Following proto-nationalist revolts, the Java War of 1825–30 and the Indian Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, both the Dutch and the British skillfully manufactured a buffer of indigenous elite collaboration, such that their faraway possessions were governed by less than two hundred and a thousand expatriate administrators, respectively.
As young, independent-minded nations imbued with a deep tradition of internationalism, India and Indonesia were at the forefront of conceptualizing a non-military defence system for Asia whose peace would be assured by the major powers through the United Nations. In part, intended to shield themselves from the vagaries of the Cold War’s emerging bipolar structure, their foundational doctrines of diplomacy — non-alignment and a ‘free and active’ foreign policy — were, in part, as much an expression of their domestic pluralist characters as it was an attempt to establish a shared basis for peaceful coexistence in a post-colonial Asia riven by dissidence and subversion at its peripheries. To this day, both India and Indonesia hold strong preferences for multilateral and UN-centred cooperation and an unfavourable view of close-ended, collective security arrangements. That said, both countries were not beyond deviating from these principles at moments of strategic opportunity or exigency — both the India-Soviet Union Treaty of Peace, Cooperation and Friendship in 1971 and the Indonesia-Australia Agreement on Maintaining Security (AMS) of 1995 providing for consultation mechanisms in case of an adverse challenge or threat of attack to its treaty signatories.
As the post-Cold War geo-political canvas of Asia once again bears the flux and promise reminiscent of the early post-independence period, both countries — independently — remain wedded to policies that reinforce their cherished strategic latitude. Yet, even as India and Indonesia delicately go about distributing their geo-political equities among a selectively diverse set of ‘strategic’ and ‘comprehensive’ partners, both countries share framework defence cooperation agreements with Western partners, the United States and Australia, respectively.
For all their parallel histories, similar policy preferences and receptivity to independent-minded partners in Asia, it is dispiriting how seemingly unenthusiastic the recent interaction between New Delhi and Jakarta has been. Five years after the inauguration of a New Strategic Partnership, both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono remain culpable of the failure to inject content into their bilateral relationship. Their recent decision to commence negotiations toward a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) notwithstanding, the Joint Statement issued on the occasion of President Yudhoyono’s January 2011 visit to New Delhi constitutes a partial reversal of the aspirations expressed in the New Strategic Partnership. Opportunities to tether their ties to a set of altogether more ambitious goals are nevertheless available.
With South Africa poised to join the politically influential BRIC grouping of major emerging economies in 2011, New Delhi’s championing of Jakarta’s subsequent entry would be politically astute and economically shrewd. Indeed, Indonesia (population: 238 million; GDP: $700 billion) rather than South Africa (population: 50 million; GDP: $350 billion) appears to be a more natural fit within this Brazil (population: 93 million; GDP: $2.1 trillion), Russia (population: 141 million; GDP: $1.5 trillion), India (population: 1.2 billion; GDP: $1.4 trillion) and China (population: 1.3 billion; GDP: $5.8 trillion) grouping. As globalising developing countries within the G20, that have been both singed badly by past current account deficits and are exposed currently to sudden-stop capital flows, both India and Indonesia retain an interest in devising a 21st century international financial system that affords national policy space for capital account management as well as principles-based mechanisms for orderly sovereign default.
Reciprocally, Jakarta, given its shared maritime border and increasing familiarity with the Indian Navy, could invite New Delhi to join MALSINDO, the Trilateral Coordinated Patrols for the Malacca Straits initiative, which has significantly arrested acts of piracy and crime in and around the straits. Down the line, both countries could consider innovative new formats for maritime cooperation, including the exchange of actionable intelligence, with trusted sub-regional partners such as Australia. Further, both Indonesia and India could usefully take advantage of the nascent ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus (ADMM+) expert working group machinery, which pairs an ASEAN member state and a non-member state as co-chairs, to initiate a discussion on norms related to regional maritime security and jurisdictional issues. On increasingly sensitive issues such as ‘innocent passage’ of foreign-flagged ships in territorial waters and the distinction between marine scientific research and military hydrographic survey in foreign exclusive economic zones (EEZs), both countries, after all, encounter similar dilemmas and hold overlapping views. Along the way, the two countries could also set the tone on how leadership can collaboratively be exercised in the Indian Ocean region, progressively an arena of great power contestation.
As India and Indonesia renew their collective destiny, the cautionary lessons of their earlier fallout in ties bear remembering, too. Then, as now, China was a common denominator as both India and Indonesia tied themselves in rhetorical knots over conflicting interpretations of non-alignment, ‘peaceful coexistence,’ and how subversive communist activities could be best contained. Going forward, attempts to cast the relationship on a China constrainment pillar are equally likely to founder on their differing margins of security felt vis-à-vis Beijing — the overlapping Chinese claim to a gas-rich corner of Indonesia’s EEZ overshadowed by India’s eyeball-to-eyeball proximity along its undefined boundary line with China. Proactive efforts to co-opt Beijing, both, bilaterally, by way of a military-to-military dialogue or attempts to forge a sub-regional code of conduct arrangement in the South China Seas, are also more advanced in Jakarta than in New Delhi. It bears noting in this regard that the two PLA anti-piracy patrol warships whose recent docking at Yangon port caused angst in New Delhi, also dropped anchor in the archipelago subsequently. Attempting to skirt over gaps in India-Indonesia relations is inadvisable. In their recently issued Joint Statement, neither country overtly supported the other’s permanent Security Council membership aspirations nor did Jakarta expressly identify Pakistan for condemnation of its role in the 11/26 Mumbai attack — a recurrent demand placed on visiting dignitaries by New Delhi. That said, a bilateral road map interspersed in equal parts with ambition and pragmatism, and cognizant of their differences in security perspective, holds the potential to unlock the immense promise of this natural partnership.
Sourabh Gupta is a Senior Research Associate at Samuels International Associates, Inc., and a contributor to EAF. A longer version of this commentary was originally published here as an East-West Center Asia Pacific Bulletin on 11 March 2011.