Mediator Role Is in Indonesia’s Interest

Disinterested? Persuading parties to sit around the negotiating table will not suffice to obtain a negotiated settlementPhilippine and US marines ride on a boat as they prepare to land on a beach facing the South China sea during a beach assault exercises. (AFP Photo/Ted Aljibe)

It is a sign of something afoot that President Joko Widodo stepped forward at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit in Myanmar to resolve tensions in the strategic South China Sea, as reported by the Jakarta Globe last Wednesday.

During the Asean Summit in Myanmar all the claimants countries, minus China, were assumed to expose their perspective on how best to address the salient security issue.

Indonesia’s position has always been that affected nations should formulate a legally binding code of conduct while disputant countries should abide by international laws parallel to affected nations’ formulation of a legally binding code of conduct.

When Marty Natalegawa was still the country’s foreign minister, he witnessed the political reality that none of the competing countries in the South China Sea were politically reluctant to abandon the use of force or hard diplomacy. Yet his diplomatic influence yielded an unimpressive political outcome.

President Joko would appear to be dedicated to proving that Indonesia under his leadership is committed to lend new meaning to the way the conflict is addressed.

What Indonesia must exhibit in mediating the conflict is the notion of cooperation, since this is central to successful mediation.

The history of Indonesia’s “brokering” international conflict, revealed that Indonesia has often shown its experiences, if not capability, in making the disputing countries realize the importance of cooperation.

One may remember the time when Indonesia initiated the Jakarta Informal Meetings (JIM I and II) to help solve the Cambodian conflict, or at least Indonesia was seen successful in “dragging” the conflicting factions to come to Jakarta to discuss the issue in a very informal way.

Persuading parties to sit around the table will not suffice to obtain a negotiated settlement.

With all the South China Sea conflicting parties appearing to persist in their refusal to compromise on their strategic interests, it is easy to detect the political and strategic barriers Indonesia may encounter when mediating the conflict.

While we all welcome President Joko’s decision to seek ways to solve the long-standing South China Sea conflict, his strategic initiative will be meaningless unless he can convince the conflicting parties the importance of sharing, at minimum, the desire to cooperate.

It is against such background that the new secretary of Joko’s cabinet, Andi Widjajanto, emphasized the importance for the conflicting parties to restrain themselves while the code of conduct is being formulated.

Assuming that Indonesia is in the process of mediation, its major goals is to foster the motivation to collaborate.

Being the mediator, Indonesia needs the cooperative gestures from all the conflicting parties so that it can proceed with the next policy steps.

But that will not be very easy to achieve since some of the disputing countries have already registered a cool reception toward whatever solution is proposed.

The real challenge for Indonesia in mediating such a high-profile security issue is whether it can have a firm grasp of what it will think contribute to the emergence of cooperation between parties in the mediation.

What is perhaps even more difficult is whether Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, if instructed by the president to further proceed in the mediation, can successfully define the conditions under which parties are most likely to be motivated to cooperate.

This assumes, of course, that the when the parties are in a military standoff, one cannot expect them to exhibit an inclination to cooperate.

This is the area where Indonesia will find it difficult to turn antagonistic climate into cooperative one.

The United States’ interest in maintaining freedom of navigation under international laws underscores the necessary multilateral basis for Indonesia’s mediation initiative.

Of course, Joko’s mediation policy strategy must also take into account perceptions that claimants have regarding Indonesia’s own interests in the area — and not only those of the United States.

Approaching the United States in the mediation process may not be a bad idea at all, since the US presence in waters that are, under conventions of international law, not under any sovereign control, has at least in the eyes of China, added to hostilities.

Indonesia’s mediation policy should include an attempt to eliminate elements of hostility in the conflict.

The ignorance of hostility as a “target point” in Indonesia’s mediation strategy will only decrease the conflicting parties’ willingness to cooperate.

If Indonesia under Joko is to be seen different in its approach toward the South China Sea conflict from the previous administration, we should expect to see Retno’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs to pour more investment to Joko’s mediation policy, so that mutual and sustained hostility on the part of one country toward the another will not hinder the process.

Retno’s specific policy measures toward the conflict, if any and if she is not to emulate Marty’s way of approaching the conflict, will constitute strategic support to any kind of progress in the mediation process demonstrate by Joko’s government.

In the end, however, Joko must realize that in the South China Sea conflict there are myriad negative factors that may have a negative effect on cooperation and prevent its emergence.

Indifference to the interests of the other conflicting parties may also seen as another negative factor which may contribute to the dim prospect of Joko’s mediation policy.

Bantarto Bandoro is a senior lecturer in the Indonesian Defense University’s School of Defense Strategy and founder of the Institute for Defense and Strategic Research in Jakarta.

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