AJC’s Asia Pacific Institute (API) strives to help Israel, the U.S., and the global Jewish community strengthen relations with Indonesia, the fourth-largest country in the world and the country with the world’s largest Muslim population.
President Trump’s recent comments, suggesting some openness to revisiting the decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is potentially good news for U.S. economic and geopolitical interests.
Religion is playing an increasingly pervasive role, threatening Indonesia’s national ideology, a tradition of pluralism, inclusiveness, moderation, and tolerance that is known as Pancasila. This trend is displayed most dramatically when terrorists strike at churches, but has been manifest in the political realm for some time, and very clearly in the important 2017 Jakarta local election.