Tag Archive for: Indonesia

How the Biden administration should manage US–Indonesia relations

Of all the countries that the new US administration might wish to nudge its way as it tackles the implications of Beijing’s power and ambitions, very few matter more strategically than Indonesia. Yet such are the obstacles to achieving this in the prevailing circumstances that Joe Biden should think twice about trying.

A more obtainable goal would be a level of influence in Jakarta sufficient to give Southeast Asia’s largest nation the confidence to remain just where it wants to be: duchessed by both great powers and beholden to neither. To achieve this, Washington should base its policies on the principle that the more Indonesia can have the confidence to secure its economic and security interests without conceding anything untoward to Beijing, the better it will be for both the US and Indonesia.

After the ignorance and neglect that the Trump administration displayed towards Southeast Asia, it is likely that Indonesia will welcome its successor, especially as Jakarta too observes Beijing’s behaviour in Indonesia’s northern waters with growing consternation.

Biden’s early messages would also have been soothing music to those Indonesian ears hankering for a more multilateralist Washington after four years of ‘America first’ bombast, trade wars and threats, not to mention Muslim bans and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s discarding of any pretence of impartiality on the Palestinian question.

The Indonesian government will be especially relieved at the signs that the incoming US administration aims to manage Beijing using a less erratic, more nuanced blend of resolve and tact, and to engage ASEAN much more than its predecessor. Predictably, President Joko Widodo (commonly known as Jokowi) lost little time in congratulating Biden via his social media platforms, using a formula reflecting his own developmental priorities while stroking Biden’s predilections for a more values-based diplomacy by liberally mentioning ‘democracy’ in his remarks.

For all such talk, however, the Jokowi administration will be every bit as transactional in engaging its US counterpart as it is in dealing with Xi Jinping’s regime, and any appeal to values will likely have little if any resonance. Jakarta is most unlikely to reject Biden’s idea of a summit of democracies and would almost certainly attend it should it happen. But if democracy promotion matters at all to Jokowi—which seems unlikely in view of his own questionable commitment to the principles of liberal democracy—he may be more inclined to view the Biden proposal as cutting across the bows of Indonesia’s own Bali Democracy Forum.

Indonesians, moreover, will be no more ready to accord the US authority on the subject after the Donald Trump years than many other people around the globe. In short, playing to shared values may well prove harmless, but useless.

In contrast, the more the Biden administration can respond to its counterpart’s practical preoccupations, the more persuasive it will be in Jakarta. These concerns are easy to discern and, to varying degrees, can be addressed. Jokowi wants US investment, financial support and technology for his grand infrastructure plans, and fair access to a Covid-19 vaccine in the immediate term.

Jokowi’s trade minister, Agus Suparmanto, will be intent on nailing down market access for Indonesia’s exports under the favourable terms of the Generalised Scheme of Preferences, which Trump belatedly (if conditionally) agreed to in October. And the defence minister, Prabowo Subianto, will want the US to be an active strategic presence in the region and a reliable supplier of the military hardware Indonesia needs to develop even a moderately credible deterrent capability—and to keep issuing him with a visa.

But no matter how well Washington might satisfy Jakarta’s wishes and desires, it will be disappointed should it assume that in return the Jokowi government would gratefully line up with it against Beijing.

Gunboat-backed Chinese fishing incursions into Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone have prompted the government to step up its military presence on the Natuna Islands and criticise China’s actions as inconsistent with international law. But it would take far more egregious bullying to drive Jakarta even to consider abandoning its ‘free and active’ doctrine and openly band-wagoning with Washington, especially since Trump’s behaviour has only amplified suspicions about US reliability as a strategic partner. Even then it would most likely baulk at doing so out of the understandable fear of the region becoming the venue for what Indonesia, like other ASEAN states, regards as essentially a struggle between two great powers interested in either retaining or gaining hegemony.

For the foreseeable future, Indonesia will most likely continue flinching from any US proposal that it cooperate in operations that overtly challenge China, as it did at the Trump request for refuelling rights for its US maritime surveillance aircraft operating in the South China Sea. It will instead continue seeking recourse in international law on the Natunas issue—despite knowing that China simply ignores it—and comfort in the fraternity of ASEAN, irrespective of the fact that the association’s diplomatic initiatives have to date failed to dissuade Beijing from doing what it wants and seem to have little if any prospect of doing so in the future.

The Biden administration should not waste any time and energy trying to budge the unbudgeable. It will have a better chance of persuading the post-Duterte Philippines and even Vietnam than Indonesia and should put its main efforts there. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t also engage the Indonesians at the most senior levels on the question of closer defence and strategic cooperation. On the contrary, quietly helping Indonesia address its many deficiencies in the sector should be a priority, and not to do so would likely come across as disrespectful and insensitive to Indonesia’s interests. It should start by treating Prabowo no differently than it will Jokowi’s other ministers. But it should cooperate without expecting unrealistic returns from the investment.

Above all, it should treat this aspect of the bilateral relationship as a part of a wider approach designed to highlight the renewed importance that it attaches to its partnership with Jakarta, one that displays respect for a nation that, for all its faults, has achieved much in recent decades. It should embrace as much as practicable Jokowi’s more feasible aspirations for the country’s development and its people’s wellbeing.

None of this will be anything other than problem-rich. It will all be frustratingly glacial. It will likely achieve just enough to keep Indonesia’s relationships with both of its giant suitors non-aligned not just in form but in substance. It risks inflating Jakarta’s sense of its own attractiveness and tendency to expect bilateral cooperation on its terms, especially since Beijing has no qualms about exploiting the appeal of its corruptive carrots to many in the Indonesian political elite while waving its stick.

And it comes only with the guarantee that not doing it will have negative consequences, not that doing it will have positive ones.

Australia, UK and UN dragged into information operations targeting West Papua

On Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, a network of accounts is targeting the West Papua independence movement with memes and messages designed to shape international and domestic narratives about the separatist movement.

The region has been beset by a series of well-documented online information operations, but some of the content posted in late 2020 claims to represent the views on West Papua of Australian officials, as well as of the United Nations and the UK government, and have reportedly been called out by the Australian government.

A former Dutch colony, West Papua became part of Indonesia in 1969 after a heavily disputed referendum. The Australian government does not dispute Indonesia’s sovereignty over the region, despite the ongoing claims of indigenous Papuans. Some Pacific island states have expressed support for Papuan independence and raised alleged human rights abuses at the United Nations General Assembly.

In 2019, the BBC and ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre described coordinated social media campaigns that appeared to target international audiences with anti-separatist messages using a series of websites, which were amplified on Twitter. One was conducted by Indonesian media company InsightID, as confirmed by Facebook. In late 2020, Bellingcat reported on another network operating across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram that bears many similarities with the one discussed here.

ASPI examined a sample of accounts sharing unauthorised infographics claiming to represent the views of Australia and other countries on West Papua across social media. The network also shared messages that suggest West Papuans don’t support independence and that Indonesia has brought prosperity to the region, among other narratives.

Some messages were attributed to Australian diplomat Dave Peebles and Gary Quinlan, Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia. There were also posts that claimed the UK supports Indonesian sovereignty over Papua, with reference to UK diplomat Moazzam Malik and UK Minister for Asia Nigel Adams. Messages stating that the UN rejects West Papua’s claim for independence were attributed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Rafael Ramirez, a former UN envoy for Venezuela. Other posts attacked Vanuatu for discussing Papua at the UN in September.

Our analysis of accounts posting the images on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram revealed signs of coordinated or automated posting. This is consistent with previous activity relating to the region: ASPI examined a dataset of accounts targeting the West Papuan movement that were taken down by Twitter in April and found evidence of highly automated accounts posting in 30-minute intervals.

Our analysis of the most recent network found that a sample group of four Instagram accounts posted similar images around the same time each day in quick succession with the same hashtags and in a consistent order. Such behaviour may suggest a single operator of all four accounts.

Likewise, on Twitter, one group of three accounts also posted in a coordinated manner. BellaShi28 (red) would post first every day, followed by EvanR28 (green) and then LysaBella28 (blue). From 6 December onwards, the posting behaviour of these accounts became more consistent, suggesting that the operator of the accounts or the capabilities of the operation improved.

Some Facebook profiles also display similarly coordinated posting schedules. On 9 December, two accounts examined by ASPI posted 50 and 49 infographics about West Papua between 20:23–20:34 and 20:52–21:05, respectively, in largely the same order and in quick succession. All had the same set of hashtags: #FreeWestPapua, #vanuatu, #otsuspapua, #lanjutkanotsus—the latter two referring to West Papua’s special status within Indonesia.

The Twitter and Instagram accounts appear to have attracted little engagement so far, but their occasional use of English and Dutch instead of bahasa Indonesia seems calculated to influence international conversations about the issue. On Facebook, some accounts whose profiles were set up to appear as if they were locals in West Papua attracted slightly more interaction.

Many of the accounts used profile images that don’t appear genuine, consistent with past social media influence campaigns targeting West Papua. Profile photos were taken from image services such as Getty, news articles and other Instagram profiles, for example. Other accounts used images that were possibly created by a GAN (generative adversarial network), a phenomenon Bellingcat also observed, which uses machine learning to create new images from a training set of past images.

GAN images can sometimes be identified due to small imperfections, such as irregular backgrounds. In the image below, for example, the blurred and warped tree or column (circled in yellow) in the background suggests this Twitter profile image is a GAN.

A number of the Facebook accounts sharing the infographics link to and claim on their profiles to be affiliated with West Papuan independence Facebook pages, despite sharing memes that largely argue against the movement. One such independence page used terms associated with the Free Papua Movement and the West Papua National Liberation Army. The intended audience of its posts seems broader than West Papua: the language used is highly standardised without Papuan-specific slang, which means it could be read across Indonesia.

Overall, the narrative of the infographics we examined seems designed to strengthen the perception that Indonesia has international support for its sovereignty over West Papua and to quash hope of outside assistance with independence for the region. While the accounts we examined attracted only a relatively small amount of interaction, information campaigns on West Papuan issues have been persistent, and this is likely to be only a small part of operations designed to spread pro-Indonesia narratives.

Australia risks alienating friends and deterring no one

Contributors to The Strategist’s ‘North of 26° south’ series have explored the continued importance of northern Australia to national security and defence strategy, propelling the argument for expanding air, naval and space bases in the Top End. This effort to prepare for an immediate hot-peace future doesn’t come without risk. Without adept strategic communication, we risk damaging our resilient yet fluctuating relationships with our northern neighbours.

Dino Patti Djalal, a former Indonesian deputy foreign minister, spoke at ASPI’s ‘2020 Strategic Vision’ conference on the shortfalls and long-term harm of such tactical miscalculations. He recalled being dumbstruck in 2011 when journalists questioned both him and Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Hawaii on the placement of a US Marines air–ground taskforce in Darwin. He reflected that neither the Americans nor the Australians had consulted or informed the president appropriately, creating embarrassment and spurring conspiracy theories that linger to this day in the Indonesian government about Australia’s malintent. The proximity of the placement to West Papua and the Masela gas block was significant in the minds of Indonesian officials, and the unannounced development was a quiet setback to the relationship.

We urgently need to craft our strategic communication to be better positioned to fulfil our mission in the north. The 1998 letter from Australian Prime Minister John Howard to Indonesian President B.J. Habibie was indicative of communication lacking diplomatic nuance or strategic thought, ultimately backfiring and playing some role in prompting the snap referendum on independence for East Timor six months later.

While we’ve made improvements in our strategic communication since 1998, Australia at times still has a tin ear for how our neighbours will interpret our domestic policy.

If Australia sees itself as a burgeoning middle power with a responsibility to protect, or at least support, the Indo-Pacific region, we’ll need to create a consistent message aligned with our strategic goals. Was it that oversight that developed an undercurrent of anti-Australian sentiment in Indonesia that sparked alight in 2017 when General Gatot Nurmantyo severed defence ties in a brief bilateral crisis? The general had spoken plainly and publicly of his concerns about the rotation of US Marines through Darwin, and accused Australia of recruiting Indonesian officers as spies.

Investment in Australian military facilities proximate to Indo-Pacific shores has increased during a downward trend in defence spending in Southeast Asia. This has the clear potential to inflame and escalate underlying anxieties. These developments, paired with the ongoing funding cuts to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, have made the need for political nuance and tact not typically characteristic of Australian ‘megaphone diplomacy’ more urgent.

If Australia is to avoid mistrust and misunderstandings, we’ll need sophisticated strategic communication to navigate a ‘poorer and more dangerous world’. We’ll need to understand what motivates the foreign policies of our northern neighbours and their indirect methods of balancing against China’s incremental incursions into their exclusive economic zones. Indonesia and ASEAN wish to see themselves as independent of great-power contests. Whether that proves to be realistic or not, we’ll need to craft our messaging to not alienate neighbours that don’t appreciate a heavy-handed approach.

South Pacific states are beginning to deviate from their traditional security relationships and leverage their geostrategic value for greater aid and investment, even if risking debt-trap diplomacy. In July at the UN Humans Rights Council, Papua New Guinea sided with China on its draconian Hong Kong national security law. It’s unclear exactly why PNG voted that way, but its signature to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative may have helped motivate the decision.

The reinvigoration behind recent military development of northern Australia hasn’t been an effort solely to deter foreign aggressors from our doorstep, but to project a credible military presence ready to support our friends in the region and maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific.

Leveraging regional proximity, northern defence commitments promise to foster greater interoperability and the capacity to conduct surveillance against covert threats and ensure our preparedness to provide humanitarian and disaster responses. But, in failing to communicate the collective value of that investment to our security partners, we risk alienating our friends in the region and, in doing so, failing to hedge against escalating aggression from China.

The government’s defence strategic update classifies the Indonesian defence partnership as of ‘first order importance to Australia’ and alleviates anxiety that Australia would consider Indonesia a potential threat. If that’s the case, why hasn’t Canberra done more to assure Jakarta, which has historically been suspicious of the US, of the intentions behind our defensive posturing and our strategic vision for northern Australia?

While Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s embrace of the ‘Pacific family’ was arguably out of the ‘Scotty from marketing’ playbook, it did successfully reframe Australia’s renewed interest in the region. The Pacific step-up needs to communicate with Australia’s partners in our near region and lose the neo-colonial, paternalistic undertones that have existed since the term ‘arc of instability’ was coined.

Looking back on our past strategic communication failures, we need to focus on consulting with our regional partners in a whole-of-government sense so they have a deeper understanding of our strategic policy.

Pompeo hits some bum notes in Indonesia

High-level visits to and from Indonesia in recent weeks have highlighted how differently major powers are playing the instruments of diplomacy to Southeast Asia’s largest and most consequential audience. Whether they have charmed or not has been about style as much as substance, a point to which Washington needs to pay more attention.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Jakarta last week offers the most striking example. Part of a swing through five Indo-Pacific countries, it followed Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto’s visit to Washington earlier in the month, and inter alia reprised the theme of expanded defence cooperation. Pompeo struck the same reassuring chord that Prabowo’s trip did by reaffirming that the United States intends to help Indonesia develop its ‘minimum essential force’ defence capabilities. He also pitched to his hosts by applauding Indonesia’s ‘courageous leadership on the subject [of China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea] within ASEAN and at the United Nations’, and conceding that, ‘It’s a cause worth pursuing in multilateral settings.’

But many Indonesians won’t have listened comfortably to his assertion that both ‘law-abiding nations reject the unlawful claims made by the Chinese Communist Party’. The strident tone would have jarred with those Indonesians fearful that Washington is preparing for conflict with China in the South China Sea and expecting Jakarta to side with it. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi notably avoided any express reference to China in her remarks at the joint press conference, instead characteristically reiterating ASEAN’s Jakarta-crafted formula for preserving peace in the Indo-Pacific through economic cooperation and obedience to laws and norms.

By the same token, Pompeo’s efforts to hit the right note on the theme most dear to President Joko Widodo’s heart—Indonesia’s economic development—were likely a case of hit and miss. Jokowi would have welcomed Pompeo’s promise to encourage more US investment in Indonesia in the digital, infrastructure and energy sectors, as well as his allusion to discussions already underway on how the administration might use the Development Finance Corporation to back private-sector interest in the market. Considering his efforts to push through a suite of microeconomic reforms, he probably appreciated Pompeo’s comments reminding Indonesians that US investors would be evaluating Indonesia’s attractiveness as an investment destination based on the success of those reforms.

Jakarta will also be relieved at the subsequent news that Washington will keep Indonesia in the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) facility, on which Pompeo was conspicuously silent in his press conference statement. Marsudi made a point of mentioning this irritant in her remarks to the Indonesian public on Pompeo’s meeting with the president. Jokowi, she said, had stressed that Indonesia wanted the US to be a ‘true friend’, but that this partnership shouldn’t be taken ‘for granted’ and should instead be cultivated through serious efforts at mutual understanding and ‘concrete cooperation’, including the continuation of Indonesia’s access to the GSP. Jokowi will therefore chalk this up as a win, though the US decision is reportedly contingent on a quid pro quo and consequently will hang over his head like a Damoclean sword should Donald Trump retain the presidency.

Pompeo’s outreach to Indonesia’s Islamic community, specifically through an address to a Muslim organisation on the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, is likely to have been the least resonant of his messages. By praising the tolerance of religious diversity, combatting of terrorism and acceptance of democracy with which Indonesian Muslims are generally (and like to be) associated, he tried to play sweetly to his audience. But nothing he said could have doused the resentment his handling of the Israel–Palestinian issue has aroused, a subject to which Marsudi alone referred in their press conference. In this context, her comment that Jokowi had stressed to Pompeo that he wanted the US to understand the interests of Muslim countries was sharp.

Pompeo’s call for Indonesia’s Muslims to condemn China’s treatment of Uyghurs is likely to have fallen even flatter. Ironically, it is has been the more radical minority of Indonesian Muslims that has been the most vociferous on this highly politicised issue. In contrast, the chair of Indonesia’s largest Muslim organisation has gone so far as to label criticism of China’s treatment of Uyghurs as foreign meddling in its domestic affairs, a line essentially echoing that of the Jokowi administration on the subject.

But the way Covid-19 featured during the visit was its most significant element, mainly because it barely did. Marsudi was careful to thank Pompeo for the roughly US$11 million of assistance (including 1,000 respirators) that Washington has provided Indonesia to deal with what the secretary of state reminded everyone had ‘started in Wuhan’. Pompeo also mentioned the US private sector’s efforts to develop a vaccine and therapeutics. But beyond that, his remarks were little more than platitudes.

In this respect, the contrast between Pompeo’s trip and that of Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Maritime and Investment Affairs Luhut Pandjaitan to Kunming on 9–10 October for talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was stark. The two leaders discussed cooperation in areas including infrastructure (under the rubric of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative), trade and e-commerce, education, and technologies like 5G. But as Luhut’s meetings on the margins with senior representatives of three Chinese firms currently developing vaccines also showed, Covid was the main topic of the visit, in which Indonesia’s health minister and the director of a state-owned pharmaceutical company also participated with a view to procuring a vaccine for a planned mass immunisation program in November.

Considering the practical cooperation the two countries already have underway in this area, Wang’s message that China was ‘willing to work with Indonesia on vaccine research, production and distribution’ of affordable vaccines is likely to appeal far more to the Jokowi administration than Pompeo’s vague remarks. Irrespective of the efficacy of any Chinese vaccine or the veracity and benevolence of Beijing’s promises, in view of these events it is hard to imagine that Washington is conducting ‘vaccine diplomacy’ in Indonesia and Southeast Asia generally anywhere near as effectively as its rival.

This is not to say that Beijing’s Covid charm offensive will alter profoundly Indonesian perceptions of China. Its South China Sea actions and other factors (for example, its preference for Chinese labour over local workers) will continue to play badly with Indonesia’s leadership and public alike. Nor will the Trump administration’s failure to match it cause irreparable damage to US influence. The US retains many attractive qualities to Indonesians, whether as an external strategic balancer; a critical source of investment, high technology and defence assets; a market; or, in its better moments, a culture worthy of emulation.

It is in this last area, however, including with regard to how the Trump administration’s evocation of US culture has defined its Middle East policies and management of the pandemic, that its performance has sometimes echoed so cacophonously in Indonesia that even Beijing’s diplomatic opera risks sounding more melodious. If editorials and comment threads on Indonesian news sites are any guide to wider sentiment, Pompeo’s visit came across like a swansong tour by a band that largely ignored its local fan base and whose lead singer is a repellent proxy for his predecessor. Whoever is secretary of state will do well to start rehearsing something better attuned to the harmonic subtleties of the regional cadence.

US visit shows Prabowo looking after Indonesia’s strategic interests

Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto’s visit to the United States (15–19 October) for talks with US Defense Secretary Mark Esper on regional security and defence cooperation suggests a great deal about the Trump administration’s agenda and Prabowo’s own—even if their joint statement on their 16 October meeting at the Pentagon actually revealed nothing of substance. The visit came after an invitation from Esper and a decision by the State Department to grant Prabowo a visa, something he had long been denied on the grounds of numerous human rights abuses he is alleged to have committed during his time as a senior military officer in the New Order era of his then father-in-law, President Suharto.

As anyone who has followed Indonesian affairs for any length of time would know, to describe Prabowo as colourful would be to make an understatement of colossal proportions, and simply to dismiss the allegations of his past behaviour as baseless would be either callous or naive. Besides being accused of atrocities during his time as an officer in the Special Forces Command (Kopassus) in East Timor, Prabowo is alleged to have been involved in fomenting and backing the pogroms visited upon Indonesia’s ethnic-Chinese community during the turmoil preceding Suharto’s toppling. He was accused of kidnapping and torturing pro-democracy activists, for which the armed forces (TNI) commander, Wiranto, claimed to have drummed him out of the military.

None of these alleged offences, however, ever translated into criminal charges against Prabowo in Indonesia. Nor have they prevented him from resurfacing as one of the most enduring political characters in the post-Suharto political drama, during which he has repeatedly tried and failed to win the presidency. His narrow 2014 defeat at the hands of the man whose rise he himself had earlier helped engineer, Joko Widodo, was especially noteworthy for his reaction, which included baseless allegations of widespread cheating and threats that he would seek a judicial challenge to the result.

While heavier than the earlier one, his second loss to Widodo last year neither terminated his powerful presence in Indonesia’s political firmament nor diminished his belief in his manifest destiny as the nation’s president-in-waiting. This reality was not lost on Widodo, who, as determined as ever to reduce constraints on his own authority and objectives, was only too ready to bring him into his cabinet and give him the portfolio he desired, securing the support of Prabowo’s party, Gerindra, in the legislature.

If Widodo’s decision was all about his own political interests, it nonetheless ensured that Indonesia has ended up with arguably its most strategically astute defence minister for more than a decade. For all his alleged offences and manifest character flaws—his ego and reputed propensity for tantrums, for example, are positively Trumpian—he is unquestionably intelligent, sophisticated, cunning and better attuned than anyone in Jokowi’s cabinet to the geopolitical realities and strategic challenges that Indonesia faces now and into the future, especially in its northern maritime domain.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that he is well equipped temperamentally and ethically to position Indonesia to manage those challenges effectively, as his reported interest in buying second-hand Austrian Eurofighters to add to Indonesia’s pre-existing mélange of Russian and US fighter jets would lead one to question. By flagging this proposition, however, he may (wittingly or otherwise) prompt the Trump administration to look at how the US might offer him a better option than pre-loved Typhoons (indeed, a reference to the subject of defence acquisitions was the only noteworthy part of the Esper–Prabowo joint statement). And while his visit should not be read as a sign that Indonesia is looking to move away from its enshrined ‘free and active’ foreign policy towards a posture favouring the United States over China, Prabowo is surely using it to signal to Beijing that Jakarta supports Washington’s maintaining of at least a powerful balancing role in the region’s affairs.

The timing of his visit also suggests that he’s strategically adept in another sense. Nobody would be more alert to President Donald Trump’s diminishing prospects of re-election and the consequences for Indonesia–US defence relations were a Biden administration unwisely to restore Prabowo’s pariah status. Already Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy has joined the chorus of Indonesian and international human rights organisations and others condemning the Trump administration’s moves towards Prabowo. If more pragmatic members of Joe Biden’s foreign policy circle are likely to counsel him against doing what would seriously jeopardise Washington’s own interests in its relationship with Southeast Asia’s most populous and strategically significant nation, it’s equally likely that Prabowo would nevertheless recognise that no time would be better than now to extract favourable arrangements for his own agenda.

As for Australia, Canberra can only urge any incoming Biden administration to maintain at least this element of its predecessor’s policies. Dealing with Prabowo invariably necessitates holding one’s nose. But the Trump administration’s argument that he should be treated the same way as any other appointee of a twice-elected president—whom, incidentally, leaders like our own praise (rightly or not) as a great friend and committed democrat—is sound.

Moreover, nose-holding is something that both US and Australian governments of all persuasions have rarely had much difficulty in doing when our nations’ strategic interests are so much at stake, including with respect to some of Indonesia’s other defence ministers and TNI commanders. China, which Prabowo lost no time in visiting in December last year, obviously has no such qualms. Nor has Russia, which would have noticed Prabowo’s interest in buying more fighters and might well be ready to offer him mate’s rates on a few more Sukhois.

To ostracise Prabowo again would not only be imprudent. It would rightly stand condemned as monumentally myopic should he indeed fulfil his self-identified destiny at Indonesia’s next presidential elections in 2024.

Policy, Guns and Money: Surviving isolation and Covid-19 in Indonesia and the Pacific

In this episode, ASPI’s Lisa Sharland speaks to Anna Powles of Massey University in New Zealand for an update on the impact Covid-19 is having on the Pacific.

Senior ASPI analyst Huong Le Thu then talks about how Indonesia is dealing with the coronavirus pandemic with Asialink’s Donald Greenlees.

And our host Kelly Smith catches up with Ned Holt, ASPI’s US Army War College fellow, to get some tips on looking after yourself while in isolation.

Coronavirus: the grim view from Indonesia

Like the end-of-the-world scenario from Nevil Shute’s futuristic novel On the beach, a feeling of impending desolation seems to hang over Indonesia as it waits for what health experts fear may be a slowly-ticking coronavirus bomb nearing the point of detonation.

From its first confirmed case on 3 March (far later than neighbouring Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines), Indonesia is now reporting more than 100 new patients a day, with a death rate among the highest in the world.

Myanmar and Laos, two of the three ASEAN countries sharing a long, porous border with China, have finally reported their first Covid-19 cases, but the scepticism continues after they claimed their patients were recent travellers from Thailand, Britain and the United States.

Most of Indonesia’s nearly 900 confirmed infections are in Jakarta and in the surrounding provinces of West Java and Banten, but although commerce is down to a relative trickle, President Joko Widodo has refused to lock down the capital because of the social and economic cost.

Given the number of access points into the city, it would be impossible anyway. But foremost in Widodo’s mind, according to government sources, is the ever-present danger of social unrest, which has already seen Indonesian-Chinese families move to Singapore to wait out the crisis.

Widodo is also refusing to approve proposed lockdowns in Papua, West Nusa Tenggara and North Kalimantan, apparently worried that it will lead to a flood of similar actions by other provincial governments seeking to prevent the further spread of the virus on islands where only a few cases have been reported so far.

Diplomatic missions, including the United States and Australia, have been cut to the bone, evacuating non-essential staff and their families for the simple reason that the Indonesian health system is already struggling to cope with a pandemic it took too long to prepare for.

Indeed, with a lack of proper facilities, equipment and medical personnel—and a health minister who anywhere else would have been sacked—Indonesia is fighting an uphill battle against the spread of Covid-19 that experts believe will only come to a peak in May or even June.

Altogether, 22 of Indonesia’s 34 provinces and special regions have reported a total of 893 confirmed infections and 78 deaths. A huge percentage of the cases have been on Java, home to 141 million of Indonesia’s 273-million-strong population—and most of those have been in urban centres.

With a 20% increase in infections each day, the Bandung Institute of Technology’s Center for Mathematical Modelling and Simulation believes there will be at least 60,000 cases by the end of April, almost twice the estimate given this week by a London-based counterpart institute.

Starting from a lower initial base, the vast archipelago appears to be on the same trajectory as Iran (population: 83.9 million) which, as of 26 March, had a total of more than 29,000 cases, climbing by about 2,000 new patients a day, and 2,234 deaths—a mortality rate similar to that of Indonesia.

Faced with the beginning of the Ramadan fasting month on 23 April, when Muslims normally break their fast together in groups, the government has already decided to call off mudik, the post-Ramadan tradition in which about 10 million Indonesians flock back to their home towns and villages.

‘If we allowed mudik to go ahead it would be catastrophic’, one senior government minister told The Strategist. National Disaster Management Agency director Lieutenant General Doni Monardo, the concurrent head of the Covid-19 taskforce, added his voice as well, saying the annual pilgrimage ‘presents a risk of contagion to the entire country’.

There are already signs of a worrying, unchecked drift to the countryside, particularly among city dwellers who always return to their villages when the going gets tough. Casual workers have helped Indonesia through past economic crises, but the current medical emergency means the informal sector is being hit the hardest.

Testing has been minimal across Indonesia, but the recent delivery of new rapid-testing kits from China—however much a drop in the bucket—will likely give a better pointer to the enormity of the task before the government in trying to contain the virus.

Most fears centre on Bali, which is seen as the potential epicentre of the pandemic because of its huge numbers of tourists and the absence of any testing up to now. Outside of the island’s four state hospitals, private doctors are unaware of just how far the virus has spread in the community.

‘We send patients with suspect symptoms to those hospitals and never hear back’, says one physician, who is astonished the island still remains nominally open to tourists. ‘They keep a tight lid on everything. The only time we knew the hospitals were full was when we had to isolate one of their patients.’

Amid all the gloom, there are reminders that life goes on—or not. On 25 March, Widodo’s mother died of cancer in the Central Java city of Solo. The grieving president urged mourners to practise social distancing and not attend the funeral. Not far away, on the same day, a Detachment 88 counterterrorism team shot dead an Islamic militant and arrested two others on Java’s north coast.

The four compass points of Australia–Indonesia relations

‘Indonesia and Australia are destined to be close neighbours. We cannot choose our neighbours. We have to choose to be friends. Australia is Indonesia’s closest friend.’

— Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Address to the Australian Parliament, 10 February 2020

Two blokes in a golf cart, one Australian, one Indonesian, go out to look at kangaroos.

No casual sightseeing trip, this. The cart has a crown on its front bumper, and both men are wearing suits.

Governor-General David Hurley is at the wheel of the vice-regal buggy, showing Indonesian President Joko Widodo the local fauna hopping around the grounds of Canberra’s Government House.

The roo-spotting is a whimsical moment in the friendship between two neighbours that are destined but deeply disparate.

At the state lunch that followed, Hurley delivered his speech in Bahasa Indonesia, ending: ‘Bapak Presiden, itu yang terbaik yang bisa saya lakukan’ (‘Mr President, that’s the best I can do’).

Jokowi returned the language effort with a ‘G’day mate’ to Australia’s parliament.

The president’s statement that Australia is Indonesia’s closest friend is remarkable because, of course, it’s not true. Yet …

Nowhere in the world are there three neighbours more different than the extraordinary triangle of Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

So Jokowi offers geostrategic and geoeconomic aspiration expressed in the most human terms.

The friendship call is an ambitious example of what leaders must do: shift reality towards the vision they describe. ‘Closest friend’ sits beside Paul Keating’s declaration 25 years ago that ‘No country is more important to Australia than Indonesia.’

Jokowi’s Canberra visit lit up the map of the Oz–Indonesia relationship. The two countries zigzag around the chart, climbing Mount Incomprehension and sailing the Sea of Dissimilarity. This is a volatile friendship, prey to shocks and shakes. As Indonesia’s previous president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said in the Great Hall of Australia’s parliament on 4 April 2005:

Over the years, our relations have experienced many twists and turns, highs and lows. We know from experience that our relations are so complex and unique that it can be pulled in so many different directions, and it can go right as often as it can go wrong. Which is why we have to handle it with the greatest care and counsel.

Noting SBY’s caution and Jokowi’s ambition, lift your eyes from the map to consider the four compass points of the relationship.

The first constant, the north star, is geography. As Indonesian people-smugglers demonstrated, we’re only a short boat ride apart.

For Oz strategists, a friendly Indonesia ‘acts as a strategic shield to the immediate north of Australia’ while an unfriendly Indonesia is a sword above our head. Here’s a statement about geography as true today as it was in 1986:

In defence terms, Indonesia is our most important neighbour. The Indonesian archipelago forms a protective barrier to Australia’s northern approaches. We have a common interest in regional stability, free from interference by potentially hostile external powers. At the same time, we must recognise that, because of its proximity, the archipelago to our north is the area from or through which a military threat to Australia could most easily be posed.

Keating paints this vividly: ‘How things go in the Indonesian archipelago, in many respects, so go we. Indonesia remains the place where Australia’s strategic bread is buttered.’

Australia wants an Indonesia strong enough not to be porous, but uninterested in using its strength for anything nasty.

The second compass point is that relative power is shifting steadily to Indonesia. It’s the same relative power loss Australia faces across Asia. Indonesia just brings it close to home. Our giant neighbour is on track ‘to pass Australia in economic size in the 2020s and eventually in military capabilities by the 2040s’. That projection is from Kevin Rudd in his memoirs.

If Indonesia maintains its 5% growth rate for the next two decades, by 2040 it will be the world’s fifth largest economy. In that future, Hugh White muses, Indonesia is as important to Australia as China, ‘because while it will not match China’s wealth and power, it is much closer—and that could make all the difference. Never underestimate the importance of proximity.’

Indonesia sets the temperature and frames Australia’s approach to the rest of Southeast Asia (just as PNG does in the South Pacific).

The Oz role in ‘regional architecture’ always has an Indonesian element, even a Jakarta veto. Suharto brushed away Gough Whitlam’s regionalist ambitions, just as his support helped Bob Hawke and Keating build APEC. Jakarta’s nod was needed to get Australia into the East Asia Summit when John Howard held the top job.

Indonesia’s centrality to Australia is central to my argument that Australia should join ASEAN.

In what I think of as his testament, the sage Jamie Mackie advised: ‘We should endeavour to ensure at all costs that our broader regional and global policies diverge from Indonesia’s as little as possible—and ideally should follow essentially convergent trajectories.’

The third compass point is Australia’s constant focus on creating diplomatic, economic and military partnerships with Indonesia. And getting the two peoples to see each other clearly.

The comprehensive economic partnership agreement finalised during Jokowi’s visit is the trade twin of the 2018 comprehensive strategic partnership, which itself is built on the 2006 Lombok treaty.

Jokowi told parliament the two countries can be ‘anchors for development’ in the South Pacific and help ASEAN transform the Indo-Pacific ‘trust deficit’.

The effort, always, is to build more weight and depth, to get bilateral alignments that serve regional aims. The joint statement from Indonesia’s president and Australia’s prime minister devoted 10 of its 45 points to Indo-Pacific ‘stability and prosperity’, 10 points to shared regional interests and 9 points to maritime cooperation.

The fourth compass point adds a great caveat to the statement that Indonesia and Australia have nothing in common.

We now share something vital and defining: democracy.

As usual, Australia and Indonesia do democracy in disparate ways; the north and south faces of Mount Democracy are vastly different, yet we share the peak and the view. Democracy—along with geography and power and partnership—can draw two peoples together, to achieve Jokowi’s vision of Australia as Indonesia’s closest friend.

The fact of a democratic Indonesia should help Australia adjust to its relative decline compared with the growing wealth and strength of its giant neighbour.

Australia and Indonesia need to trust each other if they want to get closer

There’s much to be excited about Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s visit to Australia this week, where he was the first Indonesian president in 10 years to address parliament.

Despite ups and downs in the Australia–Indonesia relationship in the past several years, overall it has been improving. The two countries’ navies, for example, have agreed to organise more joint training and exercises. And both the Australian and Indonesian parliaments have ratified the long-awaited Indonesia–Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.

There are many reasons for the growing closeness between Indonesia and Australia. Two of the most important, however, are the growing assertiveness of China and the fear among many ASEAN countries, including Indonesia, that the United States is no longer that committed to helping maintain the stability of the region, especially under President Donald Trump.

With the regional strategic situation becoming more and more unstable, it’s not surprising that Australia and Indonesia see their interests converging.

Both Indonesia and Australia are wary about China. In Indonesia’s case, the recent standoff with China in the Natuna Islands has squandered Beijing’s strategic capital in Jakarta, even though Indonesia might not want to push the issue further due to its desire for Chinese investment and its own lack of military power.

For Australia, China’s interference in its domestic affairs combined with aggressiveness in Australia’s South Pacific backyard raises a lot of concerns.

At the same time, both Indonesia and Australia have much work to do in order to strengthen their relationship, notably in building trust between the two countries.

A 2019 Lowly Institute poll of Australians shows that only 1% think of Indonesia as Australia’s best friend, only 34% think that Jokowi will do the right thing in world affairs, and a surprising proportion (63%) don’t have confidence in the Indonesian president.

In fact, the same survey also suggests that Australians don’t trust other foreign leaders in general. Those mentioned in the survey, Chinese President Xi Jinping, US President Donald Trump, Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, are all viewed negatively in the poll. Only New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has a net positive in the survey.

On the flipside, in the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies’ The state of Southeast Asia 2020 survey of a pool of respondents from the research, business and finance, public, civil society and media sectors in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Australia doesn’t perform that well either.

Among Indonesians surveyed, only 3.4% have the confidence that Australia could provide leadership to ‘maintain the rules-based order and uphold international law’. In contrast, 47.3% have confidence in the European Union, located half a globe away, and 19.6% chose Japan.

While most respondents think the US is no longer reliable, only 10.2% would choose Australia as a strategic partner to replace the United States, while 30.7% would pick the European Union and 29.5% would select Japan.

Despite their proximity, both Indonesians and Australians don’t see each other as either that close or reliable. Instead, both countries look further afield for their main strategic partners.

In essence, both countries don’t see each other as that important. A significant number of Australian universities have dropped the teaching of Indonesian language and very few Indonesian institutions teach anything about Australia.

As a result, even though the Australia–Indonesia relationship is improving, it’s clear that it is based on very slender reeds: trust between Australia and Indonesia remains lacking and the two countries certainly don’t think of each other as their most important strategic partner.

It will be problematic when push comes to shove that both Australia and Indonesia may not be able to rely on each other due to lack of trust.

Jokowi’s visit to Australia will be dominated by the trade agenda, as he has shown a rather laser-like focus on economic issues. That’s unfortunate as there is more to the relationship between Australia and Indonesia than just economics.

It might be a good idea for the Australian government to try to push for a much broader agenda, notably intensifying cultural and educational exchanges. At the same time, Australia might be wise to intensify its various other engagements with Indonesia. Today’s announcement that Monash University will be the first foreign institution to be allowed to operate in Indonesia is a good first step.

Indonesia is Australia’s closest large neighbour. Both countries should and can do a lot more to rely on each other.

Jokowi’s visit to Australia shows the power of personal diplomacy

At about the midway mark of Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s first term, a group of international relations experts who were gathered at the presidential palace asked him what his foreign policy priorities were. Without pausing, he answered: ‘Concluding the IA-CEPA [Indonesia–Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement].’

There’s no question Indonesia faced bigger international challenges than getting a trade and investment deal done with an economic partner that doesn’t rank in either country’s top 10.

The experts were duly surprised by the answer.

But it’s a testament to the power of personal diplomacy between leaders that the IA-CEPA came to figure so highly in Widodo’s estimation.

Malcolm Turnbull invested considerable energy in getting Widodo behind the agreement, taking advantage of opportunities like meetings on the sidelines of the G-20 in Hamburg in July 2017 and the ASEAN–Australia Special Summit in Sydney in March 2018.

Since Widodo arrived in Australia on Saturday for a state visit, hosted by the third prime minister he’s dealt with since coming to office in 2014, the importance of leadership connections has again been on show.

Scott Morrison has to take the opportunity to develop a relationship that works best when it fuses shared interests with the kind of easy personal rapport that Turnbull struck up with Widodo early on.

After Morrison’s initial visit to Indonesia on taking office in August 2018, the two leaders have crossed paths on the international summit circuit and at Widodo’s inauguration. But they haven’t spent a great deal of time in each other’s company.

History shows that Australia and Indonesia have transacted the most important business, and produced the most enduring change to relations, when their leaders have shared an ease of communication and confidence in each other’s agenda and ability to deliver.

The quality of relations often starts at the top when leaders on both sides are able to bridge obvious differences in personality and background. Whether Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating in conclave with Suharto to map out strategic directions, or John Howard and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono rebuilding a working relationship on the foundations of tsunami aid and counterterrorism, the atmosphere generated by a bond between leaders provides a vital umbrella for transacting business.

Relations also can just as quickly deteriorate when there are missteps at the top. After revelations that Australia was tapping the phones of Yudhoyono and his inner circle in 2013, Tony Abbott’s refusal to issue a mea culpa and his truculent body language in parliament poured gasoline on a fire that Yudhoyono was looking for an opportunity to quell.

Morrison’s unexpected declaration that he would consider relocating the Australian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem coincided with Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi hosting her Palestinian counterpart, Riyad al-Maliki, for the launch of ‘Solidarity Week for Palestine’ in Jakarta.

It was the poor timing as much as the message that prompted Marsudi’s remark that Morrison’s position was a ‘slap in the face’. The incident delayed the signing of the IA-CEPA. Tellingly, Turnbull was sent to Indonesia to calm things down.

Widodo tarnished his image in Australia with the execution of Bali Nine drug traffickers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in 2015, having refused official requests for clemency. In the meantime, he is widely seen to have presided over a deterioration in the quality of Indonesian democracy and failed to keep promises to improve conditions in Papua.

He thus comes to Australia as a seasoned and pragmatic politician, enjoying less of the naive adulation that greeted his election.

If this dampens some of the popular enthusiasm for him during his state visit, an official program designed to fete and flatter, including the rare honour of addressing a joint sitting of the Australian parliament, as did Yudhoyono, will accord him stature as he struggles to get his second term on track at home with a raft of ‘big bang’ economic reforms.

And Widodo himself clearly wants a good relationship with Australia. He took some risks in pushing for the signing of the IA-CEPA, particularly its provisions to allow the establishment in Indonesia of 100% Australian-owned educational institutions.

The Indonesian parliament ratified the agreement on the eve of Widodo’s departure from Jakarta. That’s seen by the Australians as crucial for a successful visit and will enable both sides to focus on a substantive economic agenda to grow the least developed aspect of the relationship.

This conveniently fits with Widodo’s two strong preferences in foreign policy—bilateral diplomacy and economic gains. He believes his diplomats are at their best when selling the country’s wares.

Yet the times are right for Australia and Indonesia to strengthen the relationship on a number of fronts. Indonesia’s New Year confrontation with China over fishing boat incursions into waters off the Natuna Islands highlights the growing coincidence of strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific.

Moreover, as the two countries mark the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations this year, Australia is favoured by an alignment of personalities, events and interests in Indonesia that serve to support the relationship.

Indonesia’s current military leadership is open to doing more with Australia, including low-key operational roles, such as co-deployment on UN peacekeeping missions. For the first time, the Australian and Indonesian armies have full-time instructors at each other’s officer training academies, an arrangement Indonesia has with no other country.

Years of cultivating ties through education are paying off in the array of senior Indonesian figures who have greater familiarity with Australia than previous generations.

For example, the new chair of the powerful parliamentary commission on foreign affairs and defence is Meutya Hafid, a former television journalist and graduate of the University of New South Wales. In 2007, Hafid studied rural life in Australia after winning a journalism scholarship named in honour of the late Elizabeth O’Neill, an Australian embassy press officer killed in a plane crash in Yogyakarta.

There always will be ample scope for conflict in Australia–Indonesia relations. Papua remains a potential flashpoint. Others can emerge because of differences in political priorities, values, culture and levels of development.

But when conflict does arise, the ability of leaders to talk frankly and limit the fallout is important. It’s the same when the two countries want to advance a positive agenda. This week, Morrison and Widodo can make a solid contribution to that goal by strengthening their confidence in each other.