Indonesia’s Prabowo steers strategic middle path amid China, US rivalry 

When Prabowo Subianto was sworn in as Indonesia’s eighth president in October, an immediate question was what the appointment of the once-feared ex-special forces general would mean for regional security during his five-year term in office.

Analysts tell Al Jazeera that Prabowo’s approach to foreign policy will differ significantly from his predecessor – ex-President Joko Widodo, better known as “Jokowi” – whose term in office was focused more on attracting foreign investment to Indonesia and building export markets, than on defence spending and international affairs.

As competition mounts between China and the United States in the Asia Pacific region, just how far the 73-year-old President Prabowo will take Indonesia in a new foreign policy direction remains to be seen.

“Unlike Jokowi, who largely delegated foreign affairs and security matters, Prabowo, through his defence minister, will drive more opportunities with the Pentagon,” Natalie Sambhi, an Indonesia expert and executive director of Verve Research, told Al Jazeera.

“That said, we have early signs that Indonesia is looking to deepen its relationship with China, including resuming military exercises,” Sambhi said.

“We have five years to see whether the complexity and frequency of military exercises with the [Chinese] People’s Liberation Army evolves in ways that rival the intensity with the US military,” she said.

‘Mitigating the impact of US–China rivalry’

While it raised some eyebrows at the time, Prabowo’s early choice of state visits upon securing Indonesia’s presidency gave away little of his strategic thinking for Indonesia’s place in a region of rapidly evolving military competition.

He visited Australia in August and Russia in September as Indonesia’s president-elect.

That was followed by a visit to China in November when he was elected president. Shortly after, he travelled to Washington, DC, where he met with US President Joe Biden, capping the visit with a phone call to the US’s president-elect Donald Trump.

In late November, Prabowo visited the United Kingdom and met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and King Charles.

Zachary Abuza, a lecturer in Southeast Asian politics and security at the National War College in Washington, DC, said the decision to visit Russia and China ahead of the US “certainly raised some alarm bells about what he is going to do with the bilateral relationship”.

But the order of the countries that Prabowo chose to visit could have also been more an issue of logistics and timing than a symbolic indication of strategic intent as a visit to the US would have been complicated while the country was in the middle of a presidential election campaign in October and early November, Abuza said.

What is certain, according to Abuza, is that “Prabowo is going to be a different figure” when it comes to foreign policy and the new Indonesian president may also mean a strengthened Association of Southeast Asian Nations [ASEAN] amid the regional rivalry between Beijing and Washington.

Prabowo “understands that ASEAN is more effective with a stronger Indonesia at the helm”, Abuza said.

Sambhi of Verve Research said that analysts would likely be looking at how Indonesia under Prabowo might deepen and diversify its regional security partnerships away from the twin poles of Washington and Beijing.

Other security partners for Indonesia may include Australia, France, India, the Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam, Sambhi said.

“The more Indonesia does with other middle and emerging Indo-Pacific powers, the better for the region in mitigating the impact of US-China rivalry,” she said.

Special forces commander to Indonesian president

Prabowo comes to Indonesia’s top job with a diverse portfolio and a chequered reputation in some of the Western countries that may now be eager to build a new security relationship as a counterbalance to China.

Born in Jakarta in 1951, Prabowo began his military career in 1970, when he enrolled in the Indonesian Military Academy, and from which he graduated in 1974 before joining the Indonesian Special Forces Command (Kopassus).

Throughout his military career, he was accused of a string of human rights abuses while in active service, including accusations of abuses in East Timor and Indonesia’s West Papua, as well as involvement in the bloody race riots in 1998 during the fall of then-president Soeharto – of whom he was once a son-in-law.

Prabowo denied involvement in the abductions of student activists during Soeharto’s rule and while he has never stood trial, the allegations of abuses and rights violations saw him banned from travelling to the US and Australia for almost two decades.

Prabowo’s travel ban was quietly overturned by Washington in 2020 when he was named Indonesian defence minister by Jokowi.

Australia also dropped its ban on Prabowo in 2014 when Canberra too hastily predicted that he was on the cusp of securing the Indonesian presidency on his first attempt a decade ago.

Australia ‘yoking itself exclusively to the US’

Australia’s relationship with Indonesia remains complex.

In August, both countries signed a defence cooperation agreement described as “historic”.

But the relationship between Indonesia and Australia will be one to watch as Prabowo tries to steer a middle path between China and the West, said Ian Wilson, a lecturer in politics and security studies at Perth’s Murdoch University.

Indonesia was one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War, and has a “bebas-aktif” or “free and active” approach to foreign policy, which means that it does not align itself with any major power bloc – choosing instead to work with everyone, Wilson told Al Jazeera.

Australia, however, has new regional security commitments under AUKUS – the trilateral defence partnership between Australia, the UK and the US in the Asia Pacific region. That agreement means that Australia is effectively “operating as a front line for the US in the region”, Wilson said.

“Through AUKUS, Australia has an ongoing commitment to align with the US and there will be anxiety about what that means with Prabowo, as Indonesia will deal with everyone,” Wilson said.

“By visiting Russia and China, [Prabowo] made the point that Indonesia sees all of them as partners, whereas Australia has been yoking itself exclusively to the US,” he said. “How will Australia navigate that, especially with the ramping up of tensions with China and Australia?

“Prabowo and Indonesia’s broader approach might be seen as a headache now that Australia has narrowed down its alignments, and AUKUS is the embodiment of that,” Wilson added.

Interviewed in 2022, then-Defence Minister Prabowo gave some valuable insight when he spoke of Indonesia’s close relationship with the US, and its historically closer one with China.

“We have good cooperation with both powers — I have said that many times,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, an annual security summit organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“The United States has helped us many times, in our critical moments. But China has also helped us. China has also defended us and China is now a very close partner with Indonesia,” he said.

“And actually, China has always been the leading civilisation in Asia. Many of our sultans, kings, our princes in those days, they would marry princesses from China. We have hundreds of years of relationship,” he added.

“So, you asked me, what is our position, as good friends we try to be, maybe a good common bridge”.