Sam Roggeveen has made the case in The Interpreter for Australia to seek out a defensive military pact with Indonesia to prevent Chinese domination of maritime Southeast Asia. Others have discussed why such a pact remains unlikely. One factor that remains underexplored, however, is Indonesia’s ongoing commitment to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the concept of “ASEAN centrality”.
Undoubtedly, Australia and Indonesia share in the significant strategic challenges posed by Beijing’s expanding influence and assertive foreign policy. Australia, for example, only recently stabilised relations with Beijing following three years of a wide-reaching economic coercion campaign. Indonesia, meanwhile, is embroiled in an ongoing dispute with China over waters in the resource-rich Natuna Sea and navigates Beijing’s divisive influence on ASEAN, Southeast Asia’s central multilateral organisation.
Other ASEAN members do have military alliances – the Philippines and Thailand with the United States for instance, and the Philippines has also extended its military partnership with Japan.
Still, Australia has historically held less strategic significance for Indonesia than the other way around. Amid intensifying geostrategic competition between the United States and China, for example, Indonesia prioritises Japan and the European Union over Australia as partners to hedge against growing uncertainty.
An alliance with Australia to counter China would not only undermine efforts to uphold ASEAN’s relevance but signal Indonesia’s lack of confidence in ASEAN-led institutions.
This raises the question of whether such a military alliance would be feasible – and desirable – from the Indonesian perspective.
Indonesia’s outlook on the Indo-Pacific differs starkly from that of Australia. While Canberra is committed to its ally in Washington, Jakarta refuses to side with any major power. This non-alignment approach was formulated shortly after independence and continues to inform Jakarta’s foreign policy. This explains, for example, why Indonesia abstained from the joint communiqué issued at last month’s Ukraine peace summit after Russia had not been included in the negotiations.
A military pact with Australia, even if limited, would go against this fundamental principle of non-alignment. Importantly, Indonesia also does not perceive China as a threat in the same way Australia does. The country reaps significant benefits from good relations with both China and the United States. The two great powers are also among Indonesia’s biggest trade partners and key to its aim of becoming a high-income nation by 2045.
For Jakarta, the destabilising effect of great power competition poses the biggest threat to the region. So, while Indonesia is concerned about China’s growing clout in Southeast Asia, this does not equate to support for greater military presence by the United States and its allies. Indonesia instead, promotes an inclusive regional order based on cooperation and peaceful conflict resolution. It does so primarily through ASEAN, which became a hub for a network of multilateral institutions in Asia such as the East Asia Summit after the end of the Cold War and continues to play a central role in facilitating Indonesia’s engagement with major regional powers.
Indonesia’s commitment to the centrality of ASEAN, however, constitutes another obstacle to an Australia-Indonesia military pact. Amid hardening US-China competition, ASEAN is paralysed by its member states’ different geopolitical alignments and slow decision-making processes. New security arrangements such as the Quad or AUKUS have further rendered ASEAN-led multilateral mechanisms increasingly irrelevant.
As a traditionally leading voice in ASEAN, Indonesia has invested significant diplomatic capital to maintain the grouping’s unity and significance in the Indo-Pacific. For instance, Indonesia advocated for guidelines to accelerate negotiations on a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, which remains ASEAN’s main platform to manage the conflict. Previously, Jakarta sought to use its leadership role in ASEAN to promote and operationalise the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, a vision document to reaffirm ASEAN centrality and reiterate the importance of dialogue and peaceful conflict resolution in the region. An alliance with Australia to counter China would not only undermine these efforts to uphold ASEAN’s relevance but signal Indonesia’s lack of confidence in ASEAN-led institutions.
This commitment to ASEAN means a defence pact will not be easy to achieve. Still, the rationale for closer defence ties is strong. Australia and Indonesia not only share an interest in a secure and peaceful maritime domain for their national security. Free access to sea lanes is also directly tied to their prosperity. More than 20% of global trade per year passes through the contested South China Sea alone. Australia should therefore pursue alternative strategies to strengthen its security partnership with Indonesia.
Cooperation on shared security challenges such as terrorism, climate change and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing have built institutional trust and close ties between respective armed forces and law enforcement. Australia is seen by Indonesia as a valuable partner to support capacity-building and education as well as joint training. An ongoing focus on and support for Indonesia’s specific defence needs will allow Canberra to boost mutual trust and confidence.
Incoming President Prabowo Subianto is likely to welcome and support such efforts. As defence minister from 2019 to 2024, he pursued continued military modernisation and expanded defence cooperation with Western powers. In 2022, for example, Australia participated for the first time in the Garuda Shield exercises between the United States and Indonesia. Earlier this year, Prabowo and his Australian counterpart Richard Marles also announced their plans to finalise the “most significant” bilateral defence agreement yet.
While Indonesia’s non-alignment approach and commitment to ASEAN centrality make a military pact unlikely for the foreseeable future, there is still significant potential for both to build on their common strategic objectives.
