{"id":25466,"date":"2016-03-22T06:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T19:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=25466"},"modified":"2016-03-22T09:38:31","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T22:38:31","slug":"indonesia-china-and-the-natuna-islands-a-test-for-jokowis-maritime-doctrine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/indonesia-china-and-the-natuna-islands-a-test-for-jokowis-maritime-doctrine\/","title":{"rendered":"Indonesia, China and the Natuna Islands: a test for Jokowi\u2019s maritime doctrine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nLast Sunday\u2019s<\/span> incident<\/span><\/a> north of Indonesia\u2019s Natuna islands, in which two armed Chinese Coastguard ships forced an Indonesian patrol craft to release an intruding Chinese trawler, shows once again that Jakarta must confront the reality of an overlap between its 200-mile economic zone and China\u2019s \u2018historic\u2019 nine-dash line of maritime sovereignty that penetrates deep into the South China Sea.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indonesia may not be a claimant to the disputed Spratly Islands, but the incident is the first real test of President Joko Widodo\u2019s ambition of turning the country into a<\/span> maritime power<\/span><\/a>, a policy that necessarily means asserting sovereignty over its vast sea boundaries.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although it has strongly supported ASEAN’s efforts to<\/span> create a Code of Conduct<\/span><\/a> to head off the danger of open conflict, Indonesia\u2019s approach up to now has seemed strangely adrift at a time when superpower rivalry in the region is heating up.<\/span><\/p>\n

Former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono turned a blind eye to three incidents, two in 2010 and one in 2013, in which Chinese gunboats forced Indonesian fisheries protection craft to release Chinese poachers caught fishing in Natuna waters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not only has the nine-dash line become an annoying ambiguity Beijing refuses to explain, but<\/span> those incidents<\/span><\/a>, largely unpublicised at the time, showed China was willing to use threats of violence to enforce its version of the maritime boundary.<\/span><\/p>\n

Widodo has been equally tentative in his approach to Beijing, particularly with Chinese companies financing and building some of his treasured infrastructure ventures, including the Jakarta-Bandung rapid rail project and several major coal-fired power plants.<\/span><\/p>\n

This time\u00a0Indonesia detained all eight crew members and launched an official protest, with feisty Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Minister Susi Pudjiastuti summoning Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng to<\/span> demand an explanation.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Indonesia has always claimed it doesn\u2019t have a dispute with Beijing in the South China Sea, but a Chinese Foreign Ministry<\/span> statement<\/span><\/a> claiming the trawler was in \u2018traditional Chinese fishing grounds\u2019 will be hard to ignore.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although Indonesia has sunk 155 foreign fishing vessels since a<\/span> crackdown against illegal fishermen<\/span><\/a> went into force at the start of Widodo\u2019s presidency in late 2014,<\/span> only one was of Chinese origin<\/span><\/a>\u2013and even that had been captured back in 2009.<\/span><\/p>\n

Soon after the campaign began, Pudjiastuti received an unsigned letter at her home, bearing a Chinese Embassy stamp, which warned of dire consequences if captured Chinese trawlers were scuttled, like those from Thailand, Vietnam and other neighbouring countries. \u2018I think they have a long term global view and in that they see the Chinese lake to the south as a necessary part of that view,\u2019 says one former senior Indonesian diplomat. \u2018The Law of the Sea isn\u2019t the only reference for them. It\u2019s anything that serves their interest.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Given the unfolding events in the South China Sea and its designated job of protecting an archipelago that sprawls across some of the world’s most important trading routes, it’s extraordinary that the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) still plays only a minor role in the nation\u2019s strategic planning.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, even the Coordinating Ministry for Political and Security Affairs is more preoccupied with day-to-day domestic events than coming up with strategic guidance on what the region might look like in 20 years and how the military should position itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, with the TNI having surprisingly little to say about big power involvement in the region, it is the Foreign Ministry which takes the lead by default in pursuing a so-called \u2018free and active\u2019 policy, built largely around enhancing ASEAN\u2019s role as a burgeoning but hardly unified regional community.<\/span><\/p>\n

In its still-to-be-released 2014 Defence White Paper, TNI does acknowledge the possibility of Indonesia being affected if tensions in the South China Sea erupt into conflict. But mostly it plays down external threats and focuses on international terrorism, transnational crime and illegal immigration as priority issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the past two years, TNI commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo has crafted those issues into a newly-developed theory of an international conspiracy in which unnamed foreign states are supposedly using<\/span> domestic proxies<\/span><\/a> to weaken the country from within and to rob it of its resources.<\/span><\/p>\n

It remains unclear what real evidence he has to support the idea, but it serves as an ideological justification for the military\u2019s efforts to regain a more prominent role in internal security. As the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) noted in a<\/span> recent report<\/span><\/a>: \u2018For the TNI, the great value of the proxy war thesis is that it fuses international and domestic threats and suggests that to deal with an external threat, the military must strengthen its internal security role’.<\/span><\/p>\n

Apart from superficial elements, officials in the wider region complain that Indonesia doesn\u2019t have a coherent foreign policy. Domestic critics agree, saying the problem lies in the whole policy-making process itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even continuing to place ASEAN as a cornerstone of what is largely a reactive policy isn\u2019t convincing given the fact that most Indonesians see the newly-implemented ASEAN Economic Community as more of a threat than a challenge because of logistical and educational weaknesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yudhoyono openly welcomed US President Barack Obama\u2019s \u2018Pivot to Asia\u2019\u2014and the training of US Marines in northern Australia\u2014because he was worried the serious inroads the Chinese were making into the region threatened to squeeze ASEAN apart.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if it was a good example of SBY being a \u2018foreign policy president,\u2019 Indonesia has since failed to build on the leadership role it saw for itself under his presidency, or in advancing the concept of a<\/span> Code of Conduct<\/span><\/a> that will hopefully make the South China Sea a safer place.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Sunday\u2019s incident north of Indonesia\u2019s Natuna islands, in which two armed Chinese Coastguard ships forced an Indonesian patrol craft to release an intruding Chinese trawler, shows once again that Jakarta must confront the reality …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":25470,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[971,8,819,471],"class_list":["post-25466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-illegal-fishing","tag-indonesia","tag-natuna-islands","tag-south-china-sea"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIndonesia, China and the Natuna Islands: a test for Jokowi\u2019s maritime doctrine | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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