27 August 2024 | Jennifer Parker
Image: Indonesian Defence Minister and President-elect Prabowo Subianto with the Prime Minister of Australia, The Hon Anthony Albanese MP and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, the Hon Richard Marles MP speaking at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Source: Defence Images
In recent years the defence relationship between Australia and Indonesia has developed significantly, with a range of more complex activities occurring between the two countries. The enhancement of the relationship will shortly culminate in the signing of a treaty-level Defence Cooperation Agreement, one Richard Marles labelled as “profoundly historic”.
The Indonesia-Australia defence relationship is critical to Australia’s defence. Geography is an unalterable truth. When Australia looks north, it sees Indonesia. But when Indonesia looks north it doesn’t see Australia.
The relationship is important, but it will never be as close as Australia would wish. Australia must understand the constraints of the relationship, work within these constraints and avoid representing it as something it is not. In the joint media statement last week Anthony Albanese and Marles spoke of “strong defence co-operation” and “strengthening interoperability”, while Indonesian President-elect Prabowo spoke of “more Australian participation in our economy” and Australian assistance in “agriculture, food security”.
The difference in language between the two countries is important. It is symbolic of the differences in how both partners view the relationship. Dramatic fluctuations have been the hallmark of the relationship since Indonesia’s independence, and will remain a feature of the relationship. Both countries have a very different strategic focus, alignment, outlook and development priorities. Efforts like the DCA can help to smooth out the bumps in the relationship, but they will not fundamentally change it.
The agreement joins a long list of defence-related strategic deals between Australia and Indonesia, commencing with the ill-fated 1995 security agreement. That arrangement committed the partners to consult in the event of “adverse challenges to either party or to their common security interest”. In many ways, this, the first treaty of its kind ever signed by Indonesia, was “profoundly historic”; the DCA, while significant, is less so.
Indonesia cancelled the 1995 agreement in light of Australia’s 1999 United Nations-endorsed International Force East Timor intervention. The cancellation of the 1995 security treaty is not a blip in the history of the relationship, but an example of the limits of a relationship between two countries with different strategic priorities. These priorities have been on show since the landslide election of the outward-looking Prabowo.
Prabowo, who will assume the role of Indonesian president in October, chose to visit China in his first international visit since the 2024 Indonesian election. It would have been much quicker to hop on a plane to Australia.
Prabowo’s symbolic visit to China was followed in July by a visit to Russia, his fourth in four years. During his visit, Prabowo sought support from Putin to help Indonesia develop a civil nuclear industry, while requesting that Russia’s Defence Minister, Andrey Belousov, provide technology to develop Indonesia’s defence industry – a sentiment that would not have been lost on Australian politicians and officials at the May Shangri-la dialogue in Singapore. In his speech to the audience, Prabowo avoided condemning the illegal Russian invasion of the Ukraine.
Indonesia is fiercely non-aligned, and while it courts close friendships with its neighbours like Australia, there will always be limits to the strategic depth of the relationship. Indonesia is desperate to develop its infrastructure and broader economy. This was made clear in the joint press conference announcing the completion of negotiations of the Defence Cooperation Agreement. While Australia talks defence, Indonesia talks development. Australia must recognise the realities of the relationship and avoid overreaching or trying to push Indonesia too far on operationalising the security relationship. It is perhaps Australia’s desire to operationalise the defence relationship that has historically resulted in limited success, despite the plethora of defence-related agreements between the countries, high-level talks and military exercises.
Australia is of course right to court a closer defence relationship with Indonesia. Indonesia’s geographic position makes it central to Australia’s security. Not only does two-thirds of Australia’s maritime trade pass through the Indonesian archipelago, so would any prospective adversarial naval task group or air threat. Short of conflict, co-operation with Indonesia is critical to Australia’s ability to deal with a vast spectrum of civil threats, from irregular migration to terrorism.
Even before the completion of negotiations for the DCA, the Indonesia–Australia defence relationship had reached a high point in recent years, with a greater number of exercises conducted between the two defence forces. No better case study exists for this than Exercise Keris Woomera, a bilateral amphibious activity that includes complex air, land and maritime training between Australia and Indonesia as part of Australia’s Indo-Pacific Endeavour regional deployment.
But Australia must remain cognisant that Indonesia matters more to Australian security than Australia does to Indonesian security. Australia must recognise the strategic limits of the relationship, listen to what Indonesia says its focus is and work within those boundaries to avoid pushing it too far and overestimating the nature of the defence relationship.
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