West Meets East
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday July 19, 1996
The appointment of Professor Paul Keating prompts DAVID JENKINS to explore the influential role of the think-tank in South-East Asia.
IT HAD been several years since the Dismissal, but Gough Whitlam was still able to pull a crowd in Indonesia. He arrived at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, towering over his hosts and still radiating a certain grandeur.
CSIS was Indonesia's first major think-tank. Founded by Lieutenant General Ali Moertopo, a shrewd and manipulative "palace general", it played an important role in shaping the domestic and foreign policy agenda of President Soeharto's government.
It was run by a close-knit group of former Indonesian student leaders. All were Catholics. All were ethnic Chinese. All were deeply conservative.
Gough Whitlam must have forgotten this. When a local editor asked respectfully about the role of Australia's Democratic Labor Party, the guest speaker could barely contain himself. "Right-wing Catholics," he intoned, "have done as much damage in Australian politics as they have in a number of South-East Asian countries."
CSIS luminaries exchanged nervous glances. The Australian ambassador paled. Gough Whitlam seemed oblivious to the danger. He began to nominate the affected countries.
"The Philippines!"
More worried glances.
"South Vietnam!"
By now, the directors of CSIS were on the edge of their chairs, braced for the worst.
The Great Man must have sensed that something was amiss. He paused, then changed the subject. The moment passed. Disaster was averted.
IN recent years, think-tanks have sprung up like mushrooms across Asia, making an important but often unrecognised contribution to domestic policy formulation and to the debate on regional security.
Now, with former Prime Minister Paul Keating installed as a professor at the University of NSW's Asia-Australia Institute, one of our more successful local think-tanks, Australia has another respected "name" to send around the Asian brainstorming circuit.
What are the institutes that Professor Keating can be expected to visit most often?
One of the most influential is Indonesia's CSIS, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary. Another is Malaysia's Institute of Strategic and International Affairs (ISIS), which has blossomed under the patronage of 70-year-old Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
Located in a narrow, tamarind-lined street where the pavements are piled high with used automobile tyres, CSIS occupies a special niche in the history of New Order Indonesia.
Ali Moertopo was a political adviser and trouble-shooter par excellence, both at home and abroad. He helped develop Indonesia's post-1965 political architecture, in which the army serves as the central pillar. He helped organise the 1969 "Act of Free Choice" under which 1,025 hand-picked Melanesians "voted" in favour of West New Guinea joining Indonesia. He helped "arrange" - and that is the appropriate word - the 1971 general elections. He was given responsibility for the 1974 negotiations with Portugal over the future of East Timor. He sponsored the first regular Australia-Indonesia conferences.
IN THE years since Moertopo's death in 1984, CSIS has seen its domestic political influence decline. Relations with the presidential palace are no longer close. But "the centre" continues to have a significant input on regional security.
CSIS still has links with Hankam , Indonesia's powerful Department of Defence and Security and with Deplu , the Department of Foreign Affairs.
For 20 years, members of Indonesia's CSIS and Malaysia's ISIS - together with representatives from similar bodies in Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines - have been attending each other's seminars and reading each other's research papers. Closely knit, they have links into universities, defence establishments, intelligence organisations and the regional political elite.
If you are seeking to influence the regional security agenda in Asia, you can't afford to bypass the regional think-tanks, which have now formed themselves into the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN ISIS).
"I don't think there is anything like the sense of centrality, identity or purpose on the part of the think-tanks in North-East Asia that you have in South-East Asia," notes Professor Stephen FitzGerald , a former Australian ambassador to China and Asia-Australia Institute chairman.
South-East Asian strategic studies institutes have flourished in some cases because regional foreign and defence ministries lack the time and expertise to address "crystal ball" issues. But in most cases they have carved out a niche because they enjoy the patronage of powerful political figures. ISIS Malaysia seems to have flourished not because of any shortage of talent in the foreign ministry but because Dr Mahathir finds it convenient to have a body that can furnish him with quick speeches and an alternative source of advice.
During the '70s and '80s, the think-tanks put out feelers to similar bodies in Vietnam, Japan, China, Australia, North America and Western Europe. That paved the way for the 1993 formation of the Council for Security Co-operation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), an umbrella group which brings together a fairly glittering array of big names, both government and non-government.
The 82-member US committee includes the eminent China scholars Dr A. Doak Barnett and Professor Harry Harding, two former assistants for National Security Affairs, Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski and Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, former Secretary of Defence James Schlesinger and former Assistant Secretary for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Paul Wolfowitz.
The Indonesia list is headed by a former Defence Minister, General Benny Moerdani, and a former Foreign Minister, Dr Mochtar Kusumaatmadja. It has a pronounced military bias. Of the 74 members, no fewer than 34 are generals or colonels. The list includes eight serving chiefs of Indonesian Armed Forces intelligence.
By way of contrast, Australia's 23-member list includes nine professors - including Des Ball, Paul Dibb, Stuart Harris, Peter Drysdale and Stephen FitzGerald - together with a sprinkling of officials, politicians and military men.
The rationale for CSCAP is simple. While the Cold War may be over, potentially serious security issues remain. In the words of Professor Ball: "The security architecture of the Asia-Pacific region is in the process of profound transformation, partly occasioned by the end of the Cold War and partly due to the dynamic economic developments in East and South-East Asia."
The ending of the Cold War, however welcome, has generated new and sometimes disturbing security issues. The regional security environment is now much more complex and uncertain.
CSCAP includes not just the seven ASEAN nations and the economic powerhouses of North-East Asia, as well as the US, Australia and New Zealand, but Russia and North Korea as well. It had been hoped that China, around which so much of the debate on regional security turns, would join earlier this year, once a formula had been hammered out on Taiwanese representation. Nothing has come of that.
What does CSCAP do? At one level, it acts as a talk-shop and a clearing house for the research activities of NGOs working on security matters.
EXPLAINS Jusuf Wanadi, chairman of the CSIS supervisory board and co-chairman of CACAP: "The networking is important because much has changed since the end of the Cold War. It means that we know a lot more about each other's thinking and each other's policies."
Says Professor FitzGerald: "There is still an enormous need to bring them into dialogue in China, Japan and Korea. Part of the problem is that the Japanese haven't been able to make up their minds whether they want to be international or Asians or (part of the) Asia-Pacific."
Nor have the Chinese been able to make up their minds whether they are prepared to be a "domesticated" part of Asia. Moreover, according to Dr FitzGerald, the Chinese "have, generally, a very slighting or disparaging attitude towards South-East Asia".
The council is designed to provide valuable "second-track" support to the official dialogue on security and cooperation. Here again, the work of the ASEAN think-tanks has been significant.
South-East Asian think-tanks don't simply discuss security matters; at times, they help formulate government policy. This is especially true of CSIS and ISIS Malaysia, each of which has had powerful government and/or military patrons.
In 1990, the ASEAN ISIS group came up with the idea that the ASEAN foreign ministers could use their annual "post-ministerial conferences" with foreign countries as a forum for addressing regional peace and security issues. This resulted in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which brings together the seven ASEAN countries, their seven major trading partners, including Japan, the US, the European Community and Australia, as well as countries as diverse as Russia, China and Papua New Guinea.
Today, the South-East Asian think-tanks not only generate ideas and conduct research for the ASEAN foreign ministers; they are central to much of the networking and discourse on regional security co-operation.
ALL of this has given Australia an important - if largely unheralded - link with Asia.
Australia's connection with the think-tanks began in the 1970s when Professor Robert O'Neill of SDSC helped Thailand's Chulalongkorn University establish a strategic studies centre. Later, using Ford Foundation money, SDSC established a visiting fellows program under which about two dozen scholars from the region studied at the ANU, sometimes for a year or more. In the late 1970s, SDSC hosted the first of a series of AustraliaIndonesia seminars.
When, in the late 1980s, various Australian institutes began tripping over themselves to qualify as the Australian link in the emerging regional think-tank chain, SDSC found itself in a favourable position. "We were in a pretty privileged relationship with the ASEAN think-tanks," says Professor Ball. "Privileged both with respect to other countries in the region - we had better relations with them than, say, the Japanese or South Korean think-tanks - but also privileged with respect to anyone else in Australia."
It was true that SDSC could not lay claim to any particular expertise on Asia, unlike some of its major academic rivals. But it had two other things going for it. First, it was known on the regional strategic-studies circuit. Second, a number of influential South-East Asian think-tank directors were impressed with the strategic expertise of men such as Des Ball and Paul Dibb, a former deputy secretary of the Department of Defence and author of the important 1986 defence force structure review.
With the establishment of CSCAP, Australian institutions have been able to put their academic and policy expertise to good use. "Without boasting," says Professor Ball, "it does give Australia opportunities for steering the regional agenda."
The Asians seem to welcome the Australian presence. "Australia is very much part of the networking and has taken a lot of initiatives," says Mr Wanandi.
Back home, there are pockets of scepticism. One criticism is that the think-tanks greatly exaggerate potential threats to regional security. "The main reason these guys get together is to find some threats to justify their military budgets," says Emeritus Professor Jamie Mackie of the ANU.
Another criticism is that think-tank directors tend to round up the usual suspects whenever they have a conference. Says an academic critic: "My main objection is they are talking to themselves and taking in their own washing."
Specialists on South-East Asia claim it is revealing that the Australian CSCAP committee tends to steer clear of people who know something about that region. Nor are members noted for their Asian-language skills. "How many, apart from Steve FitzGerald (who is fluent in Mandarin), have any knowledge of an Asian language?" a critic asks.
Finally, there's the complaint that CSCAP, limited as it is by its charter and dedicated to "confidence-building", is in no position to discuss potential internal unrest that could undermine regional security.
While there is some merit in those criticisms, there can be no gainsaying the role the think-tanks have played in bringing the region together. They played an early role in putting out feelers to Vietnam, which is now a member of ASEAN. They are playing an even more important role in building up relations with China.
This, clearly, is path-breaking work. It is the sort of "big picture" stuff that should suit Professor Keating to a T.
© 1996 Sydney Morning Herald