Description
Since the 1970s, the European Union (previously European Community) has pursued a balance between values-based norms and strategic pragmatism in trade and economic relations with ASEAN countries. This tension between interests and values was particularly visible in the EC’s relations with Indonesia under the Suharto regime. On the one hand, the regime’s anti-communist stance was strategically and economically significant to the Western bloc during the Cold War. On the other hand, the 32-year military dictatorship, its domestic human rights violations and its invasion of East Timor, directly contravened international norms and principles upheld by EC. This paper examines this tension between values and interest in European Community-Indonesia relations in the 1970s and 1980s, drawing upon government documents, newspaper articles and interviews. This analysis demonstrates that the EC, under pressure to uphold its normative values, initially sheltered its contradictory strategic preference by embedding its economic and trade relations with Indonesia under the multilateral mechanisms of cooperation with ASEAN. The EC’s expansion to new members, and the decline of the Soviet Union, however, gradually tipped the balance of EC policy towards values. This pattern follows existing accounts of the European Union’s “Principled Pragmatism” in global affairs, as it follows a pragmatic way based on a careful evaluation of the costs and benefits of its decisions. While tensions between human rights and economic interest remain contested in the EU-Indonesia relationship today, this historical case study demonstrates their long-historical roots, and theoretically enriches our understanding of “Principled Pragmatism.”
