Australia and Indonesia are building on existing lines of cooperation as they inch towards an upgrade in security ties, but both sides are still seen to be far from establishing a formal military alliance or treaty.
While observers note that ties between Canberra and Jakarta have improved through the decades, with the momentum expected to be maintained under incoming Indonesian leader Prabowo Subianto, the relationship should be viewed “beyond the lens” of the US-China rivalry.
Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles is set to visit Indonesia at the end of this month to sign the upgraded agreement with Prabowo, according to a report by Australia’s national broadcaster, ABC.
Prabowo – who will be inaugurated as Indonesia’s president in October – will also be making a trip to Canberra in the next few weeks to meet Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
“I will welcome the Indonesian defence minister in the next fortnight, who is coming to Canberra, and he’ll have meetings with my cabinet,” Albanese said in an interview with ABC last Thursday. “In a matter of weeks, I will attend his inauguration. The cooperation that we have with Indonesia is very strong indeed.”
When the upgraded agreement was first announced in February, Marles described it as “the deepest, most significant defence agreement between our two nations in our respective histories”.
And while Marles called it a “treaty-level” document, analysts say Indonesian policymakers are likely to refrain from such a characterisation.
“Indonesia has made it clear that it will not be party to any formal treaty-like defence arrangements,” said Natalie Sambhi, executive director of independent think tank Verve Research and a lecturer at Deakin University, Australian War College.
“However, this does not preclude Indonesia from deepening security cooperation with a range of international partners,” she said.
Indonesia may establish security cooperation arrangements that functionally resemble a “close security relationship”, but Jakarta is unlikely to publicly describe such arrangements using the terms “treaty” or “alliance”, according to Sambhi.
Evan Laksmana, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia military modernisation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the upgraded defence agreement, while not entirely “groundbreaking”, did mark an improvement in the two countries’ security relationship.
“But I don’t think it implies strategic alignment more broadly, particularly within the context of US-China competition,” he said. “I also don’t think it implies the immediate likelihood of joint war fighting or a mutual defence type of treaty between Indonesia and Australia.”
Improving ties
Australia and Indonesia will commemorate 75 years of diplomatic relations later this year. While defence and broader bilateral ties have strengthened in recent years, their relationship has weathered periodic challenges and tensions over the decades.
Both countries signed a landmark security pact in 1995, but it was annulled after four years when Australia led a peacekeeping mission to East Timor, after violence broke out in the then-Indonesian province following a referendum for independence.
The two countries later mended ties and in 2006 signed the Lombok Treaty to work together in addressing common security threats.
The relationship was threatened in 2013 when it was uncovered that Australia had wiretapped the phone calls of then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife, and other senior officials. This led to public outrage in Indonesia, but Yudhoyono ultimately prevented the diplomatic row from escalating further.
In 2017, Indonesia temporarily suspended military cooperation with Australia after an Indonesian special forces instructor deemed training materials used during an exchange programme to be disrespectful towards his country.
Things have largely improved since then, experts say, and the relationship has received more momentum since Prabowo became defence minister in 2019.
Since 2022, Australia has participated in the annual Indonesia-US joint military exercise known as Super Garuda Shield, alongside Japan and Singapore. In May, the Royal Australian Air Force and Indonesian Air Force conducted joint maritime surveillance training exercises.
“I think Prabowo has shown great support for deepening cooperation,” said Sambhi, also noting efforts under his tenure to integrate Indonesian army cadets into the Australian Royal Military College, with the inaugural batch graduating last year.
As Indonesia and Australia prepare to sign this upgraded deal, the emphasis will remain on people-to-people ties, and the “soft-power elements of a defence relationship”, according to Laksmana.
“This means engagement, exchanges, education, training exercises,” he said, adding that it was unlikely to become a more “mature defence relationship that includes technological cooperation, defence industrial collaboration or joint warfighting experience”.
However, Laksmana noted this new agreement could also address some of Australia’s long-standing strategic concerns about potential threats from one of its closest neighbours, Indonesia.
“Securing a closer defence agreement from Indonesia is part of the effort to alleviate some of those concerns to make sure that Indonesia is on Australia’s side.”
The Aukus question
According to Sam Roggeveen, director of the Lowy Institute’s international security programme, both countries might talk about the agreement differently.
“Traditionally, Indonesia has adhered to a non-aligned status … they will be keen to communicate that they maintain this status and this should not be viewed in any way as an anti-China agreement.”
Beijing has also been pursuing closer defence ties with Indonesia, floating offers for new submarines and weapons systems in recent months. Chinese senior diplomats and military officials also held their first “2+2” talks with their Indonesian counterparts this week in Jakarta.
Meanwhile, over the past few months, president-elect Prabowo has met leaders aligned with the West, as well as with China and Russia, which analysts have suggested indicate his “friends-to-all” foreign policy approach.
Analyst Sambhi said the agreement between Indonesia and Australia could be viewed “beyond just the lens of the US-China strategic competition”.
“Indonesia and other countries in Southeast Asia are looking at increasing cooperation with Australia, particularly for Indonesia, given that we do share a maritime boundary and we are inevitably neighbours.”
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Aukus will ‘get done’, Biden tells Australia’s Albanese during visit to Washington
Aukus will ‘get done’, Biden tells Australia’s Albanese during visit to Washington
However, Australia’s entry into the Aukus alliance, established in 2021 with Britain and the United States in response to growing Chinese influence in the region, had “made it harder to avoid Indonesia becoming ensnared in this great power contest”, Roggeveen said.
Under the Aukus agreement, Australia will develop a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines in order to strengthen its navy.
“Aukus has increased the chances that China will operate its navy in Southeast Asia and through the Indonesian archipelago,” Roggeveen said.
There have been mixed feelings among Southeast Asian countries towards Aukus. While Singapore has been receptive to the alliance, Indonesia and Malaysia had raised concerns that Aukus signalled furthered militarisation in the region and heightened risks of nuclear proliferation.
But the Indonesian government has since softened its stance on Aukus, with incumbent leader Joko Widodo last year saying he would view Aukus as a partner, not a competitor.
Laksmana said Australia might feel a “sense of false optimism” that the improvement in bilateral and defence ties implied that they would always be “convergent on broader questions of regional order”.
“Australia is very much increasingly strategically wedded with the US,” he said. “And that’s something that Indonesia is unlikely to fully be a part of.”
