Word: indonesia
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Obama's upcoming visit to Indonesia is being heralded as a homecoming. Millions of Indonesians consider Barry Soetoro--he was once known by his Indonesian stepfather's surname--to be an honorary citizen. But even as Obama prepares to take a trip down memory lane, the fate of his boyhood likeness underscores his--and America's--growing image problem across Asia. Soon after the statue of young Barry was moved, U.S. diplomats were busy in Beijing repairing relations with the world's next superpower. Meanwhile, Japan, for decades the key U.S. ally in Asia, is calling for a more equal...
...third biggest consumer of American goods, followed by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the 10-country bloc that under U.S. prodding was founded in the 1960s as a bulwark against communism. The global recovery from the Great Recession has been led by China, India and Indonesia. Asia would like to see its efforts appreciated...
...Indonesia itself deserves no less. The 17,000-island archipelago boasts the world's biggest Muslim population and is also its third largest democracy, demonstrating that Islam and political freedom are not incompatible. Back when Obama lived in Jakarta, Indonesia was ruled by a dictator and mired in poverty. Today it is a member of the G-20 club of the wealthiest economies. "Foreigners used to think of Indonesia as a place of natural disasters," says Gita Wirjawan, the head of the nation's investment board. "But now they realize that this is a $550 billion economy that...
That is partly because Indonesia has done well at tackling extremism. The vast majority of its people practice a moderate form of Islam, but a small band of homegrown extremists is wedded to a bloody jihad; in 2002, for instance, the bombing of two Bali nightclubs killed 202 people. But of late, Indonesia has had impressive success netting hundreds of suspected extremists and re-educating youths susceptible to the call of militant clerics...
...Washington a bracing lack of sentimentality toward London. David Manning, a former British ambassador to the U.S., told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee that President Obama "comes with a very different perspective. He is an American who grew up in Hawaii, whose foreign experience was of Indonesia and who had a Kenyan father. The sentimental reflexes, if you like, are not there." The committee concluded - and many observers of U.S.-U.K. relations agree - that Britain can only benefit from shedding those reflexes...