Question: Politicians, experts and the public differ on how they view Indonesia's achievements in the reform process. Your comment? Answer: Most prominent have been the political reforms: Four constitutional amendments, decentralization, laws on elections, and so on. But how will these work out in practice? That is still unclear. Economic reforms, by comparison, have lagged. And what about corruption? Perhaps the least progress has been made on that front. What are key areas that governments after Soeharto have yet to deal with in the transition process? One could make a list. But another response would be to note the gap between the laws already on the books and their implementation. It will not be easy. But doing so will be crucial for success in the transition process. How would the results of next year's elections affect the process of reform? Optimistically, one can picture a healthy concentration of legitimacy at the top of the system, enabling decisive remedial policies. Pessimistically, one can picture a struggle between a popularly mandated presidency and a popularly mandated legislature to the detriment of effective policies. I slant toward optimism. I doubt that the next president and the next DPR (legislature) will be eager to repeat the circumstances in which president Abdurrahman Wahid was removed from office. Whatever happens, 2004 will be a "Year of Voting Frequently" -- at least two elections (April, July) and possibly three (if a second-round presidential vote in September becomes necessary). Let's hope for the best. What are the basic conditions for Indonesia to succeed with reform and to bring the country of 220 million people out of the current crises? When I was in Jakarta in August, the answer I heard most often from Indonesians was: Leadership. Could there be a whiff of nostalgia for Soeharto's leadership in that response? Among the multiple conditions for success in overcoming the current difficulties, one of the most important will be the actual performance of democratically chosen governments, including the one scheduled to emerge from next year's elections. It is, unfortunately, possible that democracy as a method can succeed but wind up discredited by the failure of resulting governments to provide security, ensure justice, reduce poverty, and so on. And there is a sense in which the competitive electoral process itself tends to raise public expectations as to what can and should be done by government. But I am hopeful. Experience of governmental transition often suggests two options, either success and an emergence of democracy, or failure and a return to a militaristic regime. How do you see this? There are not "always two options" in such transitions. Within the category "democracy" alone there are many types and gradations. As for militarism, it is striking how much the image and therefore potential leverage of the military has changed from the immediate post-Soeharto period. Could it be that by not intervening blatantly, army leaders have built up enough credit to allow for subtler forms of influence? Not to mention the more security-conscious atmosphere since Sept. 11, 2001 and Oct. 12, 2002 (terrorist attacks in the U.S. and in Bali respectively). Interesting, too, is the increasing mention of men with army backgrounds as possible presidential candidates next year. But just as democracy is internally diverse, so should we avoid putting everyone who has had an army career in a single box labeled "militarist." I live in California. The voters of my state just fired one governor and hired another. I may be naive, but I hope that as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger will not treat complex and intractable socioeconomic problems in the same way that the Terminator treated enemy robots! In any case, it is far too early to predict the outcome of any of next year's national elections in either Indonesia or the U.S. Whatever the result, let's hope it's for the better in both countries.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Even here in Indonesia, where there is a strong tradition of tolerance, there is a war going on between radicals and moderates for Muslim hearts and minds. You can see that war in the police armed with automatic rifles, manning anti-vehicle barriers in front of my hotel and every other large Western-linked building in Jakarta. In August, Islamist terrorists blew up a suicide bomb in front of the Marriott Hotel here and are threatening to hit a long list of targets that includes schools attended by Western children. These are the same bombers who killed more than 200 people in Bali last November. The war is being fought on Indonesia's campuses, particularly secular universities where students are intrigued by radical Islam. Activists from Indonesia's liberal Islamic movement disdainfully call them "born-again Muslims'' and hold provocative campus forums with titles like ``There is no such thing as an Islamic state.'' At a religious boarding school in Yogjakarta, one of tens of thousands of pesantran spread across this vast country, they teach that the Koran is to be understood, not just rotely chanted in Arabic. "We are not frozen in those Koranic verses,'' director Tabiq Ali said. ``Interpretation depends on our own thinking.'' You can even see the war in a steamy best-seller about a Muslim woman whose faith was shattered by the hypocrisy of Islamic radicals who preached righteousness while sleeping with her. The subject of the book, a Yogjakarta university student, now fears retribution. This is a war we cannot afford to see lost. Indonesia is not only the largest Muslim nation in the world, but it could also become a base for radical Islam to spread throughout Southeast Asia. Alternately, Indonesia's struggling democracy could set an example for others in the Muslim world. "You have all the ingredients that could make this place the first Muslim majority democracy that works,'' says Sidney Jones, a leading expert on Islamic terrorism in Southeast Asia. ``And you have all the dark forces eager to push Indonesia in the opposite direction. The question is where does it come out.'' What can the United States do in this war? So far our efforts have focused almost entirely on aiding the pursuit of Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian terrorist group linked to al-Qaida. Initially, the government denied it had a home-grown problem and was wary of seeming to follow American dictates. But after the shock of the Bali and Marriott bombings, the authorities have captured many of the terrorists and successfully prosecuted them. Ultimately, however, Indonesia needs to build a modern society. While the rest of Asia, from India to Vietnam, vibrates with the energy brought by the information technology revolution, Indonesia feels like a stagnant backwater. Its economy limps along, plagued by poverty and corruption. The key is a woefully underfunded educational system. Unlike Pakistan's madrassah system, the religious schools are integrated into the state system, and many offer a secular curriculum along with religious teaching. But in the pesantran that I visited, one in a city center and the other in the countryside, I found classrooms that offered little more than whitewashed walls and wooden desks. Computers are few in number and science labs primitive, if even existing. State schools are better equipped but still backward. Why not wire every school to the Internet, build science labs and, most importantly, train teachers? A recent report on U.S.-Indonesia relations by the U.S.-Indonesia Society and Stanford University's Asia-Pacific Research Center urged a significant effort to fund education. President Bush picked up on that idea, announcing a U.S. educational aid program during his October stopover here. But he alarmed Indonesians by tying the initiative to the war on terror. The U.S. ambassador had to make the rounds assuring Indonesians that the U.S. was not out to dictate curriculum in its religious schools. More troubling is the pathetic amount of money he offered -- most of it funds shifted from existing programs -- only $157 million over 6 years. Says former Ambassador Paul Cleveland, who heads the U.S.-Indonesia Society: "You would get more democracy out of $1 billion spent in Indonesia than $20 billion spent in Iraq.''

President Bush's week-long swing through six Asian nations is long overdue. Despite being home to half the world's population and the globe's most dynamic economies, Asia has received scant attention from this administration. Unfortunately the president has only one subject on his agenda -- the war on terrorism. The president is touching lightly, if at all, on the other issues that matter most to this region -- economic globalization, China's growing presence, and political instability fed by economic disparities. This is not surprising. The Bush administration doesn't seem to think much about global economic issues. And when it does speak, as it has recently on the issue of currency manipulation by China and Japan, the administration's policy is confusing and contradictory. In Asia, the single-minded focus on terrorism leaves an opening for others -- China first of all -- who are more in tune with the region's concerns. "I've never seen a time when the U.S. has been so distracted and China has been so focused,'' Ernest Bower, the head of the U.S. business council for Southeast Asia, told a business magazine.

Regional economic bloc

Faced with multiple challenges, the countries of Southeast Asia have accelerated plans to create a regional economic bloc like the European Union. The Chinese, followed closely by India and Japan, are embracing the idea, proposing the creation of a vast East Asian free trade area that would encompass nearly 2 billion people, but notably not include the United States. When national security adviser Condoleezza Rice briefed reporters on the president's trip, the focus was almost entirely on security issues. Bush's itinerary is designed to highlight the nations working closely with the United States to combat Al-Qaida-linked Islamist terror groups in Southeast Asia -- Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. Or to reward those who are backing the war in Iraq -- Japan and Australia. Even at the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok, Bush plans to `"stress the need to put security at the heart of APEC's mission because prosperity and security are inseparable,'' Rice said. No one can argue with that basic proposition. The example she cited was the terrorist bombing a year ago in Bali, Indonesia, which shut down tourism, a vital source of income for Indonesians. But let's not look at that link through the wrong end of the telescope. We need to grapple with the poverty and income inequality in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-populated nation, which feeds growing Islamic radicalism.

China drives growth

East Asia has largely emerged from the financial crisis that swept through this region in 1997-98 and sent countries such as Indonesia into economic collapse. Economic growth should pick up to almost 6 percent next year, the World Bank has predicted. But much of this is driven by China's rapid growth, which is in turn sparking a sharp rise in trade within the region, much of it between countries in the region and China. These countries look warily on this rising giant. China is sucking away foreign investment from places like Silicon Valley that used to flow to them, and with it, jobs. At the same time, progress toward a global free market that ensures fair competition has stalled. The world trade talks in Cancun last month collapsed in rancor, and the United States seems content now to pursue its own bilateral trade deals with favored countries such as Singapore and Australia.

10-nation association

This has encouraged the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations to accelerate plans to create a European Union-style economic community. The Chinese sent a huge, high-powered delegation led by their premier to their recent meeting, signed a friendship treaty with the group and pledged to negotiate a free-trade zone with the group. "The Chinese are moving in in a big way,'' says Stanford University expert Donald K. Emmerson. Where is the United States in all this? "We're outside, and our businesses are going to be outside,'' says Brookings Institution global economic expert Lael Brainard. "The Bush administration needs to get a handle on this.'' If it doesn't, the United States will wake up one day from its infatuation with unilateralism and return to Asia to find that the furniture has been rearranged and the locks have been changed.