At the water’s hedge: Indonesia, insularity and China’s rise
at the water’s hedge: indonesia, insularity and china’s rise
WRITTEN BY DYLAN MOTIN
19 July 2024
Hedging has become the inescapable buzzword in Indo-Pacific affairs. Hardly a day passes without someone describing Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and others as hedging their bets between China and the United States. Some even see the United States and China themselves as hedging. Commentators now use the concept so elastically that almost every Indo-Pacific state has been characterised as hedging at some point.
However, a concept explaining everything then, in fact, explains nothing. Hedging is often stretched to encompass all behaviours short of all-out confrontation and diplomatic breakdown. Strictly defined, hedging entails maintaining equidistance between two opposing sides in security affairs. Hedgers are thus states that refuse to choose between China and the US. However, any state with a modicum of economic and diplomatic engagement with Beijing and Washington has been thrown into this one-size-fits-all category. This is especially true of Indonesia’s foreign policy, which is often seen as stereotypical hedging.
Indonesia’s international behaviour is indeed a riddle. It is one of the largest countries in population and area and a rising economic power. Yet, it shows little interest in projecting power outward. Jakarta also stands as an exception among major powers as it spends less than one per cent of its gross domestic product on defence. Relations with China have worsened during the last few years, but Indonesia’s engagement with the United States and its allies remains lukewarm. To summarise, Indonesia appears relatively under-committed to power politics and continental affairs. It worries about China’s rise, but not to the extent of joining US-led containment efforts.
Why Indonesia behaves differently
US and British foreign policy watchers have a name for this behaviour—offshore balancing. Insularity allows offshore balancers to invest fewer resources in building large armies. Offshore balancers are relatively protected from power politics while they are unthreatening to continental states thanks to distance. They tend to pass the buck of counterbalancing threats to more concerned mainland states and are less likely to enter alliance commitments. Offshore balancers join the continental fray only if a potential hegemon appears because a continental hegemon could muster enough resources to build massive projection capabilities, overcome the stopping power of water and possibly overpower the offshore balancer.
Indonesia appears relatively under-committed to power politics and continental affairs. It worries about China’s rise, but not to the extent of joining US-led containment efforts.
Indonesia has a long history of behaving like an offshore balancer. After its independence in 1949, no major hegemonic threat existed in Southeast Asia. China was still weak, and Vietnam was torn apart by war. Jakarta could thus afford to stay away from continental struggles and proclaim its neutrality in the Cold War. But Vietnam’s reunification in 1975 and its following invasion of Cambodia in 1978 reshuffled the regional balance. The Vietnamese threat encouraged Indonesia to revamp its armed forces and increase its combat readiness. It took a leading role in the ASEAN to turn it into a coalition to contain Vietnam’s expansionism. It also repaired its poor relations with Beijing to counterbalance Hanoi’s impressive military power. Still, it tried avoiding direct involvement, like Britain did when facing hegemonic threats.
The decline of Vietnam’s hegemonic ambitions and the end of the Cold War presented Jakarta with a safe international environment. It faced no state threat and could focus on domestic stability and economic development. However, the rise of China terminated America’s ‘unipolar moment’. While the United States was a relatively unthreatening offshore balancer, China is a rising great power with large revisionist ambitions over the Indo-Pacific region. If Beijing succeeds in achieving regional hegemony, it would severely threaten Indonesia’s autonomy and foreign policy independence.
The Chinese challenge
China and Indonesia have long had border disagreements over the South China Sea, but Jakarta kept a low profile until the mid-2010s. It advocated for a foreign policy of a ‘thousand friends, zero enemy’, where Indonesia would focus on mediating conflict among regional states. However, China’s rising military capabilities have allowed for a more assertive foreign policy of border revisionism. Unsurprisingly, Indonesia has reinforced its military presence in the area to defend its northern territories. The country is also overhauling its armed forces, although sluggishly.
China’s rise pushed Indonesia toward the US-led anti-hegemonic coalition. Jakarta increasingly relies on the United States and its allies to modernise its military capabilities. Indonesian forces participate in joint exercises more often. Washington helped build a maritime training centre on Batam Island, near the Malacca Strait. In a high-profile move, Indonesia even received a visit by American strategic bombers for the first time in June 2023. Nevertheless, Jakarta remains far from any military alliance and appears content with signalling its preference for the US side of the fence.
Hence, contemporary Indonesia is again behaving like an offshore balancer. It clearly worries about the threat of Chinese hegemony and expansion. It is strengthening its military and moving closer to the anti-hegemonic coalition. However, the security offered by insularity allows Jakarta a relatively laid-back approach. Its military build-up remains limited, and it continues eschewing overt alignment with the United States. Indeed, offshore balancers generally join balancing coalitions later than continental states to avoid the costs of confrontation and pass the buck of maintaining the balance of power onto others.
Moving forward
Jakarta faces weaknesses that historical offshore balancers like Britain did not. First, it is an immense archipelagic state of over 17,000 islands, while the British Isles are more concentrated. Defending such a large number of dispersed islands is inherently challenging. An attacker could benefit from this geography to defeat Indonesian forces in detail. Moreover, some areas of the country suffer from separatist tendencies. A rival like China could fuel separatism to weaken the Indonesian state’s integrity and limit its ability to perform its balancer role.
Indonesia’s status as an offshore balancer allows some predictions to be made. Thanks to the stopping power of water, offshore balancers are rather unthreatening to continental states. That renders them ideal security partners. It explains why Indonesia, despite its vast size and power potential, is not perceived as a potential threat by its neighbours, unlike continental powers like China, Russia, or Iran. Therefore, Southeast Asians will likely be eager to build close security relations with the Indonesians moving forward and should show receptive to Indonesian regional diplomatic endeavours.
Indonesia’s involvement in regional security will ultimately depend on power trends. If the current status quo endures or China’s threat of regional hegemony somehow vanishes, Indonesia will have few incentives to invest resources and energy in continental affairs. Conversely, if Beijing keeps rising and the balance of power risks being overturned, Indonesia may have to join the anti-hegemonic coalition and come onshore. Being an offshore balancer is an envious position, but it may not preserve Indonesia from power politics forever.
Hence, pre-empting Chinese expansion around its borders would be a prudent policy for Indonesia. It could work with Americans, Australians, and others to prevent China from installing bases in Cambodia or the Pacific islands. For now, Jakarta is not under any existential threat and lacks the budgetary resources to field large and modern armed forces like the great powers. Still, it should desire the ability to quickly increase its military capabilities in times of crisis and thus develop a strong defence industry base for such a contingency.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author Biography
Dylan Motin holds a doctorate in political science. He is currently a Non-resident Kelly Fellow at the Pacific Forum. He is also a researcher at the Center for International and Strategic Studies and a non-resident fellow at the European Centre for North Korean Studies. His research expertise revolves around international relations theory, and his main interests are balance-of-power theory, great power competition and Korean affairs. He is the author of Bandwagoning in International Relations: China, Russia, and Their Neighbors (Vernon Press, 2024). Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/Arifedisant