Leadership, Strategic Culture, and Indonesian Foreign Policy      607

¿Qué amenaza? Liderazgo, cultura estratégica y política exterior de Indonesia en el Mar

Meridional de China
¿Por qué no hay un comportamiento equilibrado en el sudeste asiático frente a lo que
muchos observadores ven como una "amenaza china", especialmente de Indonesia? A
pesar de todas las preocupaciones con respecto a la estabilidad en la región, Indonesia no
está fortaleciendo su capacidad de proyección de poder ni está formando una coalición
para abordar el creciente poder de China en el Mar del Sur de China. El comportamiento
de desequilibrio de Indonesia es el resultado de una cultura estratégica de Indonesia que
influye en su pensamiento militar y de política exterior a través de las percepciones de
amenaza y consideración económica, lo que limita las opciones que Indonesia puede tomar
con respecto a China. Como resultado, China como estado no se considera una amenaza
importante, directa e inmediata que garantice una acción inmediata que pueda poner
en peligro el mayor interés de Indonesia. En cambio, la política interna y la seguridad,
especialmente cómo la percepción pública de la amistad del gobierno con China puede
beneficiar o perjudicar al gobierno, sigue siendo el foco y la prioridad del gobierno.

Palabras clave: Indonesia, Joko Widodo, Mar del Sur de China, Cultura estratégica, Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono

Introduction

Indonesia’s Foreign Policy and the South China Sea

O n June 23, 2016, in response to what many Indonesians believe to be Chinese

infringement on Indonesian territorial integrity, President Joko “Jokowi”
Widodo convened a limited cabinet meeting on board a navy corvette. During
this meeting, he ordered the Indonesian navy to step up patrols and to improve
the capabilities of the Indonesian military.
Indonesia has a small claim on the southern part of the South China Sea based
on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 that allowed
Indonesia to claim an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) over waters surrounding
the Natuna Islands. This claim, however, overlaps with China’s nine-dash line.
Confrontations between Chinese coast guard ships protecting Chinese fishing
boats and Indonesian naval patrols have taken place, leading Jokowi to conduct
his cabinet meeting in the disputed area.
Many interpreted the cabinet meeting as a strong signal from Indonesia that
it was finally taking a serious view of all the incursions by China and other
nations into Indonesia’s territory and EEZ (Kapoor & Jensen, 2016). Yet, since
then, Indonesia has not escalated the situation and instead returned to its default
mode in dealing with China, that is, engaging China by pushing for the agree-
ment on the Code on Conduct between countries having direct interests in the
South China Sea (Nurcahyani, 2018).
It could be argued that Indonesia simply picked the best approach, which is
working well so far, because at this moment, the region is peaceful. This, how-
ever, ignores the fact that the region is currently peaceful simply because the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states find it far more profit-
able to make economic deals with China than to challenge it (Emmerson, 2016).
More importantly, China wants it to be peaceful, because it is in China’s interest
to maintain peace at this point to strengthen its long-term position. To achieve
that, China has been quietly building more infrastructure in the disputed region,
608      Asian Politics & Policy—Volume 11, Issue 4—2019

and even putting in a fleet of offshore nuclear power platforms (Zhao, 2017). On
May 21, 2018, it even landed long-range bombers on an island in the South China
Sea (Feleke, 2018).
It is not that Indonesian decision makers are not wary or unconcerned about
China; as far back as 1966, most Indonesian leaders viewed China as “aggres-
sive” and “a serious threat to Indonesia,” with navy officers concerned about
“invading forces launched from Hainan Island” (Weinstein, 1976, pp. 93–94).
Although the relationship between both states has improved after both the res-
toration of diplomatic relations between Indonesia and China in 1990, and fur-
ther strengthening of Indonesia and China’s economic relations, many members
of the Indonesian elite still see China as a threat, especially after it embarked on
military modernization, and Indonesia had to respond by increasing its defen-
sive capabilities (Novotny, 2010). When currently retired Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo
was the head of the Indonesian military in 2016, he expressed his fear about
China’s island-building projects that would threaten Indonesia’s territorial in-
tegrity (“Panglima TNI,” 2016).
Domestically, the issue of “Chinese invasion” remains a potent issue that is
always used by unscrupulous political actors to score political gains. This is
not about China invading Indonesia per se; rather, China is accused of actively
sending fifth columnists to Indonesia. For example, an ethnically Chinese in-
cumbent governor, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahja Purnama, despite his perceived close
association with Jokowi and his stratospheric and enviable approval rating of
70% (Topshield, 2017), lost in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election that was
so tinged with ethno-religious slanders that it was dubbed as one of the most
divisive election campaigns Indonesia had ever seen (Jensen & Allard, 2017).
His opponents insinuated that China provided identity cards to illegal Chinese
voters to help Ahok to steal the election (Sulaiman, 2017). Even Jokowi had to
address a hoax that suggested that China was sending 10 million illegal workers
to Indonesia (Ihsanuddin, 2016) as an advance invasion force (Putra, 2016). The
issue was so potent that when only 38.9% of the respondents were aware of the
issue concerning illegal Chinese workers, more than half of them expressed dis-
pleasure over it, according to survey results from the respected Lingkaran Survei
Indonesia [Indonesia Survey Circle] (DHF, 2018).
Thus the puzzle: why there is no balancing behavior from Indonesia vis-à-vis
a Chinese threat, despite all the fear. Indonesia is neither strengthening its power
projection capability nor building a coalition to address China’s growing aggres-
siveness in the South China Sea (or at least to fulfill its security goal). In fact,
as noted by Fealy and White (2016), Indonesian military modernization is not
focused on maritime or power projection capabilities, which are needed to con-
front or check China’s growing threat in the South China Sea. Instead, it is fo-
cused on strengthening the army to improve internal security functions.
The answer is that Indonesia’s underbalancing behavior is the result of
Indonesia’s strategic culture that influences its threat perceptions, thus con-
straining the range of policies that Indonesia may take (Dueck, 2006, p. 36). At
the same time, various presidents’ own leadership styles have influenced how
Indonesia reacts to both systemic and domestic constraints, and what kind of
policy they finally picked from the range of policies available.
 Leadership, Strategic Culture, and Indonesian Foreign Policy      609

Indonesia’s strategic culture distorts Indonesia’s perception of threat, push-

ing Indonesian military and policymakers to consider internal stability as the
top priority. This means that in order to maintain internal stability, successive
Indonesian governments need to focus on economic growth and to deal with for-
eign-influenced domestic threats. Any threat to Indonesia would be through fifth
columnists, instead of from direct military invasion. Therefore, the most recent
Defense White Paper (2015) stresses the need for the government to be aware
of any attempt by foreign countries to split Indonesia, citing the “Arab Spring,
political and security upheaval in Egypt, [and] civil wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya, and Syria” as examples of how states wage proxy wars as a 21st century
version of “divide and conquer” (Ministry of Defense (Indonesia), 2015, p. 11).
As a result, China as a state is actually not seen as a major, direct, and immedi-
ate threat, which warrants an immediate action that may jeopardize Indonesia’s
larger interest. Instead, domestic politics and security—especially how public
perception of the government’s friendship with China may benefit or hurt the
government—remains the focus and the priority of the government. In essence,
successive Indonesian presidents’ range of choices is limited by Indonesia’s stra-
tegic culture, and the policy choices that the presidents make depends on their
domestic calculations.
The structure of this article is as follows. First, I will first discuss the theoretical
argument on the impact of domestic politics and especially strategic culture on
the foreign policy decision-making process. Next, I will discuss how Indonesian
strategic culture leads to successive Indonesian presidents’ focusing on how
China could benefit Indonesia’s economy, limiting the number of policies that
Indonesia could pursue in response to China’s policies in the South China Sea.
After that, I will discuss the South China Sea policies adopted during the presi-
dencies of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–2014) and Jokowi.

The Nature of Political Threat, Underbalancing, and Strategic Culture

What makes a threat a threat? Structural realists such as Stephen Walt (1987)
argue that the level of threat is influenced by aggregate power, geographic prox-
imity, offensive power, and aggressive intentions. At the same time, however, it
does not really explain why a state may actually join or at least work with the
most threatening state.
This brings the problem of interest to the fore. As Schweller (1998, p. 22) notes,
even though states are concerned about their security, most states “must ulti-
mately serve someone” and thus the most important determinant of a state’s be-
havior is the compatibility of their political goals vis-à-vis other stronger powers.
He explains that it is very possible that a state’s own political goal may actually
be better served by the revisionist state, namely, the threatening state instead of
the status-quo power. Therefore, the relationship between the threatening and
the threatened state is far more complex than meets the eye: the threatened state
may not find the threatening state all that threatening in the short term, and may
be willing to cooperate with the threatening state, at least in the short term, to
fulfill its long-term goals.
That, however, brings up another question: What determines a state’s politi-
cal goal? In a sense, what causes a state to believe that a close relationship with