Indonesia

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Thailand delays debate on amnesty bill that has sparked mass protests. The Thai senate on Friday delayed debate on a bill that would grant amnesty to almost anyone facing charges arising from Thailand’s political turmoil that took place from 2004 to 2010. Opponents of the bill claim that it is an attempt to bring back former premier Thaksin Shinawatra from self-exile without serving jail time. (His sister, Yingluck Sinawatra, is currently serving as prime minister.) Thousands have taken to the streets in protest of the bill, some wearing yellow shirts to signify their opposition to the former premier, and others wearing red shirts as a call for justice for their comrades who were killed in a crackdown of 2010 political protests. 2. Blasts in Taiyuan, China, kill one and injure eight. Several home-made bombs went off near government buildings in the northern city of Taiyuan early Wednesday morning. According to the Global Times, police detained a 41-year-old ex-convict who wanted to “take revenge on society” and confessed to the details of the crime. The incident comes a week after a car crash and explosion killed five and injured forty in Tiananmen Square. At the same time, the Chinese government condemned an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “China’s Desperate ‘Terrorists’,” because it insinuated that human rights abuses in Xinjiang province caused the recent violence. 3. Typhoon Haiyan batters the Philippines. Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded, hit the central Philippines on Friday and is expected to hit Vietnam over the weekend. The Philippines News Agency cited unconfirmed reports that roughly twenty people drowned after the storm surge, and close to 720,000 were evacuated from the typhoon’s path. Thanks to evacuations and preparations that included emergency housing for those displaced, as well as less violent winds than previously forecast, the impact of the typhoon was not as severe as expected. 4. China’s Third Plenum starts on Saturday to much fanfare. The third plenary session of the Eighteenth Party Congress begins tomorrow, November 9, and will last until November 12; the meeting will lay out President Xi Jinping’s economic plan for the next decade. Anticipation over the meeting and its outcome has reached a fever pitch, with analysts predicting a wide range of reforms to be announced. As important as they are, though, CFR’s Elizabeth Economy argues that China needs to foster the appropriate policy environment for these reforms to flourish; it will be a few years, not a few days, before we know the real impact of this weekend’s meetings. 5. Indonesia will not take in rescued asylum seekers. Indonesian coordinating minister for security and political affairs, Djoko Suyanto, said that his government will not accept Australia’s call to take in a boat with over fifty asylum seekers. The two countries have engaged in what some have called a "mid-ocean standoff" since the boat made a distress call on Thursday. Some Australians have complained that their government has not released enough information about the event and left citizens in the dark as to what was taking place. Bonus: Jimmy Kimmel’s China "joke" reaches the White House. A petition condemning a tasteless segment by Jimmy Kimmel—host of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”—has reached the White House and will require a response after it received 100,000 signatures within a thirty-day period. On October 16, in response to a question about how to resolve the United States’ trade imbalance with China, a child concluded his answer “Kill everyone in China”; Kimmel proceeds to let the kids debate the merits of doing so. Kimmel has been compared to Hitler for airing the segment, and protesters have picketed outside ABC’s studios.

An unfortunate casualty of President Obama’s cancelled trip to Asia was the missed opportunity to cement stronger U.S. ties with Indonesia, the emerging giant of Southeast Asia. The bilateral relationship will survive, of course, as will the “comprehensive partnership” the two countries launched in 2010. But the president’s no-show for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bali deprived the United States of a symbolic occasion to highlight how much unites these two boisterous democracies. It also sowed doubts among Indonesian elites about how seriously they should take the U.S. “pivot” to Asia, at a time when the United States and China are offering competing visions of the region’s future. The Obama administration should recall that the key to success in diplomacy (as in life, according to Woody Allen) is mostly just showing up. When it comes to rising powers, most official and expert attention has focused on Brazil, India, and especially China. But a singular focus on the behemoth “BICs” ignores the economic dynamism and growing political maturity of an emerging middle tier of countries in the developing world. Among the most impressive is Indonesia, which since its transition from dictatorship in 1999 has enjoyed not only political stability but also impressive economic growth. Indeed, despite the global recession, its economy grew more than 6 percent per annum from 2008-2012, making it the world’s sixteenth largest today. Boasting the world’s fourth biggest population, with some 250 million inhabitants, Indonesia is also the largest Muslim-majority country and third most populous democracy in the world (after India and the United States). Indonesia’s combination of democratic stability, economic vitality, and strategic position astride critical shipping lanes led the Center for New American Security and the German Marshall Fund in 2012 to designate it one of four critical “global swing states” (along with Brazil, India, and Turkey). Viewed from the outside, Indonesia would seem poised to play an influential role on both regional and global stages. But how are Indonesians themselves coming to terms with their burgeoning power? Do elites in that country have a coherent strategic view of their nation’s future within ASEAN, much less wider Asia? What contributions is Indonesia prepared to make to regional and global security?  How do Indonesia’s daunting internal development challenges influence its priorities for global trade and finance, including its behavior as a member of the G20? Finally, what sort of long-term relationship does Indonesia desire with the United States? These questions were the focus of a fascinating workshop in Jakarta this past June, titled “Emerging Indonesia: Implications for World Order and International Institutions.” A detailed summary of this event, which the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) co-sponsored with its host, the Indonesian Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), can be found online. But here are a few of the most salient highlights: Indonesia is grappling with how to balance its regional commitments and global ambitions: For years, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been the main platform for Indonesian foreign policy, and Indonesia comes closest to being the leader of that heterogeneous, ten-nation forum. Jakarta has shown leadership in seeking a code of conduct to defuse tensions in the South China Sea, and it will continue to rely on ASEAN as a vehicle to establish norms of peaceful coexistence and cooperation. At the same time, it is looking beyond that grouping to fulfill its broader international ambitions, including in the framework of the G20 and bilateral strategic partnerships with the Australia, Brazil, China, and the European Union, as well as the United States. Increasingly, Indonesia will act apart from, not simply as part of, ASEAN. Indonesia is punching below its weight on global security: If one hallmark of an emerging power is growing contributions to international order, Indonesia’s grade is “incomplete.” On the positive side, the nation has increased its contributions to UN peacekeeping, expressed vocal support for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm, and been a strong advocate a Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zone. Indonesia has also sponsored  the Bali Democracy Forum, designed to help former authoritarian governments (including Arab nations) navigate the treacherous transition to democracy. Less helpfully, the nation has been largely silent in the face of the proliferation challenges posed by Iran and North Korea. Finally, participants remained divided on the practicality of the Indo-Pacific “Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation” that Jakarta proposed in May 2013, conceived as a parallel to ASEAN’s existing Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia. Jakarta views global trade and finance through the lens of its own development: Indonesia’s economic priority is sustaining a high rate of growth while continuing to reduce poverty and income inequality. Indonesia’s progress to date has been remarkable: Since 2006, the nation’s poverty rate has fallen from 18 to 12 percent, thanks in part to the largest community-driven development (CDD) program in the world. Its challenge now is to diversify from over-reliance on export commodities by reinvigorating its manufacturing base—something that will require major investments in human capital. Although Indonesia weathered the global economic downturn well, this shift to a higher-value-added economy will require attracting long-term foreign direct investment—in part by fighting corruption and streamlining bureaucratic impediments. Indonesia’s sustainable development will also require a much more vigorous approach to combatting deforestation, particularly illegal logging, that threatens to destroy one of the world’s largest remaining tropical forests. Prospects for Indonesian-U.S. partnership have never been brighter. When the United States first explored a comprehensive partnership several years ago, suspicion about U.S. intentions was rife in Indonesia. This initial wariness has subsided, however, given the broad congruence of strategic, political, and economic interests between the two countries. The two nations have recently expanded defense cooperation, as well as educational exchanges, but much more remains to be done, particularly in building commercial ties between the United States and Indonesia. (Bilateral trade comprises just 10 percent of U.S. trade with ASEAN today). While no formal alliance is on the horizon, particularly given Indonesia’s insistence on retaining good relations with Beijing as well as Washington, the United States has a golden opportunity to achieve a long-term partnership with a dynamic fellow democracy and the linchpin of Southeast Asia.

With the government shut down, the White House announced yesterday that the President’s upcoming trip to Asia, scheduled to begin October 6, will be cut short. Plans to visit Malaysia and the Philippines have been shelved for now, though Obama will still attend the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting of leaders in Bali, Indonesia. Republicans will undoubtedly accuse Obama of hitting the beach rather than resolving the budget crisis, but the President’s decision to keep his commitment to APEC makes sense. Southeast Asia is increasingly critical to U.S. interests, and Obama has made the region the heart of his government’s “pivot” of forces and diplomatic personnel to Asia. To make good on that goal, Obama should push forward several critical ideas that would help the region become a better market and trading partner, and that would enhance stability in Southeast Asia. For the whole article, and the recommendations, read here.  

Will Piekos and Sharone Tobias look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Bo Xilai sentenced to life in prison. Former Communist Party official Bo Xilai was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery, and abuse of power in the eastern city of Jinan and sentenced to life in prison on Sunday. Though the guilty verdict was by no means a surprise, the length of the term was much longer than the fifteen to twenty years that many analysts expected. On Monday, Bo appealed his verdict—though that is considered a mere formality. The Chinese government has trumpeted the sentencing as a victory for the rule of law in China, but many outside experts believe the opposite—that the trial only made it eminently clear “that the Party still controls the Law.” 2. China bans weapon-related exports to North Korea. The Ministry of Commerce released a 236-page list of banned “dual-use” items to export to North Korea on Monday, which include components for nuclear devices and rocket systems as well as several biological agents such as the Ebola virus. The list signals China’s growing concern about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and a potential rift in the two countries’ relationship. It comes amid new reports that North Korea could be resuming production of plutonium at a newly reconstructed nuclear reactor, according to satellite photographs, and a report by American arms experts that posts that North Korean scientists have learned to produce crucial components of gas centrifuges required to enrich uranium. Foreign Minister Wang Yi of China said last week said it was time for North Korea to resume talks on its nuclear program. 3. Japanese prime minister reaffirms position in East China Sea. At a news conference following the UN General Assembly, conservative Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe reaffirmed that Japan would make no concession on the sovereignty dispute in the East China Sea, while emphasizing that Japan does not intend to escalate the situation. “The door to dialogue is always open,” he stated, “and I really hope the Chinese side would take the same mindset.” Beijing has also expressed its willingness to discuss the issue, but only if Tokyo formally admits that a sovereignty dispute exists. Abe’s comments came as the Japanese Coast Guard reported four Chinese Coast Guard vessels entering the disputed waters. 4. Australia-Indonesia relationship bothered by asylum issue. Recently instated conservative Australian prime minister Tony Abbott characterized the two countries’ border issues as a “passing irritant” in an otherwise “strong relationship.” Indonesia, however, sees it differently and is upset with the new government’s plan to curtail immigration to Australia. The plan, dubbed Operation Sovereign Borders, includes policies such as turning back boats full of asylum seekers and offering cash incentives to Indonesians who inform on people smugglers. Jakarta fears the plan will be enacted unilaterally by Canberra and does not respect Indonesia’s sovereignty. Abbott will make his first trip to Indonesia early next week. 5. Giant hornet attacks kill dozens in central China. Twenty-eight people have died and hundreds have been injured in the province of Shaanxi after being stung by a wave of giant hornets. The stings can cause anaphylactic shock and renal failure. Thirty-six people died and 715 were injured during the last major wave of attacks between 2002 and 2005. Scientists suggest that warmer temperatures have allowed the hornets to breed faster. Bonus: Chinese man grows nose on forehead. Doctors decided to grow a nose on a patient’s forehead after his original nose was irreparably damaged from an infection following a car accident. Tissue expanders stretched the skin to resemble a nose. Doctors expect to implant the new nose on the proper part of the face soon.

Will Piekos and Sharone Tobias look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Chinese President wraps up trip to Central Asia. President Xi Jinping ended a ten-day trip to Central Asia with a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) last weekend. Xi signed a number of bilateral economic and energy deals with countries in the region, and the SCO reached consensus on a number of foreign policy issues (largely in line with Chinese and Russian interests). With the U.S. withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2014, Central Asia is a region ripe for Chinese leadership. 2. Violence nears end in Philippines. After the breakdown of last week’s truce, fighting in the southern city of Zamboanga will soon be over as more Muslim rebels were forced to surrender on Friday. The rebels, part of the Moro National Liberation Front that is seeking an independent state, have dwindled to around fifty from the original 200. Still, they remain dangerous, and three were killed by a bomb planted inside a bus earlier today. 3. Abe orders all of Fukushima’s surviving reactors to shut down. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered all nuclear power plant reactors from the Fukushima Daiichi plant scrapped, rather than only four as previously announced. The decision comes as Japan is trying to reassure the Olympic Committee and the public about its safety after being awarded the opportunity to host the 2020 Summer Olympics. Tokyo won the title of host city for the Summer Olympic Games over Istanbul by a vote of sixty to thirty-six. Buenos Aires and Madrid were also contenders. 4. Shuttered Kaesong complex stirs back to life. Cars and trucks flooded across the border between North and South Korea early this week, as the Kaesong industrial park restarted operations after a 166-day hiatus. The complex was closed in April, when rising tensions triggered the North to withdraw its workers. It houses 123 South Korean factories and employs over 50,000 North Koreans; it is the last joint inter-Korean project and an important source of hard currency for Pyongyang. 5. Caroline Kennedy nears confirmation for ambassadorship to Japan. Caroline Kennedy was warmly received at a confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday. Lawmakers questioned her on issues ranging from tensions in the East China Sea, Japan’s trade relations with Iran, and recovery from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Senator Tim Kaine noted that Kennedy’s father served in Japan during World War II, citing the fact as evidence of the family’s long history of representing the United States in the country. If confirmed, Kennedy will have to contend with policy issues such as increased tensions between China and Japan and implementing the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Bonus: Muslims in Indonesia protest Miss World beauty pageant. Conservative Muslims have held protests against the Miss World beauty pageant, and some have promised violence. An estimated 6,000 have already booked flights and hotel rooms for the contest, scheduled to be held next week. It is likely that the contest will be held in Bali, a majority-Hindu island, instead. A Muslim-only beauty pageant, called World Muslimah, was held in Jakarta earlier this week. All contestants were required to wear head coverings, were judged on their knowledge of the Quran rather than conventional beauty, and the winner was awarded trips to Mecca and India.

The White House last week confirmed that President Obama will be traveling to Southeast Asia between October 6 and 12. He will visit Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines, and Malaysia. In all of these countries, Obama will be celebrating growing partnerships, including a defense partnership with treaty ally the Philippines that is at the strongest its been since the U.S. left its bases in the Philippines more than two decades ago; with the Philippines driven by fear of China’s growing regional presence, U.S. forces now are returning to the country with a much more significant presence than at any time since the Cold War. In Malaysia and Brunei and Indonesia, strategic cooperation, as well as growing bilateral trade, also will be highlighted by the White House; the United States recently agreed to sell Apache attack helicopters to Indonesia, one of the first big arms deals since restrictions on selling lethal weapons to the country were lifted. But in all of these countries, Obama also should be aware that he is walking into places where, though democracy is taking firm root, it remains bumpy. The White House should be careful to help promote continued democratization in these states—and indeed in all of Southeast Asia—rather than just celebrating its strategic ties and its bilateral relationships with the current leaders of these three nations. In Malaysia, such a democracy-first strategy would mean not only highlighting how Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has helped rebuild U.S-Malaysia strategic ties from their ebb in the latter days of the Mahathir Mohamad era but also meeting with opposition leaders like Anwar Ibrahim and rights activists like leaders of the Bersih movement for clean and fair elections in Malaysia. After all, in May Najib’s coalition actually lost the popular vote to Anwar’s opposition Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) coalition, and if not for gerrymandering and alleged voter fraud, Anwar’s coalition probably would be running Parliament now. In the Philippines, this strategy would mean not only working closely with President Benigno Aquino III, who has proven to be a more proactive leader than many expected, helping putting the Philippines on a more stable economic path, but also should spend time with the leaders of the movement to combat political graft and pork barrel spending (including staff from the Office of the Ombudsman), which has become an electrifying issue among middle class Filipinos transfixed by the case of several veteran lawmakers who allegedly worked together to steal millions from anti-poverty projects. Over 100,000 people have massed in the streets of Manila in recent weeks to protest the culture of graft and politicians stealing from the state treasury. Although Aquino has promised to crack down on the corruption that has plagued the Philippines and historically undermined its growth, his actual reforms have been relatively weak. Finally, in Indonesia the president should not only praise Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for his steady leadership over two terms, ending the chaos of the Habibe, Wahid, and Megawati years, but also should meet with younger leaders of Indonesian civil society from parts of the country other than Jakarta. Compared to a decade ago, Indonesian politics have become much more national, with Jakarta-based elites no longer dominating every issue, a change highlighted by the emergence of former Solo (and now Jakarta) governor Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, as a legitimate presidential candidate for the next election.

Will Piekos and Sharone Tobias look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. North and South Korea agree to reopen Kaesong complex. After seven rounds of negotiations, the shuttered Kaesong complex, closed for months following a period of particularly high tensions, is set to be reopened, though there is no timetable yet. The complex was a major source of hard currency and jobs for North Korea until it was shut down, and it is one of the few symbols of cooperation between the two Koreas. The agreement includes a pledge from both sides to prevent any future shutdowns, an agreement to try to attract foreign companies to the complex, and permission for South Korean managers to use the Internet and mobile phones. 2. Abe avoids Yasukuni Shrine. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine on the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II, instead sending an offering. The compromise was meant to satisfy his conservative, nationalist base while not inflaming regional tensions. A number of Japanese lawmakers still visited the Shinto shrine, which honors all of Japan’s war dead, including convicted war criminals. In response, the Chinese government summoned Japan’s ambassador to protest the visit, while South Korea’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement denouncing the visit. As an annual occurrence, however, the anniversary will likely pass without further incident as it has in the past. 3. Oil regulator in Indonesia arrested in bribery investigation. The Corruption Eradication Commission of Indonesia detained Rudi Rubiandini, chairman of oil and gas regulator SKK Migas, for allegedly accepting bribes of more than $700,000. Two men later identified as representatives of Kernel Oil, an oil trading company, were at Mr. Rudi’s home at the time of the raid and were also arrested. The arrest comes as Indonesia prepares for the 2014 elections, where government corruption is likely to be a major campaign issue. Indonesia was previously a member of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and a net energy exporter, but its annual oil output has halved since the 1990s. 4. China to change organ donation system. A senior Chinese official has said that starting in November, China will no longer take organs from executed prisoners, who account for as many as two-thirds of transplant organs in China. Though the number of executions in China are a state secret—estimated at 3,000 executions in 2012—this number has reportedly decreased substantially in the past decade. The current organ donor system will be replaced over time by a voluntary donor system. 5. Tourism to China falls in 2013. Between January and June of this year, tourism to China fell by 5 percent, and travel to Beijing fell by 15 percent. The China National Tourism Administration blames the drop on China’s strengthening currency, the outbreak of H7N9 bird flu, and dead pigs floating near Shanghai’s rivers. Worsening levels of pollution—January’s "Airpocalypse" being one such example—are undoubtedly also a factor. Said one travel agent: "All the news which is coming from China concerning non-touristic things are bad, frankly speaking." China is the world’s third most visited country for tourists after France and the United States. Bonus: Chinese zoo under fire for disguising dog as lion. The People’s Park of Luohe in Henan replaced zoo animals with common species, according to the Beijing Youth Daily. The zoo was caught in the act when an “African lion” began barking. The zoo also labeled two coypu rodents as snakes, a white fox as a leopard, and a dog as a wolf.

Over the past month,Indonesia, the natural leader of Southeast Asia, has often seemed rudderless in its foreign policy, lashing out at other nations in the region over a haze crisis caused primarily in Indonesia, and offering little leadership as the region tries to work toward serious negotiations with China on a realistic South China Sea code of conduct. Does Indonesia have a regional strategy, or even an international one? Does it have a foreign ministry up to the challenge of returning to leadership in ASEAN, and playing a leading role in global organizations like the G-20 and the UN? In an interview with the International Relations and Security Network, I discuss Indonesia’s regional and global foreign policy. Read it here.

Even before several of my CFR colleagues and I arrived in Indonesia earlier this week for discussions on regional security and governance, headlines in the region’s media were dominated by the haze that was blanketing Singapore and Malaysia—not to mention parts of Indonesia—as a result of the slash-and-burn practices in Sumatra. In an effort to clear land to plant new crops, farmers there burn crop residue, timber, and peat. The result is hundreds of “hotspots,” or fires that contribute to a thick, toxic haze that travels throughout the region. This is despite a government effort to promote “zero burning” and a moratorium on all deforestation in much of the country. As Huang Yanzhong described in a post earlier this week, this year’s haze marks the most serious since 2007, when economic losses to the region reportedly reached US$9 billion. This time around, Singapore recorded its worst air quality in history, Malaysia closed hundreds of schools, and tourism dropped dramatically. Singapore and Malaysia have both offered assistance, while at the same time calling on Indonesia to step up its game. Indonesia, in turn, has refused the assistance and responded with criticism of its own, with one Minister complaining about other countries “making noise to the world when things go bad.” According to one Indonesian expert, Singapore’s offer of monetary assistance was “insulting.” Indonesian President Yudhoyono, perhaps in an effort to reduce tensions, apologized to the region and promised to devote more resources to the firefighting effort. This year’s contretemps is emblematic of a broader problem in regional governance and Indonesia’s own state capacity. While the challenge of regional haze has been recognized since at least 1985, in the region’s “Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources Agreement,” efforts to build an effective regional response have been stymied. Despite years of agreements to share information, train firefighters, and develop a common air quality index—as well as the establishment of a 2002 “ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution”—the fires continue to burn. Part of the problem rests in the nature of the agreement, which has no enforcement, sanctioning, or dispute settlement mechanism to help ensure countries’ adherence. The more significant flaw, however, is the failure of the chief culprit in the burning—Indonesia—to sign the agreement. Indonesia wants the agreement linked to other issues, such as illegal logging. Without ratification by Indonesia, the agreement cannot have any real impact on forging an effective collective response. Indonesia’s own weak state capacity poses a second challenge. Enforcement of its forestry regulations suffer from a high level of political and geographic decentralization, which makes it difficult to implement the country’s forest laws; in some cases local officials pass regulations contrary to laws passed by the central government. A powerful palm oil and timber lobby resists the more expensive methods of clearing land, and poor independent farmers have little economic incentive to adopt best forestry practices. Corruption is endemic in the forestry sector at local levels: for example, the former governor of Riau province, which is the source of much of this year’s fires, was arrested for corruption, in part for selling forest permits illegally. Still, there is hope. An alliance is emerging of domestic and international non-governmental organizations who are working with Jakarta to pinpoint the source of the fires, as well as those responsible. Agribusiness companies, such as Bunge, Caterpillar, and Nestle, are pledging not to buy palm oil or palm oil products from companies that practice slash-and-burn or plant in areas under the moratorium. More can be done. Other countries in the region should make clear to Jakarta that as a regional leader, Indonesia needs to ratify the haze agreement; it can’t be a laggard. Economic incentives to bulldoze, excavate, and compost crop residue and timber rather than burn it could also help reduce the temptation to take the quick and cheap route. Finally, the significant role of Singaporean and Malaysian palm oil and timber companies in Indonesia’s economy offers real opportunities for joint law enforcement efforts if the countries can overcome sovereignty and other political tensions.

Haze continues to spread across Southeast Asia, the result primarily of burn-offs from farming by individuals and agribusinesses in Indonesia, combined with the dry summer weather and urban pollution in the region’s largest cities. As Yanzhong Huang notes, air pollution levels in some parts of penisular Southeast Asia have reached record highs this past week; the more proactive governments in the region, like Singapore, have taken health precautions like pushing nearly all residents to wear masks while outdoors and setting up centers across the city-state for low-income and elderly residents to get free face masks they can use. As Yanzhong notes, Singapore also is vowing to pursue companies that use polluting practices and cause this haze. Overall, countries in the region, like Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, appear to be pointing fingers at each other and engaging in diplomatic recriminations rather than collaborating to address the haze crisis and its causes. It is certainly true that most Southeast Asian leaders are not exactly stepping up to the plate – Indonesia in particular, supposedly the region’s leader, has reacted to the haze crisis with a show of diplomatic pique that is useless – but in fact the countries in the region supposedly have a forum to handle non-traditional security threats like haze – their regional organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Haze has been on the agenda of ASEAN leaders’ meetings and foreign ministers’ meetings and environmental meetings for fifteen years now; I personally have attended at least three major ASEAN meetings where cooperation on reducing haze was discussed at length. More than ten years ago ASEAN inked an agreement on transboundary haze in which ASEAN countries vowed to take measures to reduce haze pollution. Of course, the agreement is vague, has no real enforcement mechanisms, and was not ratified by Indonesia, so it is of little use now. In fact, the transboundary agreement on haze is a perfect ASEAN document: Grand in vision, vague in details and enforcement, and then not acted upon. Indeed, when a crisis actually erupts, the organization’s inherent weakness, which normally can be hidden behind smiling summits and reams of plans for cooperation, is exposed. The organization’s secretariat in Jakarta is badly underresourced, as every ASEAN member knows, and the current ASEAN Secretary-General, Vietnam’s former deputy foreign minister, is a capable diplomat but does not have the tools or the name recognition to push ASEAN members to take any serious action on haze. Of course, this is how ASEAN leaders want it – having a powerful, well-known Secretary General of the organization might diminish individual country leaders’ appeal to being the voice of Southeast Asia, an unofficial post claimed at various times by everyone from Mahathir Mohamad to Thaksin Shinawatra to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Meanwhile, average people in Southeast Asia suffer, as they have done every hot season for sixteen years now.

Having just arrived in Jakarta for a joint CSIS-CFR workshop on emerging Indonesia and rising regionalism, I was greeted by hot and humid weather conditions and horrible traffic. However, this is nothing compared to the severe haze that has blanketed Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, Malaysia, and Singapore, sending air pollution there to record high levels. The haze problem is nothing new. To those who live in Singapore and Malaysia, this has become an annual blight caused by farmers in Sumatra clearing forests to make land for crops. The last major regional haze outbreak occurred in 1997-98. But this time, the thick haze has broken the Pollutant Standards Index records and hit “hazard” levels in the region, and Singapore has threatened to take action. The slash and burn cultivation can be traced to when agriculture was first developed thousands of years ago. According to historian William McNeill, this cultivation method multiplied breeding places for mosquitoes and gave malaria a new, epidemic intensity. It is no wonder that malaria and dengue fever—both of which are transmitted by mosquitoes—are such a major concern in Southeast Asia. The farming practice is not confined to Sumatra, either. Indeed, a similar practice is becoming a growing contributor to severe haze in some Chinese provinces. Two weeks ago, when travelling on the high-speed train to Beijing, I was struck by the sudden drop of visibility, which was caused by farmers in central Anhui province burning straw along the railway. Given the spread of haze to neighboring countries, one would expect that the affected countries would work together to address the crisis.  Instead, we’ve seen the rekindling of old diplomatic disputes and intensified finger pointing among governments, NGOs, and the private sector. Last Thursday, Indonesia accused Singapore of “behaving like a child” and asked for significant financial aid in order to tackle the issue. However, this action is no surprise. The 1997-98 haze crisis has not led to effective cooperation over environmental issues. Countries in the region seem to be determined to protect their sovereignty irrespective of the implications that this may have for the wider region. They might be actively pursuing bilateral cooperation over a particular regional threat (e.g., a pandemic), but the residual lack of trust among them, coupled with the principle of non-interference, makes it difficult to pursue effective multilateralism or forge a real sense of partnership.

Over the past year, as Indonesia has geared up for its next presidential election, and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has desperately attempted to keep his party together in the wake of endless corruption allegations, nationalism has come to play a larger and larger role in Jakarta’s policymaking. In just the latest example, reported well on Asia Sentinel, Indonesia has effectively tossed the chief executive of ExxonMobil Indonesia out of his job. As Asia Sentinel notes, with increasingly weak leadership from Yudhoyono, other, more nationalist ministers are able to drive the agenda, particularly Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Hatta Rajasa. In addition, within Yudhoyono’s party, which forced out several high-profile reformists earlier in his presidency, there is little constituency among the rank and file for a more open approach to foreign investment. As a result, this latest salvo follows upon other actions like the government abruptly canceling plans to offer tenders for a new container terminal in North Jakarta, as well as moves to reduce Singaporean majority ownership of Indonesian banks. There is certainly nothing wrong with Indonesians, and Indonesian ministers, wanting to control how their infrastructure is developed, and how their abundant resources are extracted and used; too often in the past, before the devolution process of the 2000s, Indonesians in many parts of the country felt that they saw little benefit from the natural resources extracted from Indonesian waters and soils. Still, Indonesia has enormous deficits in physical infrastructure, and if it is to retain the 6-7 percent annual growth rates it expects over the next decade, taking its place among the highest-powered developing economies, this huge infrastructure gap must be addressed. The country’s ports, container terminals, roads, electricity grids, airports, ferry systems, liquefied natural gas terminals and pipelines, and many other infrastructure components are among the most decrepit in Southeast Asia, even compared to other poorer Asian nations. The Indonesian government simply does not have the resources to effectively upgrade this infrastructure, and it is not going to be able to raise the funds on international capital markets to do so either. Its solution, to this point, has been to offer multinationals relatively sweet deals to manage infrastructure projects, while maintaining government control. But as the climate becomes even more unwelcoming even for foreign firms willing to abide by these build-transfer rules, Jakarta runs the risk of seriously undermining its own long-term growth.

Over the past decade and a half, Indonesia’s democratic transition has been praised (including by me)  as one of the most impressive of any developing country in the world. The distance traveled from the chaos, and potential split-up of the country, in the late 1990s, to the relative stability and high growth of today, is truly impressive. One of the main aspects of the democratization often highlighted by both Indonesia experts and many Indonesians themselves is how the country utilized political and economic devolution to reduce the power of Jakarta, cut the legacy of Suharto’s rule, increase local participation in politics and the economy, and improve citizens’ feeling of belonging to the polity. In such a diverse and geographically large country, an archipelago, such devolution might have seemed natural, but it was hardly natural to many Jakarta politicians during the early part of the transition period, men and women who had grown up in the Suharto era and had become used to a centralized developmental state, and often had copied, even unwittingly, this centralization in their own opposition organizations. Decentralization clearly has had many benefits. It has helped broaden and spread growth, and in some ways has helped pit local officials against each other in the race for investment, forcing them to take measures to help attract investment in infrastructure, resources, and agriculture. It clearly has helped boost participation in the political process, and has led to a broadening of political ideas in which politicians no longer have to come from Jakarta or even Java to get national prominence and to rise up the political ladder. Devolution also has, in some ways, helped mitigate local anger that natural resources were being taken out of their area and used to fund the central government, with local people getting little in return. Yet as the International Crisis Group documents in a fascinating new report, in empowering local officials, devolution sometimes empowers the most regressive, corrupt, and undemocratic local politicians, who use their local influence to stymie national-level courts, regulations, and politicians who often are devoted to more constitutional, liberal applications of the law. ICG’s findings are consistent with other studies, including my own for my upcoming book The Decline of Democracy, as well as those of economist Michael Rock and others. Rock has shown how, as Indonesia’s politics have opened up, there has actually been a decentralization of corruption, and in some ways an increase, as more actors are able to engage in graft. What is the overall conclusion? Everyone is allowed to elect dumb, misguided, or even venal local politicians --- we certainly do so sometimes in the United States. Is the devolution process in Indonesia still, on balance, a net positive? ICG does not really offer a conclusion on this, but I think so, despite the backsliding in some localities.