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An India-Indonesia convergence

A multipolar Asian order needs to be created and sustained
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Bilateral push: Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s forthcoming visit to India offers an opportunity to both countries to explore possibilities of working together on a range of global issues. Reuters
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It is both timely and appropriate that the newly elected leader of Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, has been invited as the chief guest to India’s Republic Day celebrations. Seventy-five years ago, at the country’s first Republic Day on January 26, 1950, Indonesia’s first President Sukarno was the chief guest. This was not only a reflection of the close bonds the people of the two countries had forged during their respective struggles against colonial rule, but also their shared belief in the resurgence of Asia as a major force for peace and development in an already deeply divided post-World War II international order.

It is this political convergence which led to the convening of the Afro-Asian Bandung Conference in 1955, with India and Indonesia as its chief architects. Today, the world is again in the grip of a dangerous polarisation; this time Asia, not Europe, is the likely crucible of confrontation and even conflict. On the other hand, one cannot preclude the possibility of tactical collusion between the two contending centres of power, the US and China — a so-called G2 — which limits the room for manoeuvring for countries like India and Indonesia. The promise of a multipolar Asia, in which the hegemonic impulses of the two most powerful countries can be constrained, depends for its realisation on countries like India and Indonesia leading the way.

Asia is already home to a cluster of established regional powers such as Japan, South Korea and Australia. If one adds emerging powers like India and Indonesia to a loose countervailing coalition, Asia may finally enjoy the agency in Asian and global affairs that it has always aspired for. Countervailing is different from containment. It demands engagement with and resistance to, in almost equal measure, to threats as well as blandishments of the most powerful centres of power. It recognises that neither confrontation nor collusion between the two leading powers are in the interest of creating and sustaining a multipolar Asia. I believe that India and Indonesia have powerful strategic convergence in this respect, which can drive their relations to a new level altogether.

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Indonesia’s criticality to constructing a multipolar Asia is obvious. It is an archipelagic state of over 17,000 islands stretching over the waters joining the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Its Exclusive Economic Zone is over 6 million sq km. India to its west and Australia to its east are like two book-ends framing the country. It is with good reason that former President Widodo described his country as a “maritime fulcrum”. It is in India’s interest to declare its support for this initiative. But to serve as a fulcrum, Indonesia must have the capacity to police and administer this vast space. The scale of resources required for this is simply not available at the country’s current level of economic and military capabilities.

This is where India has the opportunity to forge a strong and cooperative maritime partnership with Indonesia, going beyond the current joint naval patrols of their adjacent waters. India has greatly expanded its maritime domain awareness capabilities, thanks to its own satellite and long-range airborne surveillance capabilities and technological collaboration with the US. This can support Indonesia’s own growing capacities. There is a trilateral consultative forum involving India, Indonesia and Australia. This can enable India and Australia to collaboratively enhance Indonesia’s maritime capabilities. This will enable a strong crescent of surveillance, information-sharing and constrainment to be put in place in the Indo-Pacific.

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Indonesia is the largest as well as economically and militarily the most powerful member of the 10-nation Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). But it is sometimes a reluctant leader in the ASEAN. It has all along been conflicted in pursuing a leading ASEAN role and in aspiring to a larger international role consistent with its size, population and growing GDP. It has a 290-million population, the fourth largest after India, China and the US. Its GDP of $1.3 trillion has registered a steady 5 per cent annual growth over the past decade and more. Projections are that it may well emerge as the world’s fourth largest economy after the US, China and India by 2050. If Indonesia were to play a more active role in forging ASEAN into a more united, coherent and powerful entity, the concept of “ASEAN centrality” may acquire strategic credibility. But even without the ballast of ASEAN, Indonesia would still be a consequential global player as it demonstrated through its skilful leadership of the G20 in 2022.

One finds that Indonesia, in recent years, prefers to play a solo role at multilateral fora rather than work together with other emerging economies. I came across this during the multilateral climate negotiations. Perhaps this is driven by its belief in acting as an intermediary among competing negotiating coalitions. But this has not been very successful. There may now be a shift in this regard, with Prabowo conveying Indonesia’s acceptance of the invitation to join the BRICS-plus grouping. His predecessor had been more cautious, in line with the country’s earlier preference. During the forthcoming presidential visit, this apparent shift should be probed further and possibilities of India and Indonesia working together on a range of global issues, where their postures are likely to be convergent, should be explored.

During my tenure in Indonesia as ambassador (2001-02), I marvelled at the deep historical and cultural affinities which bind our two countries. The echoes and colours of India are to be seen everywhere and yet Indonesia has its deeply ingrained cultural sensibilities that draw from its own innate aesthetic wellsprings. Its genius lay in creatively transforming Indian cultural and ideational inspirations into its uniquely Indonesian expressions, as plural and as diverse as India itself. These are strong foundations on which to build a 21st-century relationship that began so promisingly in the 1950s but then lost both content and direction in the subsequent decades. Prabowo’s visit offers a second chance to make the relationship as consequential as presaged by Sukarno’s lone presence as a special foreign guest to celebrate India’s historic birth as a republic in 1950.

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