Nothing Found

Indonesia’s latest Defence White Paper was issued in November last year and was publically released on 31 May. It supersedes the 2008 White Paper. Although a replacement paper was produced in the dying days of the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono presidency, ultimately, it wasn’t adopted by the Jokowi government.

White papers can be an integral part of the defence planning process or they can be little more than public relations and propaganda. The latest Indonesian paper is a cosmetic addition to a defence planning process that’s independent of the White Paper and remains largely opaque. The Paper describes the planning process but gives few clues about how Indonesia links threat assessments with defence policy, doctrine, strategy and resource constraints to produce the most effective and efficient force it can afford.

That’s driven by a concern for security and by the fact that it isn’t just a defence white paper—it’s also a national security paper outlining the responsibilities of all arms of government for defence and security more generally.

Nevertheless, if you’re looking for confirmation of Indonesia’s foreign and defence policy, its threat assessments, its international partnerships and its general priorities for the future, you’ll gain some comfort from this 130-page process—rather than outcome—oriented document.

Threat perceptions remain holistic here and elsewhere, covering the spectrum from juvenile delinquency and the LBGT community to terrorism and WWIII. Threats are classified as military, non-military or hybrid and further subdivided into known and not yet known threats with priority given to the former.

A serious external threat is deemed by Indonesia to be unlikely and the known threats are primarily domestic including terrorism and radicalism, separatism, revolt, natural disasters, border violations, piracy, theft of natural resources, pandemics, cyber warfare, espionage, and narcotics. Most of those are the first priority of other arms or agencies of government and provide little guidance for determining force structures or dispositions.

There’s been no fundamental change in Indonesia’s defence policy. It adheres to the historic non-aligned no alliances policy and its continuing support for the United Nations. Indonesia’s neighbours are reassured that it has no aggressive intent and seeks peaceful solutions to outstanding problems related to the definition of borders and other cross border tensions. The White Paper lists the contestants in the South China Sea conflict—not including Indonesia—and calls for a peaceful solution while simultaneously nominating the development of its bases in the Natuna Islands as a priority.

The White Paper advocates global partnerships to create the ‘dynamic equilibrium’ promoted by SBY to form the conditions in which no one nation dominates the region. In the absence of alliances, this is to be achieved though the development of partnerships embracing all the major regional players. That’s illustrated by the classification of both China and the US as strategic partners followed by the lesser lights. But just to be safe, Indonesia’s maritime forces will be strengthened to secure Jokowi’s Global Maritime Axis that would see Indonesia become a major production and shipping hub on the maritime cross roads of the Indian and Pacific oceans.

Indonesia can’t compete with other major regional powers so the White Paper retains a total people’s war policy and strategy that would see the whole human and material resources of the nation mobilised to deal with internal and external threats. That in turn normalises its concern and involvement in policy matters outside the remit of defence in a democracy.

Future plans seek qualitative improvements in defence capability without any addition to its current force of about 435,000 uniformed personnel. That will be based on three defence areas covering the three major maritime approaches to Indonesia from the north, including joint command and control of allotted forces and the army’s territorial commands. The army’s territorial commands remain the last ditch of defence and its political and internal security infrastructure. Defence industry will also be boosted to include funding the building of more ships, submarines, aircraft, and armoured vehicles, and the production of consumables.

The Paper is deeply concerned with creating the responsible citizen, a concern stemming from the fear of terrorism and radicalism that might gain enough support to cause internal strife that would undermine the economy or even overturn the historic compromises enshrined in the preamble to the constitution, commonly known as the Pancasila. Consequently, the Paper outlines the program begun last year to indoctrinate 100 million citizens over the next ten years as well as incorporating it in educational curricula and professional training courses.

In a dig at the last government, leading its agenda of defence priorities is the Paper’s declared support for the government’s election pledge to reassert the responsibility of the state in protecting all citizens; creating clean, effective, and respected democratic government; and creating a strong state through the reform of the justice sector.

The inclusion of such matters in the Paper is a reminder that security sector reform, as distinct from military reform, stopped in Indonesia in 2004 and hasn’t progressed much since because the executive and parliament lack the confidence to carry it to completion and/or find that having the TNI on tap remains politically expedient and convenient. It demonstrates a lack of confidence in the people and the competence and capacity of the relevant institutions and agencies, especially in the justice sector, to perform their functions effectively. Some of those concerns are justified and need serious attention but they’re also self-serving.

Like white papers around the world, it laments that the government hasn’t lived up to its past spending commitments. It seeks defence spending of 1% of GDP now, with undefined increases over the next ten years, to achieve the ‘minimum effective force’. The paper doesn’t discuss what ‘minimum’ or ‘effective’ means. The only specific capabilities mentioned are the use of satellites and drones to support maritime security.

The Paper does little to convince Indonesians of the purpose and composition of their future defence forces or to justify the money that has to be spent on them. However, it does reassure neighbouring countries of Indonesia’s benign intent.

Taiwan’s new government already faces two major foreign policy challenges. The first is China’s disappointment over President Tsai Ing-wen’s inauguration speech last week. The second—which has hardly been mentioned in the strategic debate—is Taipei’s position on the upcoming ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Philippines versus China case.

In April 2016, the government-linked Chinese (Taiwan) Society of International Law submitted evidence to the PCA, arguing that Itu Aba (Taiping), located in the Spratly Islands chain, is an island with the right to an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and that it belongs to Taiwan. Two days before Tsai’s inauguration last week, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that the Taiwanese government wouldn’t accept the PCA ruling unless the five PCA arbitrators and the Philippines’ representatives visit Itu Aba. Yet despite Taiwan’s vested interest in the matter, its intervention in the arbitration could have an adverse effect on its strategic and political interests.

Itu Aba is the largest feature in the Spratlys. Taiwan has occupied the island since 1945 when it became terra nullius after Japan renounced its claims in the Treaty of San Francisco and the Treaty of Taipei. Taipei’s claim dates back to 1947 when it published its U-dash line, strikingly similar to China’s infamous nine-dash line covering almost the entire South China Sea.

The PCA will rule on two issues: first, it will decide which features in the Spratlys are a low-tide elevation (LTE), a rock or an island. That has implications for the range of nautical miles of territorial waters granted around the features—EEZs can claim 200nm of territorial waters, rocks can claim 12nm, and LTEs can claim neither. Second, it will reach a verdict on the validity of the claims of China’s nine-dash line—that is, determining whether claims within a country’s EEZ are enforceable. The court, in line with the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea, doesn’t have any jurisdiction over sovereignty.

Arguably, Taiwan has the strongest claim to an EEZ within the disputed area. Taiping Island is dry land with ‘a weak water lens’—meaning it has fresh water, and therefore potential for agriculture and permanent residency. Added to Taiwan’s continuous presence, it’s therefore the only feature in the Spratly island chain likely to be ruled an island and granted an EEZ. Taiping’s EEZ could also include an additional 150nm under Article 7 of UNCLOS, due to the rights of the coastal state over the continental shelf. Currently, Taiping is also home to one of only two airstrips in the area long enough to accommodate larger aircraft. As I have previously written on The Strategist, Taiwan has increased military and economic investments on Taiping. This month it also completed a US$100 million port upgrade and the installation of a new lighthouse.

There are two key reasons Taiwan maintains an interest in Taiping: first, the geostrategic location supports its maritime awareness in the South China Sea. In the future, Taiping could serve as a base for Taiwan’s upgraded P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft. Second, the island is critical to Taiwan’s assertions as a sovereign state. Taiwan’s de facto sovereignty is under increasing pressure from Beijing. Relinquishing its claim over Taiping would be a blow to Taiwan’s national pride, erode its informal independent status and undermine its sense of security. Indeed, in her inauguration speech, Tsai stated that it was her ‘responsibility to safeguard the sovereignty and territory of the Republic of China’.

However, Taiwan’s claim in the South China Sea is a double-edged sword. Despite China challenging the PCA’s jurisdiction and the Philippines’ right to bring the case to court, China has backed Taiwan’s submission. The reasons are obvious: Taipei’s challenge to the Philippines implicitly supports Beijing’s claims, and should China one day wrestle back control over Taiwan, Taiping and its EEZ would fall under Beijing’s jurisdiction. China’s control of its ‘near seas’ would also complicate the ability of the US Navy to operate in the South China Sea.

Although Taiwan’s political leadership has made it clear that its claim over Taiping is incompatible with that of China, its submission to the PCA could paradoxically benefit China and damage the new government’s goal of increased engagement with ASEAN through its ‘New Southbound policy’. Moreover, while Taipei shouldn’t relinquish Taiping, a PCA ruling in favor of the Philippines would strengthen the regional rules-based order underpinned by Washington and its allies. Taiwan’s submission threatens to undermine that result. Consequently, Washington’s de facto embassy in Taipei called former President Ma Ying-jeou’s January 2016 visit to Taiping ‘extremely unhelpful’. The PCA process will also pressure Taiwan to legally interpret its own claim over Taiping, and thus its U-dash line, which would implicitly support China’s own nine-dash line due to the historical contest over Taiwan’s independence. At the end of the day Taiwan might have best secured its interests in maritime Asia by keeping quiet.

The effectiveness of the US’ counterintelligence capabilities has been brought into question in recent weeks, after it emerged during a pre-trial hearing on 8 April that a US Navy flight officer had been charged with espionage over allegations that he passed secret information to Taiwan and possibly China. One of the most troubling aspects of the charge is that the officer may have compromised key US maritime surveillance assets and activities in the South China Sea.

According to a heavily redacted Navy charge sheet, Lieutenant Commander Edward Lin, a US citizen born in Taiwan, is accused of two counts of espionage, three counts of attempted espionage, three counts of making false official statements and five counts of communicating defence information ‘to a person not entitled to receive said information’. New information released last week revealed the evidence against Lin was at least partially the result of a government sting involving an FBI informant, whom it met with on five occasions. He has been held in pre-trial confinement in Virginia for the past eight months, after he was arrested attempting to board a plane from Hawaii to mainland China.

Taiwan, a key strategic ally to the US, has denied any involvement in the matter, which the FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service are jointly pursuing as a ‘national security case’. The incident, like many others made public by Snowden, reinforces the age old intelligence adage ‘there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service, just an intelligence service of a friendly nation’.

Given Lin’s military career and knowledge of sensitive US intelligence collection methods, US authorities have plenty of reasons to be worried. Lin served on the staff of an assistant secretary of the Navy for financial management and comptroller, where he likely had access to highly classified strategic weapons planning, before being assigned in 2014 to the Special Projects Patrol Squadron at Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay as a flight officer. Lin’s experience within the patrol squadron is a serious security concern for the US. As part of the squadron, Lin had experience managing the collection of electronic signals from the EP-3E Aries II signals intelligence aircraft, whose missions include anti-surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare mining, reconnaissance and surveillance.

The Aries has undergone significant upgrades in recent years and now delivers ‘near real-time’ signals intelligence and full motion video, allowing the Navy to pinpoint threats and eavesdrop on foreign militaries. Additionally, Lin may have had access to the P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft. In the current military environment, any intelligence concerning how the US conducts signal operations could be highly valuable to foreign governments, presenting them with the opportunity to counter US surveillance.

The implications of this case are far-reaching, most significantly in the South China Sea where tensions between the US and China continue to intensify over the US’ military surveillance operations. Currently, both the P-8A and the EP-3E play pivotal roles in tracking China’s naval activities in the region, and as such, determining each plane’s exact capabilities and vulnerabilities is of vital importance to Beijing.

The US has been increasing its surveillance flights over the region in previous months. In December 2015 it deployed the P-8A to Singapore for the first time, in a move China described as ‘regional militarisation by the US‘. Prior to Singapore, the US had deployed the P-8A to the Philippines on a number of rotations—including for three weeks in February 2015—in order to conduct surveillance flights over the South China Sea.   

Given the ever-growing tensions in the South China Sea, access to secret intelligence has increased in value. This access provides a strategic advantage, reducing the uncertainty surrounding the actions of other countries, and offering an insight into their intentions. The latest alleged breach could have provided China with an understanding of US intelligence collection capacity, and based on the planes’ capabilities, possibly provided them with enough information to deceive US intelligence collection in the future.

In addition, there is a concern that Lin may have provided intelligence regarding how and at what range the US Navy can detect a Chinese attack submarine. The knock-on effect of this is that the PLA may now be armed with the information to allow them to avoid America’s submarine hunters.

The use of secret intelligence in the South China Sea is not limited to the US. Australia—which also conducts military surveillance in the region—will also have to come to terms with the strategic implications of this breach, and realise it may not be immune from attempts similar to these in the future.

While this isn’t the first time China has been in the position to access information on the capabilities of the US Navy, Lin’s arrest adds to increasing US concerns regarding Chinese espionage and the effectiveness of counterintelligence programs.

Given the high stakes in the South China Sea in the coming months, the Lin case is sure to grasp the attention of the US military and the general public as proceedings continue. As US authorities struggle to establish the extent to which their maritime surveillance capabilities and intelligence collection requirements have been compromised, this latest alleged incident of espionage may have implications for the US for many years to come. The next question becomes how the US will prevent it from happening again.

Peter Jennings is right to point out that siting surface-to-air missiles (SAM) on Woody Island in the Paracel Islands is a strategic game-changer for the South China Sea. It’s also the logical corollary to building fighter-length runways and installing long-range radar on reclaimed islands. In this great game of grandmother’s footsteps, it confirms what’s in store for the island bases China is building much further south, in the Spratly archipelago.

But passing over the mechanics of maritime and territorial disputes in the SCS, does China’s strategy make strategic sense? Ultimately, will island runways, jet fighters, radar and SAMs enable China to assert its territorial and maritime claims? If the bottom line is ever reached—and brinkmanship revolves upon perceptions of bottom lines—could China’s chain of unsinkable aircraft carriers ever prevail?

The principal challenge for China is that the further it presses down into the SCS, the more it requires its forces to transition from ‘air-sea denial’ capabilities to ‘air-sea control’. In strategic terms, these are quite different propositions. The first implies the power to prevent others from doing as they please. The second implies the power to do as you please because others can’t stop you.

Unfortunately for China, when the geography of the southern SCS is combined with the realities and trends of military technology, the chances of being able to assert control—in particular over the Spratly archipelago, but more generally over the whole of the nine-dash line—become increasingly remote.

In practical terms, China can build any number of radar-, fighter- and missile- equipped islands, but their value as bases for exerting air-sea power depends on China’s ability to keep them supplied. China must have the power to control air and sea communications between islands and its mainland or those military assets become potential liabilities. (While there’s a qualitative difference to air and sea supply lines, in practice that’s just a matter of endurance.)

However, as the political topography of the Spratly Islands makes clear, the potential for antagonists to interdict both air and sea passage to China’s Spratly bases is almost limitless. The Philippines and Vietnam have outposts which, if also equipped with radar, SAM batteries, and surface-to-surface missiles, could isolate Mischief Reef and Subi Reef—both scenes of fast-paced runway construction.

With its own islands to the northeast and southwest, Vietnam alone has the capabilities to blockade Fiery Cross without putting a vessel in the water or an aircraft in the sky. Militarisation would take days, involve better kit (thank-you Uncle Sam), cost little compared to China’s gigantic dredging and construction operations and exert punitive levels of risk on Chinese resupply.

So, in theory at least, China’s escalations in SCS can be countered with instruments of blockade at a relatively low cost.

The orthodox answer, for China, is naval air power. With sufficient naval forces to guarantee resupply, China’s airfields become viable propositions in a conflict situation. Sure enough, China’s aircraft carrier program is ramping up. On 31 December, Xinhua confirmed a second 50,000-ton vessel. With no hiccoughs, the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLA-N) may be able to operate 30 fixed-wing fighter and strike aircraft by 2019, or double if its progenitor—Liaoning—magically transitions from its current training and technology-demonstrator role.

To be sure, the traditional and primary role of aircraft carriers is to assert air-sea control, but the theoretical value of China’s emerging carrier fleet is far removed from its practical value in the cramped waters of SCS. In a conflict situation, PLA-N has to be certain its carriers and escorts will prevail before it can risk sending them in. However, the opportunities to attack a carrier fleet in SCS are almost limitless.

The logic is circular but inescapable: the carriers are the means to acquire control of communications, but only if they can definitely be protected. And the US navy has spent the best part of a decade grappling with the realisation it can’t easily protect its carriers in comparable environments against today’s Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) weapons. It has now reformulated  its doctrine accordingly.

China cannot sail a carrier fleet into a hostile southern SCS without taking lunatic risks. And this situation won’t change any time soon. We live in a technological age when the A2/AD weapons are far cheaper than the defensive weapons required to defeat them. China was on the winning side of this cardinal trend with its carrier-killer missiles. By moving to a position where it needs to assert command, it has started to play a much more expensive—and possibly losing—hand. Its adversaries will arm their islands to the teeth with A2/AD weapons, including especially sea-skimming missiles.

Thus, the logical and probable end point of militarisation in SCS will be a mutualised ability to deny access. What all sides will know is that at the flick of a military switch, the salient areas of SCS would quickly become the air-sea equivalent of trench warfare’s no-man’s land. This standoff would halt navigation in SCS. But with huge air-bases it cannot re-supply and flagships it cannot sail, a standoff would be a political-military disaster for China.

In strategic terms, the country is setting itself up for humiliation.

It’s impossible to know how China’s antagonists are calculating the situation and the optimal time, place and circumstance to precipitate a direct challenge. But if this strategic analysis is correct then it may pay dividends to let China’s expensive, diplomatically alienating and strategically unsound policy run for quite some time. As the Transvaal President Kruger said, when asked why he didn’t take forestalling action against jingo Brits: ‘You must give the tortoise time to put out its head before you can catch hold of it.’

My final Suggests! Keep reading for this week’s best reports, podcasts, videos and more.

Top of today’s list is the stellar biography The Good Spy: the life and death of Robert Ames (h/t Kramerbooks), a CIA officer who possessed a deep knowledge of the Middle East and an extraordinary ability to forge meaningful relationships and back-channel connections with key Arab figures. Apart from being an in-depth look at Ames’ life starting from his early days in training, it doubles as an education of Middle East politics and the dealings of the American intelligence machinery from the 1970s until his death in a 1983 truck bombing in Beirut. Listen to author Kai Bird, Ames’ neighbour in Beirut, in this Brookings podcast with Bruce Riedel on the lessons from Ames’ life and how relations between the Arab and Western worlds might be different but for his work (90mins). For more, read James Mann’s review of The Good Spy here.

Who run the world? Congratulations to the latest batch of Foreign Policy Interrupted fellows, women with impact and attitude set to amplify diverse voices in foreign policy commentary and analysis! They are Yolande Bouka (a research associate specialising in African politics and security), Cori Crider (a lawyer specialising in the most serious violations of the ‘war on terror’ including Guantánamo and CIA torture), Elina Ribakova (a fellow specialising in policy initiatives ranging from global financial architecture to migration) and Irene S. Wu (author of Forging Trust Communities: how technology changes politics).

Anna Powles and Jose Sousa-Santos have a fascinating piece on Lowy’s Interpreter on Russian arms shipments to Fiji (h/t DL). While the deal wasn’t secret (nor transparent), Powles and Sousa-Santos look at why the Fijian government was so hush-hush and whether this signal’s Fiji’s pivot away from the West. In their view, Fiji had cultivated deeper defence ties with countries like Russia and China during the era of sanctions applied by Australia, New Zealand and the US and ‘a whole new cadre of RFMF officers who received their staff course education in Russia, China, or India, for example…have no ties to Australia and New Zealand. Keep reading for Russia’s interests in the South Pacific.

The National Bureau of Asian Research has just dropped a new report that sheds light on what non-claimant states think about the South China Sea disputes. Indonesia is out of its comfort zone (daaaaaanger zone?), according to Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto while Rory Medcalf says it’s uncertain how far Australia is willing to go in asserting its rights to FoN.

Two newbies from War On The Rocks: the first by Radha Iyengar and Rebecca Friedman Lissner looks at Iran, terrorism and nonproliferation after the nuclear deal, and the second by CNAS’ Jerry Hendrix says that America has a naval presence problem.

The German military is not fit for purpose. That’s the finding of the German parliamentary ombudsman, Hans-Peter Bartels, responsible for reviewing the Bundeswehr. VICE News looks at Bartels’ report, discussing the small and ‘demoralised’ force that, according to one analyst, never created a ‘warrior class’ after the end of World War II. Even Poland’s Defense Minister Janusz Onyszkiewicz remarked that his country is ‘seriously worried’ about weaker German forces (that irony is lost on no-one). But how weak is weak? As a snapshot, only 38 of Germany’s 114 Eurofighters are operational and 29 of its 93 Tornado jets. Keep reading here for Angela Merkel’s plans to address the state of Germany’s defence.

To the special forces film junkies, Gareth Evans (no, not the foreign minister), director of the Indonesian martial arts/police action films The Raid and The Raid 2, has something new for you: a samurai film (h/t Nick Prime). Check out this five-minute clip of Evans’ latest piece, set during a civil war, on a young warrior delivering a treaty between two rival lords.

Podcasts

What did the five fingers say to the face? In a new Military Affairs podcast, Samantha Newbery discusses the history, efficacy and impact of the so-called ‘Five Techniques’ of enhanced interrogation used by British authorities in Aden, Northern Ireland and Iraq. She explores that subject at length in her book Interrogation, intelligence and security: controversial British techniques 1963–2003 and, together with Brian Stewart, examines the uses and abuses of intelligence in the real world in Why Spy? The Art of Intelligence.

What’s life like on a US Navy submarine? Do submariners listen to Lauryn Hill? What kind of whiskey do they drink? In the latest Sea Control: Asia Pacific podcast, I interview former US Navy submariners and Navy divers Walter Lyon and Josh Toth who host podcast series Diver Tough. We chat about #submarinerlife, the best tunes to listen to under the sea, the end of combat exclusion for women and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (49mins).

Video

We need to talk about war. TED.com has been encouraging a conversation on one of humanity’s oldest activities for a number of years now. Worth watching in its War Stories playlist are the then Netherlands Chief of Defense, General Peter van Uhm, on why he chose the gun (17mins), Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy on the Taliban school for suicide bombers (9mins) and Deborah Scranton on her Iraq war movie crowd-sourced from soldiers (17mins),

Check out the trailer for the latest war film in the vein of Restrepo and Armadillo, A War. Made in Denmark, it’s a fictional story of a Danish company commander in Helmand who, making a decision that results in civilian casualties, faces a court martial upon his return home (2mins30s).

To all Strategist readers, thank you for your support over the past three and a half years.

This is Natalie Sambhi, last survivor of the original Strategist team, signing off.