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Tag Archive for: Indonesia
Tag Archive for: Indonesia
Australia–Indonesia relations: not a game?
It’s interesting to think about the Australia–Indonesia relationship in terms of game theory, as Peter Jennings, Peter McCawley and Rod Lyon have done in this blog recently. And I even got a few hundred words into a piece of my own suggesting that the idea of a Nash equilibrium might explain Rod’s observation that cooperation hasn’t broken out for any appreciable length of time in the 60+ years of the relationship.
My basic idea (well, Nash’s brilliant insight applied to this case by me) was that it’s possible for players to get locked into a position where neither of them can gain by changing only their strategy. For example, both can rationally opt for the strategy that gives a middling outcome, avoiding the worst case but also falling short of the best case outcome that cooperation could provide. That’s essentially what Rod described. His thesis is strengthened by the observation from psychology of ‘loss aversion‘, in that people prefer to avoid losses, even at the expense of eschewing the possibility of greater wins. But the more I thought about it and tried to get the ideas on paper, the less I was convinced that we’re thinking about this the right way. Read more
Australia, Indonesia and Confrontation
Perhaps an old-fashioned diplomatic historian might add to the valuable comments by Peter Jennings, Peter McCawley and Greta Nabbs-Keller on how to handle the current tensions between Australia and Indonesia. In particular, we might usefully look at the years between 1963 and 1966, when the two countries were engaged in armed conflict. In an extremely complex regional and international environment, Australian troops supported British and Malaysian forces who were opposing the Indonesian ‘Confrontation’ (Konfrontasi) of the new federation of Malaysia.
The Indonesian Confrontation (as it’s now officially designated) was a relatively small conflict instigated by Sukarno, soon wiped from the public mind and memory by the much larger war in Vietnam. But Jakarta’s provocative mixture of political rhetoric, diplomatic posturing, and low-level military engagements always carried the danger of escalation, threatening Australia’s national interests and complicating our alliance relationships. Read more
Australia and Indonesia: minimising maximum possible losses
Peter Jennings and Peter McCawley have both produced thoughtful and insightful posts on why Australia and Indonesia seem to be trapped in a classic ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ game. In this post, I’d like to further unpack why that’s so, and why the outcome of the game seems to almost never vary.
Just to bring readers up to speed, the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ is a classic part of game theory. A sheriff separately interrogates two prisoners. He has sufficient evidence to charge each with a minor crime, but requires their testimony against each other to pursue convictions for a major crime. He tells each that if they testify against the other prisoner, they can receive a reward while the other goes to jail for five years. If both testify against each other, they’ll both go to jail for three years. If neither testifies against the other, they’ll both simply be convicted on minor charges and go to jail for a year. Read more
Indonesia and Australia: appealing to Jakarta’s strengths
Joko Widodo was elected on the policy platform of defending Indonesia’s political sovereignty and territorial integrity, with a good dose of economic nationalism thrown in. That policy platform now manifests itself in a range of policy areas, most prominently in its sinking of foreign illegal fishing vessels in Indonesian waters and now in the country’s apparent resolve on death row executions.
The interplay of domestic politics and sovereignty in Indonesia’s current political climate render many of the inducements outlined respectively by Peter Jennings and Peter McCawley redundant. It’s highly unlikely, for example, that Indonesia would accept Australia’s intercession ‘with, and on behalf of, Indonesia in their diplomatic actions to stop their citizens being subjected to the death penalty around the world’, as proposed by Jennings. For a country that freed itself from the shackles of western colonialism within living memory, the idea of western states advocating on Indonesia’s behalf wouldn’t sit well. Read more
Sea State
It was another big week for submarines here in Australia. Early last week the Defence Minister’s office said that the competitive evaluation process for the Collins-class submarine replacement will involve two distinct stages—a request for information, followed by a request for tender.
By the end of the week, wrote Greg Sheridan in The Australian (paywalled), there had been a full Cabinet meeting on Thursday night, following
‘two meetings earlier in the week of the National Security Committee of the cabinet. There had been sharp divisions within cabinet. Tony Abbott has long had a partiality to Australia acquiring Japanese Soryu submarines and adapting them for Australian conditions.
This is no longer exactly the government’s position. Now there will be a formal, relatively transparent process with Germany, France and Japan invited to participate in the competitive evaluation process.’
Canberra’s Indonesia policy: imperatives collide in fate of Chan and Sukumaran
Many Australian observers of Indonesian politics may have assumed that the election of Joko Widodo as Indonesia’s seventh president would augur well for the bilateral relationship. After all, the former municipal governor came not from Jakarta’s political oligarchies, but appeared a humble, self-made entrepreneur and committed democrat.
Moreover, ‘Jokowi’, as he was affectionately termed, had a proven record of good governance and service delivery. His impromptu visits or ‘blusukan’ as Jakarta governor delighted residents of the capital, who’d grown tired of Indonesia’s corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy failing to deliver on service efficiencies. Read more
ASPI suggests: Australia Day edition
It’s a long weekend with Aussies preparing to celebrate their national day, Australia Day, on Monday 26 January, so here’s our pick of articles, podcasts and events for your defence fix.
No doubt many readers have seen or plan to see the movie American Sniper that looks at the life of Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle. Alex Horton looks at why the the Clint Eastwood film might be distorting civilians’ understanding of combat duty. As a supplement, he recommends the book Redeployment by Phil Klay and writing workshops like Words After War which brings civilians and vets together to dispel misconceptions of ‘heroism’. Also worth reading is Alex’s older piece on what the TV show Breaking Bad teaches us about ‘moral injury’ which he explains is a state of mind often experienced by veterans where one’s internalised moral code is turned on its head.
With the death of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Adbul Aziz on Friday, his half brother, the 79-year-old Crown Prince Salman, has now taken over the country’s leadership. But this still leaves questions open as to whether the next generation of princes will take over. The WaPo looks at the challenges of succession including a useful graphic showing the reigns of the Saudi monarchs, while Michael Herb writing for the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre wrote back in August about succession and Saudi Arabia’s stability. Read more
ASPI suggests: Christmas edition
We’re kicking off the last round-up for 2014 with peek into the new year: our colleagues at CSIS have predicted five events that will shape Southeast Asia in 2015 including a ruling on the Philippines’ South China Sea case and the state of Thailand’s democracy (for more on Thailand, the International Crisis Group have a newish report on the country’s prospects of stability). While not an event per se, I’d add to that list social and political changes in Indonesia under President Jokowi as he pushes ahead with reforms such as reducing fuel subsidies.
Meanwhile, is Indonesia turning away from ASEAN under Jokowi? Over at The Diplomat, Prasanth Parameswaran suggests, from statements made by Jokowi and his advisors, that Indonesia’s foreign policy will adopt a more bilateral than multilateral stance.
Winter is coming, warns the International Crisis Group in a report released just yesterday on the state of eastern Ukraine. The report evaluates the effect of winter on Ukraine’s separatists and their need for further Russian aid as well as discuss the conditions under which hostilities involving the Russian military could return. Read more
The Russians are coming. Not.
It’s always good to spend time in Indonesia immersing oneself in the local scene and receiving a different perspective on the world. I was there for two weeks—for both a defence technology exhibition and some leave—and it always surprises and sometimes embarrasses me about how much thinkers in Jakarta know about Australia and how little most of us know about the complexities of this country. A partial explanation is that many of the people I spoke with went to university in Australia and still visit regularly.
But there’s more to it than that and I found many Indonesians have a far more nuanced view of regional politics than do most Australians. I assume this flows from the radically different postcolonial paths both countries have followed. Indeed the phrase ‘post-colonial’ barely applies in Australia with the country happily supplementing the British with the United States as a dominant security and cultural partner. Other measures such as the re-introduction of Imperial Honours and the slavish affection directed toward visiting US politicians shows how desperately we desire to cling to someone else. On the other hand, with the end of Dutch rule, Indonesia quickly became a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement under President Sukarno and has remained leery of becoming anyone’s deputy sheriff ever since. Read more
Near or far? The choices of a top 20 defence nation
As the wire fences go up in Brisbane for the approaching G20 meeting, I’d like to revisit the topic canvassed by a couple of recent blog posts on what it means for Australia, in defence terms, to be a ‘top 20 nation’. Both Peter Jennings and Andrew Carr have outlined competing visions (here and here) of what it means for Australia to be a top 20 defence player. Both accept our status on the list. But they differ on what that means for our defence and strategic policy. The principal difference between them turns on the extent to which Australia should look out to—and engage with—the wider regional and global strategic environment. Peter’s in favour of doing that; Andrew isn’t. Andrew wants Australia to behave like most other top 20 powers: focusing on its near neighbourhood, and its local, geographic priorities.
Let’s start by clarifying ‘top 20’. Neither Peter nor Andrew define the term, so I’m going to propose two definitions, both of which lead us to a pretty similar group of countries. First, we could simply go with G20 membership. Alternatively, we could go with the top 20 global economies by GDP (as assessed by purchasing power parity). The table below shows the countries in each group in alphabetical order, plus the European Union (EU), which qualifies on both counts. Seventeen countries and the EU are common to both lists; Argentina and South Africa also feature as G20 members; Iran and Spain feature on the economic-size list. Read more