David M. Andrews responds to “United front: Australia needs a military alliance with Indonesia” by Sam Roggeveen

In his essay for Australian Foreign Affairs 21, Sam Roggeveen advances a thought-provoking vision for an Australia-Indonesia alliance postured against the threat of a militarily dominant China in maritime South-East Asia.

Facing an international security environment in which aggressive, authoritarian states are seeking to dominate their neighbours, and in which Australia’s key ally seems likely to elect a former president whose foreign policy decision-makingwould be generously described as erratic, it makes sense to con­sider what other security mechanisms and partnerships Australia might need. 

However, while I support closer Australia-Indonesia security ties, I regret that the model proposed by Roggeveen is not a realistic one. It is too conditional and caveated to be practical, and relies upon a very narrow path of plausibility, built around a neat but highly contestable sequence of events. 

Firstly, and most consequentially, is the future of the United States in Asia. Roggeveen’s argument presupposes “a post-American Asia in which China is striving to become the dominant power” and in which the US is "less motivated to defend its allies", though not necessarily physically absent. What this means in practice is unclear. 

His argument does not, for example, articulate whether the United States’ unreliability would affect Australia’s position under the US nuclear umbrella, or the status of the joint facilities. Even if the US is unwilling to risk war over mar­itime claims in South-East Asia, or over Taiwan, would the same hold true for defending Australia, given its importance to the maintenance of a US nuclear deterrent and their global intelligence-gathering capabilities? 

Therefore, is this Indonesian alliance a hedge against abandonment or a response to such an occurrence? If the former, it is wrong to suggest that “[t]here is nothing in an Australia-Indonesia military alliance that threatens US interests or the US-Australia relationship”. For if the Australia-Indonesia alli­ance failed to deter Chinese aggression and Indonesian forces were attacked by China, thereby drawing Australia into the conflict, the United States would risk being entrapped in a war with its principal strategic competitor by virtue of its security commitments to Australia. 

Secondly, the proposed form and scope of the alliance is not fit for purpose.

Roggeveen argues for an alliance “devoted solely to the task of denying any for­eign power dominance of maritime South-East Asia”, with a “tight focus on the ability to find and sink ships”. It also requires “an explicit commitment never to strike the territory of a foreign nation”, including bases in third countries. This alliance “would probably not include a NATO-like statement of mutual defence”.

An alliance that lacked any general commitment to defend the other party (or at least a commitment to consult in response to threats), that was restricted to attacking targets in the members’ maritime approaches and that prohibited attacks on enemy territory and bases would be practically and diplomatically worthless. Expressly limiting how and where Australia and Indonesia could counter China’s coercive measures would be committing to fighting blindfolded and with both arms tied behind their backs. 

It is likewise incongruous to suggest that Australia would only work with Indonesia’s air force and navy to achieve these objectives, especially in a strat­egy that would almost certainly include the use of land-based missile systems operated, as in the Australian case, by the army. 

Thirdly, no consideration is given to Australia’s existing treaty arrange­ments in the Indo-Pacific that carry a form of security obligation - namely, the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) with Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom; the Australia-Japan Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation (JDSC); the Australia-Papua New Guinea Bilateral Secu­rity Agreement (BSA); and the Falepili Union with Tuvalu. 

The FPDA, JDSC and BSA all require members to, in response to secu­rity contingencies, consult to determine what actions should be taken, just as in the 1995 Agreement between Australia and Indonesia, which Paul Keating is quoted here comparing (positively) to the “clout” of ANZUS. In effect, Aus­tralia already has an “alliance-like” network of agreements in place, none of which applies the same narrow and prescriptive conditions that are laid out in Roggeveen’s model for an Australia-Indonesia alliance. 

While Roggeveen makes a strong argument that only Indonesia possesses the proximity, economic size, demographics and strategic interests to be a poten­tial Asian ally for Australia, as Evan Laksmana explains in his essay, it would be almost inconceivable for Indonesia to move from non-aligned to allied, despite the threat posed by China. There are lessons to be learned from Australia’s existing partnerships, and potentially a greater chance of upgrading or supple­menting those ties than there is of starting from scratch with Indonesia. 

Though I disagree with the details of the proposition, I believe Roggeveen has done a valuable service to public debate on defence and foreign policy in Aus­tralia by stimulating this conversation. Were this vision of the future to arrive, it would be a groundbreaking day in Australian strategy-making. 

David M. Andrews is a senior policy adviser at the ANU National Security College, a PhD candidate at La Trobe University studying alliances and multilateral security organisations, and a former public servant in the Australian Department of Defence.