The remarkable destiny of Megawati

By Thomas Plate

The problem with moral purity of the political kind is that it can produce consequences of the most immoral kind.

That will be the case in Indonesia if the United States adopts what would in effect be a hands-off policy, as many Western human rights groups are advising.

Such a course would prolong Indonesia's agony and cause many more deaths than if the United States is properly involved. Commendably, the Bush administration appears to be on top of this Asian crisis and understands the grave issues at stake.

Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, is now at a crossroads. Lady-long-in-waiting Megawati Sukarnoputri, tapped by parliament last week to succeed mystical Muslim cleric Abdurrahman Wahid as president, should in fact have been president for the past two years anyway. In 1999, she garnered more votes than any other politician, only to be outmaneuvered for the job in the final turn by Wahid.

Now this untested daughter of Sukarno, post-colonial Indonesia's first maximum leader, inherits the ironical destiny of being drafted by her countrymen to save the very modern nation that her father founded.

Will this taciturn but well-connected member of parliament prove to be the strong-willed Margaret Thatcher of Southeast Asia, the needed Indonesian iron lady? Or will Megawati, in the words of unkind critics, be a "Mini-wati"?

Among the keys to her ability to succeed will be the support not only of her own people but of the biggest players in the Asia-Pacific region. Japan still has enormous investments there. China is well aware of widespread anti-Chinese tensions within that largely Muslim society and would gain stature by helping the new government keep its balance.

And the last thing the United States wants in geopolitically pivotal Southeast Asia is an anarchic archipelago of thousands of islands, near some of the world's most vital sea lanes, self-destructing and spilling over onto the shores of key U.S. allies Australia, the Philippines and Singapore.

That's why the Bush administration is right not to hide behind the apron of moral correctness and look the other way. Indeed, it appears poised to ask Congress to drop the well-intentioned but ill-advised ban on U.S. military aid to Jakarta, and is working to reconnect with the country's military in ways that are consistent with our own values.

The military-to-military ban was initially put into place by lawmakers under pressure from human-rights lobbies upholding the morally pure view that the military's past excesses invalidate any future effort to work with it.

This is a touchy issue, of course, because the Indonesian armed forces have indeed often proved a mechanism of rough law-and-order, most notoriously for repression in East Timor, scheduled for independence next year. But while it is true that the military must not be given free rein to levy truncheon law, it can hardly be cut out if Indonesia is to avert the far more massive bloodshed of national disintegration.

Sure, the military must be properly supervised by the civilian Megawati government, just as true internal economic reform must be a condition for further aid from the International Monetary Fund. But the purist human-rights position — that the past misdeeds of the Indonesian army irredeemably dirty the hands of any nation that would help — is a formula for an Asian Yugoslavia of roiling ethnic revenge.

Oft-exemplary Western human-rights organizations, from the luxury of their well-evolved democracies, don't understand the wrenching ethical choice here. One New York-based human-rights spokesman put it this way: "Any re-engagement with the military at this time would severely undercut reform efforts."

In actuality, the opposite is the case. Failure to re-engage the Indonesian military will doom economic reform for this nation of 206 million. And many more people will die if the army, historically central to the cohesion of this sprawling, ethnically diverse country, is not actively involved in the nation rebuilding.

The unpleasant truth is that, no matter what happens, either many will die in Indonesia or only some. A hands-off policy will almost certainly lead to the former; a pragmatic policy of Western engagement could well help mitigate Indonesia's ongoing agony and loss of life.

The penchant for morally pure foreign-policy solutions can lead only to large-scale tragedy.

Thomas Plate, a columnist for The Honolulu Advertiser and the South China Morning Post, is a professor at UCLA.