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The G20 foreign ministers’ meeting on 8 July in Bali was almost certainly a harbinger of the G20 leaders’ meeting scheduled for later this year, and a graphic illustration of why the G20 in the current circumstances is both teetering on the brink of pointlessness and incidentally irreplaceable.

Ending without a joint communiqué and group photo, the central meeting sent two clear messages. The world will lose nothing by G20 members not boycotting the event. But nor will it likely gain anything from a meeting bound to be marked by bitter disharmony and drama. Not even a communiqué. Or a photo.

On that measure, the Bali meeting was a failure. That wasn’t Indonesia’s fault. No host could have done any better at cushioning the clash of values and interests currently defining relations among the G20’s members, especially since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine.

The meeting just made that clash more graphic. Just like at the G20 finance ministers’ meeting in Washington in April, a protest walkout took place. But this time the walker was Russia’s Sergei Lavrov, professing his indignation at Western ministers’ ‘frenzied’ condemnations of his country’s behaviour as that of ‘aggressors, invaders, occupiers’. Evidently the truth hurt.

Not content with one theatrical, fuming march from the room, Lavrov reportedly also left the premises just before Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, addressed the room virtually as a special guest.

Not that Lavrov enjoyed a monopoly on such moves. Unwilling to sit anywhere near him, G7 ministers had absented themselves from a welcome dinner held the night before that he had happily attended. This time the condemnation came from the walker himself, who chided his erstwhile G8 counterparts for their bad manners. ‘This,’ tut-tutted the minister whose troops are firing missiles into schools, residential buildings and shopping malls, ‘is how they understand protocol, politeness and code of conduct.’

Pressed for her reaction to her G7 counterparts’ manners, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi was more interested in underscoring her intention of ensuring her guests’ comfort. ‘We are trying to create a comfortable situation for all,’ she insisted, adding that she understood ‘the situation because once again, everyone has to feel comfortable’.

How comfortable Marsudi was with her Russian guest’s behaviour, however, can only be the subject of speculation. But presumably she would at least have been nonplussed by Lavrov’s absence from plenary discussions on the food price inflation and insecurity caused by Russia’s invasion and blockade of Ukrainian grain exports, as German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has disclosed.

After all, she and her president, Joko Widodo, had visited Moscow less than a fortnight earlier not only ostensibly to persuade Putin to give peace a chance but also to allow Ukrainian wheat to make its way to a hungry world, including millions of noodle-loving Indonesians. That her other guests were so determined to stress that Russia had stopped neither its brutality nor its blockade despite Widodo’s ‘peace mission’ must have sat uncomfortably with Lavrov’s assertion in his own speech that Russia would ‘continue to make a significant contribution to ensuring access to food and energy resources’—presumably by shipping more of its own wheat and what it’s allegedly stolen from Ukraine.

According to the Russian news agency TASS, however, Lavrov enjoyed the sympathy and support of his country’s other G20 partners. Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement dutifully conveyed by TASS claiming that there had been ‘sober assessments of the objective causes’ of the prevailing global economic shocks that were principally the fault of ‘the West’, and that ‘many partners gave a clear signal that it’s unacceptable to isolate Russia’. The same source indicated widespread support for Russia’s contention that ‘a polycentric structure of the world order and the democratization of global governance’ were necessary, along with ‘a broader engagement of dialogue on multilateral platforms to solve the problems of developing countries’.

Lavrov no doubt emphasised Western culpability for all these problems, Russia’s credentials as the developing world’s champion, and the advantages of ‘polycentricity’ in his meetings with ‘counterparts from Asia, Africa and Latin America’ on the event’s margins. How many actually bought such self-serving misdirection remains unknown, but it probably registered sweetly in the ears of those most inclined to cast international affairs in a similar, doctrinal light, including a few among Marsudi’s own lieutenants in Indonesia’s foreign ministry.

Others also took full advantage of the opportunity for sideline meetings, not least both the United States and China. Their own bilateral meetings, judging by official US statements, were both extensive in their subject matter and ‘candid’. But subsequent critical remarks from each about the other suggest that however welcome their meeting was as an avenue for discussing opportunities for more bilateral cooperation on such matters as climate change, global health and food security, their divisions over Taiwan and the South China Sea, among other issues, remain as deep and entrenched as ever.

For different reasons, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s meeting with Widodo on 11 July in Jakarta was almost as significant if far less candid. Besides expressing China’s appreciation for Indonesia’s able and ‘wise’ chairing of the G20, as Marsudi explained to Indonesia’s media, Wang praised Widodo’s peace mission to Ukraine and Russia. The pair also discussed a raft of bilateral commercial and health sector issues, as well as progress on projects partially funded under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, including the controversial and troubled Jakarta–Bandung high-speed railway project.

From an Australian perspective, Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s sideline meeting with Wang in Bali was another welcome development, if merely a first, tentative step in the direction towards a relationship restored at least to a level that China has with most other liberal democracies.

The Bali meeting also afforded an opportunity to stage a meeting of MIKTA, the grouping of Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey and Australia, on the margins. According to the Mexican foreign ministry, the participants discussed the war in Ukraine and ‘mechanisms to assure the availability of, and trade in, grains and fertilizer, along with the theme of migration’.

What good this side meeting achieved remains to be revealed. But if the original rationale for MIKTA was the unique role that these non-G7, non-BRICS countries collectively might create for themselves in conceiving and steering solutions to critical global issues in the context of the inherent tensions arising from the G20’s eclectic mix of political systems and developed and emerging economies, the need for actually doing that has surely never been more urgent.

Hopefully such a disparate minilateral grouping can rise to the challenge. Its members should try. Doing so would help preserve the G20’s credibility, and that’s in all their interests. But it’s easy to be sceptical that it can. It’s even easier to predict that it won’t.

The Bali meeting would therefore appear to have been more valuable for what happened around it than within it. That may well be the same story come November when the leaders gather and hold their own bilaterals on the margins.

That’s not enough to give a ringing endorsement for a body whose achievements, thanks to its widening internal divisions, have been few in recent times and risk being non-existent this time. It may not be enough to dispel whatever doubts have arisen and strengthened in capitals about the G20’s worth—doubts that in some were there from the beginning.

But given the dire, disorderly state of international affairs today, its marginal meetings should probably be reason enough even for the major powers to persist with it until such time as conditions are more conducive for the constructive cooperation that marked the G20’s earliest years—a moment that seems inconceivable so long as Putin reigns in the Kremlin.

Anthony Albanese last week successfully passed what has become a foreign policy initiation for new Australian prime ministers: he established a good working relationship with his Indonesian counterpart.

Whether Albanese’s business-like exchanges with Joko Widodo grow into a personal rapport—or leadership ‘trust’ as Indonesian observers prefer—will depend on personal chemistry and circumstances.

But at least the visit set the tone for a productive phase in Australia–Indonesia relations. History shows us two things. First, much more gets done in the bilateral relationship when the two leaders get along. And, second, structural consolidation of ties usually occurs in distinct stages when the two sides seize on opportunities that are often created by unforeseen events.

The Indonesians were keen to ensure the first point by creating a familiar mood for the visit.

This was publicly illustrated by what might come to be known as ‘bamboo bicycle diplomacy’. Widodo and Albanese peddled around the gardens of the presidential palace at Bogor on bikes built with a bamboo frame—the quirky invention of a designer from Central Java.

The image of the two leaders riding side by side was used widely in the Indonesian media and played to Widodo’s carefully crafted image as an ordinary man. Some of his predecessors would more likely be seen astride Harley Davidsons. This little bit of theatre also usefully advertised Widodo’s purported commitment to transitioning Indonesia to clean new and renewable energy.

The ‘spontaneous’ ride wasn’t without its humour. Indonesia’s foreign ministry, which came up with the idea, had to first check with the Australian embassy whether Albanese could ride.

The hitch came when Widodo wanted to gift the bicycle to Albanese—Australian officials needed to ascertain the quarantine status of the bamboo. According to one official, the Central Java manufacturer was dumbfounded by the complexity of the questions.

Whether or not the bicycle ever makes it to Australia, it served its purpose. We are left with a picture of two leaders who are outwardly easy and relaxed in each other’s company—a subtle message that will resonate in Indonesia. When asked about the visit, Indonesians referred to the guy on the bicycle. At least Albanese will be remembered.

On the substantive agenda, the single most valuable signal Albanese sent on his visit was that Australia would play its part to ensure the success of this year’s G20 leaders’ summit, being hosted by Widodo in Bali in November. Widodo has a lot personally invested in the outcome, both domestically and internationally. Albanese confirmed that he would attend the meeting, distancing himself from his predecessor Scott Morrison’s comments that Russia should be expelled from the grouping and that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s presence would be a ‘step too far’.

This was the right call. While sorting out the diplomacy over Russia at the G20 won’t be easy, Australia is wise to keep its options open and to signal that its first priority is to secure the endurance and viability of the G20. As others have observed, it is the best international table at which Australia has a seat.

With the G20 diplomacy set aside for now, Albanese’s first encounter as prime minister with Indonesia sensibly emphasised shared economic interests rather than some of the thorny geopolitical issues of the day, on which Australia and Indonesia will not always agree.

There’s much that Australia and Indonesia can do together with refocused attention on the relationship. The opportunity to be seized arises from heightened fears that a global slowdown and soaring inflation will choke a post-Covid-19 recovery. It also arises from an awareness that regional strategic competition necessitates diversifying markets and sources of capital.

This could give renewed impetus to greater trade and investment. The economic relationship has been historically underdone. In 2020, Australia exported about $7.1 billion in goods and services to Indonesia and imported about $5.7 billion in return. It amounts to a small surplus in Australia’s favour, but Indonesian officials would like to close the gap. The pool of investment is similarly weak: Australia has about $3.2 billion invested in Indonesia, and Indonesia has about $1.8 billion invested in Australia.

The Australian government has long recognised this weakness. It was a key finding of a report from former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade official Richard Maude to the Morrison cabinet, according to government officials. Maude’s report led to DFAT being asked to draw up a new Indonesia strategy, which is due to be completed by the end of the year.

But Australia already has the framework for economic engagement in place. The Indonesia–Australia Closer Economic Partnership (IA-CEPA) is far from being a perfect trade and investment agreement, but it provides a solid foundation to grow and diversify economic relations.

The previous government identified several areas in a blueprint for the partnership released last September. The blueprint targeted growth in mining and energy services; agriculture and processed food; health and aged care; and education, skills and training. The new government would be wise to pick this document up and build on it.

Still, it can be more ambitious. Two areas in which there’s potential to grow are the service economy—in, for instance, education, technology, health care, tourism and business advisory services—and infrastructure investment.

The first of these will require a new approach to labour mobility in both directions, which has been recognised as a missing ingredient in relations. This is not an easy proposition for either government, but it’s a necessary one if we are to establish deep and enduring people-to-people ties and better integrate the two economies.

The second could see some of Australia’s pool of retirement savings tap into Indonesia’s growing need for new sources of clean energy, transportation and other infrastructure.

But the investment model has to be right. And that might entail Jakarta issuing new regulations on investment vehicles and showing a willingness to flexibly deal with challenges faced in making individual investments. One approach that appears to have worked well in India is a fund in which foreign and national institutions pool their money and directly acquire infrastructure assets.

At a political level, these types of initiatives would play well with the natural games of Albanese and Widodo—two leaders whose backgrounds and agendas are steeped in infrastructure.

Whatever the two governments do, it’s a good time to set high ambitions. Of course, there will be plenty of failures and setbacks, and these should not detract from the mission. Another lesson from diplomatic history is that when Australia moves decisively and boldly in supporting relations with Indonesia at critical times, the rewards are long-lasting.

Amid debate on initiatives such as the Quad and AUKUS, Malaysia and Indonesia are looking for alternative security frameworks based on cooperative principles in line with ASEAN’s aversion to notions of collective security.

To this end, Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein met with his Indonesian and Philippine counterparts, Prabowo Subianto and Delfin Lorenzana, in March to extend their trilateral cooperation agreement (TCA) to bolster national security.

They agreed to expand the TCA by including other organisations and ministries, deploying a permanent trilateral marine officer, improving intelligence sharing to direct surveillance operations more productively at regional crime–terror nexus activities, and enhancing strategic engagement and commitment among the three states.

The TCA was established in 2017 after terrorist attacks in Marawi City and a wave of kidnappings, and it’s understood that cooperation will cover combating violent extremism, terrorism and transnational crime. Communication among the partners will be improved along with greater collaboration among their military forces. These significant steps towards addressing common threats could not have been imagined two decades ago.

The TCA is one of a number of minilateral security frameworks to emerge in the Indo-Pacific. Several Indian Ocean and Malacca Strait littorals have launched such mechanisms. The Colombo Security Conclave, initiated in 2011 and revived in 2020, comprises India, Sri Lanka and Maldives—which have upgraded their 2013 agreement to a maritime and security agreement—plus Mauritius. The Trilateral Dialogue on the Indian Ocean involved Australia, India and Indonesia. The India–France–Australia dialogue was established in 2021. The 2004 Malacca Straits Patrol was established by Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in 2004 and joined by Thailand in 2008. It was expanded to take in Eyes in the Sky, a program of combined maritime air patrols.

This marks a significant shift. Responsibility for maritime security, once the domain of superpowers, especially during the Cold War, is now being taken on by rising, middle and small powers.

The nations building these minilateral frameworks prefer to keep themselves away from major-power machinations. Their goal is to reach out to the farthest corners of their respective maritime subregions by carefully mapping threats and vulnerabilities. These developments are not surprising when great powers can no longer affect events without support. Events in Ukraine have signalled that countries need to be able to deal with ‘locale’ concerns without depending on the diminishing capacity of great powers.

Significantly, the contributing nations have broken the bonds of mutual suspicion and, more crucially, the lack of discourse on these matters.

These developments are in complete contrast with the Cold War years in Asia. As a leading regional power, India was wholly averse to any superpower intervention until recently. Other important South Asian nations such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Maldives took similar positions. Sri Lanka spearheaded the successful initiative to secure UN General Assembly support in declaring the Indian Ocean, with the air above it and the ocean floor, a zone of peace for all time.

For decades, the Indian Ocean remained distant from any cooperative military endeavours. Mutual suspicions were so high that in the 1990s when India tried to scale-up its military capabilities, Indonesia and Australia were alarmed. The situation has turned around to the point where Indonesia has agreed that India can modernise its Sabang port.

And while ASEAN was formed in the late 1960s amid security concerns, Cold War politics, Britain’s decision to withdraw from east of Suez and elsewhere in Asia, and the export of communist ideology by China, the association has focused primarily on strengthening economic integration and cooperating on addressing non-traditional security matters.

The last attempt to establish a security platform in the conventional sense in this region was in the 1960s with the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, but it was relatively short-lived. Today, the only institutions addressing security issues have been the ASEAN Regional Forum, the Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum and the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus. But even these institutions still focus on non-traditional security and elements of human, cooperative and common security.

However, much has changed and it was little surprise that ASEAN members Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines decided to launch a cooperative arrangement covering maritime and joint air patrols in and around the Sulu and Sulawesi seas.

Some might argue that despite the recent measures to address the TCA’s shortcomings, cooperation remains focused in a narrow area and there’s good reason for the three countries to strengthen it further.

China is the elephant in the room. From reclamation and militarisation of islands in the South China Sea to the activities of its naval militia and coast guard, China’s assertiveness has been extensively chronicled. A report by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative mapped out the paths of Chinese survey ships across the South China Sea in 2020–21, revealing considerable activity in waters straddling the coasts and economic zones of the three countries. Malaysia and the Philippines have responded officially to incursions into their maritime and air spaces.

Strategic uncertainty and military anxiety over China are common features of maritime trilateral mechanisms across the Indo-Pacific. While relations between the three TCA countries and China have ebbed and flowed over the years, they are gradually converging to a shared state of complexity in which each has a relationship with China epitomised by cooperation with an important economic partner and concerns over China’s increasing assertive behaviour. Even Indonesia has had brushes with China over the Natuna Islands.

Another issue is Indonesia’s decision to relocate its capital from Jakarta to Nusantara in East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo, which will require relocation of civil servants and military personnel. According to one source, 30,000–50,000 personnel will be deployed in the new capital’s regional commands. There will undoubtedly be spillover effects, such as the establishment of new businesses to meet a growing demand for goods and services. This will have an impact not just on Indonesia’s part of Borneo, but also on the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak.

Could the impact also be felt in the southern Philippines, which has long struggled with security and insurgency challenges? Given Indonesia’s need to provide security for its new capital, the TCA could curb illegal immigration and criminal activities such as piracy and smuggling through joint operations.

Huge economic opportunities will be available for enterprising businesses in all three countries. It might be a watershed moment for this area that has always had great potential. We may see a new impetus, for instance, in the Brunei–Indonesia–Malaysia–Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area, which was established in 1994 only to be hampered by its small market, lack of physical connectivity and security concerns.

Malaysia stands to gain the most. Even though incidents such as kidnappings have reduced significantly since 2020, security concerns remain, including the threat of maritime kidnapping. Malaysia must also continue to deal with threats from the Abu Sayyaf jihadist group, illegal migration and smuggling. These are expected to increase once Covid-19 restrictions, particularly on border crossings, are relaxed. The TCA will do a lot to address some, if not all, of these issues and take some of the burden off Malaysia.

The TCA could significantly help safeguard global supply chains through the South China Sea and the Malacca Strait. Another key shipping lane runs through the Makassar Strait, providing nations including Australia and New Zealand a more direct route to East Asian markets. There may one day be an opportunity to expand this arrangement through cooperation with Australia and China.

A complication is that Indonesia and the Philippines have outstanding territorial issues with Malaysia, and Malaysia has similar issues with Indonesia, but they are being managed well.

Arrangements like the TCA strive for greater collaboration on the maritime front, despite unsolved issues and mistrust. A wish to preserve regional stability used to result in inaction. Now, in a more fragmented world, the same goal drives ASEAN member nations towards greater collaboration to preserve common interests.

No one who has observed Indonesian foreign and strategic policy probably needs reminding of how differently Jakarta sees and engages with the world to the way Australia does. But in responding to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal and indefensible assault on Ukraine, Indonesia’s foreign ministry has reminded us anyway.

The official statement from Indonesia’s foreign ministry (Kemlu) is a masterpiece of its genre.

The first two of its five points correctly affirm some fundamental concepts with which Australia and other like-minded nations can readily agree. They refer to the principles of the United Nations charter, ‘including respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty’, which Indonesia insists ‘must continuously be upheld’.

The statement describes the military attack on Ukraine as ‘unacceptable’, and, given that nearly 200,000 invading troops replete with tanks, war planes and other instruments of death and destruction are staging it, makes the unarguable point that people’s lives will be put ‘in grave danger’.

With the same crystalline insight and logic, it asserts that the attack ‘threatens regional as well as global peace and stability’.

So far, so good. But matters take a turn with points three and four of the statement.

‘Indonesia calls’, it proclaims, for ‘this situation’ to end and ‘further calls on all parties to cease hostilities and put forward peaceful resolution through diplomacy’.

It ‘urges’ the UN Security Council to ‘take concrete steps to prevent the situation from further deteriorating’.

It’s in the nature of the beast for diplomatic statements normally to be constrained, and therefore often inaccurate and inadequate as an expression of national sentiment. The phrasing of this one should not lead us to believe that President Joko Widodo, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi and millions of Indonesians aren’t as appalled about what’s happened to Ukraine as any decent Australian. Jokowi’s tweet, ‘Stop war. War brings suffering to mankind and endangers the world’, doubtless reflects his horror. And Marsudi at least tried to persuade her Russian counterpart to resolve Russia’s dispute with Ukraine through diplomacy.

But statements have their purpose. They express policy, however vague and ‘nuanced’ that policy might be, and however wilfully opaque its expression. They matter in that sense.

And any statement on the Ukraine crisis that, like Indonesia’s, fails even to mention the word ‘Russia’ in it and to identify it as the aggressor is more than inadequate. As a statement of policy, it is fatuous and darkly risible.

More to the point, it is disingenuous. The Jokowi administration surely knows that both sides aren’t to blame for a war that Russia started and that Ukraine strove to avoid. To insist that Ukraine cease hostilities when it is only defending itself from the naked aggression of a revanchist tyrant is more than naive. It smacks of deliberate myopia.

This is doubly the case coming from a country that places so much store in its own sovereignty and bridles at any threat to it, real or perceived.

It also wouldn’t have escaped Marsudi’s attention that, notwithstanding the appeals of most of its members for Russia not to attack, the UN Security Council is hardly able to heed Indonesia’s appeal to take concrete—if undefined—steps to stop Putin from making matters even worse when Russia is a permanent member of the council and happens to be its current president.

In this context, it’s worth remembering how Indonesia responded to news that Australia intended acquiring nuclear-powered submarines sometime in the distant future.

It had no qualms then about identifying the villain of that piece in its eyes.

The statement it rushed out identified Australia by name four times and implied that Canberra was irresponsibly accelerating an arms race and being cavalier about its obligations under various international instruments, even though Australia has not violated any of them and has no intention of doing so when and if its boats sail.

It had certainly not invaded its neighbour on the premise that it had no sovereignty by virtue of being only an error of history and thus having no right to exist.

So, why is Indonesia again exemplifying the adage that there is none so blind as he who will not see—or that there is none so mute as he who will not state the obvious?

The answer as ever lies in a blend of policy orthodoxy and self-interest, as Kemlu spokesperson Teuku Faizasyah revealed in a press conference on the matter.

After being careful to condemn abstractly ‘every act which is a clear violation of territorial integrity and sovereignty of a country’, Faizasyah clarified that Indonesia had no intention of imposing sanctions (impliedly on Russia) because, ‘We will not blindly follow the steps taken by another country.’

At first blush, this comment reflects Indonesia’s oft-reiterated obedience to its ‘free and active’ foreign policy, albeit with a gratuitous, defensive tone in this case.

But Faizasyah’s subsequent remarks—‘We will make a decision based on our domestic interests and … whether sanctions would solve anything’—betray the more transactional character of the Jokowi administration’s foreign policy. And as he went on to explain, ‘We see time and time again that sanctions do not mean the resolution of a particular issue.’

The interests Faizasyah referred to weren’t specified but were presumably economic in the main, irrespective of how realistic Indonesia’s hopes for Russia in that domain might be. Last June, Indonesia’s trade minister, Muhammad Lutfi, followed Jokowi’s instructions to boost trade with the country’s non-traditional partners by visiting Russia for bilateral talks as well as a meeting with the Eurasian Economic Union. And while Moscow remains far from being among Jakarta’s largest trading partners, bilateral trade has grown significantly in recent years, with palm oil making up 40% of Indonesia’s exports to Russia.

Indonesia has also been keen to attract Russian investment, and the two countries have been exploring cooperation on Covid-19 vaccine production. And as any visitor to Bali in recent years can confirm, flows of Russian tourists to the centrepiece of Indonesia’s tourism sector, which the Jokowi administration is desperate to revive after Covid, have been among the heaviest from anywhere (nearly 160,000 arrived in 2019).

Indonesia–Russia defence ties have also long been significant, notwithstanding Jakarta’s decision to drop Russian Sukhois from its options for new fighter jets. Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto’s hosting of the first-ever ASEAN–Russia joint maritime exercise last December in Indonesian waters  underscored the Jokowi administration’s interest in consolidating a relationship with a power that has served as an important source of weaponry for Jakarta and many of its ASEAN colleagues.

If nothing else, after Putin’s assault on Ukraine, hopefully Jokowi will at least be more circumspect in his public remarks about Russia and its place in the Indo-Pacific region. Last year, he pretended that Russia might play a positive role through its ASEAN ties in strengthening ‘strategic trust’ in Southeast Asia, ‘maintaining stability, peace and prosperity’ and mitigating the risk of strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific region.

And, ideally, at least a few other eyes across ASEAN are no longer so ready to blind themselves to reality, as was evidently the case at last September’s Russia–ASEAN summit. The joint communiqué proclaiming both parties’ commitment to the principles of ‘a rules-based framework’, ‘respect for sovereignty’ and ‘respect for international law’ now looks even less in synch with the truth than many others.

But Australia should have no delusions about where Indonesia, along with other ASEAN nations and our Quad partner India, will stand when it comes to taking whatever ‘concrete steps’ are feasible in responding to Russia’s brutal repudiation of the very principles to which Jakarta claims such adherence.

And of the lessons Canberra should draw from this, two should be the most obvious.

The first is that if Indonesia is not even prepared openly to condemn Putin’s Russia for attacking Ukraine, it will certainly do nothing, even rhetorically, that might jeopardise its ‘domestic interests’ should China attack Taiwan. Those interests far exceed any Indonesia has in Russia.

The second is that while we can and should keep working to make the most of our comprehensive strategic partnership with Indonesia, Australia should remain clear-eyed about just how truly ‘strategic’ a partner Indonesia is set to be for the foreseeable future, and deal with it accordingly.

Otherwise, we’ll be as detached from reality as any statement about Russia’s being a ‘buffer of stability and peace’ or that calls for Ukraine to give peace a chance.