“The world America made for us is passing away. Its place is being taken by a new and harder post-American world, and we are at a loss to know what to make of it.”

In another publication, Hugh White states what others have been writing in Pearls & Irritations since the assaults on democracy and the rule of law were launched last year by Trump Two.

The wisdom of ANU’s Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies is weighty enough to withstand the storms of simplistic slurs like “anti-American hatred” or “left-wing wokes” that battered earlier prophets.

White’s views might amass enough energy in Canberra to move policy forward – powered in part by his forecast of change:

“A lot more of us may be starting to understand … the truth of Paul Keating’s mantra that Australia must look for its security in Asia, not from Asia.”

Embedded in Keating’s 1994 Sydney speech that White quotes is the almost hallowed, but now hollow, line that “no country is more important to Australia than Indonesia”.

This was followed by a 1996 overseas address, elbowing Australians to become Asia-literate and embrace trade and friendship. Both nations had to “recognise the reality that neither Australia nor Indonesia threatens the other and that we have common interests in the stability and security of the region around us".

Most of these hopes crumpled when dictator and Keating admirer President Soeharto quit in 1998. Successive federal governments since have been frightened into inaction by Indonesia’s turbulence.

Co-operation was also sent to the tip by Jakarta discovering a supposed puppet was prepared to take a moral stand against the Republic’s vicious reaction to the 1999 East Timor Referendum. The 80% “Yes” vote yanked the tiny country out of the “Unitary State”, a term as holy in Indonesia as Gallipoli is in Australia.

Another reason for the slump in Australian concern is domestic – the waning interest in Indonesian matters since its people installed democracy at the turn of the century. Australian applause turned to horror with the 2002 Bali Bombing and the assault on the Jakarta Embassy two years later.

The tolerant and progressive Indonesians in Keating’s last-century vision had been deposed by radical killers. It was time for a less benign approach to our neighbour and a move away from the polytheistic and politically complex states of Southeast Asia.

Easier to refresh ties with the Anglo-Saxons 16,000km distant in the North Atlantic. We were assured they remained “great and powerful friends”; we were wrong.

Now they’re the untrustworthies, and it’s time to remember the folks next door. Whether the latter now want our courtship is doubtful because they show little interest in us apart from as a supplier of meat and wheat, and images of cuddly koalas.

Keating’s dreams of a polyglot Australia are being assassinated by frugal tertiary institution administrators while academics look elsewhere, bothering about values, not valuations.

Last century, 22 Australian universities were teaching Indonesian. By 2022, that number was just a dozen.

Uni research claims government campaigns to stop the slide “have missed the mark (because) a focus on the economic and strategic importance of Indonesia rarely resonates with students".

“This is because these narratives are too esoteric and future-based for teenagers, who are often more swayed by youth and popular culture.”

Indonesia is predicting it will seize regional leadership as the world’s fourth most populous and economically influential state by 2045 (the centenary of Indonesian independence).

This arrogance is now being kneed by reality: state revenue has tumbled by 12% in the first third of this year, partly because of inefficient tax gathering and wild optimism. Trade is also declining, with exports snared by US tariff policy flip-flops.

Australian legacy media’s interest in Indonesia depends on shock and awes of Ozzies arrested in Bali for alleged drug crimes that carry the unused death penalty. Agency reports of natural disasters, like volcanic eruptions and landslides swallowing villages, are a staple.

These space-fillers fit the last-century archetype of Asia — exotic, primitive and chaotic — needing no special knowledge to grasp a conclusion and don a bias.

The complexities of a rapidly evolving multiethnic archipelago of more than 280 million — 11 of them to one of us — are usually left to ponderous Oz-based academics (White is an exception) rather than costly on-site journos to actualise.

Into this gap has marched Beijing now actively engaging with Jakarta at a depth far beyond our wee dips into small innovative projects. Even far-away Palais Bourbon is more involved than adjacent Australia; French President Emmanuel Macron spent more than two days in Jakarta last month with Brigitte eclipsing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s lone 24-hour dash.

Petty points maybe – though not in cultures where partners and pomp draw far more readers than communiques.

As defence minister, cashiered former general Prabowo Subianto turned poli was in Beijing before his election as president last year courting renminbi – and getting applause for his nation’s solid support for the Palestinians.

(Indonesia is almost 90% Sunni Muslim, the same faith followed by most Palestinians. It has no diplomatic ties with Israel.)

All this is a fearful distance from the US pro-Israel position. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has called on Asian allies to boost defence spending to 5% of GDP “to counter China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific”.

This warmonger’s arrogance — also bowled at Australia but batted away by Albanese — suggests the former TV presenter is a poster boy for Trump’s ego. To be gracious, maybe he’s just plain crass.

For Hegseth’s gratuitous advice to be realised, Indonesia would need to lift its US$175 billion annual defence budget 16 times, dump its free meals for school kids program and scrap or shrink education and health spending.

Although there’s widespread hostility towards the influence of ethnic Chinese citizens, the nation China is seen more as a friendly bank than a military threat.

Hegseth — and our right-wing Australian Strategic Policy Institute which has an office in Washington though not in Jakarta — seem blinkered by the awkward truth: China is Indonesia’s biggest business partner, with annual bilateral trade topping US$130 billion.

Chinese investors know where to slip the envelopes to gatekeepers, but these practices deter ethical Western businesses who are told by Albanese to help Indonesia get ahead.

It’s already there and needs no sanctimonious cents from Down Under when it gets megabucks from China.

It would help the bemused if Professor White’s essay could include this footnote:

“Aussies need years of intelligent study to come within a whiff of understanding Indonesia – a nation of passions and contradictions, nothing like our traditional allies.”

For peace to prevail, let’s try a new slogan: It doesn’t help the arms industries, but “getting to know you” sure beats “might is right”.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.

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