law, as an autonomous institution, or the rule by law, as an agency of state power.

While Joko speaks frequently on his maritime agenda, Connelly says “he still shows little interest in or any deep knowledge of international politics in the region”.

And his commitment to a Sukarno-style concept of the strong state and the domestic politics of sovereignty could push him, Connelly says, “towards a less co-operative stance on specific issues that capture the imagination of the political and diplomatic elite” — such as trade and micro-economic policy.

Such an approach will make it less likely that Indonesia will play a leadership role, as it had begun to do under the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono with Marty Natalegawa as foreign minister, in ASEAN or on South China Sea issues.

And Joko has come to office just as new leaders have emerged in those three other powers of Asia, China, Japan and India, whose regional and global visions and ambitions, as well as their domestic authority, are palpable: Xi Jinping, Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi.

Robustly democratic Indonesia should be assuming regional leadership with a confidence that, at least for now, is eluding Joko.

Rowan's article originally appeared 20 May in The Australian.