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In search of Indonesia’s ‘grand strategy’
Original link: http://www.sr-indonesia.com/
For a large and populous country that lies along a strategically vital trade route, Indonesia does not have a clear and coherent “grand strategy.” Experts both inside and outside the Indonesian government may claim otherwise, noting the peaceful foreign policy slogan of “a thousand friends and zero enemies” and the bebas aktif (free and active foreign policy). This, however, remains a very vague policy with limited practical implications, in particular on what kind of actions Indonesia must take to achieve its goals.
The fallout from the lack of a grand strategy is evident in Indonesia’s security policies. Take the recent debate on whether Indonesia should buy 100 Leopard tanks from the Netherlands as part of a plan to modernize its Armed Forces. The talk centers around whether buying the tanks is a great idea for an archipelagic nation, whether Indonesia’s transportation infrastructure such as roads and bridges are strong enough to handle the 60-ton tanks, whether such a purchase would negatively impact Indonesia’s own defense industry and whether Indonesia should abandon the plan considering the nationalistic uproar following the Dutch parliament’s opposition to the sale because of perceived human rights violations in Indonesia.
There was no discussion at all, however, on where the tanks fit into the strategic calculations generally elaborated in a grand strategy.
Even explanations from Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro and Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Pramono Edhie Wibowo, and then President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, failed to address this question. They were mostly centered on the need for Indonesia to keep up with the Joneses: because other nations in Southeast Asia had Leopard tanks, it is only natural that Indonesia should also have them.
In essence, there has been no debate whatsoever on what kind of military Indonesia must have to fulfill both its foreign policy and national security needs. Defenders of the Leopard tank procurement would have a much stronger case to make to both parliament and the public had they managed to show where the tanks would fit within Indonesia’s grand strategy, and the short and long-term military goals to meet the demands outlined in this grand strategy.
The fact that Indonesia does not have a grand strategy means there is simply no good argument to justify the purchase of any type of hardware it may want. At the same time, any political opposition could derail Indonesia’s scheme to modernize its Armed Forces.
Regionally, Indonesia’s policy of bebas aktif works to some degree, especially in dealing with the rise of China. As noted in an interesting analysis by Jessica Brown, a researcher at the Australia-based Center for Independent Studies, Indonesia has managed to juggle the interests of both the United States and China while benefitting greatly from their overtures. Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty M Natalegawa has often remarked that Indonesia wants to promote the paradigm of “win-win” solutions, through which it reduces the chance of diplomatic backlash and makes everyone happy.
Such an approach, however, has not helped strengthen ASEAN, which is also one of Indonesia’s key foreign policy priorities. Frontline states that are most directly influenced and threatened by China, most notably Vietnam and the Philippines, do not share the optimism of Indonesia’s approach and actually see its win-win strategy as a clear lack of commitment to standing together against such threats.
Not surprisingly, both the Philippines and Vietnam welcome more US involvement in Southeast Asia, as they see America as less threatening and the lesser of two evils compared to China. Thus, Vietnam applauded US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the 2010 ASEAN Summit in Hanoi when she said the United States had an interest in preserving free shipping in the South China Sea, and that it would be willing to facilitate multilateral talks on the issue.
This was implicit affirmation that the US was refocusing its attention on the Asia-Pacific region. For its part, the Philippines reacted positively when US President Barack Obama announced last November that 2,500 Marines would be deployed to Darwin, Australia. Indonesia’s reaction was more pessimistic and subdued, with policymakers criticizing growing security competition in the region.
The problem here lies in the fact that there is no encompassing formal security institution that binds ASEAN, unlike in Europe where most members of the European Union are also members of NATO. In Europe, such overlapping institution helps bind nations because they are to some degree certain that their security concerns are addressed. Within ASEAN, however, even though its member states are more economically integrated, security arrangements lag behind, and as a result they seek out better security guarantees than can be provided by the regional grouping.
In the short term, Indonesia’s win-win approach works beautifully for its own interests in maintaining the status quo in the region and managing its relationships with both the US and China. In the long run, however, the policy will only undermine Indonesia’s cherished ASEAN project and its own credibility in international affairs.
Therefore, why does Indonesia not have a grand strategy? Actually, the country did have a grand strategy during the Soeharto era, which was evident in how Indonesia dealt with Cambodia’s four-way civil war in the 1980s. Even though Indonesia’s neighbors feared Vietnam’s expansionist ambitions and wanted to “bleed Vietnam white,” Indonesia’s main concerns centered solely on the threat of China’s expansion into Southeast Asia through its protégé, the Khmer Rouge.
Such calculations guided Indonesian foreign policy behavior, culminating in the two Jakarta Informal Meetings in July 1988 and February 1989. These meetings de-escalated the Cambodian conflict and led to the July 1990 International Paris Conference on Cambodia, co-chaired by Indonesia and France, which would end the civil war the following year.
In today’s Indonesia, however, the fragmented nature of its bureaucracy, with unclear chains of command due to overlapping organizations, self-interests, cronyism, lack of leadership and political will (and imagination), the inability to develop coherent policies, and the need to maintain the status quo rather than take painful bureaucratic reforms work in tandem to prevent any meaningful effort to craft a grand strategy. The creation of a grand strategy would force many within the various governmental bureaucracies to actually shape up and reform to meet national goals outlined in the grand strategy.
That is a shame because in the light of an uncertain global environment, and the changing nature of international affairs, it is a time for Indonesia to start developing one, lest it become more and more irrelevant, even in its own backyard.
