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How to approach the protracted Myanmar crisis
Any objectives ASEAN has set out to achieve will not be possible unless the conflicting parties sit and talk to each other.
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A border wall between China and Myanmar with barbed wire and a Chinese national flag is pictured on Jan. 14 in Ruili, west Yunnan province. The city of Ruili is slowly creaking back to life as China ditches its zero-tolerance COVID-19 strategy after years of strict lockdowns and other grueling restrictions. (AFP/Noel Celis)
In her annual foreign policy speech on Jan. 11, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi outlined the general direction of Indonesia’s foreign policy for the rest of 2023. While she touched on a range of issues in her speech, including last year’s achievements, it is important to look at how Indonesia plans to approach the Myanmar cause.
It is this problem that has received a lot of attention from the region and beyond. Moreover, expectations are very high that Indonesia, which assumes ASEAN chairmanship this year, would be able to produce a breakthrough on the current impasse.
It is clear that the first challenge that Minister Retno needed to address is the management of expectation. She stated that while Indonesia’s chairmanship would pay serious attention to finding solutions to the Myanmar crisis, Indonesia would not allow other equally important points on ASEAN’s agenda to be held hostage by this problem. In other words, Indonesia’s chairmanship of ASEAN is not going to be a single-issue chairmanship.
Indonesia’s approach to the Myanmar problem, as outlined by Minister Retno, has two important elements.
First, in order to have a coordinated and coherent approach, a special office of special envoy will be set up, led by Minister Retno herself. Second, as the five-point consensus (5PC) continues to be the basis of any approach toward the Myanmar problem, Indonesia emphasized the need to pay attention to the importance of all-inclusive dialogues.
That is why, in her speech, Minister Retno reiterated that Indonesia will “engage all stakeholders” in order “to facilitate national dialogue”, which is mandated by the 5PC (objective no. 2). The other two key objectives mandated by the 5PC are cessation of violence (objective no. 1) and the delivery of humanitarian assistance (objective no. 4).
