10 - Competing Globalization: The Case of European Cooperation with Indonesia against International Terrorism

Summary

INTRODUCTION: INDONESIAN-EUROPEAN UNION RELATIONS

International terrorism is often seen as a counter-force against the Westernled form of globalization. Local terrorists from different places often mobilize together, find global common agendas to replace their local ones and start targeting global symbols of the current hegemonic form of globalization. At the same time international terrorism is also itself a phenomenon of the globalized world. It is a counter-hegemonic form of globalization. It mobilizes a global constituency by cleverly exploiting the international media, communicating by e-mail, telecommunications, SMS, and MMS services, and it uses global means of financial transfers to fund deadly operations. Similarly, international counter-terrorism fights globalized violence and represents the mainstream of global cooperation. In short, international terrorism and international counter-terrorism are two parts of a global battle between two very different coalitions applying global opportunities for the promotion of their goals against each other.

While international terrorism has historically drawn its motivation from many different global divisions, tensions and conflicts, the current mainstream of international terrorism gets its strength from the difficult relationship between the Western and the Muslim civilizations. Thus in the process of reducing violence and making globalization more inclusive, a crucial task is to find rules for co-existence between these two civilizations for a less violent relationship between the West and the Muslim world.

This chapter will tackle part of the challenge of creating cooperation between the West and the Muslim world by analysing two actors — Europe and Indonesia — who have an understanding of each other, and who both, can make claims of significant representation of the two civilizations. I will first look into inter-civilizational difficulties between Indonesia and the European Union (EU). The discussion will then look into the possibilities of finding models in Indonesian-European relations to provide a middle ground between the antagonistic positions of the West, as represented by the United States, and the Islamic world, as represented by some of the radical Middle Eastern states. Finally, a framework will be proposed that could enable a common Indonesian-European agenda for building a bulwark against inter-civilizational violence, by creating a platform for a more inclusive form of globalization.