 Good morning. I'm Ernie Bauer, the senior advisor and director of the Southeast Asia program here at CSIS and we're honored to have the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, the world's fourth largest country and third largest democracy. Scott Marcell here with us. Good morning, Scott. Good to see you, Ernie. Could you tell us a little bit about the U.S.-Indonesia comprehensive partnership? What's the status of it and what's working, what's not? Well, as you know, Ernie, it was launched when President Obama visited in November 2010. There's really two fundamental ideas. It's really, A, to get our governments and the habits of working together more in a broad range of areas. And two, and I think this is increasingly important over time, it's really building up relations between our societies, you know, institutionally, universities, university scientists to scientists, business to business, very importantly. I think it's going very well. It's actually had really very tangible results starting with things like Peace Corps Agreement that have brought the Peace Corps back. Significant progress, I think, on education where we'd seen the number of Indonesian students studying in the U.S. fall sharply. And we're on the rebound, although we have a lot of work to do. And that's important, both, I think, to help Indonesia get more well-educated students, but also because that builds a long-term constituency for the relationship. It's going well. A lot of progress in health, science, technology, the military-to-military relationships grown and strengthened quite a lot. Probably the toughest area we found and the one that we need to work on the most is business. That's interesting. Let me ask the business question then next. It's a nice segue. It seems to me that the business community, the world business community, has found Indonesia. The herd is there and they're asking, you know, what is this? How do we work with Indonesia? So there's a lot of interest. You see some new investments being announced. At the same time, it seems like Indonesia might not be ready for all of that world interest. And some of the trade, a bunch of trade issues and some new laws that investors are questioning. What's the situation from your perspective? Well, you described it very well. I mean, on the one, I think people are looking at the size of the Indonesian market with 240 million people. Six and a half percent growth, a lot of dynamism and, you know, very good demographics, which means I think a good outlook for growth continuing. Really good macro situation, debt to GDP barely over 20 percent. So on the macroeconomic side, it's great. And they are seeing a lot of other investors pour in huge opportunities in infrastructure and in consumer markets, etc. So that's attracting people. I think rightly, and I think American companies should be looking at Indonesia. On the other hand, Indonesia remains a difficult place to do business. It's, you know, 129th on the ease of doing business index of the World Bank. And recently, as you said, there have been some regulations trotted out that we think are closing the markets in some areas. And that's unhelpful, as well as some new regulations on the investment side that I think have a goal of trying to increase the amount of value added that's being done in Indonesia. Our concern and my concern is that in doing that, they may actually discourage investment. So I think it's, as usual, it's a bit of a mixed picture on that side. Are we out of sync with the Indonesians on trade? You know, I know the Americans are thinking about what we can do on a U.S.-Azian basis on trade and engagement right now. We've had discussions here lately. The Indonesians have sort of signaled, I think, no FTAs in the near term or TPP. What is their attitude on joining these regional trade agreements? Well, what they've said, of course, they've signed up as part of ASEAN to a handful of FTAs. There's been some negative reaction among in the business community in Indonesia to what they see is a lot of imports coming in. And so I think a little reluctance to charge ahead with new FTAs or to join TPP. That said, they also recognize that they're increasingly dependent on international trade as their exports have been shooting up. And so I think we have to be a little bit patient here. And usually countries that are enjoying a rapid increase in exports over time, that does change their attitude about the importance of international trade. And I think that's what we have to try to reinforce. Let's turn to foreign policy, if we could. The foreign minister has said he'd like to sort of avoid a new Cold War dynamic. Well, what is the Indonesian reaction to the US announcement of a pivot back to Asia or rebalancing, whichever you prefer? Well, the Indonesians are pleased to see a stepped up US engagement in the region without a doubt. As you said, they, like many other countries, don't want to see increased tension. Well, neither do we, for that matter. So in that sense, we're in line with the Indonesians. I think they have looked to see that this pivot isn't just on the security side. And so we've been talking to them and explaining that, in fact, it's not. It's there's a little bit on the security side, but there's there's trade. There's diplomacy. They're showing up and engaging with real regional forums. And overall, I think they really do welcome that. Could you say a word about the human rights situation and religious freedom? There's there's been some news lately about the Christian Muslim conflicts and even within Muslim sex, the Ahmadiyya, right? Could you comment a little bit on? Sure, I'd say a couple of things. First, I mean, I think one thing to keep in mind is that the human rights situation in Indonesia, while still has its challenges, is dramatically better than it was a decade ago. And I think it's important to to keep that in that context in mind, even if we shouldn't use it as an excuse for for for failures in some areas. What I see is in some cases some human rights problems, both with police and and the military on a very localized level, individual soldiers and police sometimes carrying out human rights violations. On the issue of religious tolerance, the longer I'm there, the more I think there are problems of religious tolerance. But, you know, that's not unique to Indonesia. As being a big democracy, I think the bigger challenge really, in a way, is rule of law. You know, in our country, we have some intolerant people, too. But the laws are pretty clear and enforcement of those laws is pretty good. Indonesia still, I think, is trying to find the right balance as a new democracy in enforcing the law without being too heavy handed. I think what we've seen in some cases is actually a lack of willingness or or ability to protect certain groups. And it's not always religious. Sometimes it's ethnic or just different groups fighting over land or something where I think Indonesia is still struggling to figure out how to enforce the law with the appropriate use of force sometimes. And I think occasionally there's too much and occasionally there may be not be there may be unwillingness to engage. And as a result of that, you get some some violence. Yep. What's the status of Indonesian democracy? You know, they seem to be the big boat that is turned and really moved in that direction. What's the what do you see? Well, again, I think it's undeniable that they've had this remarkable democratic transformation over the last really almost almost 15 years now. And there's tremendous freedom, freedom of the press, civil societies, very active elections, you know, there's tons of elections and they're credible. So I think the big picture is very positive. As you would expect, there are challenges in terms of building the institutions for good governance. And I think that's that's really the challenge. I think most Indonesians would even in the government would say that. So improving the court system, which is still, you know, sometimes subject to a fair amount of criticism, improving the security forces, including the police, so that people have faith and they're able to enforce or implement rule of law. I think it's very important and improving the ability of governance. It's critically important at the local level with decentralization. And of course, a huge challenge remains corruption. Although there have been a lot of people, a lot of senior officials thrown in prison because of corruption, it still remains a serious problem. A lot of work to do down there. Thanks for spending some time with us here in Washington and good luck on your missions. Thanks, Ernie.