IN THE hallowed halls of Jakarta’s foreign-policy circles, a quiet rebellion is brewing against the “Strategic Trader” doctrine. Farouk Abdullah Alwyni, an economist at the Center for Islamic Studies in Finance, Economics, and Development (CISFED), has lobbed a rhetorical grenade at the government’s shiny new toy: the Board of Peace (BoP). His argument is as simple as it is stinging: Jakarta should stop chasing the high-stakes transactionalism of the BoP and return to the multilateral embrace of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
For Mr. Alwyni, the OIC is not just a club; it is the only forum with the “international legitimacy” and a historical mandate that has placed Palestine at the top of its agenda since its inception. By pivoting toward the Washington-centric BoP, Indonesia risks trading its moral inheritance for a seat at a table where the rules are written in greenbacks, not international law.
The Legitimacy Deficit
The BoP, chaired with characteristic bravado by Donald Trump, is seen by critics like Alwyni as a “poros utama” (main axis) that might be too pragmatic for its own good. While the BoP talks of reconstruction funds and stabilization personnel, the OIC represents a collective moral front. Indonesia, Alwyni argues, possesses the “moral and political capital” to lead a consolidation of the Islamic world—a role that a mere “Board” of international powerbrokers can never fulfill.
Strategic Traders vs. Moral Mediators
The dilemma for President Prabowo’s administration is acute. The BoP offers a direct line to American investment and a pragmatic, if cynical, path to regional “stability.” The OIC, meanwhile, offers the slow, grinding machinery of traditional diplomacy. To Alwyni, the choice is clear: you don’t find the soul of a nation in a “Buku Kas” (ledger book); you find it at the altar of long-standing international solidarity.
The bottom line is that while Jakarta might be looking for a shortcut to “Peace” through the BoP’s gilded doors, Alwyni warns that the long road through the OIC is the only one that doesn’t end in a moral dead-end. It’s an old-school critique for a new-school administration that is increasingly finding that in the world of global power, you can’t always have your cake and eat it too—especially when the cake is being served in Washington.
Further reading: The Washington Gambit: Jakarta’s Pragmatism on Eroding Ground
