Endgame with Gita Wirjawan - Donald K Emmerson: ASEAN Centrality and the Way Forward

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

When talking about Indonesian politics and foreign policy from the perspective of researchers outside the region, Prof. Donald K. Emmerson’s name is always one of the tops of mind. Most recently, his edited book, “The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century,” explores how Indonesia and other ASEAN states are dealing with the opportunities and tensions of living next to a rising China. We will discuss his views about Indonesia’s journey toward its Endgame in the context of its history, politics, and position in the now intense rivalry between Washington and Beijing. Professor Donald K. Emmerson is the head of the Southeast Asia Program in the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.

So when I talk about strategic autonomy for Southeast Asia, I mean strategic autonomy for Indonesia, the country and the other countries in Southeast Asia. And also, yes, the autonomy, the moral autonomy of the individual, deserving respect. Freedom can be extreme. I'm very upset by libertarians. I really resent their arguments because it amounts to, you know, in a crowded movie theater with no danger, standing up and shouting, fire, fire. When talking about Indonesian politics and foreign policy from the perspective of researchers outside the region, Professor Donald Emerson's name is always one of the names in the top of mine. Most recently, his edited book, The Deer and the Dragon, Southeast Asia and China in the 21st century,

explores how Indonesia and other ASEAN states are dealing with the opportunities and tensions of living next to a rising China. To discuss this critical and timely topic, Professor Emerson, who currently serves as the director of Southeast Asia program at Stanford University, will be our latest guest on Endgame. We will discuss his views about Indonesia's journey towards its own endgame in the context of its history, politics and position in the now intense rivalry between Washington and Beijing. Enjoy this episode. This is Endgame. Hi, Don. Welcome to Endgame. Thank you. Thank you, Gita. Good to be here.

Thank you. It's so good to see you, especially wearing the Batik. I know you've been a big fan of Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and the world. I want to ask you a few questions in this session. Let's start off with how you grew up. I know you were born overseas, I mean outside the United States, and how you got interested in whatever you've been involved in the last few decades. Well, you know, the answer to that question would take more time than we have, needless to say. In my opinion, and I always say to myself, Don, you could be wrong.

So keep that as a kind of constant footnote in what I say in this interview. But in my opinion, my life fortunately, very, very, very fortunately, has been quite unusual, at least in contrast to the life of an average amount. My father was a career Foreign Service Officer, a wonderful man, whom I still admire very, very much. And in those days, when I was born and when I was a young man, foreign service officers in the United States government were transferred from one country to another roughly every two years. every two years. So I grew up being moved from where I was to another place where I would only be another two years.

This was an extreme, to put it mildly, an extreme childhood experience. I was raised as a youth and a young adult on every inhabited continent with the exception of Australia. Now, of course, I go to Australia, or at least I used to before, COVID fairly often. So just to give you an idea, and I'm not going to talk about each one of these countries, but give you a sense of my own background. I was born in Japan. The next country that I lived in was Peru.

After that, the Soviet Union. After that, Pakistan. After that, India. After that, Lebanon. And after that, although by then I was not living 365 days a year with my parents. We have to add Nigeria. That's where I wrote one of my papers in college on the Ahmadia movement in Nigeria. And then the last country is now called Zimbabwe.

In those days, it was Southern Rhodesia. And I wrote my senior thesis on African nationalism in what was then Southern Rhodesia. Now, you can imagine with that kind of the background, my memory of it and talking about it with other Foreign Service kids who were going through the same process was that there was no middle ground. There were those who loved it, as I did. I mean, maybe it became an addiction, a drug, travel, the novelty, new faces, experiences. Yes, of course, leaving school that you were just getting adapted to for another school.

And setting aside the language that you probably tried, or maybe you didn't even bother to try, but if you did try to learn, you probably didn't learn it very well. And suddenly you're in a new country with a new language, right? And some of my young friends, I remember once in Moscow, the son of a Foreign Service officer said to me, you know, Don, as soon as I become old enough to make my own decisions, I'm going to go back to the United States, I'm going to go to Iowa, I'm going to look for a small town, and I'm going to meet the first good-looking girl that I'm, you know, that I meet, I'll marry, and we'll settle down and we'll never move again. And this individual, a very nice guy, couldn't stand, the instability, excessive diversity,

variety, my God, every two years, you know, something new. Your podcast is the end game. My life has been the beginning game, the beginning game, the beginning game, and in a way they never ended, at least they never ended in the same place. But I'm on the opposite extreme. Right. Opposite extreme. because my heavens, what an extraordinarily rich immersion in what is, in fact, one of the most

intriguing and interesting facts about the human race. It's diversity, right? Correct. So, you know, in binakha, tungalika terms, I was all about the binika. I was all about the binika. And then the question would arise, and I'll shut up in just a second, but, you know, you touched a flow of memory. Yeah, this is good. I took care of the binika, or my parents did, But what about the eco? What about the unity? Once I was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean as a young kid. I was very young.

And the first thing you did when you got on a ship in those days when you were like maybe 10 years old or something is you found out who else the little kids were on the ship. And then you got to know them and you tried to, for example, sneak into first class without permission. That was a lot of fun running all over the ship. So there we were. We had just left the United States bound for Europe. and a kid turned to me and he said, where are you from? And I said, well, I'm from, I forget the number, State Room 302 on the second floor. You take the elevator, you go down two floors.

That's where I am because that's where my family was and where I was sleeping. And this kid said, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. I don't mean that. Where are you from? And I repeated the same thing. And this went on and on, and I started to cry. And I left and I ran back to the state. state room, and I asked my mom, you know, where am I from? And she explained the whole thing to me.

But what that meant was that my parents, my mother in particular, whenever they were in a new country, my mother pretended that we would be there for the rest of our lives. Once we had to stay in a hotel in Karachi for about six months in Pakistan. And the drapes of the, you know, down across the windows were preventing sunlight from coming into the room. And so she went to. down to the desk and said, you know, the drapes are much too heavy. I have two kids, and they need fresh air, of course, and they need sunlight. So could we please replace the drapes with something that will let the light through? And the guy at the desk looks at her, and he says, Madam, I don't think you know what a hotel is really about. In other words, the guests can't

demand to change the decor of the room, right? But she persisted, and she won. And so we had light. And so everywhere we went, mind you, if my parents had divorced, then, you know, I might be, oh, that would have been terrible because that was the one ICA in my life, my parents, wherever they were. And so I'm incredibly grateful to them. And, you know, it leads to some interesting conversations. I know in college, for example, you know, I have a couple of beers right in you're sitting around talking. And I would ask the following question. I would look at these guys because in those days where I went to school, Princeton, had no women. It was only men. And I look at the guys and I'd say, okay, I'm going to give you a

choice. Imagine that you're standing in front of two doors. Behind one door, you know, are 30 of your favorite friends. Guys, women, whatever that you've known for a long time, but you haven't seen them in a long time. And you want to open that door and see them? Or do you want to take the other door? Now, the other door, behind that door, are 30 people you've never met, never met, and might not even meet in the future. which door do you choose? And inevitably, they chose the first door to reunion with their friends

from long before. And I would always choose the last door. Always. So this very day. Not because I'm against my friends, no, I love the company of my friends. It's been a little difficult with COVID-19. But because of the thrill of learning,

how do you learn from the familiar? It's hard to learn from what is already so familiar. But it's really important and it's, you know, it's inspiring to learn things that you didn't know from people that you have not until now. Wow. Wow. Then you went on to Yale from Princeton, right? And then what got you interested in those further studies and whatever you've been busy with, you know, at Stanford? Well, okay, here. Let me interject. You know, there is this debate, right, about, you know, those that would have grown up overseas,

they tend to be less nationalistic about their original country vis-a-vis that school of thought where if you had grown up quite a lot overseas, you actually tend to be much more, if not more nationalistic, but your original country. and I'm a little bit like you, but to a lesser degree, because I grew up overseas for quite a lot. And it actually glued me to my country of origin, which is Indonesia, a lot more than I had thought, and a lot more than what I've seen around me. Well, that's an interesting comparison. I understand that.

I know where you're coming from. But in my case, it's a little different. when I was first in Indonesia again forgive the anecdotes but that's what's required it seems to me and I'm happy to share them when I was in Indonesia for the first time I never did this perhaps logically and consciously but in fact as I met people and I had met some already in the United States I was studying language at Cornell University and so forth. And I had the impression that travel might indeed, because some of the kids I grew up, as I said, thought it was terrible, might affect my point of view. And so I was aware of thinking,

should I continue to travel? And if so, where should I go? Or should I become more American? For example, I didn't play sports when I grew up because the schools that I was in overseas, none of them really offered sports programs. And my mom, that was the one thing. She said, you know, if you'd been back in the States, you probably would have played, I don't know, soccer, baseball, or whatever. To me, that was a minor loss. And so the consequence of that background instilled in me a fanatic intellectual curiosity,

which I maintain to this day. And it's almost fatal. There's nothing I'm not interested in. So you can imagine, you know, when I pick up the morning paper, you know, instead of skipping all the articles that have nothing to do with Asia, I'm reading obscure stuff that I never knew because I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated by you. I'm fascinated by this program. I'm fascinated to know why it's called end game and not beginning game or midgame, right? And so that then led me to maintain my life, only this time under my own steam.

And here I will say the question might be put this way, and that is, you know, what brought you to Indonesia? Because Indonesia was the first country that I lived in, I guess you could say, entirely as a result of my own effort. And I'm embarrassed to say this. I'm very embarrassed to say this, actually, but it happens to be true that because my parents were assignments were in Africa, as I mentioned, Nigeria and what is now Zimbabwe. and I had written some papers on those countries for the courses that I was taking, I thought, well, maybe it would be cool to write a dissertation about the liberation of Africa from colonial rule. What a fascinating topic. And so I had a plan. I won't go through the details.

I was studying Portuguese. I planned to go to Angola and, you know, find out what was happening there in terms of their struggle against the Portuguese and so forth and so on. And frankly, to be perfectly honest, my dissertation proposal, which I had to send out for funding, because I couldn't fund it on my own, my proposal was really insane. If I had been a professor reading my proposal at that time, I would have rejected it right away. And in fact, when the letters came back from all these foundations, you know, Ford, Rockefeller, you name it, I look, I must have sent about 17, okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, a dozen letters, the places that might give me a fellowship so that I could go to Africa. And all of the envelopes that came back were thin, very thin, which meant no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and no, right? And so there I was, what was I going to do? Because I've been doing African studies and so forth.

There happened to be a gentleman at Yale University at that time who, well, I'm getting much too much in the detail. Suffice it to say that I did manage to get a fellowship to go to Cornell University and study Indonesia. And the reason that I wanted to do that, you know, after I realized that, you know, I had completely failed as an Africanist. In fact, you know, the African Studies Council at Yale, I represent the worst investment they probably ever made because they paid for my graduate studies. And yet I failed to study Africa. So there I was in Indonesia, sorry, in Cornell. intrigued beyond belief with what was happening in Indonesia. Now obviously those back then those were days, that was the new order. Right. That was the new order.

And of course, yes, exactly. A lot had happened including some terrible things, including the massacre of the 1960s, 66, but at least I was following, you know, my path to another country that I didn't know much about. I had studied a little bit with Harry Benda, the professor that I mentioned at Yale. So I learned a little bit about it, but I was very ignorant. I remember I got off the plane in Jakarta and thought to myself, well, great, I'll pick up the Indonesian language newspaper now that I can read it. When did you arrive in Jakarta?

December, 1967. My gosh. And I think it was Kompas. And I managed okay with the headlines and, you know, I worked my way through the stories on the front page. But on the corner of the front page was the Pajok. Remember the Pajok? Yes. A little corner where there was totally written in Bows.

I was only two years old, Dawn. Okay, right. No, I know, I know, I know. But you've heard of the project. No, no, I know. Yeah. Exactly, right. And I realized that the project was full of all kinds of, you know, not the language from the book that I had been studying, but the language of the street, the real living language.

And all kinds of slang expressions. And so, wow. And so I kept up my Indonesian language studies while I was there. And so I became an Indonesianist. I'm sorry to say. But I'm lucky. that I did this by failing to become an Africanian. An Africanian.

And you went to Munchar in East Java. Yeah, well, you know, I'm glad you mentioned Munchard. I guess that's right. It did come up. So, yeah, Munchar is, in retrospect, probably the most fascinating anthropological research that I have done in my entire life. And it affected my career to the better, in my opinion.

Munchar, as you know, is in Banyuan, in East Java, and right across from Bali. And in those days, I'm not sure I haven't checked lately, I'm not sure what the case is now, but back then around 1974, Munchar's fisheries, offshore capture fishery, Munchar's fisheries were the largest such complex, but one, with one exception, and I forget where that was exactly, in Indonesia at that time. time. So it was huge. Thousands and thousands of fishermen going out to sea. The reason that I went there is because in September, actually on the 30th of September, 1974, the fishermen, and not all of them, but a large number of them in Munchar, rebelled. They had been given under a cooperative

relationship, overseen by the East Java government, the provincial government of East Java, they had been given new nylon nets. They had been given new boats that would last longer than the old ones. They had been given motors to put on the back of the boat so that when they caught the fish, they could get back to shore more quickly and therefore sell the fish at a higher price because it hadn't started to rot, right? So this was a boon. This was a gift, in effect, from the provincial government to the fishermen.

They took the boats, they burned them. They took the outboard motors, they burned them. They burned them with gasoline drawn from the motors. They took the nets. Now, the nylon nets were harder to destroy, but they melted them. They also threw them in the fire. Now, this seemed to be completely irrational

because I'm sitting in Malon. My family is in a house, John Brita Satu right across from Iqip Ma'am. And I'm reading this and I'm saying, what a puzzle. Now, academics love puzzles and I'm no exception. So I thought to myself, why? Why did they rebel? Why did they bite the hand that ostensibly was feeding them?

And I spent about nine months off and on in Munchar. Well, actually, that's an exaggeration because by the summer I was in Australia, so it was more like six months in Munchar doing the research. And briefly, here's what I found. I don't want to get started on the details because I won't shut out. To this very day, it fascinates me what actually happened and why. Well, the first thing is I mentioned the 30th of September. The riot took place on the 30th of September.

So, of course, immediately you can imagine from Surabaya, from the province, this is insurgency. These must be communists. They're burning our gifts on the 30th of September to commemorate Gestapo. Right. And of course, that was totally, totally, totally incorrect. It was completely incorrect. Right. Because even though Surabaya wasn't that far from Munchar, the calendar that mattered in Munchar, because remember the fishermen were overwhelmingly Mauderese and Muslim, many of them quite devout.

What mattered in Munchar was the lunar Muslim calendar. The month of Ramadan, 13 Ramadan was the actual date on which the event occurred. So the first explanation, it took me like, you know, I don't know, two or three days, not more to completely throw out the window. So then it remained. Well, why did they rebel? And if I can leap, as it were, to the end game, right, because I don't have time to go through all of the discovery, the research, the field research that I did. Here's the result. Inequality in some circumstances can be legitimate in the eyes of the oppressed.

Now, that's hard to take morally. But empirically, there's a lot of evidence, not just in Munchar. Because what the government had done, the title of the piece I wrote is orders of meaning. That is, the order of meaning, the understanding of the world that prevailed in the capital of East Java in Sribaya, was different from the one that prevailed in Munchar. And from the people in Munchar, from their perspective, the Pangabat, which is, is what, I don't know if that term is still used. We called the, there were ethnic Chinese, basically, tycoons, at least on a scale,

obviously reduced in Van Nuwangi, a local scale, tycoons who made sure to loan money to the owners of the boats, the Juragandadat, right? The owners of the boats that the fishermen used to go out to sea. And then in return, the owners of the boats, the Jiragandadat, would loan money to the fishermen. For example, let's say a fisherman's daughter has a wedding coming up. It's quite expensive. The fisherman can't afford it. Well, the judah and daughter would say, you know, I'm happy to loan you, blah, blah, blah.

And you don't have to pay it back. Now, in a capitalist individualistic society, when you get a loan, you got to know you've got to pay it back, right? I mean, you know, unfortunately, Donald Trump never learned the lesson. That's one reason that's no longer, thank God, the president of the United States. But for the fishermen, this debt. They knew they couldn't break the debt. If they repaid the lender, that would be an insult to the lender. The lender would be furious.

Instead, the fishermen realized that these were, this is a matter of Wang Ikatan, Wang Ikatan, because the fishermen were terikat. They had to continue to go out of sea, and frankly, they got very little of the profits of the catch. So they were being economically exploited. There's no question about it. you know, the money lenders and the ship owners were doing very well, and the fishermen were not doing well at all, right? And in the view from Surabaya, which was a more modern view, I guess you could say, said, look at this gap. You know, the fishermen are going to love us because we are going to provide them with the equipment, the boats, the nets, the motors with which they can liberate themselves from domination by the money lenders and by the boat owners, you know, by this upper class.

Sure. Well, instead, the way the fishermen read it was, you are destroying our security. They're destroying our system, right? No, sure, we're indebted, absolutely, right? But it is a stable system. That's what we've always done. Exactly. And that's what we want to continue to do.

And that was the reason that they burned the nets. They rejected the gift because they thought it would completely destroy the bonds between human beings, the inegalitarian bonds between human beings that enable them to, you know, their daughters could get married. And of course, you know, obviously much beyond that was harder to get from the moneylenders or from the boat owners. And that was really what happened. There are some other explanations as well. I go through a couple of hypotheses, but that's the most stunning. Because Democrats and maybe revolutionaries as well often feel that wherever it exists, injustice obviously is awful and must be hated by the people who are on the rest of.

end of these inegalitarian relationships, patron-client relationship. But frankly, sometimes the client turns to an outsider and says, get away. I don't want you. I've got my patron. Okay, I might. I'm not living like a king, admittedly, but I'm managing. So I think that we need to examine the extent to which poverty is an institutionalized form in which security is what is given. and of course the money, the profit, the welfare is what is taken away. You know, this, we're going to revisit this topic again, the topic of inequality, but I want to jump to the book that you've just released, The Deer and the Dragon, which, in which, you know, to some extent you alluded to, you know, the notion of inequality.

Explain why and how you used a symbol. of the mouse deer to describe Southeast Asia and how you contrasted that with the dragon, i.e. China. Well, relations between China and Southeast Asia are a hot topic right now. Yeah. When my book came out, three others came out just about the same time, oddly enough on the same topic. Yeah. So, and I didn't really know that was going to happen, but I knew that I wanted to have something distinctive about the book that would be remembered after even perhaps the arguments in the book were long since forgotten.

Because remember, over a dozen authors, you know, roughly, well, not quite as many chapters. It's a very diverse document. You've got the book with you, though? Yeah. It's a fascinating book, the deer and the dragon. And look at in the opening chapter, or rather in introducing the book, I make a following point. If you count the deer, the little black deer, right, there are 11 of them. It should be in one, two, three, four, eight, 11.

Yes, 11. And the dragon down below is huge. Okay. And I say immediately at the beginning, I use this as something that I can rip into, that I can, in tearing it apart, try to make, I hope, some important points. The first is that the deer, that is the southeast, 11 Southeast Asian countries are not all same size. Not at all. We're at Indonesia versus Timor-Leste, for example, you know, and so on. We all know that, right? That's number one. Second, they are, their small size is misleading

because of Indonesia. Indonesia is a big deer, right? And so immediately I introduce in the very beginning. It's not the little conchial. Yeah, right, exactly, not the little conchon. So I introduced at the very beginning, number one, a sense of a view coming from within Southeast States, that encounters inequality between, in this case, China and the Southeast Asian countries, but does so in a way that defends the hope and desire of Southeast Asians for strategic autonomy. In other words, the Conchial stories, I had a lot of fun reading them. Oh, boy, I really, you know, in fact, I had to stop at some point because the book is never going to get written if I just keeping the Conchal stories going, reading them.

But with all due respect to the tradition, in Indonesia, my guess is that if you, and you may have, if you read the stories and how the canchio ends up defeating, whether it's the dragon or, you know, the elephant in some cases, the tiger, it turns out that it's not just because of the cleverness of the deer, of the mouse deer, of San Cancho, it's also because of the stupidity of the dragon. The dragon's really dumb, easy to fool, right? And so then I pick up this theme. I say that the symbolic sort of hope and desire to, as it were, stand up to China and even to engage in such clever diplomatic maneuvers that, you know, China doesn't know what happened, right, in order to avoid being always on the short end of the stick, right?

that although that works fine in literature, it's not true in reality. That is, yes, I don't want to sort of criticize all governments in Southeast Asia across the board. There is creativity in the foreign policy of Southeast Asian governments, no question about it. But there's a natural tendency in Southeast Asia. What's the mantra today? You know, it's associated with Prime Minister Lee in Singapore, but it comes up in the mouths and speeches and statements of officials in South East Africa. Southeast Asia, more or less throughout the region. And the mantra is, don't make us choose. Meaning, we don't want your dragon, the American dragon or the American eagle. We don't want

the Chinese dragon either to force us to side with one side or the other. This used to be known during the Cold War during the time when we referred to the third world, right, other than the first two, the communist bloc, the capitalist block, and then the third world. This was known as neutralism. Don't make us decide. But the trouble with that position is that it implies passivity. Right.

You know, it's sort of like the Antara dua caram. We remember that the origins of independent Indonesia's foreign policy very much operated under that egos, the notion that we must cleave a path Deantara, dua, caram. In those days, one, of course,

the West and the second would be the communist East. But if you put it that way, remembering that the Karang are fixed, they're in the water, they're not moving, you're moving. And if you want to stay exactly between them, right, you give up the autonomy of your foreign policy. It's dictated by distance. In other words, you completely surrender your national obligation to have foreign policies that serve your country, your people, not the people, people in country. Another set of people in countries. So that's the way I introduce the topic. Now, then what that means, of course, and again, this is not coincidentally in keeping with my own background, right? I'm, you know, I'm all binika, binaka, binaka, binika. Is there, is there ICA about Southeast Asia? Yes,

and I admit that, ASEAN in particular. But in the book, not only I, but some of the other chapters, but particularly, I think, especially on the South China Sea, tries to demonstrate that ASEAN is simply not capable of really making a dent in the problem of the South China Sea. It's just not able to do that. You alluded to the possibility or the fact that there's not a whole lot of unity or not as much unity as there needs to be as one reason. Yes. Yes, that's absolutely right. Not as much unity as there needs to be.

And that's evident on so many different fronts. I mean, let's just briefly, we can return to this if you wish, talk about democracy. Some people who use languages that may be a little bit harsher than I would use have referred to ASEAN as a club of dictators. That's unfair. It's certainly unfair to the four countries. Remember, only four of the ten countries in Southeast states. Asia qualify as partly free, as, you know, more or less free under the Freedom House

Aegis. And remember, Freedom House is an American organization. Its methodology can be criticized. I'm not defending Freedom House necessarily, but they do every year issue a comparison, a ranking. And the current situation is that there is only one country in Southeast Asia that is free with no adjectives. Timor-Leste.

That's right. Timor-Leste, which is not even a member of ASEAN. And of the ten members of ASEAN, six of them are not free. By that definition, six of them are authoritarian, right? And only four are partly democratic. And there's no fully democratic country. And let me guess. Indonesia is one of the four?

Yes. Yes. Indonesia is one of the four. But that could lead us into a conversation of the raging debate. That's not a series. Yeah, right, with the raging debate, which has become even more intense, I dare say, with what has been happening to Moldoko. Yeah.

Right? I mean, we could talk about that. And, of course, that's a very recent event. We don't know quite how it's going to turn out and so forth. But for some who look at it, it reminds them of the manipulation that Suharto did with regard to the BDI. and other parties that were so, there were ostensibly opposition parties, but they were basically, you know,

there to support the government. Right. And some of my colleagues, compared to my colleagues, I think I am a little bit less pessimistic, perhaps, maybe, maybe naively so in hoping that Indonesian democracy is certainly going to, I'm sure in some form it will survive, but it may survive as a rather illiberal democracy.

And, of course, tying that in with China, you know, what that means, I suppose, that, you know, take a look at Myanmar just to leap into the last week, right, or the last day or two, right? So here, because of what's happened in Myanmar, since the creation of the junta, the declaration of the coup on the 1st of February, is that now several Chinese factories, garment factories, for example, have been burned. You know, people come in on motorcycles and they throw gasoline on the factory and it goes up in flames. And there are about 10 of those that have occurred to varying degrees of damage, admittedly. And that's kind of a puzzle.

You know, why should the Chinese factories be targeted? Now, there's some who say it's much, the soldiers are doing it. The regime is burning the factories. I have great difficulty believe in that. Yeah. I mean, you know, the regime is, in many respects, evil. The death toll is, what, 150 or more? And it shows no sign of slowing down.

But they're not dumb. They're smart. And why they would burn down the factories that lead back to Beijing, a country, which is one of the few countries, well, maybe, I mean, without going through the whole list, right? Right. But actually, when the Americans talk about democracy, democracy, democracy, looking at Myanmar, they look at Myanmar and talk about stability, stability, stability,

which is exactly what the hunter wants to hear. So why would the hunter bring these down? It seems to be more likely that these are done by individuals who are not only appalled by the coup, but very worried that China will come in to support the coup makers and squash democracy. in Myanmar. What do you think could be the way out of this, you know, the situation in Myanmar? Well, that's a... I mean, some people might have thought that the junta would know that there's a way out for them.

That could lead to a way out of this, you know, unfortunate situation that we're seeing in Myanmar. I would like to think that there are reformers inside the junta, inside. the Ta-Hada, inside the military, who might, as the killing goes on, say, enough, enough. Right. We can't go on like this. We've got to work out something that they wouldn't probably be committed to full democracy, no. And probably the 25% in the legislature reserved for the military, that might well be maintained. But at least they would say, we'll go back to the days of the transition under Hongsan Suu Kyi that we wiped out on the 1st of February.

I see no evidence of such a faction inside the Tatmada. Now, what do I know? I don't even speak Burmese, right? But my guess is, I could be wrong, but my guess is that the way out, and it's not a way completely out, it's a way, should we say, out of the current killing, maybe, and into eventually some kind of resolution,

which would allow for the return of democracy to Myanmar. And that is this. There have been opposition activities, obviously, throughout Southeast Asia from one time to another. We have insurgencies. Think of the Communist Party in Mindanao in southern Philippines. Think of what's happening in southern Thailand with, you know, Muslim unrest and so forth. We could go on and on and on.

But what's interesting is that this now looks like it might generate a government in exile. Dr. Sa, who is here in the United States, He has a colleague, interestingly resident in Maryland, who has also been given some responsibility to represent the opposition in Myanmar. And why couldn't the United States, and others as well, including Indonesia, recognize a government in exile, which would mean that from now until, you know, maybe, you know, the junta will do what Putin likes to do and send somebody to the United States to poison the representatives of this government in exile.

I don't know, whether they would do that or not. Hopefully not. I mean, that would be, again, horrific. But the existence of such a government would mean that the junta cannot get away, cannot avoid comparison with the opposition, not just in terms of the relative power in the streets of Yangon, but in terms of global influence. If enough countries recognize a government in exile,

it seems to me it's going to make it more difficult. for the junta. And it will also make it more difficult for China because China presumably would not want to join that group, right? So I think we're really at the stage where that begins to be a consideration. I remember, you know, the GPRA,

the Algerian revolutionary provisional government in Tunis, right? In Tunisia, they kept the revolution alive, right, against the French in Algeria by representing not the table the feeble regime that was inside as a puppet of France during the war, for the extent that that really amounted to a puppetry situation, then for the first time we have leverage.

We have leverage through a government in exile. That seems to me to be something that's worth it's worth talking about. But again, you know, maybe I'm even there, I'm being too optimistic. And maybe the clock will be turned back. look what happened after 1988. I mean, maybe we will go back to the days when Yanmar was completely isolated, the hermit country, cut off from the outside world.

I hope not. Yeah. Let's go back to the book. I mean, I'm tempted to think of your comparison between the deer and the dragon as another comparison between the fox and the hedgehog, right? where the Fox tends to have a little bit more intuition

and a hedgehog, as systematic as they may be, they just tend to move in a straight line with no sensitivity to fluctuating circumstances around. I want to push this a little bit, right? I mean, is there a likelihood of the new Monroe kind of doctrine that's going to be embraced and implemented by China with respect to, you know, the neighboring Asian countries? I think I think the answer to that is yes.

Okay. China militarily is on the verge of controlling the South China Sea. And, you know, frankly, with all due respect to the Obama administration, which at least was a lot better than, you know, the administration that followed. Nevertheless, during the second Obama administration in particular, there were individuals high up in the National Security Council and the State Department who made the argument that, okay, so some of them actually said, you know, we don't want to go to war over a bunch of rocks. It's just a bunch of rocks.

And it used to drive me crazy when I would hear people say that because it's not just a bunch of rocks. These are now naval bases. These are military bases. They have runways. They have emplacements for missiles, missiles that, you know, can reach almost all the way to Guine, or maybe not. not named from those islands themselves, but certainly from the mainland. But they also represent a threat to the Southeast Asian states that border the South China Sea. So don't talk to me about rocks.

And then the answer often is, well, look, if we ever went to war with the Chinese, hey, these little bases, they would disappear within 30 minutes. And I'm saying, do you think you've made a rational argument because you're talking about what probably would turn out to be World War III with millions, maybe billions, dead? I mean, come on, what kind of an argument is that? So, yes, China wants a sphere of interest in Asia. Ideally, it would be your Asian, EUR Asia, but they're going to start in Southeast Asia. And in particular, they have started in the South China Sea.

And here's something that I would say that is perhaps a bit of a departure from, you know, the standard scholarship on ASEAN, on the ICA, the integrity in the U.S. unity of Southeast Asia. But when you ask what will be, what will the world look like in 2045, one of the things I would speculate is this. Will Southeast Asia continue to exist as an ICA, as a single organization, all brought together, you know, with English as the, as the lingua franca and so forth, the headquarters, not really the headquarters, the secretariat in Jakarta. Or will the northern tier, with the exception of Vietnam, or historical, reasons because Vietnam will not tolerate suzerainty by China over its own country.

It's gone to war repeatedly to prevent that from happening. Most recently in 1979, when they were invaded by China from the north. So we set aside Vietnam. But Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, will they remain part of Southeast Asia or will they have become part of a greater China? And I'm not saying there will be a Chinese province called Myanmar or a Chinese province called Laos, but I am saying that the demographic penetration on the other side of the land border between China and the northern tier of Southeast Asia, you know, it's full. There are people, some people say Mandalay is a Chinese-speaking town.

Now, I can't say that. I've not been there recently enough to be able to corroborate that. But the demographic penetration from China, the economic penetration from China could well mean that Southeast Asia will end up being split. with part of the northern tier on China's side and the rest of the region on the side of the United States. And frankly, with that image in mind, I get, I mean, in a friendly way, I get a little bit, just a teeny little bit, I don't know, tired. Maybe not annoyed, not annoyed, but tired hearing once and again and again and again, you nor the Chinese should make us choose. because really who's trying to make Southeast Asia choose? You know, from a Southeast Asian perspective,

the United States is thousands and thousands of miles away. The United States has no desire to control the South China Sea. That's perfectly clear. If anything, the movement here in the United States against an overcommitted foreign policy is so strong that it's hard to get people to think that maybe the United States should have a role, you know, in India, right? or maybe even in Australia or in South America, right, to pull back, you know, and I agree with

the emphasis, which is let's have less militarization and more democracy, which is exactly, I think, what the Biden administration is trying to do, and I fully support that. But, you know, the moral equivalence between Beijing and Washington does not work. Beijing is a threat. It will always be potentially a threat simply because of its proximity to Southeast Asia. And actually, Southeast Asian probably have to worry more they do, I think, about the United States not being present in Southeast Asia than about the United States being so present in Southeast Asia that they're dominating the region. Because that's extremely unlikely. You refer to negative control as opposed to positive control, right?

Being embraced by the Chinese. Explain that. Well, this is part of a small. one-person campaign that I made sort of a hobby almost, or at least focused on for some years now, which is to try to persuade the United States and other countries to get together and simply sign a one-sentence statement, not 23 paragraphs of bland, you know, this or that, just a single sentence. And it would run as follows. No single country should control the South China Sea, period.

including America, including India, Australia, Indonesia, Timor Lestay, you name it. Right, right. The autonomy, the maritime regional autonomy. Because if you look at a map, you know, we all know about Tana Ayr, right? But can you foreign policy eyes, that is to say, regionalize, this notion of Tana Aieri? Yes, you can. And you can say that the South China Sea is the heart water, the heart water, not the heartland, the heart water for Southeast Asia. Yeah.

And so Southeast Asia, Asiana in particular, has a natural responsibility, even an obligation, giving how important those waters are to Southeast Asia to try to do something to prevent Chinese control over the South China Sea. Now, the good news is that the Biden administration is more realpolitik and less moral politic, I guess, or vice versa. I suppose you could argue it either way, actually. I'm not going to pursue that particular thought. But what I mean here is that the Obama administration,

consistently, especially during its second term, sent messages to the Department of Defense until what was then called the Pacific Command in Hawaii, saying, okay, you guys you want to run freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, maybe, I don't know, twice a year maybe, maybe three times, but don't do it much more than that, because we don't want to make the Chinese angry. Why? Because we need their support on other things, on economic matters, on, you know, global warming, And now, of course, on the pandemic, I guess you could add that, right? And so they undercut the position that was favored by individuals who saw more clearly what China was doing, namely extending control over the South China Sea. And that, fortunately, has changed.

Rather than the Biden administration being, you know, Obama revisited or Obama 2.0, right? Right. Instead, it seems to me that the advisors, certainly the Secretary of State, the head of the National Security Council and Biden himself, I have no illusions about China. And of course, I don't want there to be a war between China and the United States, but I don't think there will be. I think that's not on the cards.

When I talk with people about South China Sea, I tend to divide them into the two camps. The people who are worried about escalation, war, the China, and the people who are worried about expansion, Chinese expansion. And frankly, balancing the two, it seems clear to me that Chinese expansion is a far more realistic and immediate danger,

than an all-out war between the U.S. and China. Now, some people would say, well, okay, you missed through a statement, that's a typical of an academic. Academics are drunk on words. They love words. You're just proposing a bunch of words, thou shalt not control the South China Sea. That's going to have no effect whatsoever. I disagree. It will have only symbolic effect, at least at the beginning, but it will always be there that can be referred to by people.

Right. A nonpartisan statement. You know, what about the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation? I happen to be in Bali when the Brazilians signed that treaty, even though the last time I checked, they're a long way away from Southeast Asia. Why couldn't we take that core sentence, no single countries will control the South China Sea, and make it a part of a larger document, a treaty of maritime cooperation in Southeast Asia, something like that, which would be signed by countries all over the world, right?

That would be the ideal. And admittedly, it would only exert moral pressure on China, but I make one last point before I shut up. You see, professors love to talk. They need to be shut up. This is your show. Just a minute, okay. And here's what I would say. July 2016, the Arbitral Court Award, which essentially declares that the 9-dash line is ridiculous,

or at least that it contradicts the Convention on the Law, the United Nations Convention on the Law to Sea. What a victory for the Philippines. The Obama administration dropped the ball. Instead of pushing it, which they should have done, they said, oh, yes, we agreed. That's a good idea. And then went on to do something else, right? So it completely lagged. You could say that it was just a piece of paper. In fact, that's exactly what the Chinese said, is a scrap of paper. It's just a scrap of paper. Well, that scrap of paper has been around, right? And now is being referred to more often as the, shall we say, the temperature in Southeast Asia regarding China rises and rises and rises.

And the pushback against China is becoming stronger and stronger. Right? We had, we had, you know, wolf warrior diplomacy. We may now have, particularly with regarding Canada and the two prisoners in China, we now have hostage diplomacy. We have China saying, you know, you've just made us mad, and so we're not going to import your bananas anymore, right? we have China actually amazingly enough going around the region and having its ambassadors declare, I would hope privately for their own embarrassment, declare to their hosts, we want you to praise us more. Tell us we're terrific.

No, I mean, after all, we gave you some, I don't know, some shots maybe for COVID-19, some vaccines or something, whatever it might be. But we want you to go out publicly and say, we hereby congratulate the great sovereign one wonderful People's Republic of China, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, no, that's unheard of. I mean, one thing that, if I may say this, is a gross generalization, that Americans, not all Americans, because after all, some people did vote for Trump, a lot of them actually, but Americans and Indonesians, I think, have perhaps the following thing in common. And that is the ability and the inclination to criticize.

And you imagine how embarrassing it would be if an American diplomat said to an audience, No, by the way, we want you to, you know, it's like, it's like when I edit the Deer of the Dragon, and then, of course, Stanford, they want publicity for the book. So do I. I mean, I want people to buy the book. I want people to read it. So I'm looking for blurbs, right? Blurbs on the back that say, this is a wonderful book. And so it's really embarrassing. And it's incredibly embarrassing. I'm really, it's, you know, I can almost just not do it to send someone a message. You could say, would you like to write a blur because a blur means a favorable review? And what I try to say is instead, which may defeat the purpose, is we'd like a sentence or two about the book and keep in mind that you can be as critical as you wish. That's what I really want to say. And what I sometimes do, especially if I don't know the recipient of the email. And similarly, in Indonesia, there is, it seems to me, an appetite for criticism and for modesty as well. And the insanity of being asked to stand up and kiss the posterior of a foreign country, which is, it seems to me, an appetite for criticism and for modesty as well. is just intolerable from my point of view.

One of the reasons I've been attracted to Indonesia is a two-word phrase that I may be misinterpreting. It's in Javanese. Mawas-Diri. Mawas-Diri. Mawas-Diri. I think introspection, my God, the Americans certainly could have used more introspection. Yeah, we could too. Before they got involved in the Vietnam War, before they went to war in Iraq and I could go on and on and on, right? And similarly, in Indonesia, when I had a panel recently talking about,

having a scholar, two scholars, talk about whether Indonesia is becoming less and less democratic, right? And as that issue came up, particularly in conversations with Indonesians, I don't get the answer, oh, you're criticizing our country. You should not do that. Don't criticize us. In fact, what we'd really like you to do is praise us. That's absolutely, I mean, forgive me for saying this, that is un-Indonesian. Yeah. Maybe it's be, maybe quite apart from the reasonable, although perhaps now endangered success of democracy in Indonesia, which means giving everybody the right to speak. And some people are arguing with some justice

that Chacoa is not really giving everybody the right to speak in some instances, I admit that. But still, that lays the basis for the sovereignty of the individual, as long as that sovereignty doesn't hurt someone else. That's critical, right? So when I talk about strategic autonomy for Southeast Asia, I mean strategic autonomy for Indonesia, the country, and the other countries in Southeast Asia, and also, yes, the autonomy, the moral autonomy of the individual, deserving respect.

Freedom can be extreme. I'm very upset by libertarians. I really resent their arguments because it amounts to, you know, in a crowded movie theater with no danger, standing up and shouting, fire, fire. You know, really, that's my view of extreme, you know, libertarianism. I think it's a danger. and it's alive and well and living in some parts of America. Now, because of the more, how can I put it, the more communal maybe character of Indonesia, as an archipelago spread across so many different islands, cultures, and so forth,

the tolerance, the diversity that I ran into the first time I was in Indonesia, and that off and on, with some exceptions, what happened to Ahok, for example, is just, no, I'm sorry, that's just unacceptable. That's completely unfair, it seems to. me. And so there are criticisms to be made. But the, you know, what we used to call Islam fanatic, of course, you can't use that phrase anymore. But when I was there as a student, people used it often. And I'm not blaming it on Islam. Actually, it would be better to refer to it as, you know, the extremism of certain Muslims who believe in a version of Islamism. Islamism itself

is okay. We had Christian democracy in governments in France, in Italy, and so forth. Religion has a role in politics, but not to the extent that you deny the freedoms of members of a religious group, in this case, a minority. Hey, Don, that's a lot to absorb. Too much, maybe. You know, let's, I want to take you back to this notion of China's potentially engaging in a, in a negative control type of situation, right? But if we were to put this in the context of what has transpired in the last 2,000 years,

I would argue, and most in Southeast Asia would argue that the relations between China and Southeast Asia have been predominantly economic, right? I don't think, you know, it has been militaristic in any manner or in any way significantly. It's just very difficult to think of China. China in the 21st century as a militarily engaging type of nation state. As much as we know that this cat has grown into a tiger in the last few decades, what would it take for Southeast Asians to feel comfortable with the potential role of China so that we can have the kind of peace and stability that we've had in the last 2,000 years?

You know, if we were to think of China as how the United States might have been in the context of Southeast Asia or South China Sea, you know, providing the necessary support so that, you know, economically, commercially, we could transact with each other in a peaceful and stable manner, if one can think that China is going to be able to play that role in the context of the negative control that you've alluded to earlier, would that be enough? Or we probably would need further assurance from China that things are going to be all right? I think the further assurance is essential.

And so then the question arises, what might it be? And, you know, I have not shared with our viewers what I mean, as you know, what I mean. by negative control. I'm not saying that China wants to be in a position of such unmitigated strength and unchallenged power in the South China Sea, that everything that happens, every little thing that happens happens because and only because China wants it. No, China, big as it is, with its technological capability, military strength. No, China cannot do that.

What China can do, however, is established negative control, which means that if something happens in Southeast Asia, as it probably will, looking ahead, that bothers China, right, in some way. China could talk to the country in question, maybe make a few allusions to possibly economic punishments and other punishments that would be directed against the Southeast Asian state, whose Navy, or whatever, had the audacity to challenge a Chinese ship, you know, off Scarborough-Scholl in the South China Sea. Now, elements of that are already happening. One of the least discussed and most evident exports from China doesn't show up in the trade data. It's the export of self-censorship.

That's exactly what China is trying to do in ASEAN. China is trying to split ASEAN. It may succeed, especially. if the northern tier minus Vietnam ends up succumbing to a greater China. You know, the role of the proxy veto, whether it's Laos, whether it's Cambodia, China would like to have other proxy vetoes so that they can be guaranteed that ASEAN will never pass any resolution that criticizes them. And already, of course, for diplomatic reasons, which I understand, you know, ASEAN is reluctant to criticize China. but it still technically has the power to.

So what this means is the argument for regional autonomy, which means autonomy of the region, right, and presumably ASEAN is best equipped to represent the region. If that doesn't happen, then how can autonomy of the individual member countries be maintained against Chinese pressure? You're absolutely right in the sense that, you know, the Southeast Asians have conveniently divided the role,

they assign to China and the United States to two different sectors. They say to the Chinese, we're going to trade with you, come invest in us. And these are good things because the Chinese have contributed to the boom in Southeast Asia over decades. There's no question about it that when China grows economically, provided it doesn't make the mistakes that it's been making recently, and provided it doesn't covet ownership of land and water in Southeast Asia, or the way it did, for example, and it continues to do on the border between China and India, or the way it tried to do in 1979 when it invaded Vietnam, although I think they were prepared to

deliver the punishment, that's what they call it, and then retreat. So it is possible to work out a situation in which that specialization occurs. China takes care of the economy, the Americans take care of security. But that doesn't make any sense for Southeast Asia because it reduces the role of Southeast Asia, again, to be passive, autonomous, the recipient. I'm a recipient of Chinese aid, and sure, we'll stand up and praise you. You're really a good set of people. Thank you so very much.

And then Washington happens to provide, you know, the South China Sea with some kind of naval umbrella, more or less. Yes, thank you very much. Yes. I don't think that's tenable over the long run. It would have to be the case that China's interest in the security of Southeast Asia incorporates the need to cooperate with other outside countries, with the quad, for example, with Japan, with Korea, with India.

But as you know, in the debate over the COC, that, you know, within the discussions on the South China Sea, the Chinese are insisting on a provision that would say, you know, when you have, let's say you want to remove the South China Sea's floor, you want to penetrate it and lift up oil and gas, to explore hydrocarbons in the South China Sea, please go ahead, but don't do that with any other country except our country, right? the China national oil company, only we, don't work with the Americans, don't work with the French,

forget about the British. Now, that's an imperial ploy to exclude the foreign countries so that, yes, so that South China Sea and Southeast Asia eventually will become part of a China-dominated sphere of influence. That's not in the interest of Southeast Asians, because it removes their choice. When they say, you know, we don't want to have to choose between you or them, the only way that that can happen is if the two countries, China and the United States, on the one hand, are willing to cooperate to the point where actually there is a role for Southeast Asia positively within a cooperative and peaceful arrangement that is both economic and secure at the same time. That's terrific. I would support that in a moment right away. But right now it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

Okay, let's peel a little bit more here on the autonomy. right, the topic of autonomy. I look at countries like Singapore in Southeast Asia as one of the few, if not very few, that seems to be able to be having a level conversation with either China or the United States. And I could hypothesize that that's correlated with their ability to have educated themselves

quite nicely in the last few decades, Right? Do you think, or in your view, Indonesia is one that could actually create a much more autonomy for itself by way of educating itself. Let me give you some figures here. If I take a look at the comparable or comparative marginal productivity of Singapore at $170,000 per person per year on a PPP job. adjusted basis. That compares significantly much higher than that of Indonesia, which is at only $24,000. And I think I would argue that that's somewhat correlated with, you know, how we're a little bit slacking with respect to Singapore on, I don't know, the fields of science, the fields of communication, and many other things. Now, to the extent that we can improve upon these metrics in the next couple of decades until 2045,

wouldn't that actually improve our ability to be more autonomous? Yes. Right? Basically. Yes, it would. Other things being equal, it would. Yeah. No question about it.

So, I completely do. What do we have to do, Don? I mean, it, I think just to be pragmatic about this, I think if we just get our act, together in getting more educated, more efficient, more productive, and whatever. I think we can enter the table with a relatively much higher position of strength, right? Be it with anybody with China or the U.S. or the Europeans, Australians and what have you. I think, you know, we recognize that China is no longer the honorary member of the world.

So they are a true, real member of the world, and they have gotten a seat at the table, as the United States would have had in the last few decades. So in order for us to have a level conversation with either China or the US, or be able to get the other ASEAN countries to stay unified and united, I think we've just got to get Iraq together.

And so other countries in Southeast Asia. So if that's the way forward for the 10 nations in Southeast Asia, then I think, you know, we could have a much brighter future for ourselves and with respect to any superpowers out there, be it the United States, China, or India in the 21st century. I agree. And frankly, it's vital to maintain the optimism that your comment represents. Yeah.

You know, without optimism, people aren't going to want to change the future. They're going to just give up. I worry about strategic fatalism, not optimism, in Southeast Asia, whereby increasing the people are saying, you know, they're a dragon, we're a little mouse deer, forget it. End their story, right? They're going to dominate. They might as well just get used to it. And the spirit of what you've said, and also the content, suggests an opening in a very different and far more constructive direction. At the same time, you know, academics love abstractions, and I'm no exception.

an easy and perhaps overworked abstraction between structure and agency. You are, in a way, talking about structure. Take the structure of education. If more Indonesians studied, you know, science, engineering, mathematics, and so forth, especially with all the discoveries that are coming, including, you know, medicine, achievements in medicine and so forth, especially with regard to the COVID-19 situation, yes, that will change the structure of Indonesian society, and so far as there will be pools of talent organized in institutions, including governmental institutions, that will express the findings, the research, the knowledge, into policy, policy that will improve the lot of Indonesians and also make the world a better

place. That's the kind of argument. But in a way, if that's all about structure, what about agency? Right. For example, take the agency, which is, really at the root of the case for liberal democracy, the agency of individuals in the beings. Now, it's true that, you know, the top-down state-centric model in China has in some ways proven very successful, including with regard not, of course, to the beginning of the pandemic. That's a whole other story. But with the way the pandemic appears to have been kept at bay in China from the top down. Although then we look at Taiwan, which is a democracy, and we see also spectacular results in terms of fighting the pandemic, and they're not an authoritarian regime.

So I think that the future of Indonesia inside ASEAN depends on the extent to which they can foster the agency, yes, of individuals who have the knowledge to be able to improve Indonesia and its role in the world, to build a structure to support that improvement. But at the same time without the ability to speak one's mind and to do the research that, you know, when is passionately hoping to do, it's going to be very difficult. So I think the looming possibility of creeping authoritarianism in Indonesia is not zero. It needs to be looked at and it needs to be kept away. And ultimately, you know, you're in education, I'm in education.

And in a way, the argument here might be said to be self-interested, right? Right. Because, you know, it would involve more teachers. And you have that aspiration, certainly, and your background suggested, and so do I. That's all very well and good. But things change relatively slowly. Training a generation is a huge job. And once they're trained and they go out into the real world, then they respond.

The feedback from the real world may lead them to think, you know, I'm only going to accept. the one career where I'm least likely to step on someone's toes. That means the least imaginative. That means the least creative. You seek safety and security and you end up in a blind alley because you're not generating the findings, the entrepreneurial spirit and so forth that you've been talking about a few minutes ago. So I think there's a tremendous role for Indonesia. I mean, you know, the standard statement about Indonesia is that Indonesia is pitching below its weight. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, yes, to some extent that's true.

I remember Susilo Bombang Yudoyono, right? What was this foreign policy? We want a million friends and no enemy. Sorry, that is a popularity contest. It's not a strategy, right? So I think there's tremendous opportunity here. And I'm encouraged particularly, and I have given recently, enjoyed very much giving several lectures to Indonesian audiences.

And the enthusiasm, the spirit, the design, desire is just wonderful to see. And it's a bottom-up kind of thing. And it's being stoked under the auspices of you and this podcast. As you bring, you know, millions of Indonesians together with ideas, some from from inside the country, some from outside a country. It's really exciting. And it kind of restores my faith in, you know, going all the way back to when I first arrived in Indonesia and basically fell in love of the country. I mean, that's, you know, it's, it's heartening to hear you say that. And I'm certainly on your side of the end. We are going through an episode where I think we could see, you know, seeing Indonesia show a bit more leadership with respect to Southeast Asia, right?

And I think we've been blessed with the idea of having shifted, you know, from trust deficit to this huge strategic trust that has entailed, you know, great degree of centrality within ASEAN, right? But at the end of the day, I think each member of the union has to get its act together. He or she needs to basically just get educated, get more proficient, get more efficient, get more productive. So that as you enter the building, as you enter the room, you can enter the meeting with that position of strength. Like as Singapore has. And I think, you know, with only 5.5 million people, they can enter any room having a relevant discussion about anything. And we've seen how they've been able to shape the thinking of the elites in China, the elites in the U.S. You name it, policymaking-wise, academically, commercially, economically, and all that good stuff.

Indonesia, I think, needs to pick up on stuff like that a bit more. So I'm actually optimistic. and I look at the glass somewhat helpful in the sense that we've legislated as to allocate 20% of our budget for educational purposes. But there is a bit of a deficiency. Not a whole lot of Indonesians want to be teachers, right? If we go to countries like South Korea, the top graduates of the universities, they think it's cool to be a teacher, as much as they think it's cool to work for Google, right? But if you're in Indonesia, you name it.

I mean, if you've been here long enough to know that, you know, the social status of teachers, unfortunately, is not way up there. Right? I know a lot of great teachers in this country, but I don't think I can generalize that a lot of people in Indonesia want to be teachers. I think they would rather work for the tech companies or the banks or what have you. Now, I think it would take countries like Indonesia to be at that level where it's a cool thing to be a teacher.

And we've got to get to a point where, you know, the top 5%, the top 10% of university graduates actually want to be teachers. They get paid well enough and they get regarded socially well enough. until then I think we're going to struggle. We're going to limp. Directionally, we may be moving upward, but I don't think we're going to reach the point of heightness as quickly as we would like. What would you say to this proposition

that although what you say is important, it's even vital, it will not succeed that is changing the structure, will not succeed until the agency at the very top exercises its ability to shape the Southeast Asia. Because actually, you know, I remember the days decades ago where Indonesia was thought to be the true leader of ASEAN. And there was always a concern on the part of other countries in Southeast Asia. Well, what do the Indonesians think?

What do the Indonesians think? Now, my impression, and this is perhaps being unfair to Jekoi, is that, you know, his background is as a furniture, salesman in Solo. So I understand that when he wants to send a bed, which can't be put on the back of a bicycle, an entire bed to Sumatra for sale in North Sumatra, let's say, or for that matter, all the way into eastern Indonesia, he needs infrastructure. So infrastructure then serves the need of trade, of investment, of business, and all of those various good things. But by focus so heavily on the engineering aspect at the tangible level of roads and railroads and ports,

he neglects the issue of agency at the top in defense of Indonesian interests. Yeah, I mean, I'm making this a little too harsh. Don't misunderstand. I think he's done. Actually, my opinion of Indonesia today is a little bit better than the opinion of people who really think that it's just backsliding and democracy is doomed and so forth, Although I'm exaggerating their position as well. They do have a point of view.

But why couldn't Indonesia tomorrow say something like this under the Mawas Diri category? Right. So, you know, for some time now in the South China Sea, we have claimed not to be a claimant. We've claimed not to be a claimant. But, you know, actually, what we really meant to say was that everybody has recognized pretty much our EEZ offshore of Natuna. And so we don't need to claim that because that's part of the way. of international law. And when the Chinese, or for that matter, anybody else, Vietnam, Malaysia, when they cross that border and begin fishing and pulling up hydrocarbons from under the ocean

inside of our exclusive economic zone, then yes, our claim to that zone immediately appears, and we defend it, and we will continue to defend it, and go beyond that and say something like this. You know, maybe this is a little too much candor. It's true we're the largest country in Indonesia, and therefore it's perhaps appropriate that we make the following invitation to the other four contestants in Southeast Asia in the South China Sea, that is to say, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Brunei. And we propose that the five of us... I remember what you said about Brunei. Yeah, right.

They rarely showed up. Exactly. That's right. But that doesn't mean it can't be tried again, especially since there has been a lot of pushback against China. And you might argue with a Biden administration, it becomes easier perhaps to defend a multilateral. Actually, it's not multilateral. It's mini lateral. Biden talks a lot about multilateralism. What about mini lateralism?

What about the five I've just mentioned? Or maybe even Malaysia and Vietnam getting together and sorting out the overlap in their continental shelf claims so that they can clear up the disagreements among themselves in order eventually then to face China with a united front. Because that, it seems to me, is what ASEAN is going to have to do if it wants to reduce the gap in power between the dragon and the deer. And this is quite apart from education. This is a practical suggestion that could be done tomorrow. I'm not saying it will succeed, but it should try. And even if it doesn't succeed, people will remember and they say, you know, when retino, when Retino Marsudi, of course, I'm inventing this, obviously, when Retno Marsudi made this proposal, you know, wow, we were kind of interested because we don't hear from Indonesia. lot very often. We haven't really for quite some time. And so even though the proposal didn't quite

work out, we're delighted. We're delighted that she's back on board with us in trying to do things inside ASEAN that will improve the region and will establish a regional autonomy, not just a collection of countries with their respective national autonomies. And if we take a look at what Retno did with regard to Myanmar, that's potentially encouraging. I say potentially because initially, of course, when she agreed to meet with the junta, that did not go well on the streets of Yangon, obviously, right? Because it's sort of, you know, sort of coalescing at the top to make decisions that will affect the bottom. But think of the non-governmental organizations in Indonesia. There are many, many of. Think of the think tanks.

Think of their counterparts in other Southeast Asian countries. The Institute of the ASEAN Institute of Southeast Asian Studies was an invention that a good friend of an Indonesian once actually attributed to me, and it said, you know, the reason we have this joint arrangement of think tanks in Southeast Asia done is because you suggested it. And I remember thinking to myself, well, gee, I mean, come on. I mean, thank you very much for the compliment, but I'm sure there were a lot of other people who wanted that idea implemented even more than I do.

But the point is that at the level of track two and track three, people like you, people like me, Why aren't they at the forefront? When was the last time that the think tanks of Southeast Asia got together, you know, maybe a so-called expert? I hate the word expert. I really don't. I don't consider myself an expert. So let's not say expert. Let's say the thinkers.

Okay, to all them thinkers, whatever you want to call them, they come together and they try to, on purpose, generate a whole bunch of proposals, some of which they know are unrealistic. Simply to put on the table, because an unrealistic proposal sitting on the table can nevertheless stretch the mind. of the diplomat who's accustomed to thinking inside the box only, and he looks at this idea, says, well, that'll never happen. But then maybe he'll think, well, you know, actually, maybe if we tweaked it a little bit, or maybe if we talked to the ties, you know, see what I'm saying? There's an opportunity for creativity that Indonesia could meet, if it wished to, given its present composition of leaders and thinkers and scholars and people like yourself.

And that would have a dramatic impact, it seems to me. Yeah. Because that's an advantage that the nations of Southeast Asia, except for the ones that are so tied to authoritarianism, that they quash creative thought entirely. Unfortunately, they're still fairly rare. Maybe simply because the technology is not that advanced to enable a government, let's say, in Laos, to actually accomplish that. The realm of creativity is wide open and the door is open and it's welcoming Indonesia in if Indonesia merely wants to walk through that door. Right. Let's talk a shift gear to democracy.

You've been big on talking about democracy all over the world, right? I want to be the devil's advocate here. We've gone from the stage of individual democratization to the stage of market democratization to that of data democratization. One could argue empirically that each one of these states, stages has not really yielded the kind of equality that we would have wanted in terms of welfare and also equality of opportunities, right? If we take a look at the genie coefficient ratios

of many democracies around the world, it's actually gone up in recent years. How do we beat this? How do we remedy this if we want to keep ushering, embracing democracy, going forward, or perhaps there needs to be a remolding or reshaping of democracy so that we can have the kind of equality of welfare, equality of opportunities that we would have envisioned long time ago. I think the ending of your question is the beginning of my answer to your question. I have long debated with American colleagues whether an ill liberal democracy is still a democracy.

I mean, technically it is, if you use the phrase, you've got the adjective, but it's linked to the noun, democracy. And I admit that an electoral democracy in which the majority supposedly rules, there are elections, but individual rights to think and speak and write are violated, but that is in no sense a liberal democracy. It may be a statistical, you know, majoritarian democracy, but not a liberal one. And it doesn't follow that the majority is always right. Okay.

So the first thing, it seems to me, is to stop imprisoning ourselves. This is less true of Indonesians than it is of some Americans. I mentioned neoliberarians, for example, to imprison ourselves in an idealistic perfectionist box of democracy and oppose all deviations from it. That's a big mistake, it seems to me. But how far do you go in welcoming shaky democracies, semi-euro? democracies, partial democracies, the Bali democracy form could have been a major initiative by Indonesia to try to address this question.

A related issue is whether we should be talking about governance more than talking about democracy, because governance gets us closer to performance, to output, rather than just input. And if a democracy is making incredibly stupid decisions, American democracy is a case in point from time to time on certain issues, right? Then what's the point of having a democracy to begin with? And so ways in which we can operate by inserting and protecting what I like to call pockets of autocracy, pockets of autocracy inside a democracy, the court system all the way up to the Supreme Court in the U.S. is a good example. And when Trump tried to destroy American democracy, one of the first things he did with his henchmen was try to destroy the nonpartisanship in the Supreme Court to bring in people that he thought would simply be puppets of himself. Right. Fortunately, they haven't been.

I mean, they've made some decisions that I certainly strongly disagree with, but actually, they've been relatively autonomous. There's a colleague at Tsinghua University. You may have seen this book. I think it's called the legitimacy of inequality. something like that. And there is an argument all in favor of governance and forget the equalization of rights between the leaders and the followers

because the followers tend to be dumb and the leaders are smart and they're educated. So let them leave, right? The problem with that is it denies respect to the people who occupy the country for the most part. And that's one reason why those people, if things happen has happened on the 1st of February in Myanmar, are going to rise up.

And again, I admit that stability is important. It's not more important necessarily than democracy. Sometimes revolutions may be necessary, but it certainly is important. There was a meeting held in California, in sunny lands, southern California, for various reasons I was not there. But basically, it tried to generate like a charter or a statement about democracy to which Southeast Asian leaders and also South Asian leaders might possibly agree. It was an academic exercise.

Maybe that's one reason I was so interested in it, I guess. But it's time to rethink what we mean by democracy. If liberal democracy is the deification of the individual, that is a disastrous democracy. Because, frankly, with the growth in the global population and with threats such as, you know, climate change and pandemics, no, you know, a mass of isolated individuals whose rights are being protected at all costs,

that's a disaster in terms of any kind of a response to challenges that cross borders. I sometimes make the contrast, I did this once in Strategic Review many years ago, published in Jakarta, and I've done it since, I make a contrast between what might be called mandate democracy on the one hand and cockpit democracy on the other. And what I mean by that very simply is that if a company wants to come into a town and build a factory and the local people are worried

about pollution, that's a mandate issue. They should be represented, right? They should have a mandate to be represented to speak about, well, what measures are you going to take to prevent pollution, right? Are you really need to do this? Maybe you could do this somewhere else. All of these kinds of discussions should take place as much as much as possible in a public setting with a lot of public participation, representation, if you will, a representative kind of democracy. On the other hand, if you're a pilot sitting up in the front of the plane and there's another plane that's coming straight at you, you're not going to get on the loudspeaker system and say, oh, by the way, passengers, especially if you say maybe especially in first class because your people paid more,

okay, passengers, it's up to you. I want to vote. Should I turn right or left? You tell me, of course, then they're dead. There's no time. And in a way, the pandemic, although it could have spread faster, it spread, Lord knows, fast enough, and it may continue to spread through variance. And the response of you say that, well, whatever else happens, we have to protect the right of the individual to say whatever the individual wants about what to do about the pandemic.

Well, no, I'm sorry. I can pronounce it's that three syllables, pandemic. I understand what it means. That's about the limit of my knowledge. So I don't want to be listened to on this topic on which I have no expertise whatsoever, right? And so without gutting democracy by handing power in a kind of, you know, platonic fashion, right, the notion of the philosopher king, you know, ruling class becomes a bunch of eggheads, you know, hanging around in think tanks. No, no, thank you very much. But we have to admit that the proportion, here's the critical question, what proportion of the problems that we're going to face between now and the 100th anniversary of Indonesian independence in 2045? What proportion of those problems are cockpit problems as opposed to mandate problems? And my guess is that the cockpit problems are increasing in number compared to the mandate problems. And that means that you're right. We have to rethink democracy. Because if we won't, if we don't rethink it, it may be taken from us simply because our failure to make the right.

decisions in the conference. I have a slightly more pragmatic view about democracy. I mean, you know, whether you're a democracy or a plutocracy, I mean, or an autocracy, I think it really boils down to institutional building, right? And we have seen an autocracy such as China where real democratization of talent has actually taken place. where the most competent get chosen, the selection and choice would not have been by way of patronage, right? I mean, if you underperform, you get slaughtered,

as much as it is an autocracy. That, I think, is the good irony. Whereas on the other hand, in a democracy, the bad irony is that some of the talents that are occupying the spaces that are supposed to actually help build institutions were actually chosen based on patronage. If that were to get fixed, I think we can have a much more thriving democracy. And if we were to peel that a little bit more, right,

you know, we've got more than 500 municipalities, regencies, and provinces. Unfortunately, to some extent, some of the local regional leaderships are still involved in a big way in selecting talents in ways that are contrary to the spirit of nation building, to the spirit of institutional building. If we were to fix that, I think we're good to go, right? So, I don't know. Who do you think? Well, I, I want to challenge you a little bit if I could. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you don't mind. I mean, you say that if you underperform, you get in trouble in China. Well, in a sense, if you overperform, you get in trouble.

Okay. Well, I didn't say that, okay. Yeah. I guess logically you could infer. Yeah, but you could say that if you overperform, then you're in trouble. Look at Jack Ma. Right. Xi Jinping looks at Jack Mauna has been incredibly successful.

It says, ah, this is a challenge to my authority. Remember, I'm in charge here. I'm the number one guy. Yeah. And if you take a look at the anti-corruption campaign, there's an interesting question in China, which is what proportion of the people who are being arrested, tycoons and so forth,

represent potential political challenges to Xi Jinping, who wants to be, you know, ruler for life. So, you know, even if you look at the past, I mean, here's another example. I know that made in China, 2025 and so forth, effort to control the market in, you know, solar energy, high-tech developments, you know, Huawei and so forth, 5G and all of that, it is nevertheless remarkable for this supposedly extremely, you know, performing, high-performing country that for all these years they have relied

solely, not solely, that's not quite true, but almost solely on imports of chips. So in the supply chain, the critical input of chips, without chips, no computer, has been neglected. Now, maybe that's because they thought they could always import these items. And so it was just a matter of lack of foresight on their part. But it would also suggest that the entrepreneurial spirit involves also the intellectual curiosity spirit, which involves the scientific discovery spirit, of a large number of. of people, yes, admitted the economically better off than the masses, concentrating on the need to fill a gap, in this case, a critical gap in the supply chain for advanced technical

devices. And so it seems to me, not to mention the, you know, how reliable are Chinese data on economic growth. If the predictions of percentage improvement in GDP so closely match the actual output, you can either say that there are wizards at the top of the food chain, in China who can predict exactly what that percentage is going to be, or you can say rather that there's fudging. That if the percentage turns out to be embarrassingly high or embarrassingly low, presumably low would be much worse, then there will be convenient statistical manipulations to take place that will iron that difference out.

So not to mention what's happening in Xinjiang, what's happening in Hong Kong, what has happened and continues to happen in Tibet, what's happened in Badak, what's what made well happen in Taiwan, what's happening in the South China Sea. So my view is that China is, let's put it as mildly as I can, a challenge, a challenge, if not a threat to the security and survival of a number of countries as it reaches out with the desire to control its neighborhood, particularly Southeast Asia. And so I think Southeast Asians can do a lot, but you are 100% right. You're absolutely right, that the need to focus on science, technology, and so forth at the institutional level in universities, giving incentives, for example, from the government, you know, the free

market ideal, you know, the Milton Friedman, Freedom Choose ideal. Well, I'm sorry, that's pretty, that's pretty archaic that's in me at the moment. We may return to it in some Halcyon future, but I don't see that happening. So I think there's a lot that Indonesia could do, but I would hate the message to be something like this, wait until we have enough educated people. Because that could take decades. Meanwhile, stick your neck out. One of the transliterations or whatever you want to call it from foreign language into Indonesian that I object to the most, maybe it's changed, you tell me, is the adjective

provocative. Provocative is bad. Yeah. But Silicon Valley, at least used to think now they're chastened, right? So Silicon Valley used to be, you know, the god, right, the idol. And now they're in the doghouse for various reasons. But they used to say, no, provocative is good. And as a pseudo-intellectual, I'm inclined to agree.

Thinking outside the box. I once, if I can lapse into anecdote, once at a meeting in Hainon, sponsored by the South China Sea Research Institute on the island. I gave a talk in which I brought with me in my briefcase a t-shirt. And this was a luncheon talk, so maybe you'll forgive me for being a little bit loose in my performance. But I held up the t-shirt for everybody to see it. It says, think outside the box. And then I asked for Maoist duty, particularly from the Chinese.

And I said, come on, you know, I don't know if anybody's recording this or not, but we're all here together. And, you know, it's under the Chatham House rule. We're not going to cite each other, et cetera, et cetera. Tell me, what is the Chinese box and how do you think inside it? And don't you wish they could think outside it? And if you did think outside it, what thoughts would you have? And not just thoughts, you know, that talk about Winnie the Pooh, right, that Che Jing-Jing thing is an idiot or something like that. No, no, no, no, no.

Fascinating, constructive thoughts that might be pursued to some. benefit to society, right? Are you limited in that way? And, you know, maybe some would say, no, I'm not limited. I could do all of that. Some would argue that there's a huge wall, a thick wall, a Chinese wall between freedom of speech, which affects political matters, and then the ability of scientists to, you know, look into the microscope and reach their own conclusions. And I think that the origins of the virus in Wuhan show that that argument does not. not work. It simply doesn't work. The punishments that were that were dealt out. The incentives that people at the lower level in China to overreport performance knowing that that's what the

upper tier wants to think. We talked earlier about Munchar, right? About the hierarchy in Munchar. Well, there's a hierarchy in China as well. And the hierarchy does not stand in the interest of the Chinese people. So I'm at the moment, you know, I'm hoping maybe economic reform, take the SOUE. massively inefficient, you know, funded, kept, cosseted to some extent by the regime, by the Communist Party of China as the patron. And that's holding the Chinese people back from the kind of, yes, competitive search for knowledge that you and I take for granted because we work inside educational institutions. Okay.

I do have the optimism that for us as a democracy to thrive all the way through 2045 would be on the basis of, I think, further institutional building. And if we could see a lot less misallocation of resources, if we could see a higher degree of democratization of talent, the right talent's going into the right spaces, I think we've got a good chance. You know, we've talked almost for 100 minutes, Don. I guess I'm going to have to ball it down to the last question. You know, it's so fun. Yeah, it is. It's a lot of fun.

Thank you. Yeah. Let me end with the last question, okay? And I'm going to try to put a few things in one here. The pandemic, which you have alluded to a few times in this conversation, has caused many economies around the world to basically go through or potentially go through a deceleration

of economic growth rates. Any deceleration basically would entail less ability to redistribute welfare. Because lower growth rates mean that you have a few more cakes, I mean of fewer cakes to distribute. to people, which would I think make it more difficult for inequality to be further remedied,

at least in a near foreseeable future. This kind of like erodes our ability to, you know, see democracies thrive in a good way in a near foreseeable future. So I think we've just got to be cautious about this. and for countries like Indonesia, how do you see the role of domestic politics interplaying with international politics? You've talked about this many times, right?

At the end of the day, foreign policy is actually a projection of what's happening domestically. And you've alluded to, you know, in Indonesia, whatever has recently been happening domestically, you know, in the political scene. So you've got this complicating factor of deceleration of economic growth rate and additional complicating factor of domestic politics, which has and is likely to continue coloring our international policy making and implementation.

What's the way forward for the typical Indonesians so that we could reach our end game in 2045 in a cool way. Well, that is a large question. This is a huge question. I guess I'm not an economist, but I will say that there is a debate here in the U.S., probably also, I would imagine, in Indonesia, between the pessimists and the optimists. There is a, since you're an optimist, and I try to be. And by the way, we have to end on a positive note. Positive note.

Okay, that's a requirement. It's a mandate. Yeah. Well, okay, so to put a positive, you know, I appreciate your very skilled here in leading the discussion. I want the Indonesians to rise up to the occasion so that we could build this country in a good way. Okay, well, I guess in that case, the first thing I would say is that in this debate between the pessimists and the optimist, let's look for a moment at the optimist. And their argument is that actually we're going to see a massive rebound in the global economy. It'll be unevenly distributed, I admit.

I'm not sure what proportion of the benefit will fall on Indonesia, the U.S., Uruguay, you know, France, South Africa. I don't know. I really don't. In fact, no one knows because we're talking about the future. We're talking about, you know, not just 2021, but 2022, 2023. And the argument is there will be a bounce, a large bounce, precisely because of the unavailability of opportunities to spend due to the six feet rule, the mask rule and so forth. And I think the mask rule will probably remain with us, in varying degrees from country to country, for some time to come. The inability, in a sense, to purchase means that although poverty has increased dramatically, there's no question about that.

And the Genie Index has decreased also. It seems to me no question about that, despite variations from country to country. Nevertheless, there is a sort of a reservoir of money that didn't get spent. Let's say middle class money, or maybe, you know, if you want to add the elite, upper class money. And once there's enough stability to allow for more in-person activity so that we're not limited to Zoom, not to mention the limitations of Zoom in and of itself, which is particularly in terms of trust back and forth, right? I mean, when you're talking from one box into another box,

you're necessarily thinking and speaking inside the box, but there's not the advantage of the corridor conversation that takes place that, you know, alongside an in-person conference where two people exchange very, very stimulating and valuable ideas, although I'm being a little romantic there. So in any case, there'll be a huge bounce. And actually, the growth of,

the global economy will then be less of a problem than the possibility that that growth is not going to trickle down enough to the people at the bottom. And then we get into individual national considerations. I mean, international aid, of course, matters and can contribute to that. Multilateralism to some extent can play a role in reducing in within country inequalities. But ultimately, it seems to me it's a national issue. As long as we don't feel on the one hand that we can lay complete trust and promise and faith in a completely free market, there are no completely free markets in the world almost in any case.

That would be one extreme. And of course, the other would be going completely in the direction of what Donald Trump considers to be the deep state that is trying to control everything. But one can be optimistic that within a variety of successes and failures, the direst concerns, the most pessimistic concerns, will be shunned aside, will be overtaken by the, at least the adequacy, if not the impressiveness of a recovery post-pandemic. And then the question is not to let that cause us to lapse into complacency. Oh, well, you know, the GTV is going up again, you know, maybe even though I plunged perhaps more in previous years than it's going up now,

But nevertheless, you know, the road is open. Let's plunge ahead. You know, the sky's the limit kind of thing. But it does seem to me that the economic conditions under which attention can be paid to that inequality of income are going to also facilitate the possibility that, yes, money will be spent. The $1.9 trillion approved just recently, unfortunately by only one party,

but successfully in the U.S. Congress, suggests that the United States has embarked on a massive experiment to see if, on the one hand, as some say, they'll generate massive inflation, it'll be bad, and others say, no, it'll generate massive demand, particularly as people at the lower extremities of the income distribution spend their boons, spend their gifts, right? So I think you can argue either way.

And Indonesia also has an opportunity. For example, take a look at the trickle-down effect from China of foreign investments that are concerned about the future of their investments in the PRC. It's been mainly to proportionally to Vietnam, as you know, some to Malaysia and some to Indonesia. But here, if the act, the law that Giacoli managed to get passed, remains as unpopular. Obviously, he was interested in attracting foreign investment, among other things. If it remains as unpopular among Indonesian nationalists, well, I think those nationalists should balance the good and the bad, right? The benefit and the detriment of trying to open the Indonesian economy more to an influx of a diverse kind of foreign investment, not just coming from China so that China's leverage over Indonesia will increase, but a more diverse and balanced range.

of sources. But yes, that could not only lift the economic pattern of growth in Indonesia, but it could also maintain the openness that Indonesia needs to foreign ideas, back and forth, exporting ideas, importing them, but not exporting censorship, or for that matter, importing censorship. And I'll just end on this note. I gave a talk recently for a colleague who's teaching a course on international relations. And, you know, as I said, I like to be provocative. I do. Maybe I like that a little bit too much. I don't know. Some people might say so.

So I decided to begin the talk by saying, you know, I just want to tell you people, there's students of obviously sitting at their desks, I wanted to tell you that this course of an introduction to international relations, basically IR 101, will cease to exist. You know, and the professor is looking at me, what does he have some kind of secret? Am I being fired? What's going on, right?

And the kids are just, what do you mean? It ceased to exist. And I said, because henceforth, there is no such thing. as international relations. It doesn't exist. There are intermestic relations, international, domestic, and domestic international relations. That's what this course should really focus on. Because the worst thing you want to do is to seal off the boundaries of a country so that it looks like a billiard ball,

you know, that's knocking into another billiard ball in the famous realist, you know, analogy or metaphor, as if countries were solid objects that collide with each other. You know, I mean, come on, that is metaphorical. The reality is far different. And particularly the way in which high technology for good or for evil bridges the gap between the national and the international, that's where the action is going to be. And that's where Indonesia needs to train a generation of young Indonesians who can manage the different priorities, very challenging, in the international sphere, in the domestic sphere, so that one serves the other and the other serves the one. Wow. Well, on that note, Don, I've got a lot more questions to ask, but I got no time.

Well, I've enjoyed this. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on to endgame, and let's look for a good future for all of us. All right. All right, thank you. Thank you so much. So much, we're coming again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're, that's our time our Don Emerson from Stanford. Thank you.

Endgame is a podcast by the School of Government and Public Policy Indonesia. The first Indonesian policy school to offer a full-time master's program in English and is a production of the cinema of Indonesia's award-winning entertainment and technology company. Oni Jamhari and Anga Duima Sasonko are our executive producers.

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