The majority of the world's government, banks and institutions - including the European Commission - have considerable leverage on a "really bloody vulnerable" Indonesia: if they care to use it.
This is the assessment of an expert on Indonesia and East Timor, Dr John Taylor, Professor of Politics at London's South Bank University and author of a classic work on East Timor, Indonesian's Forgotten War.
Indonesia has a corporate debt of $65 billion and cannot get any new loans unless it restructures its banks. It has agreements, for about $45 billion of that debt, with a coalition of lenders which includes most Western governments, the European Commission, the OECD and the IMF. Indonesia's vulnerability lies in its inability to attract capital.
The tenor of reports from this Consultative Group for Indonesia is that, following the Asian currency crisis that helped bring down the Suharto regime in Jakarta last year, that "everything is improving".
But says Dr Taylor, what economic improvements there have been in the past 18 months are because of "an incredible, massive contraction of the economy".
"Indonesia's potential is not going to be realised. It is so weak." But, says Dr Taylor, the question is "are governments going to put the pressure on?"
And he says that the policy preoccupation of the former US president, Mr Richard Nixon, that "we must not lose Indonesia" still applies in Washington.
In the first quarter of this year, Indonesian showed 1.8 per cent growth, which followed a 13 per cent contraction of the economy.
Inflation has been reduced from 70 per cent to about 10 per cent, but it has been done by creating greater unemployment, which stands at 17 per cent of Indonesia's 200 million people.
A recent World Bank report put 14 per cent of Indonesian below the poverty line, an improvement on a previous estimate of 40 per cent. However, Dr Taylor says that figure is more likely to be 30 per cent.
The United Nations estimates two-thirds of Indonesians will be below the poverty line by next year.
Indonesia has a large fiscal deficit which is likely to be $9 billion this year. Only $5.9 billion has been pledged towards this by donors.
Dr Taylor says that the International Monetary Fund's leverage is "not that great" since $10 billion of its last package of $12 billion has already been disbursed.
Indonesia also has a considerable arms trade relationship with the United States, Britain, France, Germany and South Africa, which is seen as a factor inhibiting sanctions against Jakarta.
An immediate question is the planned delivery in the new year of 16 British Aerospace Hawk ground attack fighters.
In spite of an agreement that previously supplied planes would "not be used for internal repression" the Hawk, and the American Bronco counter-insurgency fighter, has been used against guerrillas in East Timor over the years.
Indonesia has asked for its debts, including money owed for 24 previously supplied Hawks, to be rescheduled.
Britain's Campaign Against the Arms Trade is campaigning against abuses of Britain's "ethical foreign policy", an intention by the Export Credits Guarantee Department to underwrite a new £250 million Hawk deal and against an invitation to Indonesia to attend a forthcoming arms fair in Britain.
The London-based Indonesian Human Rights Association, or Tapol (political prisoner), has said: "The poverty-stricken Indonesian people will still have to pay for military equipment which has no conceivable connection with efforts to rescue them from their desperate economic plight."