Indonesia's Defense Diplomacy through the United States: Case Study of Cooperation a Float Readiness and Training (CARAT) 2019 Joint Exercise 1. Introduction Indonesia is faced with a new political constellation that is very dynamic in recent years. Indonesia's global and regional strategic security environment is characterized by geopolitical competition, geo-economic competition, and the spread of non-traditional threats. In the regional realm, Indonesia's natural leadership in Southeast Asia must deal with the spread of non-military threats such as terrorism, piracy, drugs, and human trafficking. The problem of terrorism, for example, aside from facing the challenge of the unity of perception in the ASEAN collective security framework (Wiratma and Suharman, 2016), cross-regional cooperation and the development of Indonesia's capable military capabilities to protect borders must still be a serious concern for Indonesia (Ministry of Defense, 2015). As such, defense diplomacy can play a crucial role in supporting defense demands through several agendas to increase cooperation and strengthen the military. The United States is still an important player in shaping these dynamics and the trend is even showing an increase in the Southeast Asian region. Indonesia pays serious attention to the US-style Re-balancing Policy (Ministry of Defense, 2015). This policy is the basis for greater US political, military and economic penetration in the Asia Pacific region. Therefore, to follow up on this maneuver, Indonesia has applied several strategic policies. Indonesia under the leadership of President Joko Widodo shows a significant commitment to managing its maritime potential which came to be known as the World Maritime Axis (PMD). Various policy moves were taken, starting from forming a coordinating ministry of maritime affairs, boosting the sea-based economy, building maritime development infrastructure, and inserting maritime agendas in domestic politics and foreign diplomacy (Nainggolan, 2015; Yamin, 2015; Kemenko Kemaritiman, 2019). At the regional level, Indonesia is also pushing maritime as a priority for cooperation as was recently seen in the adoption of the ASEAN Outlook in 2019 (ASEAN Secretariat, 2019). The logical consequence of the reality and direction of the policy is the strengthening of sea defense capacity by empowering the Indonesian military's sea dimension. Although the military aspect is not so discussed in the various maritime development commitments above, the capability of the navy, which is reliable and certainly supported by the
A new security pact, the so-called AUKUS – Australia, United Kingdom, United States, was just established on September 15th, 2021. Australia is promised to be aided in building its sophisticated military capability, including the most anticipated one, the nuclear submarine. Amid a deteriorating relationship with the emerging power, China, the three countries concluded a decision which led to the intensification of rivalries among great power. Between the mentioned confronting parties, southeast Asian countries apparently divided yet felt a security dilemma in responding to the establishment of AUKUS. Either it refuses any military projection effort or considers the AUKUS as a balancing manoeuvre due to China’s assertive behaviour in the South China Sea. Geographically and politically Indonesia is the key actor. This article discusses how Indonesia’s strategy should be composed on addressing the threat posed by AUKUS in the regional stage. We investigate the importance of building our own national capability to deter any upcoming threat. Defence industries find their relevance in this situation. We suggest that Indonesia should put the building and developing its national defence industries as a major agenda of the strategy for addressing current and future security threats.
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