U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta on July 22 and announced that the United States would resume cooperation with Indonesian special operations forces, known as Komando Pasukan Khusus, or Kopassus. While Washington will not offer training to the group immediately, its announcement of renewed ties removes the last obstacle to full military relations and amounts to a concrete step in the U.S. effort to reassert its presence in Southeast Asia. The United States cut off relations with the 5,000-member force, along with the rest of the Indonesian military, in 1999 due to the U.S. Leahy Law, which forbids the U.S. military from working with foreign military units linked to human rights abuses. (Some Kopassus members have been convicted by Indonesian military tribunals of human rights violations in putting down separatist movements, including the abduction of student activists in 1997-1998, the 2001 killing of Papuan activist Theys Eluay, and other abuses in Aceh and East Timor in 2002.) Since 2005, the U.S. State and Defense departments have revoked this ban and have begun strengthening ties with Indonesia's National Armed Forces (TNI), excluding Kopassus. Following Gates' June meeting with Indonesian Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro in Singapore, the two states hammered out a framework agreement on defense cooperation covering training, defense industry and procurement, and maritime security. The leaders of Kopassus and TNI persistently have been pushing for the ban to be lifted. In March 2010, Kopassus officers traveled to Washington to discuss the resumption of U.S. training. Washington responded by asking the Indonesian government to remove members of Kopassus who were convicted of human rights violations in order to reform the unit and allow the training to resume, and the Indonesian government complied by removing or relocating fewer than a dozen men from the unit. While human rights issues remain a concern — there are allegations of abuses as recently as 2009, and the U.S. Congress still has members opposed to renewing cooperation — both countries' leaders appear to have deemed the tactical and strategic value of resuming full military ties to be more important. The Pentagon will now begin to slowly re-engage Kopassus through a number of staff-level meetings. No immediate training is scheduled, and Washington has reserved the right to vet individual members of Kopassus before they participate in any U.S.-led training. Cooperation with Kopassus will significantly improve the United States' and its allies' counterterrorism and security efforts in the region. The U.S. State Department's Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program is already funding the Indonesian National Police unit Special Detachment 88 and its ongoing crackdown on terrorist groups. Kopassus is in the military hierarchy, completely separate from the police, which could give the United States and Indonesia another counterterrorism tool to complete the dismantling of remnants of Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad. But perhaps most important, the lifting of the ban will create a deeper channel of U.S. influence by virtue of the fact that Kopassus serves as a critical stepping stone for future Indonesian military leaders. (click here to enlarge image) While the U.S. decision was not unexpected, it reinforces the U.S. policy of re-engagement with Southeast Asia that began in 2009. The United States sees Indonesia as the linchpin of this strategy. Not only did the countries share strong ties during the Cold War, but Indonesia contains several important features: It lies across a large and strategically important stretch of geography, including the vital trade routes between the Indian and Pacific oceans; it has the largest economy and population of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states; and it has achieved a relatively high degree of political stability since its chaotic transition out of military dictatorship in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Hence the announcement by U.S. President Barack Obama and Yudhoyono in June to form a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, of which the aforementioned new defense agreement is only one component. For the United States, reopening ties with Indonesia's special operations forces is just one aspect of a relationship that will deepen on several fronts — namely security, business and investment — and serve as an opening for broader U.S. engagement in the region. Gates' visit to Indonesia was not the only visit this week to promote this Southeast Asia policy. After her visit to South Korea, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Hanoi to attend a meeting of foreign ministers of the ASEAN member states and to hold bilateral discussions with Vietnamese officials. During the visit, Clinton pledged a new American partnership with ASEAN while also commenting on a range of issues, from the ChonAn sinking to human rights in the region to Myanmar's upcoming October elections and its rumored nuclear cooperation with North Korea. Yet the U.S. re-engagement with Southeast Asia is by no means moving rapidly. While Washington has tried numerous times in recent decades to revive regional ties, other matters have taken higher priority, and it is worth noting that Obama has delayed a visit to Indonesia several times. Thus far in the latest round of re-engagement, the United States has few concrete changes to show for its efforts. For example, the Obama administration's much-touted review of U.S. policy toward Myanmar has achieved little. But each step is nevertheless a step, and Washington is envisioning bigger things. It is seeking direct and expanded relations with individual ASEAN states as well as with the organization as a whole, starting up the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a trading bloc to rival other Asian free trade agreements, and taking a greater part in regional initiatives, such as the East Asia Summit, in which the United States, once uninterested, is now seeking observer status. Even opening avenues of cooperation or communication with states where there were none before — such as through military exercises with Cambodia and state visits with Laos and Myanmar — could eventually develop into more substantial cooperation. From the U.S. point of view, this re-engagement is an attempt to make up for lost ground and repair existing ties in a region that lost importance after the Cold War. U.S. moves to reopen relations with Southeast Asia have caught the attention — and caused some anxiety — in Beijing. China is dramatically increasing its influence in the region through trade, investment and cooperation of various sorts, including with Indonesia, and a competition between Beijing and Washington over the region has consequently emerged. It is not a coincidence that the Kopassus commander, Maj. Gen. Lodewijk Paulus, recently suggested that the unit was looking at developing closer ties with the Chinese military if the U.S. training ban was not removed. For China, Washington's Southeast Asia push, not to mention the U.S. presence in South Asia and Central Asia, is clear evidence that the United States is initiating an accelerating policy of containment. China views U.S. efforts to form closer ties with Vietnam as a direct challenge because Vietnam has a historic rivalry with China and has vigorously opposed China's increasingly aggressive claims on sovereignty over the South China Sea. Beijing places great strategic importance on the southern sea because it affords China the positioning needed to secure vital overseas supply lines, and therefore any threats to this strategy — especially those supported by the United States — are alarming. Beijing is also suspicious about Washington's sudden desire to join the East Asia Summit, a security grouping that Beijing viewed as an opportunity to form linkages with other states in its region without U.S. oversight, influence or interference. Media reports from the ongoing ASEAN foreign ministerial summit claimed Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi's statement on the issue was unenthusiastic. Beijing's concerns are rational given its interests. In particular, it has a full awareness of the challenges it faces in the coming years. Its economic model is reaching a peak, and it has massive wealth and regional disparities to manage as it attempts to deepen reforms meant to create self-sufficient economic growth. The problem of maintaining stability while undergoing wrenching restructuring is complicated by political uncertainty as the Communist Party approaches a generational leadership transition in 2012. It is with these concerns in mind that Beijing is observing U.S. moves in the region with some anxiety (witness also its vocal resistance to U.S. military exercises with South Korea in response to the ChonAn incident), which is only amplified by the knowledge of the increased flexibility the United States will have after it reduces its military commitments in the Middle East.