Indonesia's Foreign Policy in 2016: Garuda Hovering

Summary

The Garuda — the man-bird — in Indian mythology is the vehicle of Vishnu. Perhaps the best known image of the Garuda in ancient Javanese art has it transporting historical eleventh-century East Javanese king Airlangga. The Garuda has been adopted as the symbol of the modern Indonesian state. The author has used the Garuda as a metaphor for Indonesian foreign policy and has likened it to the Phoenix, the fabulous bird of Greek mythology that arises from the ashes of the fire that consumed its previous incarnation, to fly again. Sukarno's Garuda was left in ashes in 1965. Under Soeharto, it rose to fly again, towards Indonesia's leadership in ASEAN and the so-called “South”. It was immolated in the economic meltdown and political turmoil of the collapse of the regime in 1998. The ashes of the Garuda were barely stirred by the short presidencies of B.J. Habibie and Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur); the former engulfed in the disastrous separation of East Timor from Indonesia and the latter by the leader's erratic eccentricity. It was not until President Megawati Sukarnoputri's term of office that the Garuda began to struggle out of the ashes of its predecessor. It was a wounded Garuda, bleeding from the internal war in Aceh, but able to stretch its wings at the 2003 Bali ASEAN Summit (Bali II), where it sought to reclaim ASEAN leadership. Only in the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) did the Garuda take full flight again. SBY's high-profile global foreign policy outreach was viewed as a tool to advance Indonesia's place in the world as an emerging middle power actively engaged in international affairs.

In President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo's first two years in office, the Garuda has been hovering, circling a more self-restricted flight zone while casting about for direction, still unsettled on a course. Jokowi seems uninterested in foreign policy, or at least only in how it connects to his domestic agenda. During the 2014 election campaign, both Jokowi and his opponent, Prabowo Subianto, trashed the globalist internationalism of outgoing President SBY. The fact that SBY's high-level international visibility showcased Indonesia as a rising middle power was dismissed as having no direct domestic payoff. SBY showed the Indonesian flag to the world; Jokowi has furled it.