Tag Archive for: Indonesia

Unpacking Indonesia’s civil–military relations under Jokowi

The Indonesian military (Tentara Nasional Indonesia or TNI) turned 72 years old on 5 October. Much of the gung-ho surrounding the anniversary, however, wasn’t about the new weapon systems displayed during the celebration or new strategic plans. Instead, the focus was on TNI Commander General Gatot Nurmantyo—from his explicit order that soldiers must attend public screenings of an old anti-communist movie to his accusations that ‘non-military elements’ were importing arms. Those polemics, when coupled with his previous controversies—from alleged political manoeuvres during the Jakarta election to his brief suspension of language training with Australia—highlight how polarising the general has been since assuming command of the TNI in 2015.

Some have attributed such controversies to Gatot’s political ambitions (see here and here). Others, however, paint the TNI as the problem. They have noted, for example, how the TNI has been expanding its non-military activities, from counterterrorism to anti-drug campaigns, or how retired officers have been playing prominent roles in the Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo administration. Senior officers have also publicly exhibited conservative tendencies as antiquated programs of ‘state defence’ are crowding out technological modernisation plans.

The TNI’s public image should have tanked. But in a recent poll, 90% of the public agreed that the TNI was having a ‘good influence on the way things are going’ in Indonesia. That’s higher than the police (63%) and human rights organisations (82%), and it’s consistent with dozens of surveys over the past decade underscoring the TNI’s high favourability rating (see here and here).

We can make sense of this paradox—mounting criticisms but soaring public popularity—when we consider a few often-overlooked contextual factors surrounding the TNI.

First, Indonesia’s civil–military relations are not an exclusively elite affair between generals and political leaders. The broad conception of civil–military relations emphasises the strong relationship between militaries and their societies. And yet, for decades, most studies and press reports on Indonesia’s civil–military relations have focused on the political contestation between military leaders and the political elite. We know little about the societal relationship between the public and the TNI, or about the effect that relationship has on its intra-organisational dynamics.

That said, the TNI’s popularity seems less about elite politics and more about how the military’s post-1998 withdrawal has led to an increase in the public’s engagement with the police (separated from the TNI in 1999) and other non-military political institutions. Through more engagement, the public unsurprisingly sees the failure and corruption of other institutions more prominently than those of the TNI as an organisation.

Second, it is incumbent upon the president to carefully manage the TNI. Under Jokowi, however, civil–military relations have been on auto-pilot; his ministers—retired generals like Luhut Pandjaitan and Wiranto—handle national security affairs while the defence ministry and TNI headquarters formulate their own policies. Jokowi hasn’t been personally interested in a deeper or closer engagement with the military, and his advisers might feel he shouldn’t spend political capital on it—not when economic development and infrastructure are re-election centrepieces.

To be fair, finding the right balance in managing the TNI has always been difficult. Micro-manage too far, like President Wahid did in 1999, and you have political chaos. Not managing at all allowed conservative voices to dominate, as the Aceh conflict under the Megawati administration showed us. For better or worse, President Yudhoyono took great pains to engage with and manage the TNI. His personal and hands-on approach to the TNI may have even helped stabilise military reform.

In any case, Jokowi can’t easily intervene in military affairs when things go south without sustained investment. It’s extremely difficult to manage civil–military crises when you haven’t built trust or a relationship with your military leaders and the organisation. Such investment is even more critical when you have a TNI commander who’s more willing to engage in public or even political activities.

Finally, the TNI’s recent regressive tendencies are partially rooted in the lack of attention for almost two decades to fundamental issues of organisational reform—from education and training to personnel management. Rather than completely overhauling the military structure put in place by TNI commander Benny Moerdani in 1983, the post-Suharto military leaders preferred to tinker with it (a process dubbed ‘organisational validation’). Aside from the reforms to its political role, the TNI’s overall structure had been modified more than half a dozen times since 1998. The last set of modifications was announced last year and would last until 2019.

With constant tinkering sans fundamental overhaul, personnel policies in particular could hardly be professionalised. The incentive system that had rewarded conservative and politically ambitious officers remains. Nurmantyo is not unique in this sense; he’s a product of the height of the New Order era along with his generation who entered the military in the 1980s. As junior officers, they cut their teeth in East Timor and formed the backbone of the New Order’s system of territorial and political control during its peak. But as mid-rank officers, they had to deal with the uncertainty of democratic transition and the TNI’s near disintegration. Finally as senior officers, they had to ‘wait in line’ as promotional logjams plagued the TNI when the retirement age was suddenly lengthened from 55 to 58 in 2004 even as non-military posts shrunk significantly.

Consequently, some of the 1980s generation like Nurmantyo are often more fluent in political strategies and their conceptions of national security tend to be inward-looking and expansive at the same time. They are also, above all, concerned with organisational unity and restoring the TNI’s reputation. When job promotions and post-retirement careers are equally uncertain, staunchly conservative and politically ambitious officers tend to be the norm rather than the exception.

Bottling Indonesia’s Gini

When Indonesia declared independence from Dutch rule in 1945, the country’s founder, Sukarno, called on his people to build a nation that would ‘stand in strength’, eternally united. That mantra—unity and strength—helped shape the country’s future, including its approach to economic development. During much of Indonesia’s early history, its egalitarian distribution of wealth and assets set it apart from its neighbours.

But seven decades later, the legacy of equality is fading. If Indonesia is to remain one of Asia’s most robust economies, it is essential that its current leadership recommit to narrowing the socioeconomic gap.

During much of the 1970s and 1980s, Indonesia’s low level of income inequality helped raise living standards and reduce poverty. In 1970, just 25 years after independence, the country managed an enviable distribution of wealth among a diverse population, with a Gini coefficient (a common measure of income inequality) of 0.35 (with zero representing maximum equality). By comparison, neighbouring Malaysia had a Gini coefficient of 0.50.

Indonesia’s remained roughly the same for decades. But, since the Asian financial crisis in 1997, income gaps have widened throughout the region, and in Indonesia in particular, where social welfare programs have barely stemmed the rise in inequality. This year, Indonesia’s Gini coefficient is around 0.39, only slightly better than the 0.41 recorded in 2014.

To economists like us, this trend is deeply worrying. Because persistent high or rising inequality can contribute to political instability and undermine social cohesion, it is critical that Indonesia address it. Paradoxically, Malaysia’s experience is instructive.

In Malaysia, income inequality is no longer primarily a function of ethnicity, or the rural-urban divide, as it once was. Thanks to successful redistribution strategies adopted during the 1970s and 1980s, average per capita income increased, and poverty rates fell dramatically. Though wealth distribution remains a major concern, Malaysia’s Gini coefficient has been on a steady glide towards greater equality since the mid-1970s; in 2014, for example, it dropped to 0.40 for the first time ever (though this figure remains higher than the average for OECD economies).

Indonesia is moving in the opposite direction. Not only does it have one of the highest levels of wealth inequality in the world; it also suffers deep regional disparities. The country’s poorer eastern provinces, which have a history of ethnic violence, lag behind the rest of the country on human development indicators, infrastructure quality, and access to education. Despite the country’s overall progress, food insecurity and child malnutrition remain serious issues in the east. In other words, it is not just Indonesia’s income distribution that concerns us, but how unequal access to health care, education, and social services has become.

Our concern is widely shared. Last month, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers from around the world gathered at the Indonesia Development Forum to explore solutions to the many forms of inequality that are affecting Indonesia today. The challenges are complex, and discussions focused on the need for multipronged solutions. As Columbia University’s Jeffrey D. Sachs noted, greater investment in education, and more effective wealth redistribution strategies, are the key areas that Indonesia’s government must focus on.

The classroom is the foundation of sustainable development everywhere. Access to education is one of the best ways for poor or disadvantaged youth to become economically productive and climb out of poverty. Unfortunately, Indonesia’s public schools, especially in the east, are struggling with teacher absenteeism. Children who want to learn simply cannot when their instructors do not show up. Broadening access to education is not only about boosting enrolment rates; it also requires ensuring accountability and improving service quality.

Still, reforming the education sector alone will not be enough to close Indonesia’s wealth gap. Strategies that the government should consider include expanding social protection, creating more vocational-training programs, and overhauling the tax system. In many OECD countries, redistributive policies, like tax breaks and expansion of welfare benefits, have helped reduce inequality. If Indonesia is to hit the targets set by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for reducing inequality by 2030, it must follow these countries’ example.

There are many reasons to be hopeful. Bambang Brodjonegoro, Indonesia’s minister of national development planning, has helped make social inequality a key agenda item, following the direction of President Joko Widodo. This time next year, the Indonesia Development Forum will meet again to gauge progress in our efforts to tackle regional inequality.

Clearly, the political will exists to restore greater equality to Indonesia’s economy. If current leaders can remain as focused on their vision as the country’s founders were on theirs, Indonesia will again serve as a model of unity and strength for the region.

Indonesia’s maritime strategy: what’s been achieved?

In 2016, the Indonesian government released a white paper outlining the parameters for a future ‘global maritime fulcrum’ (GMF) strategy. The document reflects the significance of the littoral environment to the country’s national psyche and is indicative of a seafaring tradition that goes back to the 2nd century.

Primarily associated with President Joko Widodo, the GMF seeks to secure Indonesia’s wider maritime interests by capitalising on the state’s unique crossroads position between two oceans (Indian and Pacific) and two regions (Asia and Australasia). Unquestionably ambitious, this visionary program has unfortunately yielded little progress since its inception. Not only has it failed to delineate an appropriate roadmap for meeting its external priorities, but ongoing territorial tensions with Beijing have hindered the GMF’s potential coupling with China’s One Belt, One Road initiative.

The GMF was conceived in light of the numerous threats that plague Indonesia’s archipelagic waters, including illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing (IUU); pollution; unresolved border disputes; illicit trafficking (arms, humans, drugs); piracy; and terrorism.

A strategy to counter those myriad threats isn’t helped by the vastness of Indonesia’s littoral environment. To provide even basic coverage of the roughly 6 million square kilometers of combined archipelagic waters and continental shelf and 17,500 islands, it has been estimated that the country would require a fleet of at least 300 vessels operating around the clock.

Adding to Indonesia’s concerns is the growing hegemonic rivalry for leadership in the Asia–Pacific. In particular, Jakarta has become increasingly animated over the possibility of being drawn into the crosshairs of the great power competition between Beijing and Washington.

The aim of the GMF is to fundamentally transform Indonesia’s oceanic realm from what has historically been a security liability into a strategic asset. The policy is predicated on two core assumptions. First, unless the country fully understands, responsibly exploits and studiously manages its waters, a rapidly unmanageable catastrophe will unfold. Second, by effectively leveraging its geographic location, Indonesia can play a decisive role in helping to balance the increasingly fraught relationship between China and the United States.

The GMF consists of six defining principles and seven pillars, the crux of which can be boiled down to six functional areas: (1) engaging in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy to resolve or at least mitigate border disputes for the common good; (2) tying economic growth to sustainable management of the seas; (3) making large-scale investments in infrastructure to increase connectivity between the numerous islands of the archipelago; (4) creating a coordinating agency that would eventually evolve into a dedicated coastguard; (5) expanding the navy’s green- and potentially blue-water capacities through new equipment and investment in people; and (6) acting as a neutral third party to ensure a balanced regional order in the Asia–Pacific. To pay for the GMF, Widodo has declared an intention to increase the overall defence budget to 1.5% of GDP within three years (it’s currently less than 1% of GDP).

There’s little doubt that Widodo is sincere in wanting to institute a comprehensive program of maritime domain awareness for Indonesia. The population has also been generally supportive of his agenda, especially the desire to decisively deal with IUU. Sinking foreign vessels that are caught poaching in the country’s waters—317 have been destroyed since Widodo took office in 2014—sits particularly well with Indonesian nationalism.

That said, little of real substance has been achieved since the GMF was first announced. The only development of note has been the creation of a new maritime security agency (Badan Keamanan Laut, BAKAMLA). However, even there progress has been halting, largely due to a lack of resources and the inherent difficulty of coordinating 12 self-interested national agencies that have a culture of entrenched rent-seeking.

The GMF’s failure to produce results is mainly due to two factors. First, despite the emphasis on external priorities (using diplomacy to settle border disputes and expanding the navy’s capabilities), the construct is largely silent on exactly how to configure the country’s military and foreign policy apparatus so that it can meet regional security issues head on. That partly reflects Jakarta’s preference for the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states. However, it also stems from the traditional inward bias in Indonesian strategic thinking and the priority given to maintaining the integrity of the archipelago.

Second, the GMF has been unable to fully leverage China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, which aims to foster greater trade integration between Europe, Africa and Asia. Although President Xi has alluded to the potentially significant role Indonesia could play in actualising that plan, cooperation has been stymied by Beijing’s assertive stance on territorial claims within Indonesia’s EEZ. Repeated instances of Chinese vessels trawling in the area around the Natuna Islands—which China asserts is within its self-defined nine-dash line and historical national fishing grounds—has been especially contentious, not least because of the importance the Widodo administration has attached to combating IUU.

This ongoing impasse has complicated relations between Jakarta and Beijing and potentially put at risk mutually beneficial arrangements to further their respective maritime plans. However, the cost of failing to align the two strategies will be far greater for the GMF as the various infrastructure projects it envisions—including 24 deep-sea ports that will connect north Sumatra, Jakarta, East Java, South Sulawesi and Papua—will be highly dependent on Chinese investment. Without a resolution of this territorial dispute, Indonesia’s ability to prosecute a viable policy of maritime domain awareness will remain at best questionable and, at worst, unrealisable.

ASEAN and Indonesia’s foreign policy: 50 years on

In his speech commemorating ASEAN’s 50th birthday, Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo reminded ASEAN to maintain its unity and centrality lest it be drawn deeper into a great-power rivalry that would undermine the security of individual member states. Indeed, the threat of great-power rivalry in Southeast Asia strongly motivated Indonesia to establish ASEAN with Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand in August 1967. Fifty years later, a similar threat has returned amid nagging doubts that Indonesia can mitigate it through ASEAN.

In 1967, the Cold War was ‘hot’ with the American war in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Indonesia had just ended its bellicose Konfrontasi (Confrontation) policy against the British-backed Malaysia and Singapore. Those events coincided with the rise to power in Jakarta of the anti-communist General Suharto, who made economic recovery a priority after years of mismanagement and neglect under his predecessor, the leftist President Sukarno.

Yet, suspicion towards the great powers’ military presence in Southeast Asia remained as strong a feature of Suharto’s foreign policy as it had been under Sukarno. With America’s military presence in Thailand and the Philippines, and Britain’s in Malaysia and Singapore, Suharto was very much aware of the acute sensitivities Indonesians felt against an immediate volte-face from Sukarno’s firm anti-imperialism legacy. Indonesia’s abandonment of Konfrontasi thus entailed a commitment by all ASEAN members to ensure that ‘all foreign bases [on their soil] are temporary’ and ‘are not intended to be used directly or indirectly to subvert national independence and freedom of States in the area or prejudice … their national development.’

In 1971, ASEAN agreed to a ‘neutralisation’ of Southeast Asia, promising a region ‘free from any form or manner of interference by outside Powers’. In addition, ASEAN pledged its members to the principle of ‘non-interference in internal affairs of one another’ so that they could concentrate on the paramount concerns of internal (regime) security, political consolidation and economic development.

In the following decades, ASEAN became the cornerstone of Indonesia’s foreign policy, with the primary aim of keeping the great powers at bay, such as during the Cambodian conflict. Indonesia initially hesitated to see ASEAN denouncing Vietnam for invading and occupying Cambodia in 1978, for Hanoi had been a strategic buffer against possible Chinese expansion into mainland Southeast Asia. Yet, the consequences of Vietnam’s free rein in Cambodia would have been worse. It would have given Vietnam’s ally, the Soviet Union, greater influence over the region, exposed Thailand’s eastern flank to Vietnamese incursions, and in turn compelled Bangkok to ask its ally, the United States, if not also Vietnam’s arch-rival, China, for more military assistance and presence. In short, a mere slap on Hanoi’s wrist would have failed to stop further militarisation and destabilisation of Southeast Asia by the great powers.

The fall of Suharto in May 1998 and the subsequent democratisation of Indonesia’s national politics opened its foreign policy up to the scrutiny of multiple domestic stakeholders. Now the legislature and civil society demand a greater say, if not also a veto, in the making of foreign-policy decisions.

However, the current increase in foreign-policy stakeholders coincides with the return of great-power rivalry reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s. It has become harder for Indonesia, let alone ASEAN, to answer critical geopolitical questions, such as the South China Sea dispute, with clarity and one voice. Compounding that problem is the wider diversity of ASEAN’s membership. The process of managing intractable geopolitical issues is becoming more complex. The ‘ASEAN way’ of consensus decision-making to address such issues means that collective decisions are about finding the lowest common denominator. ASEAN’s difficulty in issuing joint communiqués on contentious geopolitical issues, if at all, could become the norm.

As ASEAN finds it increasingly difficult to conceal internal discord, its unity and centrality are slipping away. ASEAN has now come under the scrutiny of great powers whose rivalries it originally meant to keep at bay. It’s axiomatic that ASEAN’s relevance today is contingent upon its members’ ability to avoid becoming the proxies of such rivalries. There have been calls for Jakarta to contemplate a ‘post-ASEAN foreign policy’, introduce ASEAN-minus-X or voting mechanisms, or focus on alternative multilateral groupings that can better fit Indonesia’s strategic preferences. In a way, those suggestions reflect Indonesia’s increasingly pragmatic and transactional view of ASEAN.

Fifty years ago, ASEAN was founded to promote regional stability, which was vital for Indonesia’s national development. Now, the reverse seems to apply: national development is the basis for ASEAN’s relevancy. Jakarta appears less hesitant to look elsewhere for whatever ASEAN fails to deliver.

It would be a real concern if Jakarta felt it could get more out of the great powers than out of ASEAN. If that happened, any conflict of interest among and between the great powers and ASEAN would compel a serious rethink of Indonesia’s foreign policy. The challenge thus lies in how Jakarta can help ASEAN innovate and evolve so that it can reconcile the changing expectations of member states in light of the great-power rivalry in Asia.

Indonesian democracy: from stagnation to regression?

For much of the past decade, observers have praised Indonesian democracy. Elections have been competitive, the country boasts a vibrant civil society, and the press enjoys far more freedom than in most Asian states.  An analytical consensus thus emerged that Indonesia’s democracy was stable and relatively liberal, with no serious existential threats on the horizon.

Events since 2014 have cast doubt on that consensus. New signs of fragility have materialised that we believe put Indonesia at risk of democratic regression. That fragility has three sources: re-emergent strands of authoritarian populism from among Indonesia’s old ruling caste, the rise of a xenophobic and sectarian brand of politics, and a sustained illiberal drift in the regulation of civil liberties.

A neo-authoritarian brand of populism emerged in 2014. Prabowo Subianto, a Suharto-era military general, ran a formidable campaign against Joko Widodo (Jokowi) in the tightly fought presidential election that year. Prabowo represented a ‘classically authoritarian-populist challenge’: he suggested that Indonesia was unsuited to Western-style democracy, and blamed ‘foreign forces’ and wealthy minorities for Indonesia’s economic woes. Prabowo lost by just 6%, bringing Indonesia within a whisper of a serious authoritarian threat. That threat hasn’t disappeared. Prabowo enjoys support from his loyal base, and most observers believe he will run in the 2019 presidential elections.

There’s been an upswing in sectarianism too. A coalition of Islamist groups and conservative Islamic organisations, backed by leading politicians, mounted a powerful campaign against Jakarta’s Christian Chinese governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok). Their efforts proved successful, with Ahok losing the election decisively before being found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to two years in prison. The victor, Anies Baswedan, allied himself opportunistically with the sectarian campaign, as did his patron, Prabowo Subianto.

There has been much debate about the depth of public support for such campaigns. Prabowo’s narrow loss, and the success of the anti-Ahok protests, suggest a significant constituency for an illiberal brand of politics in Indonesia. Some analysts, however, are sceptical, and warn against inferring a generalised rise of anti-democratic, especially Islamist, sentiment in the electorate. But the greatest danger lies not in the existence of a constituency for illiberalism, but in the potential coalescence of that group with a reinvigorated authoritarian-populist challenge. The 2014 presidential election and the recent Islamist mobilisations indicate that such a coalition already has significant electoral clout.

We also note an increasing propensity among political leaders to craft ethnically-charged narratives about the nature of wealth distribution. Such politicians decry the growing gap between rich and poor, and suggest that rising inequality has an ethno-religious dimension, with poor Muslim masses exploited by a small but wealthy ethnic-Chinese and Christian minority. Sinophobic discourse has a long history in Indonesia; its re-emergence should ring alarm bells, given that it has in the past often led to anti-Chinese violence.

Perhaps most concerning, however, is the slow, insidious, illiberal drift in the laws and regulations governing civil liberties in Indonesia. Laws on defamation, treason and blasphemy, for example, are ripe for political manipulation. We’ve also seen a serious deterioration in the protection of minority rights, particularly for religious minorities and Indonesia’s LGBTI community. That drift began under President Yudhoyono, prompting a change in Indonesia’s Freedom House score from ‘free’ to ‘partly free’ in 2013, and has been sustained during the first half of Jokowi’s presidency.

What role has Jokowi played in Indonesia’s slow-moving democratic regression? He won office in 2014 on a largely democratic and inclusive platform, with the support of volunteers and civil society activists. Yet since coming to office, Jokowi has pursued a narrow, conservative developmentalist agenda, with little concern for democratic reform or human rights.

The president’s attempt to neutralise the perceived threat from Islamist groups is a case in point. In July, spooked by the Ahok mobilisations, Jokowi issued a regulation that enables the government to disband organisations it deems a threat to national unity or Pancasila, the state ideology. The target was Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI). Indonesia already has a law to shut down groups like HTI. But Jokowi wanted to avoid legislated checks and balances, and so designed a tool that could have come straight from an autocrat’s playbook.

Jokowi is proving to be an impatient, reactive leader. He is readily unsettled by political threats and, like many in Indonesia’s political class, seems comfortable using illiberal tools to defend his political position.

There are, no doubt, many who welcome Jokowi’s heavy-handed approach to groups like HTI, which are themselves undemocratic, illiberal and xenophobic. But it’s striking that neither President Jokowi nor other political leaders framed that approach as a defence of Indonesia’s democracy or civil liberties. Instead, they justified it as a defence of Pancasila—the same tactic used by President Suharto when cracking down on opposition.

It’s tempting to see these signs of democratic regression as isolated incidents. But we need only look at countries like the Philippines and Turkey to see how once-stable democracies can deteriorate in the hands of democratically elected leaders.

Indonesia is clearly not in the midst of a full-blown democratic breakdown. There is no coherent attack on elections, opposition parties or civic space. But we must pay attention to growing signs of fragility in one of the region’s last remaining democracies.

How did Indonesia become an archipelagic state?

Image courtesy of Flickr user NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

One of the distinctive features of contemporary Indonesia is that it is an archipelagic state in which the government exercises sovereignty over the waters between the islands making up the country’s land territory as well as over the islands themselves.

But the nation we now call Indonesia was not born as an archipelagic state. Until the middle of the 1950s nearly all the waters lying between the islands of Indonesia were as open to the ships of all nations as were the waters in the middle of the great oceans. These waters belonged to no state nor did any state claim any form of jurisdiction over them. As a consequence, Indonesia was made up of hundreds of pieces of territory separated from one another by high seas.

Then, suddenly, on 13 December 1957, the cabinet of Prime Minister Djuanda Kartawidjaja declared that the Indonesian government had ‘absolute sovereignty’ over all the waters lying within straight baselines drawn between the outermost islands of Indonesia. These baselines, encompassing as they did all the islands making up the country, formed Indonesia—its lands and the seas over which the government now asserted sovereignty—into a single unified territory for the first time.

During the late colonial period, the Dutch government had made episodic attempts to assert sovereignty over small margins of the seas closely adjacent to landforms. What the Djuanda Declaration asserted was of an entirely different order, claiming sovereignty for the state over vast swathes of sea previously open to all nations.

The declaration alarmed neighbouring states because of the implications it might have for the free movement of ships through the archipelago and access to fishing grounds in the waters now claimed by Indonesia. And it outraged the Western maritime powers. Fearing that it had the potential to restrict the mobility of their naval forces and disrupt international shipping, they condemned it as a gross violation of the freedom of the seas enshrined in international law and announced that they would disregard it.

The Indonesian government appeared to be in no position to overcome a challenge to its claim. It was embroiled in serious and deep-seated domestic political turmoil and its navy was far too weak to enforce any conditions the government might place on foreign warships passing through the archipelago. And yet in 1960 it enacted the declaration of the Djuanda Declaration into national legislation (Law No. 4 of 1960).

Undaunted by the storm of criticism and rejection, the Indonesians pursued and vigorously campaigned their claim though a series of UN conferences and meetings in succeeding decades, and through an equally robust series of discussions and agreements first with their near neighbours, notably Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, and later further afield, which sought to put legal flesh on its claim. As well, its diplomacy involved continuing bilateral negotiations with its major antagonists, particularly the United States, and constant and successful efforts to attract support from the ‘Third World’ group of nations in such a way as to press the maritime powers to accept the inevitability of their claim.

In all these talks, Indonesian delegations aimed to clarify thorny and agonisingly intricate problems of definition—for instance, just what is an archipelago?—and, more important, the nature of the jurisdiction that an archipelagic state might exercise over its claimed archipelagic waters.  In particular, under what regime might foreign warships be allowed to pass through archipelagic waters? Would they be subjected to the innocent passage regime or would it be necessary to craft a new passage regime that, for example, allowed submarines to pass through archipelagic waters while submerged?

As these discussions entered a decisive stage, three people played pivotal roles. On the Indonesian side, the measured and incisive professorial style of Mochtar Kusumaatmadja blended brilliantly with the combative, energetic efforts of Hasjim Djalal. They made a formidable team.

Perhaps even more crucial at specific points was the masterly leadership, diplomatic sensitivity and adroit tactical nous displayed by the Fijian Satya Nandan. It was he who, as rapporteur of the Second Committee at the 1975 Geneva Law of the Sea conference, drafted the breakthrough single negotiating text which entrenched the concept of the archipelagic state and became the basis of the final agreement.

Eventually, in 1982, Indonesia gained international recognition for its claim when the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea formally recognized the existence of a new category of states known as archipelagic states and declared that these states had sovereignty over their ‘archipelagic waters’.

In the end, even the United States, which refused to sign the 1982 Convention, found itself formally recognising in 1988 ‘the archipelagic States principles as applied by Indonesia’.  Indonesia’s ultimate victory, still remarkably little-heralded, was testament to the resilience, creativity, judiciousness and pragmatism of its diplomats.

Cyber wrap

Image courtesy of Pixabay user Magnascan.

The 2017 Cyber Security Challenge Australia (CySCA) kicks off today. Seventy-nine teams will compete over 24 hours for trips to cybersecurity conferences including DEFCON, Cisco Live, and RUXCON, as well as the possibility of being headhunted for a cyber security job. CySCA is just part of the Australian government’s push to expand the cybersecurity talent pool in Australia.

Last Friday, the government’s Special Advisor, Alastair MacGibbon, was talking up the need to start teaching primary school children about cybersecurity. And MacGibbon’s deputy, Sandra Ragg, was also out on the hustings last week pitching the idea of an Australian cyber alumni network to a conference in Sydney. The network would be a means to transfer skills between the public and private sectors, crowd source new ideas and provide a ‘surge’ capability for major cybersecurity threats to the country.

Also in Canberra last week was the inaugural Australia-Indonesia Cyber Policy Dialogue, hosted by Australia’s Cyber Ambassador Dr Tobias Feakin. The Dialogue, announced by the Prime Minister and Indonesian President Widodo in February, reportedly discussed views on international cyber norms, cooperation on cybersecurity and engagement with regional countries to reduce cyber risks. Mirroring the broader bilateral relationship, Australia’s cyber relationship with Indonesia has been rocky in the past, but events such as the Dialogue indicate a new positive focus from both countries.

China has launched an ambitious program to write an online Chinese Encyclopaedia, dubbed a ‘Great Wall of Culture’ by its new editor in chief Yang Muzhi. 20,000 authors have been recruited from Chinese universities to write 300,000 entries. Yang also told the South China Morning Post that the project will directly compete with Wikipedia, to ‘guide and lead the public and society’.  SCMP also notes that access to Wikipedia in China is ‘patchy’, with possibly controversial subjects usually timing out. Gizmodo notes that Wikipedia access has been a tricky subject for Chinese web-censors, who have variously blocked access to single pages, the Chinese version, and the whole site at different times.

The French presidential election was marred by the last minute dump of nine gigabytes of information stolen by hackers from the eventual victor Emmanuel Macron’s campaign. Macron’s campaign headquarters had previously noted persistent attempts by suspected Russian-linked hacking group APT28 to access campaign information. Just before the 12pm Friday media blackout, Macron’s campaign announced that they had fallen victim to a ‘massive hacking attack’, which resulted in thousands of emails, internal campaign memos and accounts being posted online late Friday. The material also included some obviously fake documentation.

While the documents were largely mundane, and the incident didn’t appear to have a noticeable effect on the ultimate outcome, Macron hasn’t ruled out retaliation against Russia for the incident. His foreign policy adviser said that ‘We will have a doctrine of retaliation when it comes to Russian cyberattacks or any other kind of attacks’. France’s national cybersecurity agency will also be investigating the incident.

In Germany, Hans-Georg Maasse, the head of domestic security agency BfV, has threatened to ‘wipe out’ servers used by threat actors, including APT28, APT29 and APT10, if the owners of the servers aren’t willing to assist authorities to prevent further cyber incidents. BfV has been investigating hacking incidents that targeted the Bundestag in 2015 and political associations connected with the major parties last month, that have all been linked to Russian cyber actors. And according to the Washington Post, two former officials from the Obama Administration have called for a comprehensive US/NATO/EU strategy to deter further Russian attempts to ‘subvert’ elections.

The British Army has announced a new recruitment campaign for cyber savvy soldiers after its previous attempts failed to secure the necessary number of recruits. Payments of £5,000, known as a ‘Golden Hello’, will be provided to communications systems operators and engineers in the Royal Corps of Signals. Meanwhile, the US Marine Corps is reportedly struggling with the concept of admitting cyber skilled Marines through lateral entry programs that allow personnel to skip basic training in junior ranks. Concerns that the Marines can’t recruit enough of the right people to ensure mission effectiveness are balanced by concerns that lateral entry will undermine the Marine’s esprit de corps and the ‘every Marine a rifleman’ ethos.

Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun has learnt that Japan’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry plans to introduce a certification system for IoT devices in 2018. The Ministry plans to devise an index to rate the cybersecurity measures of IoT devices, which will be indicated by a Ministry certification mark. The emergence last year of the Mirai botnet, which uses infected IoT devices to mount massive denials of service (DDoS) , has further heightened long standing concern among governments and cybersecurity researchers about the security of IoT devices.

And finally, the manager of the .au domain auDA wants your views on the introduction of direct registration in Australia. The change to direct registration will allow shorter domains in the .au domain space, e.g. aspistrategist.au instead of aspistrategist.org.au. Tell auDA your thoughts here before 15 May.

The Counterterrorism Yearbook 2017: Indonesia

Indonesia’s 2016 was bookended by two significant terrorist events. The first was the 14 January bombing and shooting attack by four people near the Sarinah department store in the centre of Jakarta , which killed eight people and injured 23 others. The second was a series of arrests for terrorism offences, including a planned suicide bombing of the presidential palace by a female jihadist, intended for 11 December but thwarted by CT police the day before.

Those were just two of at least 13 terrorist incidents and plots in 2016, but they were notable for several reasons. Both were inspired by the Islamic State (IS) and directed by senior Indonesian members of IS in Syria. Indeed, the Sarinah attack was the first IS terrorist operation in Southeast Asia to result in the loss of life. Although in many ways a bungled operation, the attack revealed the ability of senior Indonesian jihadists in Syria to organise violence at home, rather than just recruiting Indonesians to go to the Middle East to fight for IS, as had previously been the case.

The failed 11 December plot was the first involving a potential female suicide bomber in Indonesia. Women have long played an important role in Southeast Asia’s terrorist networks, but to date have never directly participated in an operation. That marks an important change in the dynamics of Indonesian terrorism.

Since the emergence of IS in late 2013, there have been predictions that it would further radicalise terrorists in Indonesia, leading to a return to the types of mass-casualty attacks not seen since the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotel bombings in Jakarta in August 2009. But for much of 2014 and 2015, IS’s main concern was to attract Southeast Asians to Syria and Iraq as fighters. It made little practical effort to promote operations within Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines—the sources of most of its Southeast Asian fighters. The number of returnees from the Middle East increased over 2016, suggesting that they will pose a mounting security threat for Indonesian counter-terrorism officials. In addition to pro-IS groups intensifying their activity, other sections of the jihadist community, particularly Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), are showing signs of consolidation, though they haven’t been involved in recent violent activity.

While Indonesia’s terrorism threat levels have risen because of IS factors, they remain well below those of the 2000s, when JI-linked terrorists, many of them former Mujahidin who had trained in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan in the late 1980s and early 1990s, put together a succession of highly lethal attacks that resulted in more than 300 deaths and a thousand serious injuries.

Virtually all terrorist bomb attacks and plots over the past seven years have been of low technical competence and were often amateurish in their execution. But if better leadership and technical competence became available, especially through returnees from Syria, then threat levels could rise significantly. I also contend that, despite the continued success by CT police in detecting, arresting and prosecuting violent jihadists, the Indonesian Government’s overall CT strategies are patchy and misconceived.

It’s important to keep Indonesia’s terrorism problem in perspective—something that the media isn’t always inclined to do. While Indonesia has the largest jihadist community in Southeast Asia, it suffers fewer terrorism fatalities than the Philippines. Of the several thousand Indonesian jihadists, most aren’t supporters of IS, and they don’t involve themselves in or approve of terrorist attacks against civilians, at least for now. Of the minority who are IS aligned, very few have the skills and discipline to mount major attacks, though many have the wish to do so.

While foreigners and non-Muslim Indonesians are high-priority targets for IS members and affiliates, Indonesian Government officials, especially police and prosecutors, remain at the top of the enemy list and are the most vulnerable to attack.

Indonesia is very likely to experience worsening terrorism problems in the coming years. Despite police success at breaking up terrorist cells and plots, there’s a ready supply of new recruits to extreme jihadist causes like IS. Some recruits are older, more experienced jihadists who’ve come to regard IS’s struggle as more virtuous or compelling than that of other jihadist groups to which they’ve been affiliated. But many of the new recruits are younger and from backgrounds with little trace of militancy or puritanism.

As IS’s military fortunes continue to decline in Syria and Iraq, opening up the prospect of its partial collapse, the possible return of skilled, battle-hardened jihadists to Indonesia could substantially add to the potency of local terrorist groups. If Indonesia’s experience of Mujahidin returning from Afghanistan and Pakistan 25 years ago is any guide, many IS returnees will be committed to violent jihad at home.

The likelihood of a worsening terrorism threat should impel the Jokowi government to bolster its broader counter-terrorist efforts. The National Counter-Terrorism Agency is struggling to properly address many of the key issues relating to radicalisation, and most of Indonesia’s successes in counterterrorism are due to law enforcement, rather than prevention campaigns. Better researched and more tightly targeted deradicalisation programs, along with more professional management of terrorist prisoners and closer monitoring of releasees, would be a substantial advance in Indonesia’s combating of extremism.

Cyber wrap

Image courtesy of Pixabay user JeongGuHyeok.

Australia and Indonesia have agreed to deepen their cooperation on cyber security issues following the latest meeting of the bilateral Ministerial Council on Law and Security. The joint communique noted the Ministers had agreed to new initiatives including a new Australia–Indonesia Cyber Policy Dialogue later this year, cyber strategy workshops in Australia to share best practice for policy development, and exchanges on lessons learned from the establishment of the Australian Cyber Security Centre to assist the creation of Indonesia’s new cyber security agency. Cyber security has been a sensitive issue between the two countries since the Snowden leaks revealed that Australia had spied on former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and the new initiatives are a welcome sign of cooperation with a key regional player.

Yesterday Justice Minister Michael Keenan released the 2016 statistics for the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN), revealing that there wwere about 44,500 reports of cybercrime in Australia last year. The figures show that Victorians were the biggest victims of cybercrime, and that nearly half of reported incidents related to online fraud and scams. The ACORN report was released on international Safer Internet Day, an initiative that seeks to raise awareness of cyber security and safety issues, with a particular focus on children.

The Australian Signals Directorate has built on the success of its award winning Top 4 mitigation strategies this week, releasing the ‘Essential Eight’ as part of its new Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents. ASD considers the eight mitigation measures to be the cyber security baseline for organisations, and additional measures should be adopted based on the risk profile of the organisation. Combined, the eight measures create a defence posture by seeking to prevent malware running on networks, limiting the extent of incidents and aiding the recovery of data. Implementation of the Top 4 is mandatory for Australian government agencies, but it’s not clear if it will be expanded to include the four new essential mitigation measures.

Saudi Arabia and Iran’s ongoing cyber spat has sparked up again as up to 15 Saudi government agencies and companies have been hit by a renewed wave of Shamoon 2 malware. Famously used in 2012 against Saudi Aramco, the virus wipes the data on affected machines. Shamoon 2 emerged late last year and reportedly affected Saudi Arabia’s Civil Aviation Authority. Cyber security firms Symantec and Palo Alto have released analysis that indicates Shamoon 2’s creators have undertaken significant preparatory work to assist its spread. That includes the use of stolen passwords that Palo Alto reported are likely to have been taken through phishing, based on the passwords’ strength.

The second edition of the Tallinn Manual was released this week by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE). The manual addresses the application of international law to cyber operations in peacetime or in conflict short of war, following on from the first manual that addressed the law of armed conflict and its application to cyberspace. ICPC is pleased to be hosting the Australian launch of the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on 24 February. Register here if you would like to come along.

And finally, in the news this week, Samoa has launched a five year cyber security strategy, noting the need to protect Samoans and build confidence in the country’s economy. In the UK the Public Accounts Committee has criticised the government’s approach to cyber security. The Committee’s report calls out ‘chaotic’ data breach processes, and lack of action on personnel shortages, and calls for a plan for the new National Cyber Security Centre. In the US, Treasury has already eased some of the sanctions imposed on the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in response to malicious Russian cyber activities including attempting to influence the 2016 US election. The changes specifically ease the restrictions on the supply of IT products to the FSB. Also in the US, a court has issued an order to Google to retrieve information from a foreign server, reversing the precedent set by an earlier case involving Microsoft in which the court ruled data stored overseas was beyond the reach of a US warrant. In darker places, a vigilante has brought down about one fifth of the ‘Dark Web’. The unknown actor hacked Tor hosting service Freedom Hosting II because they believed the company was knowingly hoisting large child pornography sited. And here is an interesting account of how Google fought the massive DDoS on KrebsOnSecurity last September.

The Strategist Six: Endy Bayuni

EBSSWelcome to The Strategist Six, a feature that provides a glimpse into the thinking of prominent academics, government officials, military officers, reporters and interesting individuals from around the world.

1. We’ve seen a steady rise in religious extremism in Indonesia in recent years. Does that trend pose a serious threat to Indonesian democracy?

Religious extremism has always been around in Indonesia. The big difference today is the failure of the nation to deal with this firmly as radical groups capitalise on freedom of speech to spread their hate-filled and violent ideology, particularly through the internet. The government is unable to distinguish between legitimate Islamist voices and those that openly promote violence to push for their Islamist agenda. We’ve seen many clear-cut cases of crimes being committed in the name of Islam, and the government deciding to look the other way. Democracy is undermined not by the rise of religious extremism, but more by the government’s inability to uphold the law.

2. Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama is on trial for criminal blasphemy. Will he survive as governor and how big a political challenge are these proceedings for President Joko Widodo?

Ahok’s case is being tried in court, but it remains to be seen whether the judges can withstand the pressures brought on them by radical Islamic groups that mobilised support on the ground and the internet to turn public opinion against the incumbent governor. Criminal blasphemy are the charges brought against him as Ahok is a Christian of Chinese ethnicity and he was, until recently, leading in the surveys for the February 2017 gubernatorial elections. President Widodo and National Police Chief General Tito Karnavian found the pressure too much to bear to prevent Ahok from being dragged to court. It reached the point where Widodo had to choose between saving his buddy Ahok or his presidency. Widodo has since been drumming support from mainstream Islamic organisations like Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, and from the National Defense Forces (TNI), to counter the campaign by those using Islamic banners, by portraying them as undermining Indonesia’s diversity and unity.

3. For most of ASEAN’s history Indonesia has played a key role in shaping its direction and working towards a more stable region. With ASEAN now clearly under strain can we expect Indonesia under Jokowi’s leadership to once again take the lead in helping resolve differences between the member states?

ASEAN’s leadership is always Indonesia’s for the taking because it’s the largest member. Much depends on whether the Indonesian president wants to exercise this leadership or not. Jokowi is more preoccupied with domestic issues than his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. But Indonesia remains consistent in its belief that ASEAN is the best way for member countries to collectively channel their voices and fight most of their aspirations in international affairs. The challenge is bigger now with gnawing differences between members countries on several major issues, like the South China Sea dispute. Indonesia exercised its leadership in ensuring ASEAN foreign ministers addressed the South China Sea in the final statement at their meeting in Vientianne in July.

4. China’s claims over much of the South China Sea have generated serious splits within ASEAN. Do you believe it’s still possible for ASEAN to reach agreement on a code of conduct for the South China Sea?

Indonesia, and ASEAN, can only try to persuade China to sit down and conclude negotiations on the code of conduct, which is essential for the peace and stability of the region and beyond. The code wouldn’t guarantee that the multiple territorial disputes would be resolved, but it would ensure that countries refrain from using force in pursuing their interests in the South China Sea. It’s in everyone’s interests that negotiations on the code of conduct be concluded soon.

5. How would you evaluate the current threat posed by Islamic State and its affiliates in Indonesia?

The National Police have foiled several terrorist plots in recent months, some of which had connections to ISIS. Ironically, the threat in Indonesia is likely to grow if ISIS continues to lose ground in Syria as it will force its fighters to flee and take their battle outside the territory. Some of these will return to Indonesia. ISIS already has adherents and supporters in Indonesia, not only from those known radical groups but also new recruits influenced by its propaganda in the internet. It’s really up to the police, and their intelligence capability, to monitor and to act to prevent the next big terrorist attack in Indonesia. So far, they’re doing a great job.

6. Bilateral ties between Australia and Indonesia have just experienced another hiccup—this time over defence cooperation. How do you assess current relations between Jakarta and Canberra? How committed is Joko Widodo to the idea of a closer strategic partnership?

President Jokowi’s prompt response, ordering his top defense officials to resolve the case and prevent it from spreading, indicates how he values this relationship. We have two leaders in Canberra and Jakarta who understand the strategic interests of this relationship and who have shown their commitment to resolve problems that arise from time to time—and they keep propping up—on a case-by-by case basis, and to not allow a single hiccup to undermine the entire relationship. There are forces in both Indonesia and Australia who will keep trying to widen and escalate each dispute between the two countries to harm the relationship.