The EU Needs To Pay More Attention To Indonesia – Analysis

In recent years the European security and foreign policy communities (both academics and practitioners)—as dedicated followers of fashion—have jettisoned their interest in the “Asia-Pacific” in favour of the US nomenclature du jour: “Indo-Pacific”.  After three decades of privileging trade and investment in a multilateral context, an economics discourse has given way to a juxtaposed geopolitical chicken and egg discourse (which comes first) of “threat inflation” and security cooperation. After initial strategies from France (2018), and then Germany and the Netherlands in 2020, the EU launched its Indo-Pacific Strategy in September 2021. The second EU-Indo-Pacific Forum was held in Brussels in late January 2024.  

The all-embracing nature of both discourses are however misleading. They allow for no disaggregation of the significance and practices of individual regional states other than China, Japan and India. With the end of the Vietnam war in 1975 European concerns with Asia largely shifted to Northeast Asia, with, initially, a preeminent place for Japan and afterwards South Korea and now China. “Asia Pacific” was a coda for the economic relationship with these two states.  “Indo Pacific” is essentially a coda for a Washington driven geopolitical construct of Sino-American rivalry that effectively allows no place for the individual agency of Asian countries that have traditionally, and especially recently, refused to inscribe themselves in this Transatlantic vision of world order. 

The case of Indonesia is particularly illuminating here.  Despite European nods in the direction of ASEAN (the 24^th EU ASEAN Summit took place in Brussels February 2, 2024) as a partner in support of a multilateral international order, the region’s largest state rarely figures in Europe’s thinking outside of its ASEAN membership. In practice pious European invocations of ‘ASEAN centrality’ and hype on “inter-regionalism” reduce Indonesia to being but one cog in an unthreatening regional wheel. 

On 14^th February 2024 electors in Indonesia—the world’s largest Muslim majority country of some 280 million people—will vote for a new president and local leaders in what promise to be largely free and fair elections. Five 2 ½ hour televised thematic debates for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates have been held since the end of December 2023 and keenly watched by an engaged population. The level of sober policy analysis in these debates and, once again, voter turnout (+/- 70% is the norm) should make many in the West blush. Indonesia is placed by the Economist Intelligence Unit in the same category as the US, namely a “flawed democracy”. However, the Indonesian elections will in all probability provide lessons of a largely successful democratic transition and unbroken and continuing democratic consolidation since the end of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998. The elections can be expected to demonstrate the gradual implementation since that period of a decentralized model of governance capable of maintaining national unity in an archipelagic state of some 18,000 islands—one third of which are inhabited—and 1,340 ethnic groups and nearly 600 languages and dialects. Amusingly the Indonesian coat of arms sports a motto which translates as “Unity in Diversity”. Precisely that promoted in the European Union.

After the end of the Suharto dictatorship Indonesia did not play by the conventional transitional rule book. Suharto was allowed to step down gracefully and later died peacefully.  Indonesians sought Reformasi (reform), not a revolution. No new constitution was immediately imposed and while the military initially kept its 20% of seats in the national parliament they were progressively reduced  to zero. Through a transfer of resources and the granting of a degree of autonomy, a long-running separatist rebellion in Aceh was ended.  Notwithstanding its diversity, language has also proved to be a unifying force in the creation of a nation state. The adoption of Bahasa Indonesia from the time of independence—a variant of Malay —was a textbook case of successful imposition of a unifying national language. This progressively democratic trajectory—with its concomitant decentralization—is not the kind that makes headlines in the Transatlantic and European world, however it is profound in its consequences, as the political awareness and demands of Indonesia’s Generation Z—the decisive electors on February 14^th—demonstrates.  Several European states—and indeed the USA—have much to learn from the Indonesian democratic voyage.

But in-depth study of Indonesia (and its language) in Europe is limited to a few specialized schools such as SOAS in London, INALCO in Paris and, for historical reasons, several universities in the Netherlands. Similarly, at the international and foreign policy level, a European lack of interest and understanding of Indonesia and its role as an actor in global affairs also prevails.  Indonesia’s international behaviour has matured considerably since the time of the brutal annexation of East Timor during the Suharto period. After his fall his immediate successor (and Vice-President) B.J. Habibie allowed a referendum on East Timorese independence. Habibie also ratified several of the main UN human rights texts. 

Closer attention to Indonesian foreign policy reveals a degree of innovation that trans-Atlantic leaders rarely appreciate in their zero -sum game of counting allies in the rivalry between the USA and China.  The European security and foreign policy community can learn from states like Indonesia that do not subscribe to either a binary liberal or revisionist view of world order or a binary—economic/Asia-Pacific versus geopolitical/Indo-Pacific—view of Indonesia’s region. 

Indonesia is a positive example of an emerging democratic middle power with a long tradition of independence of thought and action. Recall, it initiated the Nonaligned Movement in 1955.  Its architect, the then Indonesian foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda, saw the Bandung Forum as an intergovernmental forum about democracy, not among, democracies. As a constructive middle power, the Indonesian government continues to support and refine its activities as well as acting as a responsible international citizen in other multilateral institutional settings such as the G20 under its presidency in 2022. Indonesia has a distinct, and evolving, vision of international order projecting an Asian conception of democratic norms allowing it to engage constructively, rather than slavishly, with the Liberal International Order. Its regional integrative tendencies are clearly empathetic with a European view of order, as should be its concerns about the often undue and overtly heavy-handed influence of the great powers on that order. 

There is a consistency over time in Indonesian foreign policy thinking.  In the midst of the Cold War, Mohammad Hatta, Indonesia’s first Vice President was an early articulator of soft, but strategic, hedging—articulated in the concept of “rowing between two reefs”.   Drawing from Indonesia’s own sense of homeland – one involving sea and land – Foreign Minister Adam Malik was a major architect of the 1973 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Indonesia defined the concept of the archipelagic state with a distinctive form of territorial sovereignty. More recently Marty Natalegawa, Foreign Minister from 2009-2014, gave a new twist to soft hedging by proffering the idea of a “dynamic equilibrium” that rejects a formula for world order framed by great power rivalry.  

Indonesia’s growing international leadership, especially of ASEAN, is further reflected in the organisation’s adoption of Indonesia’s 2019 ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, that urged a regional order cautious of but, nevertheless, inclusive of China. This stands in sharp contrast to the current “Indo-Pacific” views of Washington and its closer partners. In this time of growing global bifurcation, Indonesia remains a supporter of the principles of multilateral collective action problem solving enshrined in the UN system and some of the core principles of a liberal order, democracy and human rights, and especially the developmental material benefits that flow from democracy. It largely practices these principles, but it rejects Western attempts to universalise them. It has chosen not to join the BRICS. It is keen to become the third Asian member of the OECD and OECD members (with the current exception of Israel) want it to join.

In sum: On the basis of Indonesia’s growing importance as a major international actor a sufficient lack of European attention to it is short sighted. At the very least it is economically counterproductive and strategically misguided in an era of hyped confrontational geopolitics. Rare is the state in the modern age whose foreign policy is largely driven by a growing commitment to its democratic values as has been Indonesia’s since the end of the 20^th century.  Europe would do well to engage it more fully.  

About the authors:

• Dr David Camroux, D. Let is Honorary Senior Research Fellow & Adjunct Professor and Co-Coordinator; Franco-German Observatory of the Indo-Pacific at Sciences Po, (https://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/observatory-indo-pacific/) and Co-editor, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs  www.currentsoutheastasianaffairs.org.
• Professor Richard Higgott, PhD, FRSA, FAcSS is Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy, at the Brussels School of Governance (https://brussels-school.be/team/richard-higgott), Visiting Fellow, at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Study, European University Institute, (https://www.eui.eu/people?id=richard-higgott-1) and Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy at the University of Warwick.