Indonesia's Foreign Policy and Grand Strategy in the 21st Century

Rise of an Indo-Pacific Power

Vibhanshu Shekhar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781317199892
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

This book examines the changes in Indonesian foreign policy during the 21st century as it seeks to position itself as a great power in the Indo-Pacific region.

The rise of 21st-century Indonesia is becoming a permanent fixture in both the domestic and global discourses. Though there has been an increasing level of discussion on Indonesia's emerging power status, there has been little discussion on how the country is debating and signalling its new-found status. This book combines the insights of both neo-classical realism and social identity theory to discuss a reset in an emerging Indonesia's foreign policy during the 21st century while emphasizing domestic drivers and constraints of its international behaviour. There are three key organizing components of the book – emerging power, status signalling and the Indo-Pacific region. The Indo-Pacific region constitutes a spatial framing of the book; the emerging power provides an analytical category to explain Indonesia's changing international status; and status signalling explains multiple facets of international behaviour through which the country is projecting its new status. Though leaders are adding different styles and characteristics to the rising Indonesia narrative, there are a few unmistakable overarching trends that highlight an increasing correlation
between the country's rising power and growing ambition in international behaviour. This book is built around four key signalling strategies of Indonesia as an emerging power – expanded regional canvas, power projection, leadership projection, and quest for great power parity. They represent Indonesia's growing desire for a status-consistent behaviour, its response to the prevailing strategic uncertainty in the Indo-Pacific region and its attempt to advance its strategic interests.

This book will be of much interest to students of South-East Asian politics, strategic studies, international diplomacy, security studies and IR in general.

1Indonesia’s emerging power status signalling

Rising Asian powers have emerged as the vanguard of the systemic shift taking place in the global politics, variously referred to as ‘the Post American World’, ‘the end of American World Order’, ‘the end of American Century’, the rise of new economic order, the rise of ‘Eastphalia’ and ‘the Great Convergence’ of the East and West.¹ Situated outside Europe and the broader Western world, the narratives of their rise are built on a historical context – civilizational powers, which had lost their freedom, power and status during the modern era are finding their rightful place in the changing global order. These emerging powers are status-conscious, as they seek to project an elevated posture, create a niche strategic space for themselves in a particular geostrategic context and capitalize on international status recognition to advance their interests and their leadership role. Nowhere is this trend appearing in all its complexity as it is in the Indo-Pacific region. China is argued to be probably the most status-conscious country in the world.² India’s quest for great power status is probably as old as independent India itself.³ The Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe’s, modest step toward ‘collective self-defense’ is seen as ‘essential to securing its regional and global standing’.⁴ The idea of status advancement has conditioned Japan’s foreign policy in the ASEAN region. Japanese former Prime Minister, Suzuki, in his speech at Bangkok, Thailand in 1981 declared that ‘Japan will play a political role to help maintain world peace commensurate with Japan’s status in the community of nations’.⁵ Japan under the leadership of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has also begun to forge partnerships to pump up its international status. Joseph Nye has identified ‘Abe’s modest step toward collective self-defense’ as ‘essential to securing its regional and global standing’.⁶ Similarly, emerging Indonesia’s quest for regional and global status has been a source of international debate during the 21st century.⁷

Understanding emerging powers: capabilities, recognition and ambition

There is no universally acceptable definition of emerging powers, even though it is increasingly becoming one of the most oft-used terms in the current IR and foreign policy debates. A few experts have confined its definitional canvas to the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries, while others have expanded this category to include other large emerging economies, such as Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey.⁸ One expert extend its definition to include not only countries but also diverse socio-political or economic logical entities, such as ‘regions, social scapes and flows, economic networks or global cities’ within the definitional canvas of emerging powers.⁹ Another expert identifies eight criteria for identifying an emerging power – ranging from economic strength and military spending to domestic stability and international ambition.¹⁰ The multiplicity of reference points and definitions have produced a conceptual category of emerging powers whose criteria remain contentious; defining characters are debatable; boundaries are flexible and their behaviour multifaceted and ambiguous. They are marked by substantial differences ‘in terms of their power and geopolitical importance; economic weight and degree of integration into the global economy; distinctive cultural and historical trajectories; and their domestic political systems’.¹¹ They are variously labelled as ‘rising powers’, ‘aspiring powers’, ‘leading powers’, ‘major powers’, ‘new-emerging powers’, ‘global swing states’, regional powers, ‘emerging markets’, ‘pivotal states’ and ‘middle emerging powers’.¹² They are also characterized as would-be great powers and today’s emerging powers are on the way to become great powers.¹³ These emerging powers are also termed as ‘Quasi world powers’, ‘capable of competing for the position of a world power and on the threshold of becoming one in the near future’.¹⁴

Alastair Iain Johnston posits five different approaches to identify a rising power – a historical view (i.e. a state is rising if it is more powerful than the past); a visibility view (a state is more engaged in the world than previously); an influence view (a state increasingly affects the lives of ordinary people); a ‘threat to the hegemon’ view; and an ‘inter-subjective expectations’ view (i.e. a state is rising if other states view it as having a larger role in the world than in the past).¹⁵ While the first and third approaches relate to an increase in the states’ capabilities as a defining element of the emerging powers, the second and fifth approaches relate to international recognition of emerging power status. The fourth view of emerging powers as a threat to the hegemon allude to the ways in which emerging powers express their international ambition. These three constituent components – capabilities, recognition and ambition – relate to what Thomas Volgy and others refer to as opportunity (capabilities), willingness (ambition) and status attribution (recognition).¹⁶ Together, states are called emerging powers when they acquire certain level of capabilities, are internationally recognized as emerging powers, or exhibit regional and global ambitions befitting emerging powers in their foreign policy. These three constituent components are further discussed.

An increase in the states’ capabilities or power is considered as the ‘default’ definition of emerging powers.¹⁷ In terms of their capabilities, they are demographically large, economically growing, politically stable, militarily strong, resource-rich, institutionally capable to govern a large population and technologically capable to innovate. Rising powers experience a relative increase in the state’s political, military and economic power with economic resources acting as ‘a preliminary to expansion and war’.¹⁸ The central character of an emerging power is its growing economic strength.¹⁹ It is also a key organizing principle of the BRIC countries. Jim O’Neill and other experts at the Goldman Sachs came up with the idea of the BRIC countries by concentrating on a group of large and growing economies.²⁰ Second, the economic strength provides the requisite resources for an emerging power to invest in consolidating other facets of power, including the military power.²¹ An emerging power, according to some, should be a large military spender, possess real or potential nuclear weapons capability and play a significant (i.e. regional great power) military role in a critical region (Middle East/East Asia/Europe).²² The focus on augmenting military power can be seen in terms of increased defence spending, development of domestic defence industries, acquisition (development or import) of new offensive military capabilities and their forward deployment. This trend is more conspicuous in the Indo-Pacific region, which has seen growing salience of regional rivalries, escalation of hostility and increased emphasis on development and deployment of offensive military capabilities.²³ Indonesia’s increased defence spending and military modernization is an expression of its growing economic capacity to develop military capability.²⁴ Third, emerging powers are not static powers; rather, dynamic actors, as their capabilities and rankings continue to mutate. The upward economic trajectory of these powers cannot be taken for granted and they remain susceptible to various domestic and international shocks, which may, in turn, lead to setbacks in their capabilities. The 1997 crises in East Asia reduced the material capacity of tiger economies and induced domestic political transition and regional uncertainty. Indonesia, one of the tiger economies, faced its worst political and economic crisis and its status changed from a pivotal state to a state on the brink of unravelling. Finally, emerging powers are a disparate category of countries with varying pace and scale of growth in their capabilities. The varying nature of emerging powers’ capabilities has produced a flexible spectrum within the emerging power category. For example, the four BRIC countries have registered a different scale, pace and scope of their rise. Notwithstanding considerable differences in the capacities of the BRIC powers, they all are considered as emerging/rising powers.²⁵ This understanding is important, as it may help delink the emerging power debate with the rising China debate and underscore that China is not the only country that is rising, and the rise of other emerging powers, such as Indonesia, should not necessarily be assessed at the scale of China’s rise. Indonesia has figured frequently in the newer acronyms of emerging powers, such as MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey), MIST (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey) and the N-11 (Next Eleven), which were considered as having the potential to join the BRIC countries.²⁶

A state can also gain emerging power status through international recognition from other states, whether dominant or small. A state is recognized as an emerging power when it is perceived as: (a) registering sustained growth in its national power to a level where its current status does not justify its growing capabilities; (b) treading predictably on the trajectory of gaining ‘unusually powerful’ capabilities in a given timeframe; (c) being able to influence the regional and global affairs; and/or (d) showing the potential of influencing regional and global trends.²⁷ There are two ways in which a state can be recognized as an emerging power: (a) by other states or the international community in general, and (b) by its p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Indonesia’s emerging power status signalling
• 2 Rise of the Indo-Pacific geopolitics
• 3 Indo-Pacific as Indonesia’s regional context
• 4 Indonesia as a maritime power
• 5 Indonesia’s ASEAN-Plus and post-ASEAN ways
• 6 Great power management and strategic partnerships
• Conclusion
• Index