Reforming Indonesia's foreign ministry: ideas, organization and leadership.

• Author: Nabbs-Keller, Greta
• Position: Essay

The domestic context in which Indonesia's foreign policy is framed has been transformed since reformasL A conscious attempt has been made by policy-makers to change its ideational basis, internalizing values such as democracy, good governance and human rights. This can be seen most clearly in Indonesia's promotion of a strategic democratization agenda within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). At the same time, and as a result of democratization, institutional power has shifted from the military to the civilian bureaucracy. Foreign policy-making in Indonesia is now more complex than it was during President Soeharto's authoritarian New Order (1965-98): it has become more deliberative and consultative, and is now subject to the contestations of new and recently-unbridled actors including the legislature (DPR), media, public opinion, civil society organizations and business groups.

Scholars have explored many aspects of these changes. Much of the literature concentrates on the role of the DPR as a foreign policy actor, and the implications of its enhanced powers for executive accountability, political legitimacy and for Indonesia's external relations more broadly. (1) The impact of democratization on the process of regional integration is another key focal point in the scholarship. Through Indonesia's engagement with ASEAN, the literature explores the interplay between democratic norms with more enduring ideational aspects of the country's foreign policy, to demonstrate how "European ideational imports" have been localized within extant "foreign policy doctrine and practices". (2) Scholars such as Lee Jones and Rizal Sukma focus on domestic politics as a constraining factor on Indonesia's "democratic" foreign policy, as indeed much of the literature does, to varying degrees. For Jones, the underlying socio-economic power structures in Indonesia, and in Southeast Asia more broadly, are largely "unfavourable to liberal or participatory policy-making", despite the presence of democratic institutions. (3) Sukma argues that domestic weakness exerts a powerful constraining influence on Indonesia's foreign policy. Although he does not preclude the influence of external factors, he argues that Indonesia is engaged in rhetorical democracy projection rather than actual promotion, based partly on Indonesia's internal challenges. (4)

With the exception of Sukma and Anwar, scholars have paid scant attention to the foreign ministry, and the foreign minister, as key agents of change. This article seeks to fill that gap. It highlights the role of the foreign policy bureaucracy in driving important conceptual innovations and practical reforms, and examines the role played by individual foreign ministers in the reformasi and post-reformasi periods, especially Hassan Wirajuda. It argues that the role of the foreign ministry is crucial because it has transformed itself into an entrepreneur of new ideas and foreign policy practices. By focussing on changes to foreign policy under Wirajuda, the article demonstrates how the foreign ministry was the architect of many of the key changes in Indonesia's post-Soeharto foreign policy.

The article is organized into three key sections. The first section explores the impact of the military's political ascendancy after 1965 on the foreign ministry. It identifies the loci of institutional and individual foreign policy influence during the New Order period in order to provide context for subsequent changes in the reformasi period. The second section examines how Indonesia's political liberalization enabled greater agency by civilian, reformist-minded bureaucrats to shape a new foreign policy agenda and reform the organizational machinery underpinning it. It seeks to demonstrate how changes to the institutional and ideational basis of foreign policy were fundamentally an effect of changes in civil-military relations, resulting from the democratization process. The third section attempts to evaluate the efficacy of legal, bureaucratic and ideational changes on foreign policy-making. It measures their effect on the performance of the foreign ministry and carriage of the country's diplomacy more broadly.

"Purification and Cleansing"

To understand the impact of democratization, one must first appreciate the immediate and long term effects of the Indonesian armed forces' (Angkatan Bersenjata Republic Indonesia, or ABRI) political ascendancy over the foreign policy bureaucracy, and the impact this had on the broader ideational framework of the country's foreign policy. Against a backdrop of fear and political uncertainty, military authorities, led by Major-General Suharto, progressively took control of the government apparatus following an alleged coup attempt by the Communist Party of Indonesia and pro-Sukarno military officers on 30 September 1965. (5) By early 1966, backed by a series of presidential decrees and legislative bills, military authorities embarked on a process of "purifying and cleansing" the government bureaucracy. (6) The foreign ministry, known then as the Department of Foreign Affairs (Deplu), had been widely viewed as the ideological fulcrum of the country's revolutionary foreign policy under Foreign Minister Subandrio, and was thus targeted for pervasive intervention by ABRI's leaders. (7)

In April 1966, through a foreign ministerial decree, a Team for Restoring Order (Tim Penertib) was established within Deplu, which evolved into the Special Executive Foreign Affairs (Laksus Luar Negeri). Although the Laksus was chaired nominally by the Foreign Minister, within Deplu however, the Laksus unit was headed by an army Brigadier-General--with a Lieutenant-Colonel as his deputy--who reported directly to the commander of the Restoration of Security and Public Order Command (Pangkopkamtib). (8) The Laksus was tasked specifically with "countering guerrilla politics associated with the 30 September coup movement and their sympathisers abroad". (9) In addition, Laksus personnel were posted at Indonesia's overseas diplomatic missions, where they oversaw the "mental development" (pembinaan mental) of overseas Indonesian students and the screening of staff so as to "remove extremist and subversive elements". (10) Such intrusive measures by military authorities translated into a "confusing and frightening" time for Deplu staff. (11) In the aftermath of the abortive coup, the foreign ministry and the state intelligence agency, the Badan Pusat Intelijen (BPI) both led by Subandrio were targeted for protests and physical attacks by anti-communist student organizations. (12)

By 1970 six military officers were imbedded within the foreign ministry, and although civilians remained numerically preponderant within Deplu, three out of six Director-General positions were held by military officers. (13) As Leo Suryadinata has noted: "It was the creation of these two new entities, which first institutionalized the role of the military in the foreign ministry. (14) Following purges at the foreign ministry in 1966, it became the norm for a number of the top positions within Deplu, such as the Secretary-General and Inspector-General positions (responsible for operational and support functions respectively), to be held by generals. In addition, military officers also filled the positions of Director-General for the Directorate-General for Safeguarding Foreign Relations and the Director for the Asia-Pacific regional desk. (15) The institutionalization of the military within the foreign ministry meant, in effect, that certain positions were reserved for ABRI officers, under the system of kekaryaan whereby active military officers held civilian positions throughout the Indonesian bureaucracy. ABRI's "dual function" (dwifungsi) became the legal and ideological rationale for the military's political hegemony and institutionalization from 1966. But the loci of foreign policy influence lay not so much in these ABRI officers embedded in Deplu, but in the military's broader dominance over state policy, a fact recognized in the relatively sparse literature on the foreign ministry during the New Order. (16)

Despite the military's takeover of government, civilian foreign ministers and senior diplomats remained key actors in the practical formulation and implementation of foreign policy. In the months following the coup attempt, senior ABRI officers had recognized the importance of retaining a civilian figure as a "public interlocutor with the outside world", as Michael Leifer observed in his classic study of Indonesian foreign policy. (17) Appointed as foreign minister by Soeharto in 1966, charismatic former journalist Adam Malik in fact proved somewhat of a counter-balance to the military's hegemony over foreign policy, disagreeing with ABRI, for instance, on Indonesia's approach to China and Vietnam. (18)

Although responsibility for the practical conduct of Indonesia's foreign relations remained with the foreign ministry, on occasion senior military officers took the lead on sensitive policy issues--usually those pertaining to sovereignty and territorial issues--and dictated the ideological parameters of foreign policy, subject to presidential assent. Such ideological parameters were defined by the military's vehement anti-communism and rapprochement with Western powers in support of regional stability and economic growth. In the latter endeavour, ABRI generals turned to the advice of an influential group of technocrats, who were mainly US-trained economists, referred to as the "Berkeley Mafia". (19) The New Order maintained Indonesia's "independent and active" (bebas-aktif) foreign policy doctrine as a key continuity with the Old Order, but increasingly turned to Western countries such as the United States and Australia for military training and assistance.

Despite the retention of civilian foreign ministers and a civilian-dominated ministry in numerical terms, Soeharto (formally appointed...