Suharto's Asean legacy

The public here seems to be as bogged down by the controversy of Suharto's legal status as it was when he was still relatively healthy.

Is there nothing anyone can say, not about Suharto in Indonesia or the corruption allegations against him, but about what he did and said about the building of the Southeast Asian region.

Suharto's New Order is now part of history, but it was during his administration that Asean was launched to reflect the region's response to the developments in world politics at the time.

The region also saw the revitalisation of bilateral relationship between Indonesia and its immediate neighbours, particularly Malaysia. The normalisation and the end of confrontation with Malaysia were seen as important precursors to the formation of Asean. Suharto was quick to read that a post-Sukarno Indonesia would need domestic stability and normalisation with its neighbors in the region. There was also an assumption that Soeharto preferred constructive relations with Indonesia's Southeast Asia neighbors as a means to gain regional influence. Many then said that Indonesia was the primus uinterpares of Asean.

Suharto felt compelled to build a regional organization to assure that Indonesia had dropped for good its more radical approach. He moved to consolidate regional trust and regional cooperation under a "pro-Western" theme. Suharto decided to switch the government's focus from permanent revolution to developing the country's economy and wealth. Indonesia under Soeharto was indeed a stabilising factor in the neighbourhood.

To make Indonesia's policy in the region more visible and tactical, Soeharto introduced in the country's foreign policy the concept of concentric circles in which Asean was officially the central focus of Indonesia's foreign policy, and the next level out was composed of Indonesia's neighbors in the Asia Pacific region. In the outermost circle were the United States and Europe, important partners of Indonesia in trade and aid.

The way Asean arrived at its decision cannot be seen in isolation from Suharto's preferences for mushawarah and mufakat (consensus and compromise). It become the mode for regional decision-making later known as the Asean way, which has put its stamp on Apec as well as the Asean Regional Forum.

Suharto went much further by provoking the region to become tougher. Suharto introduced the concept of national resilience to enhance the state's capability and its people in all fields of national endeavor so that the nation could survive safely while at the same time preserve its own identity.

Knowing the importance of the security and stability of the region for the development of its countries, Suharto attempted to inject the concept of national resilience into the regional arena. It was during the very first summit meeting of Asean, held in Bali in 1976, that Suharto tabled the idea, which was later known and accepted as "regional resilience". The concepts of national and regional resilience were then incorporated into the Bali Concord of 1976 and into the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia -- TAC.

Suharto might have anticipated that if the integrated Southeast Asia he imagined in 1966 was to be successful, it had to be based upon the concept of regional resilience. Suharto's concept of national resilience and regional resilience reinforce each other and thus strengthen the convictions of the countries in the region about the close links between political stability and economic development at both the national and regional levels. The concept of regional resilient will continued to be relevant at all of Asean's life.

The writer is chief editor of The Indonesian Quarterly published by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a lecturer in the International Relations Post-graduate Studies Programme at the Faculty of Social and Political Science, the University of Indonesia.