AFTER EXECUTIONS, AUSTRALIA RECALLS AMBASSADOR TO INDONESIA:

Indonesia executed eight people accused of drug trafficking, including two Australians, as part of President Joko Widodo’s “war on drugs”. Australian officials had made personal appeals for clemency from Indonesia’s government, but it all came to naught yesterday, when a firing squad carried out the state’s sentence and shot the convicts dead.

The official response from Australia was carefully measured outrage. . . .

The saga illustrates some of the problems in Australia’s relationship with its giant and increasingly powerful neighbor.
In Indonesia, colonialism remains a very live issue, and Australia’s support for East Timor’s independence has been a sore spot. Some also fear that the restive, mineral-rich Indonesian half of New Guinea might also some day come into play, and that Australia might find it convenient to meddle. And Indonesia, a mostly Muslim country with increasingly conservative social mores, shares the abhorrence of many of its neighbors for drug trafficking, and is deeply committed to tough drug laws.

Australia knows that it needs good relations with its neighbor—for one thing, to help control what could otherwise be a tsunami of illegal immigration by desperate boat people—and Australian politicians of both of the major parties work hard to keep the relationship strong. But Australian public opinion sometimes chafes at what this means.

Far from fading away, these problems are likely in some ways to grow more serious. Indonesian Islam has traditionally taken a relaxed view on many social issues; that is beginning to change as more conservative strains of Islam gain ground. And the Indonesians, with the world’s fourth largest population and a rapidly growing economy, aren’t always averse to throwing their weight around on the diplomatic scene.

Add Australia to the list of nations worldwide that will want nuclear weapons, now that the United States seems an unreliable ally.

Related thoughts here.