How Indonesia's Prabowo Subianto is treading careful balance amid US-China rivalry: Report

Jakarta [Indonesia], December 14 : After Prabowo Subianto became Indonesia's president in October, people quickly began to wonder how his leadership, given his background as a former special forces general would affect regional security in the coming five years of his presidency, Al Jazeera reported.
Several analysts believe Prabowo Subianto's approach to foreign policy will be very different from that of his predecessor, Joko Widodo (known as "Jokowi").
According to Al Jazeera, Jokowi focused primarily on boosting Indonesia's economy by attracting foreign investment to Indonesia and building export markets rather than on defence spending and international affairs.
As tensions and competition between China and the United States increase in the Asia-Pacific region, it is uncertain how far Indonesia's 73-year-old President Prabowo will take Indonesia in a new foreign policy direction remains to be seen.
"Unlike Jokowi, who largely delegated foreign affairs and security matters, Prabowo, through his defence minister, will drive more opportunities with the Pentagon," Natalie Sambhi, an Indonesia expert and executive director of Verve Research said.
"That said, we have early signs that Indonesia is looking to deepen its relationship with China, including resuming military exercises. We have five years to see whether the complexity and frequency of military exercises with the [Chinese] People's Liberation Army evolves in ways that rival the intensity with the US military," Sambhi added.
According to the report, Prabowo's early choice of state visits gave a glimpse of his strategic thinking for Indonesia's place in a region of rapidly evolving military competition.
After visiting Australia in August and Russia in September as Indonesia's president-elect, Prabowo visited China in November, when he was elected president. Shortly after, he travelled to Washington, DC, where he met with President Joe Biden, capping the visit with a phone call to the US's president-elect Donald Trump.
In late November, Prabowo visited the United Kingdom and met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and King Charles.
A lecturer in Southeast Asian politics and security at the National War College in Washington, DC Zachary Abuza highlighted Subianto's choice of countries to visit--Russia and China--before visiting the United States, and stated that "the decision to visit Russia and China ahead of the US certainly raised some alarm bells about what he is going to do with the bilateral relationship."
But the order of the countries that Prabowo chose to visit could have also been more an issue of logistics and timing than a symbolic indication of strategic intent as a visit to the US would have been complicated while the country was in the middle of a presidential election campaign in October and early November, Abuza added.
Abuza also noted that the new Indonesian president could strengthen ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) especially given the growing rivalry between Beijing and Washington in Southeast Asia, Al Jazeera reported.
What is certain, according to Abuza, is that "Prabowo is going to be a different figure" when it comes to foreign policy and the new Indonesian president may also mean a strengthened Association of Southeast Asian Nations [ASEAN] amid the regional rivalry between Beijing and Washington.
Prabowo "understands that ASEAN is more effective with a stronger Indonesia at the helm", Abuza said.
Further, Sambhi of Verve Research suggested that analysts will closely observe how Indonesia, under Prabowo's leadership, expands its regional security partnerships.
Sambhi of Verve Research said that "analysts would likely be looking at how Indonesia under Prabowo might deepen and diversify its regional security partnerships away from the twin poles of Washington and Beijing."
Other security partners for Indonesia may include Australia, France, India, the Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam, Sambhi said.
"The more Indonesia does with other middle and emerging Indo-Pacific powers, the better for the region in mitigating the impact of US-China rivalry," she said. -
Subianto, born in Jakarta in 1951, Prabowo began his military career in 1970 when he enrolled in the Indonesian Military Academy, from which he graduated in 1974 before joining the Indonesian Special Forces Command (Kopassus).
Throughout his military career, he was accused of a string of human rights abuses while in active service, including accusations of abuses in East Timor and Indonesia's West Papua, as well as involvement in the bloody race riots in 1998 during the fall of then-president Soeharto - of whom he was once a son-in-law, as reported by Al Jazeera,