Indonesia’s Future: Political, Economic, and Foreign Policy Challenges under Prabowo

Indonesia’s 2024 Presidential Election: Sectarianism Out, Dynasty In, Democracy Tethered

Navhat (Nava) Nuraniyah

The Many Facets of Prabowo Subianto: Quo Vadis Indonesia’s Foreign Policy?

Dewi Fortuna Anwar

Facing Constraints: The Implications of Prabowo’s Victory for Indonesia’s Economic Policy

Muhammad Habib Abiyan Dzakwan

The Implications of Prabowo Subianto’s Presidential Win for Indonesia’s Security Policy

Yohanes Sulaiman

Prospects for U.S.-Indonesian Relations under President Prabowo Subianto

Ann Marie Murphy

Introduction

Indonesia is a regional leader and an economic powerhouse. It is the world’s third-most populous democracy and fourth-most populous nation overall. It is also Southeast Asia’s largest economy, with a GDP of $1.4 trillion, and the world’s tenth-largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity.[1] As such, Indonesia’s political and economic developments reverberate through the wider Asia-Pacific.

This Asia Policy roundtable examines the implications of Prabowo Subianto’s presidency for Indonesia and U.S.-Indonesian relations. Prabowo is a controversial figure, and his February 2024 election victory was contentious as well. He was dismissed from the military in 1998 during Indonesia’s democratic transition, accused of involvement in human rights abuses in Papua Province and Timor-Leste during his military service, and subsequently prohibited from entering the United States. The ban was only lifted in 2020 following his appointment as defense secretary in the second cabinet of Indonesian president Joko Widodo (known as Jokowi). Prabowo has thus successfully rehabilitated his image into that of senior statesman and politician. In the 2024 election, he ran on a ticket with Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Jokowi’s son. While the vote was overwhelmingly in their favor at 58.6%, allegations of state interference dogged the election.

The first essay in the roundtable by Navhat (Nava) Nuraniyah explores several fundamental questions about Prabowo’s electoral victory: “How did Prabowo, a septuagenarian with a tainted human rights track record, manage to win the hearts of predominantly young Indonesian voters? How did he and Jokowi forge an alliance after years of a highly polarizing and sectarian rivalry…? What does his triumph mean for the future of Indonesia’s democracy, which has reached a nadir since the 1998 democratic transition?” She argues that to secure electoral victory, Prabowo relied on two key factors. First, he successfully rebranded himself from a sectarian populist to a fun-loving, grandfatherly statesman by adopting a gemoy (cute) persona and a campaign that promoted an aspirational lifestyle to Indonesia’s younger voters. Second, by bending his platform toward Jokowi’s agenda and, critically, by bringing on Jokowi’s son as his running mate, Prabowo convinced Jokowi to mobilize his own popularity and the machinery of the state behind him. Nuraniyah argues that, given the erosion of checks and balances during Jokowi’s tenure and Prabowo’s own background, his presidency will likely continue to take Indonesia down a path of expanding executive power and overall democratic decline.

Considering Prabowo’s prospective foreign policy, Dewi Fortuna Anwar in her essay expects that he will be a “hands-on president who plays an active role in shaping and implementing foreign policy during his tenure.” With a cosmopolitan background, Prabowo is known to embrace diplomacy and international forums, and he has shown interest in helping resolve extraregional conflicts such as the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars. Given his military past and position as defense minister, Prabowo will likely bring security matters more closely under his wing and incorporate defense diplomacy into his foreign policy. Anwar contends that Prabowo “will be forced to balance nationalism and aspirations of greater self-reliance with the reality that Indonesia needs a large-scale influx of external capital and technology to develop its economy.” This means pragmatically managing relationships with both China and the United States amid escalating great-power competition. Anwar notes that “Prabowo is likely to be even more concerned than Jokowi about preserving Indonesia’s independent and active foreign policy credentials and not being seen as taking sides.”

In the third essay, Muhammad Habib Abiyan Dzakwan addresses the implications of Prabowo’s presidency for Indonesia’s economic policies. He argues that while Prabowo campaigned on the premises of continuity with the past and optimism for the future, promising to continue many of Jokowi’s policies but also to implement a new nationwide food program, he will “likely have his own way of orchestrating the country’s economy.” Indonesia faces fiscal and geoeconomic constraints in the years ahead as it seeks to be classified as a developed country by its centennial in 2045. Prabowo may opt to follow in Jokowi’s footsteps by reallocating spending (possibly away from Jokowi’s pet infrastructure projects) and continuing the downstreaming of Indonesia’s mineral wealth, especially nickel, to boost economic development. However, Prabowo will also take cues from Suharto’s economic policy, blending state control of certain economic sectors with capitalism to pursue the government’s agenda. As Indonesia strives to fulfill its Golden Indonesia 2045 vision, the new government must address its fiscal problems, manage its resources wisely, and avoid economic and political entanglement in the great-power competition.

As a former general and minister of defense, Prabowo is likely to take an active interest in national and international security affairs. But Yohanes Sulaiman argues in his essay that, contrary to some expectations, Prabowo is unlikely to move the needle much on either defense reform or the strategic challenges facing Indonesia. He points out that while Prabowo referenced international conflicts during his campaign, he usually referred to them as triggers for rising prices rather than as global security threats. Prabowo did not address Southeast Asia or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in his vision and mission statements, nor did he mention the South China Sea dispute near Indonesia’s own maritime borders. Sulaiman argues that in security matters Indonesia is hamstrung in two particular ways. First, its strategic culture is focused on internal threats and has spent heavily on the army at the expense of the navy and air force. Second, the army has a growing glut of officers but has resisted personnel reform. Prabowo has proposed that these excess officers assume positions within the civilian bureaucracy, causing some to fear a return to Suharto-era military intervention in civilian affairs and suggesting further democratic backsliding. Sulaiman contends that the country will continue to face the “problem of reconciling the military’s strategic culture and transforming it into the force that Indonesia needs to face global challenges.”

The last essay, by Ann Marie Murphy, considers the implications of Prabowo’s presidency for U.S.-Indonesian relations, which generally have been positive over the past decade. She argues that his human rights record and the controversy over whether the election was free and fair, given heavy political interference, “pose a dilemma for the United States between its values and its strategic interests.” Broader trends in U.S. diplomacy, however, suggest that the potential for a downturn in bilateral relations due to Prabowo’s past is low. Murphy argues that in practice U.S. policy toward Southeast Asia has shifted away from the values diplomacy of the Obama era. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have “largely subordinated human rights concerns to strategic interests…as competition with China has intensified.” U.S. policy toward Indonesia is more likely to confront differences over government outlooks on pressing geoeconomic and geopolitical issues. Although Indonesia would like to reduce its economic dependence on China and expand economic ties with the United States, doing so will be constrained by China’s existing presence in the Indonesian market. Likewise, despite the growth of both U.S. defense sales and the Super Garuda Shield joint military exercise, Indonesia’s commitment to a nonaligned, independent, and active foreign policy will continue to limit the scope of U.S.-Indonesian defense cooperation. The two states also have different views on the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine conflicts. Overcoming disconnects around expectations of each other will be a priority for both countries.

This Asia Policy roundtable highlights that while there are areas of domestic and international policy where Prabowo’s election as president raises the potential for change, others will likely stay much the same. Domestically, Indonesia may continue backsliding in terms of the quality of its democracy, as the government focuses on economic development through resource downstreaming and other measures to improve the country’s standing by its independence centennial. Internationally, Prabowo will likely continue to pursue a nonaligned foreign policy of pragmatic engagement, especially toward China and the United States. For U.S.-Indonesia relations, strategic interests will likely outweigh any divergence of values, but differences in geopolitical views could still challenge future cooperation.

Navhat (Nava) Nuraniyah is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political and Social Change in the College of Asia and the Pacific at Australian National University (Australia).

Dewi Fortuna Anwar is a Research Professor at the Research Center for Politics at the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Habibie Center in Jakarta (Indonesia).

Muhammad Habib Abiyan Dzakwan is a Researcher at the Department of International Relations at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (Indonesia). His research currently focuses on international political economy and Indonesia’s relations with great powers. His writing has appeared in the East Asia Forum, the Diplomat, China Daily, and the Jakarta Post, among others.

Yohanes Sulaiman is an Associate Professor in International Relations at Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani, Cimahi (Indonesia). He is also a Nonresident Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

Ann Marie Murphy is Professor and Director of the Center for Foreign Policy Studies in the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University (United States). She is also an Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University and a founding partner of the New York Southeast Asia Network.

Endnotes

[1] “The World Bank in Indonesia,” World Bank, October 20, 2023.