According to Dino Patti Djalal, founder of the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia, the country can become the great power of Asia only if has clear international strategy. Indonesia has strong and effective policy toward the US and ASEAN, but does not have coherent China policy. Now there are cities in Indonesia that are developing more intensively than China.
There is much happening around the world, including Trump presidency, rise of China, strategic rivalry in the Indian Ocean, changing relations between great powers. Considering this, the ASEAN leaders at the summit in Manila have to figure out responses to such challenges, to work out a strategy for the coming years, how to make ASEAN more grass rooted, to make the organization more people oriented. ASEAN is less ambitious in its integration than EU, but in any case, it needs to have more effective economic integration.
When it comes to Russia-Indonesia relations, they were always stable. The question is how to elevate them to a new level, to arrange a strategic partnership, to make engagements on certain issues more effective. Russia should be more involved in the regional architecture issues, he concluded.