Bottom Line
- Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia’s next president, is unlikely to change the current trajectory of Indonesian policy in the South China Sea.
- Indonesia has been gradually strengthening its security posture in the South China Sea in response to the growing number of Chinese incursions into its exclusive economic zone.
- The Indonesian military has sought to add capacity that would enable them to sustain larger and longer-term deployments around the Natuna Islands.
In February 2024, Indonesia elected Prabowo Subianto as its next president. While he does not take office until October,
speculation over whether and how Indonesia’s foreign policy might change is already swirling. Certainly, there have been indications that Prabowo may chart a course that is less in line with the West than that of his predecessor, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. Indeed, the People’s Republic of China was Prabowo’s first overseas destination after his electoral victory. But even before his election, there had been other indications, such as his off-the-cuff proposal for a
peace plan for the Russian-Ukrainian War that would have left most of occupied Ukraine in Russian hands and his particularly harsh
criticism of the European Union over its ban on Indonesian palm oil. Both cases stood in contrast to his warm embrace of
China and its investments in Indonesia’s strategic
nickel mining industry.
However, Prabowo is unlikely to change the current trajectory of Indonesian policy in the South China Sea—the southern portion of which China and Indonesia dispute. Over the last six years or so, Indonesia has responded to the growing number of Chinese incursions into its exclusive economic zone by gradually strengthening its security posture in the region. That strengthening can be best seen in the slow but steady establishment and expansion of military bases on the Natuna Islands (or the Riau Islands in Indonesia), just south of the disputed waters. That development is likely to continue under Prabowo, who served as Jokowi’s minister of defense for the last five years. Once finished, the bases will enable Indonesia to better monitor and respond to any foreign incursions into its exclusive economic zone.
Less Neutral, More Wary
Building bases, of course, is not the traditional tack that Jakarta has taken. Rather, it has long played down its
maritime dispute with China in the South China Sea, particularly in public. Indonesia’s former foreign minister,
Marty Natalegawa, epitomized that approach in his oft-repeated assertion that “between Indonesia and China, there is no territorial dispute.” Narrowly speaking, that is true. But China’s “nine-dash line” claim in the South China Sea does overlap a substantial swath of Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone near the Natuna Islands, where some of the country’s richest fisheries and largest offshore natural gas fields lie.
What resistance Jakarta did mount against Beijing’s “nine-dash line” claim was restrained in the past. When Indonesia’s United Nations mission
rebutted Beijing’s claim in 2010, it did so obliquely by citing China’s own recognition of other countries’ (presumably also Indonesia’s) exclusive economic zone rights under the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty. Also softening its rebuttal’s blow, Indonesia reiterated its willingness, as a “neutral party,” to help establish confidence-building measures among the South China Sea’s claimants and referenced its part in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ perennial negotiations over a
South China Sea code of conduct.
Far from taking the hint, China facilitated more incursions into Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone. It subsidized the
fuel that Chinese fishing boats needed to make the long journey to the region and sent Chinese coast guard ships to accompany them. Chinese naval vessels soon followed. Then, in 2014, as if to solidify its claim to the disputed waters, Beijing unveiled a new
official map that showed them as an integral part of continental China. Indonesian defense officials bristled.
General Moeldoko, then chief of the Indonesian armed forces, traveled to Beijing and privately impressed upon his
Chinese counterparts that Indonesia would protect its claims in the region. He then went a step further. He published a lengthy
op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he publicly expressed Indonesia’s dismay with China over the map and noted that, as a result, “the Indonesian military has decided to strengthen its forces on Natuna.” Unfortunately for Moeldoko, constraints on Indonesia’s defense budget at the time prevented him from quickly boosting the military’s permanent presence on the Natuna Islands—a step that would have given his statement greater weight. So, although Jakarta announced
plans to improve Indonesia’s defense posture in the region, it made meager progress on them.
Instead, Jakarta tried to demonstrate its resolve with occasional shows of force. It began to seize foreign fishing boats in its exclusive economic zone and blow them up, including a few
Chinese ones. But doing so did not temper China’s behavior. In March 2016, a
Chinese coast guard vessel rammed a Chinese trawler that Indonesian authorities had stopped to prevent it from being taken in tow. Three months later, several
Chinese coast guard vessels aggressively maneuvered to coerce an Indonesian navy corvette into releasing a Chinese trawler that it had captured.
