WhirledView

America's Asian Pivot

By Patricia H. Kushlis

At the Santa Fe World Affairs Forum’s symposium “Our World in Ferment” on April 17, China expert and Deputy Director of the Kissinger Institute for US-China Relations Douglas Spelman described the change in US policy direction in Asia over the past 18 months as more of a pivot towards Southeast Asia as opposed to one directed at the continent’s North where US attention has been fairly constant, and intense, for some time.

On the April 23 international news, a BBC correspondent reporting from the island of Palawan near where US and Filipino forces were engaged in Balikatan, the bilateral annual war game exercises held under the Mutual Defense Treaty, reported on the heating up of military tensions between China and the Philippines over who controls what in the South China Sea.  An aside: Palawan is an island where I once spent a week at a charming ecotourism resort a year after the US bases had been kicked out of the Philippines by one vote in the Philippine Senate.

Believe me, the reporter has a pretty cushy observation perch from which to observe military exercises as well as snorkel on the side.  

A Chinese Lake?  Maybe not

The Chinese consider the South China Sea a Chinese lake – made more valuable through exploration by international companies for likely oil and gas under the seabed.  Palawan is, by the way, just south of the South China Sea. A BBC report argues that it is precisely because the Filipinos and Vietnamese have signed contracts with international companies to explore for those riches in the disputed territorial waters they claim as their own that set the Chinese off.

The area in contention is called Scarborough Shoal. The Schoal lies within the broader area known as the Spratly Islands, tiny basically uninhabited dots in the sea.    

The rationale for the US pivot towards Southeast Asia has centered on keeping the sea lanes open. This is part of long standing US security policy in the region. What’s new is the Chinese challenge to it. Most of the shipping to North Asia passes through the Straits of Malacca then northward through the South China Sea.  The claims by Asian nations for control of their pieces of this sea bed off the coasts of southern China, Vietnam and the Philippines have been fuses waiting for a match for years. 

With China’s economic rise, it’s increasingly heavy handed approach to Southeast Asia has become more pronounced.  On the one hand, Chinese leverage is major in the areas of trade and economics where China has become the region’s dominant trading partner.  This is not necessarily bad for the US.  When I lived in Southeast Asia in the early 1990s, the Japanese were economically dominant in the region but that trade dominance did not negatively impinge upon the freedom of navigation through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore or the South China Sea.             

On the other hand, a deeply held fear of China’s growing security desires has sent ASEAN governments scurrying to find protection from other big powers further away.  The US is the obvious choice despite a residue of anti-American anti-colonialism in the Philippines and the mistakes of the Vietnam War – both of which seem to have been all but forgotten or at least, in the face of their larger concern, brushed under the carpet for now.

Aung San Suu Kyi: Should She or Shouldn’t She?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Some Americans boast of not voting in 2010.  Others strut and say they’ve never voted!  The system is too corrupt, too unresponsive, too dirty.  Idiots! They’re so pure they don’t exist, politically.  I wonder sometimes if WhirledView has any impact. And yet, without tossing a few well-chosen stones into the ocean, how to make a splash?

What's in a Win?

Just such questions of purity and efficacy have arisen in the aftermath of the recent Burmese elections.  Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League of Democracy have won 43 of the 44 seats available to civilian voters, which leaves 80% of the seats in Parliament controlled by the military (to say nothing of the presidency and other offices held by figures who have “resigned” from the military).  Suu Kyi herself has pointed out that the elections were flawed.  Observers from the European Union stopped short of praising the process as anything more than a step in the right direction. 

The elections, which were not nation-wide, evidently, were scheduled for many districts where cynics would have predicted no hope for reform-minded candidates, a devious way of tipping the scales even further against the opposition.  Most hard-headed observers expected voters in the four districts around the new capital and those in districts hosting military installations to back regime sympathizers.  Who employs them?  Who fills their rice bowls?  You don’t usually bite the hand that feeds you.  In addition, analysts assumed, the people in hilly tribal areas would vote for fellow tribals, not a Berman lowlander, whatever her glamor or her opposition to a repressive army.  This, too, would hurt Suu Kyi’s NLD.

Voters Thought for Themselves

The “realists” turned out to be wrong.  Suu Kyi and her party members won all but one available district, a Shan constituency, which did indeed send a tribal to the new Parliament, although the National League of Democracy won in a neighboring Shan district.  The NLD even came out ahead in those army-dominated districts.  This achievement should remind us all that military men and women can think for themselves, even if they spend most of their time following orders.

But let’s not over-hype the election results. Aung San Suu Kyi and her party have won a resounding victory in an election guaranteeing, by its very design, that she and her NLD colleagues will be hopelessly outnumbered in Parliament.  This clever bit of engineering on the part of the regime has led to the big question: should The Lady claim the seat she has won—or should she not, lest she legitimize a junta that kept her under house arrest for two decades and treated too many other justice-seekers worse by far? 

Is She Just a Tool?

Some analysts worry that Suu Kyi is being manipulated by a deeply-hated regime that has turned Myanmar into an economic basket case during its decades of iron-fisted control.  The Generals, they believe, have dug themselves into a hole they can’t get out of by themselves.  However, with Suu Kyi as a decorative but ineffectual figurehead in Parliament,  it may be that the US and other sources of economic aid will be sufficiently charmed and bamboozled to lift sanctions, allow trade and investment and provide the country with humanitarian assistance. 

What a contrast to the regime’s policy in the wake of the devastating cyclone Nargis in 2008, when the Generals preferred to allow people to die rather than risk the interference that would inevitably come with accepting commensurate emergency aid!  No doubt this callous policy lost them more than a few votes in the recent election.  Having monks shot during the Saffron uprising a few years ago didn’t help either. 

When the Symbol is the Message – Clinton, Obama and the South China Sea

By Patricia H. Kushlis

On November 16, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke from the deck of a destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, in Manila Bay.  She delivered America’s message in Philippine waters docked next to the capital’s shore - the gist of which included a not-so-veiled warning to the Chinese military to play by international rules and keep paws off the barren islands and rich resources resting under the surface of the South China Sea in territory claimed by four other Asian countries in addition to China.  

While there have been decades-old overlapping territorial claims among the five (Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines and China), China is the single protagonist to have staked out the South China Sea as its own bathtub, a position which runs counter to the US policy of freedom of navigation, the international Law of the Sea Convention, and America’s own economic and trade interests in the region. 

In a press conference in Canberra on the same day, President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Gillard announced the intent to rotate units of US Marines on Australian bases for training and exercises as well to increase US military flights out of Australian airfields along the country’s north coast. The six month rotations there are to begin the middle of 2012 with 250 US Marines ultimately increasing to as many as 2,500.

Obama and Clinton then moved on to the East Asian Summit in Bali where all but the leaders of three ASEAN countries spoke in support of the US position on the South China Sea.  The strongest statements came from the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore. 

The photos tell the story

Clinton’s visit to Manila commemorated the 60^th Anniversary of the signing of the bilateral US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.  That the ceremony was held on a US warship suggested in and of itself a made-for-media story with high profile visuals oozing with historical symbolism.   In essence the evocative photos told the story – the contents of the speech were almost secondary. 

Put those visuals next to photos of General Douglas MacArthur’s famous farewell “I shall return” declaration uttered upon departure after President Roosevelt ordered him to leave Corregidor Island in March 11, 1942 in the face of an overwhelming Japanese military invasion of the Islands.

Add in the pictures from 1898 when the US Navy steamed into Manila Bay and took the Philippines by force from the Spanish as an almost forgotten part of the Spanish-American War which otherwise focused on the battles of the Caribbean brought on by the Hearst media empire’s yellow journalism of the day.  

Yes, there were some 50-70 protestors in Manila who objected to Clinton’s presence last week – but in reality their numbers were negligible in comparison with the mass protests that have rocked Manila in the past.

South China Sea Policy Change

US policy towards the South China Sea changed over a year ago after the Vietnamese and Filipino governments objected to a new Chinese assertiveness in these long disputed waters. Both Southeast Asian governments voiced objections and turned to the US for support.  That the US demonstrated this support so visibly and at such high levels was not missed by any of the parties involved.  It also provoked – as likely expected – an angry retort from the Chinese.

The Filipinos understood the symbols; the Chinese got the message

The photos of Secretary Clinton speaking from the deck of a US warship in the harbor of its former colony surrounded by Filipino military brass in itself spoke volumes.

Combine Clinton’s speech with Obama’s nearly simultaneously timed press conference in Australia in which he also reiterated that the US had abandoned neither its interests nor its allies in Southeast Asia and Australia. In fact he stressed that the US would up its presence in this immensely vibrant economic part of the globe as the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan finally winds down.

Unlike the controversial and often negative reception to actions of previous American governments in decades past, however, the US defense presence this time around was solicited by the Southeast Asians and the Australians to help the region counter-balance an increasingly powerful China.

For the most part and until quite recently, the Chinese have almost exclusively focused on building trade and aid relations with their southern neighbors – approaches designed to win friends and positively influence the neighbors. This has included the signing of CAFTA or the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area agreement in 2010 as well as financing infrastructure development projects in Southeast Asia’s poorer parts over a number of years.

Yet, as with any large power on the ascendancy and especially one located nearby, the smaller neighbors prefer not to catch pneumonia if and when the elephant or the lion sneezes.  Furthermore, their sense of unique cultural and historic identities in this colorful part of globe combines with their singularly strong aversion to colonialism and vassaldom that come to the fore whenever a large beast stirs.   

Previous WV posts on this topic by Patricia H. Kushlis:

The US, China and the South China Sea - What's Changed?  July 2010

 

How not to do public diplomacy in Laos or Any Where Else - Hip-Hop, Hippity Hop, Hop, Er Flop

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Update:  See Addendum below.

When Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State and criticized for the State Department’s lack-luster handling of America's image abroad, she exuberantly claimed that “we all do public diplomacy now.”   Suddenly Foreign Service Officers who had never before spoken in public and had other pressing responsibilities – like adjudicating visas (you wonder why appointment times for visa interviews take so long?) or helping American citizens in distress - were suddenly fanned out throughout whatever country they were assigned to on public diplomacy gigs.  Meanwhile, 30% of the public diplomacy positions were left vacant. (Aerial Poto left of the Mekong in Laos by PHKushlis 2009)

It’s unclear to me whether an increase in State Department hiring a year or so ago made a dent in the high public diplomacy vacancy rate but I do know that too many American public diplomacy positions abroad are being filled by officers who are not public diplomacy specialists and do not have the requisite skills to perform the job adequately while those that supposedly do are assigned to other specialties or a few – likely more than when USIA was a separate agency – are moving up the hierarchy into Deputy Chief of Mission and Ambassadorial positions. 

Although a look at the promotion statistics from a year or so ago, suggests that these higher level opportunities for public diplomacy officers are far fewer, than let’s say, for almost any other State Department Foreign Service specialty.

Meeting-the-public is part of Ambassadorial job requirements

Now Ambassadors do, in fact, have a meet-the-public component in their job descriptions.  The best ones know the country to which they are assigned, speak the language fluently or at least passably well and are able to make the case privately and publicly for US foreign policy as it pertains to the country and region in which they serve.

If they don’t have those attributes – as I saw particularly in the case of a variety of political appointees over the years– those with common sense and a modicum of smarts take the advice of the embassy’s public affairs officer as well as the career diplomat (the DCM) who is charged with making the embassy run smoothly and, as importantly, keeping the ambassador from becoming a public embarrassment for the United States.  The advice is usually to keep a low profile and let someone who does know something talk with the media especially about substantive issues.  And, not-so-by-the-way, to refrain from making a public spectacle of himself or herself thereby introducing an unnecessary irritant into relations between the two countries.

There are, of course, also a few political appointees who are immensely popular in ways difficult for a career Ambassador to emulate.  They include both of President Obama’s appointments to China: former Ambassador John Huntsman and the current Ambassador Gary Locke as well as years ago the late Senator Mike Mansfield to Japan where he became almost a permanent fixture (1977-1988) regardless of administration because the Japanese liked and respected him so much.

But that’s not the issue here.

 

If you have not had the opportunity to view a couple of recent videos of Karen Stewart, US Ambassador to Laos, attempting to perform hip-hop at a public concert, may I suggest you let your fingers run, not do the walking to Youtube. Or just click on the video above.  The second one is below the fold. These questionable exhibitions of hubris are blissfully short and, at least for a while, the least offensive one (above) can also be found on the US Embassy Vientiane’s webpage.  My guess is it won’t last there all that long – but something posted on You-Tube as well as in the Lao electronic media as these are – can seemingly last forever.

 Tone Deaf and judgment poor?

Sadly, Ms. Stewart is a career senior Foreign Service Officer and she may well have had – and continue to have a terrific career. But I wonder.

Love Song to Ferry Rides

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

In Dar-es-Salaam or New York City, a ride on a ferry is an interlude of grace, assuming you dare to decommission your cell phone.  You have put yourself in the hands of the captain, the vessel, the currents, the weather.  For five minutes, a half hour, or more, you are not in charge, you are not responsible, you are free. And so you stand there, feeling the throb of the engines through the soles of your feet—or maybe you just give yourself to the the rocking of the boat, as a one-car ferry is pulled along by human muscle power.  Sometimes this primitive kind of ferry is suspended precariously from a cable strung across a river.  I crossed the Zanskar River in Ladakh that way.  The horse power waited on the other side—real horses loaded with trekking gear.

I remember my thrice weekly rides on the ferry when I was teaching English composition at the St. John’s campus on Staten Island.  Those crossings, after I’d wheeled my bike aboard, were always sweetened by the fact that I wasn’t pedaling, but the return trips were especially delicious.   I’d managed to survive two  more sessions with students who had no interest in logic, syntax or the classics of Western civilization. Yes, I was grateful for that job, which allowed me to live in the Village, but in love with it I was not.  Meanwhile, the vision of lower Manhattan, hazy in the distance or loomingly close up, never failed to enchant me.  Sixty compositions to read and grade? In sight of  the magic kingdom, forgotten.

Weekends, when I was working in Medan, Indonesia’s third largest city, I explored Sumatra, whose coastal roads were constantly interrupted by hair-raising river crossings.  These ferries, usually, were modest raft-like vessels, and they looked all too sinkable, either by too-heavy loads—e.g., lorries themselves overloaded, or, more likely, by unbalanced vehicle-placement.  Capsizing fantasies weren’t the worst of it.  Driving on and off was nightmarish: picture two planks, each about a foot wide, neither securely fastened to anything at either end.  Add to that the fact that rivers flow, which means the ferry itself wasn’t exactly stationary.  Crawling inch by inch
along those planks in low gear, I kept my car windows open, my theory being that I could wiggle free if I ended up under water. Still, there’s something to be said for such experiences.  Prayer-saying terror turned into chest-swelling pride as my rear tires bumped off the planks and I drove away from the ferry slip.  Slip—what a wonderful word for ruts leading to water’s edge.  

The old ferry across the mighty Rufiji River in southern Tanzania is no longer in operation.  It has been replaced by a bridge, which is not surprising.  Traffic on the main road down the Eastern coast of
Africa has increased considerably.  This is a good thing, by and large, for economic development. 

Back when I was driving frequently to the Selous Game Reserve with Tanzanian friends, a fairly large, conventional-looking ferry shuttled back and forth across the Rufiji River. This ferry was a vital link on a major road. so a back- up vessel was always moored just up river, ready to go into service at any time.  Unless it too was under repair.  Both vessels were shamefully rusty on the outside.  No one assumed that engine room preventive maintenance was any more assiduous. 

Thus, at the Rufiji crossing, a mere hour’s wait was cause for celebration, and we usually had an ocean of time for people-watching—or amateur anthropology. A flat-chested old woman in a threadbare tee shirt with a kanga wrapped around her bony hips sells bananas from a basket she balances on her head.  What’s her story?  How about the boy with a basket strapped to the back of his bicycle?  It’s full of chickens.  Live chickens, squawking.  We never bothered to pack a lunch when we were driving to the Selous.  We could count on venders at the ferry landing to supply us with boiled or grilled corn on the cob, mangos, slices of fresh coconut, sesame brittle and sweet hot tea.  Kababs, too. Sometimes.

My latest ferry ride, this past August, was also in Tanzania.  We—that’s my grandson and I, crossed the harbor from the center of Dar-es-Salaam to the coastal road that would take us to an ocean-side resort, where the sand was fine and white, the slope of the beach was gradual, the undertow was minimal and the waves were splendid for body surfing, just as I remembered from the days when I and embassy colleagues would drive out of the city for an afternoon at the beach.  This ferry line was also on a commuter route.  Delays of two, even three hours were not impossible mornings and evenings, I was told.  How Dar had changed!  When I was posted there,  the whole city didn’t hold enough cars to make a respectable traffic jam. 

Fortunately, my grandson and I reached the ferry slip at midday.  The ferry had just departed, and there were just a dozen vehicles ahead of us, including some large buses, but the incoming ferry was already on its way.  Squinting across the harbor, I saw several dhows and some little fishing boats, too. Some things hadn’t changed. 

I was glad for that wait, about 45 minutes, because it gave my grandson a glimpse of Tanzania outside the safari circuit.  Human life.  Not just the lions and elephants that can't help but fascinate a fourteen-year-old.  He was too young for long lectures on sociology and politics, but sitting there in the van, waiting for the ferry, he saw Dar-es-Salaam on the move.  Men in business suits, uniforms, sarongs.  Young girls in jeans and short skirts.  Matrons in the modes of the day.  Women exhibiting various stages of Muslim modesty. Kids being whiney or charming. In short, a mishmash.  An African version of a cosmopolitan city.     

All the photos here were taken from the van as we waited in the middle of four lanes of vehicles for the ferry.  The ferry ride, as usual, was pure pleasure.

Crossing Thin Lines

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Where does public affairs begin and psy ops end?  Or for that matter, where does public diplomacy begin and psy ops end?  Or how about the line between public affairs and public diplomacy?   Then toss in a thread the width of a silk worm's between Congressional relations and info ops and psy ops to make matters more complex.

All, after all, are about informing and influencing others for a specific purpose although the reasons, methods of choice and audiences differ.  The practitioners select from a variety of communication tools depending upon the circumstances. 

The controversial Rolling Stone anti-Pentagon expose making the rounds of the blogosphere and main stream media this past week is about the apparent misuse of an army unit  under General Caldwell in Afghanistan whose members, a whistleblower claims, were told to use information operations tools to attempt to influence visiting Congressional representatives.  The goal:  to gain support for increased funds for training Afghan troops. 

The Whistle Blower Did Not Have Psy Ops Training

A few comments on the Rolling Stone site suggest that the whistle blower did not have the requisite army psy ops training and, therefore, did not really work for a psy ops unit.  The New York Times later confirmed that the commenters were right and whistle blower Michael Holmes clarified his position.

Meanwhile the Command argued that the unit had only been asked to prepare bios and other unclassified background information –along with several public affairs specialists - because it was short handed.      

Regardless, the issue is something different. The roots are found in 1948 when Congress passed the Smith-Mundt Act. Smith-Mundt was aimed at the State Department’s information activities directed towards foreigners abroad.  The law’s goal was to prevent “propaganda” from the Executive Branch directed at foreigners from reaching the American public.

That’s the official version.

Matt Armstrong, however, discovered in researching the topic several years ago that it had also been pushed by AP who saw State’s efforts as threatening to its fledgling overseas sales operations.

The Smith-Mundt firewall moved from State to USIA when the Agency was created in 1953 and affected all of its information work until USIA was abolished in 1999– from Voice of America radio broadcasts to publications like the glossy America Illustrated that was coveted throughout the Soviet Union.

The firewall was never absolute. 

Short wave radio hams could pick up the signal in these United States and Americans working abroad could pick up copies of the USIA publications from USIS posts and centers to use in classes or otherwise if, for instance, they were teaching English to foreigners.  We used to hand out copies of America Illustrated when we traveled in the Soviet Union and met with Soviet officials and other Soviet citizens:  copies of AI also helped score those coveted tables at popular restaurants.   But the Internet blew a hole in the Smith-Mundt wall.

By the time I left USIA in 1998, a major dilemma was how to deal with that momentous challenge created by the Internet and the gusher of information it unleashed and in so doing, how to differentiate public affairs from public diplomacy.  

Back at the Arlington ranch

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Arlington, the Pentagon walled off psy ops, info ops  and other communications based operations aimed at foreign enemies from Americans. It did so for the same reason – so as not to propagandize the American people.   Its lawyers built long standing arguments around Smith-Mundt principles to keep the two at football field length.  This is what Michael Holmes, the Rolling Stone’s chief source, was referring to when he argued that his unit should not have been being used to help conduct Congressional relations. 

Yet, the issue that the critics and Rolling Stone commenters miss is that the question being raised is not just whether the Command in Afghanistan had crossed the Smith-Mundt barrier in the traditional sense, e.g.between psy ops, info ops or public diplomacy and public affairs, but worse, whether the unit in question was being used to help lobby Congress for additional funds for a particular program – in this case, to increase the training pf Afghan troops.  This adds a whole new and even more dangerous dimension to the fifty year old Smith-Mundt fire wall.  In fact, Caldwell’s decision had nothing to do with cross over from psy ops to public affairs or info ops to public affairs.

 Ironically, the members of Congress who General Caldwell was trying to influence were supporters of the training program anyway – so was this apparent overkill really necessary?

I for one, fail to understand why a psy ops or info ops unit would have been called upon to do anything more than brief visiting Senators on the unit's operations.  Surely the Command should have had staff specialists assigned to handling visiting firemen, that is, Congressional delegations known as Codels in the vernacular.

Afghanistan the largest US military operation in the world

Afghanistan is now the largest US military operation in the world and must be inundated with high level visitors from Congress.  The military understands that Congress needs kid-glove treatment and so do the Embassies. Surely the military, at least, would have the staff to devote to receiving multiple Codels multiple times over and wouldn’t have needed to pull staff from elsewhere. 

After all, the US military has an amazingly well honed Congressional relations operation which helps explain why it consumes nearly 20% of our federal budget. 

In the end, however, this is a strange and troubling story.  I hope it represents a single case. 

 

China and the US: A Multitextured, Technocolored Relationship

By Patricia H. Kushlis

In “Friend or foe?  A special report on China’s place in the world” published on December 4, 2010, The Economist assesses the multitextured technicolored relationship that has developed over the past 15 years between the US and China. As part of that assessment The Economist’s writers characterize America’s two-track China policy as engagement on the one hand and deterrence on the other. 

In essence, engagement “is designed to reward good behaviour and hedging to deter bad.” In practice, however, argues The Economist, “the hedge risks undermining the engagement” especially since the former is largely run by State Department China hands while the latter by the Pentagon and the two bureaucracies don’t necessarily see eye to eye - let alone talk to each other all that much.

Sadly, the fall-out from the Wikileaks fiasco likely increases the distance across the Potomac rather than lessens it.

To complicate the US-China situation further – although The Economist’s political economists do not so explicitly state – is the possibility that factions within the Chinese government and the ruling Communist Party are themselves not all on the same page regarding how best to pursue China’s interests abroad.

Civilian relationship better than the military one

Over the years, the US government’s relationship with China’s foreign policy civilian side has been far more durable than the military-to-military one which, let’s face it, is a sometime thing. The latter has been almost non-existent for over a year – at least until Secretary Gates’ appeared in Beijing last week – and there are a whole host of issues surrounding a heightened security climate from the South China Sea to North Korea and Japan that demand steady careful management, if, in fact, they can’t be resolved.    

The State Department cables thus far released by Wikileaks and a follow-up interview by Guardian reporter Simon Tisdal with an unnamed Chinese diplomat in Europe suggest that Chinese Foreign Ministry representatives and at least one high level Communist party official have decided that propping up the North Korean regime indefinitely is not in China’s long term interest.  As far as these civilian officials are concerned, a unified Korea under the South – as long as the transfer of power occurs peacefully and US troops stay below the DMZ would be an acceptable outcome to this six decade long, crisis-fraught dispute. 

We Love You, Barry, But---: Understanding Indonesia-Speak

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Somewhere recently I read an piece by a U.S.-based analyst that I can’t, however ingeniously I go googling, find now.  It said something condescending like this:  with the U.S. and China competing for influence in Indonesia, Indonesian leaders are going to have to pick up some extraordinary diplomatic skills in order to play the one off against the other successfully.

That Indonesia will have to string its Chinese and American suitors along in coming years I don’t doubt.  But, having been fluent in Indonesian and having  worked for three years in Jakarta and Medan, pursuing what is now called public diplomacy, I really did have to laugh at the suggestion that Indonesians need instruction in the subtleties of diplomatic interaction.   Clearly the (happily unnamed) writer knows little of what you will (I hope) pardon me for referring to as the “Indonesian mind” in any of its many ethnic variants. 

As an immediate corrective to his (it was a he) misperception, I would suggest a visit to a museum with a collection of daggers from the archipelago.  A kris can be an artwork of sublime beauty.  Its ways of killing have also been highly developed. Just a glance at those exquisite wavy or serrated blades, which may or may not have been anointed with poison,  sends shivers down my spine.   Sitting in on conversations between Indonesians, I often felt I was in the presence of some very sophisticated verbal kris-work.

Coincidentally, shortly after encountering the above cited bit of pseudo-analysis, I stumbled upon a lovely demonstration of Indonesia’s undoubted ability to understand and cope with the world as it is.  The quote comes from a Jakarta Post column by veteran lawyer/politician/educator  Jusuf Wanandi.  He's musing over Beijing’s  inept handing of economic issues sure to be discussed at the upcoming G20 meeting. 

The Chinese might have a point to resist US pressures, such as to revaluate the yuan to reduce imbalances. They could do it with finesse and nuance.
   
This is at least expected from a big power that is self-confident and knows what it wants. One can always cooperate to find solutions, especially if one is in a better and more powerful position.
   
In the end, while China has elevated its stature globally, it is still limited in the economic realm. I assume Deng Xiaoping’s advice from some decades ago is still valid: Don’t have hubris, don’t be over-confident —  and play your strengths with care.

  
Similar commentary on the Obama visit exemplifies the sort of editorial writing that also flourished in the Suharto era when I was reading newspapers in Indonesian as well as English.   The style is still in style, it seems.  To see what I mean,  I recommend reading from start to finish a "welcome Barry" editorial.  While appearing to be  gratified by Obama’s bahasa-studded flattery (Obama also laid it on too icky thick in India, with Hindi, to my mind), the Post gets in some very heavy criticism, alternating ever so delicately between the pros and sorta cons, making points but refraining from anything so crude as a death blow. 

When I was working in Indonesia, often preparing media reaction cables (no email then), I came to enjoy this style that frustrated many of my colleagues.  "Indonesian journalists should learn to get to the point," they complained.  To that there were three responses.  For one thing, it was dangerous to be too overt when it came to criticizing the Suharto regime.  Writing nakedly, you could end up dead; sinuous indirection would allow you to speak your mind and survive.  Equally important, was the matter of language itself.  Bahasa Indonesia has two passive voices and only one active voice. Finally, there’s etiquette.  Even among the supposedly unrefined Bataks of North Sumatra, you couldn't just blurt things out.  So Indonesian editorializing wasn’t bad writing.  It’s just wasn’t American writing.  And it still isn’t.

That being the case, let me translate the Post’s conveniently Englished, Obama-centered editorials and columns into Americanese.  This is what I get:

1.  It was deeply insulting for Obama to cancel his previous visits.  We Indonesians haven’t quite forgiven him, but we did appreciate his all-out homecoming performance this time.  A caution, however.  If he’s serious about how important we are to the U.S. (we’ve heard this before), he won’t cancel the trip he’s promised for next year.  Still, maximal expectations have to be tempered by realism (another under-appreciated Indonesian trait).  As Abdillah Toha put it in another Post column, “Despite many problems that point to the declining power of the US, America is still a superpower to be reckoned with.  Thus America is more important to Indonesia than vice versa.”

2.  America and Indonesia do indeed share certain constitutionally-enshrined political values (unity in diversity, religious tolerance, etc.), which should make it relatively easy to cooperate, and we  love it when you Americans mention this.  However, this apparent affinity can degenerate into words, words, words.

3.  Yes, we Indonesians are pretty tolerant, but most of us are Muslims, and we think the U..S. condones intolerable behavior by Israel.  To make this brotherhood business work, we need to see  serious changes in America’s policy in the Middle East   Israeli settlements need to be stopped.  Israel’s disproportionate response to Palestinian provocation is also unacceptable. We didn’t hear anything encouraging during Obama’s visit.

4.  Nevertheless,  since we Indonesians are indeed realistic and pragmatic and because China is getting too damned peremptory,  Indonesia is willing to cut the U.S. a little slack. 

As Wanandi put it: “For Indonesia, a US presence in East Asia is important so Indonesia has the option to implementing [sic] a free and independent foreign policy.  It is also important for other small and middle-sized countries to pursue their national interests in East Asia.”

Jakarta Post items worth reading:   

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/11/11/editorial-until-next-year-barry.html

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/11/09/obama-between-hope-and-reality.html

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/11/11/obama-leaves-ri-people-breathe-sigh-relief.htm

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/11/09/%E2%80%98barry%E2%80%99-return-home.html

For less on style and more on policy check this out:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/LK16Ae01.html