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Book Reviews567 contemporary Thailand, and about whom many other Thai observers will no doubt write. Alex M Mutebi Public Policy Programme National University of Singapore Researching Indonesia: A Guide to Political Analysis. By Gerald L. Houseman. Lewiston, New York, USA: The Edward Mellen Press, 2004. Hardcover: 186pp. If the current U.S. malaise in the Middle East represents in one sense the inability ofpolicymakers to go beyond their ethnocentric worldview since September 11, 2001 then in another sense another abiding concern is whether U.S. foreign policy prescriptions in the future will be imaginative enough to secure its interests as well make the world a safer place. With U.S. interests so wide in scope and its interactions in an ever changing world so complex, will the next generation of foreign policy advisors be equipped adequately to provide sound advice to future administrations? The empirical evidence is worrying. Area studies pre-September 11 had collapsed significantly since the 1980s and these worrying trends have accelerated since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, in view ofthe apparent inability ofU.S. policymakers to comprehend the complex world around them, if ever a Senate inquiry was convened to assess the U.S. responses post-September 11, an urgent recommendation should be that Area Studies be designated a strategic national priority. Take for example Indonesian studies. Would a current academic audit discover that Indonesian language courses at U.S. universities are gravely endangeredbecause ofplummeting enrolments? Could America's advanced linguistic skills base in Bahasa Indonesia be lost within the next 10 years? Is there a possibility that the U.S., once a world leader in the teaching of Indonesian language and studies, producing many of the key scholars in the field, allow the progressive decline of a field once so rich in diverse scholarly perspectives? Such diverse research ranged from the policy-related work ofPauker at Rand and Glassburner at Berkeley, the powerful historical analysis of Benda at Yale, Geertz's remarkable contributions to anthropology at Princeton, and of course the eclectic group of mavericks led by Kahin at Cornell. It takes close to 10 years for a scholar to build the advanced linguistic capability and 568Book Reviews the networks necessary to lay the groundwork for serious academic research. More importantly, there remains the critical need to train the next generation of young Americans in order to lay the foundation of skills necessary for students to be equipped to succeed in the fields of diplomacy and commerce relating to Indonesia. A cursory glance of the annotated bibliography in Houseman's book will indicate that with one or two exceptions, the bulk of the American scholars whose works are cited either are retired, close to retirement or, like one of the early leading lights (George McT. Kahin), sadly no longer with us. Where are their replacements? If Southeast Asia is as Colin Powell describes "the second front in the war on terror", and Indonesia is the focal point of the Jemaah Islamiyah movement, the great imponderable remains: where does the Bush administration seek advice on Indonesia outside the narrow confines of the policy community? These are troubling questions too complex to grapple with in a mere book review. This is not to sound too pessimistic, but empirical record so far makes for grim reading. In this regard, Gerald Houseman's volume fills a significant void, although it is rather American-centric from the viewpoint ofa Southeast Asian academic, such as this reviewer. There is a plethora of excellent books in English written by Indonesian scholars that sadly do not rate a mention in the author's annotated bibliography. Likewise a discussion on international relations in the book makes no mention of the outstanding work on Indonesian foreign policy by Franklin Weinstein or Michael Leifer. Australian scholarship on Indonesia is dismissed as "long on factual detail while providing little in way of theoretical underpinning" which, in the reviewer's opinion, is somewhat unfair considering that most independent observers would conclude that Australia in the 1990s led the world in the teaching of Indonesian language and studies. However, for how long this lead will be maintained remains an open question as the University of Sydney and...

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