Indonesia’s Global Maritime Fulcrum: From Hedging to Underbalancing

Abstract

This article examines why Indonesia’s vision of the Global Maritime Fulcrum (GMF) was not properly developed in accordance to its strategic response to the increased rivalry between China and the USA in the Asia-Pacific region. Although the GMF initially focussed on achieving domestic agendas, Indonesia’s implicit intention is to utilise the GMF as a hedge in order to strengthen economic cooperation with China while keeping the USA engaged in the region’s security architecture. My article seeks to go beyond the existing literature’s employment of primarily structural realist analysis to understand Indonesia’s strategic behaviour by applying a neoclassical realist approach to Indonesia’s case, which better demonstrates current conditions exhibiting how conflicting elite interests generate political discord which in turn hinders the state’s ability to extract and mobilise domestic resources, ultimately hampering Indonesia’s ability to achieve its GMF goals. Although certain threats and opportunities within the international system have manifested themselves to actively encourage the proper implementation of GMF, this strategy remains underdeveloped since the time of its launch. Neoclassical realism provides a better explanation that enhances our understanding of how Indonesia assesses and responds to its strategic environment.

China-US Competition

“…This perhaps explains why various Southeast Asian actors adopt differing positions despite all claiming to be seeking "not to choose sides" between the United States and China. Indonesia's efforts to find a mediating role between Washington and Beijing differs from Cambodia's China-friendly position and Vietnam's acceptance of some friction with Beijing, for instance (Caroline 2021;Ciociari 2021;Emmers and Le Thu 2021).…”