Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese leave after a press conference on board HMAS Canberra in Sydney, Australia, November 12, 2025. - Reuters
JAKARTA: There is no doubt that the new security treaty between Indonesia and Australia will strengthen the two countries’ overall ties further, but it was not necessarily the watershed moment that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described.
Two nations come close together primarily because they become economically interdependent or because they share common values or common interests.
To say now that Indonesia and Australia are becoming closer over security suggests the presence of a fear factor. Whatever that fear might be, it is the worst reason to build any relationship, at least from the Indonesian perspective.
Negotiations for the treaty were concluded during the state visit of President Prabowo Subianto to Sydney, and the treaty was announced during the two leaders’ joint press conference on Nov. 11 aboard HMAS Canberra, the Royal Australian Navy’s fleet flagship.
Albanese said he would travel to Jakarta in January to sign the treaty. Building on existing security arrangements, the new elements in the treaty, as Albanese explained, would include regular consultations between the two countries’ leaders on security matters and exploring their response, either jointly or individually, including when the security of one or both countries is threatened.
Indonesia and Australia already have elaborate security cooperation arrangements in place, based primarily on the 2006 Lombok Treaty. These include various military exercises, bilateral or multinational, the “2+2” meetings of foreign and defence ministers and the annual leaders’ meeting for discussing overall relations, including security.
The neighbouring regional giants certainly have a responsibility, whether individually or collectively, to ensure peace and security, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. But we should also be mindful of the differences in how they deal with regional security challenges.
Australia has forged various security alliances, including a bilateral treaty with the United States, the trilateral AUKUS pact with the US and the United Kingdom and the Quad security dialogue with the US, Japan and India. A common thread in these alliances is the need to counter the rise of China as a global superpower.
Nonaligned Indonesia relies primarily on diplomacy and has turned down invitations to join security alliances. It has forged cooperation programmes with everyone that matters to national security, including China.
Admittedly, however, it has far more security cooperation programmes and joint military exercises with Australia and the US than with China. A treaty with Australia is the furthest that Indonesia could venture, short of entering into an alliance.
More regular consultations, which the new treaty will entail, do not automatically commit either country to some kind of joint military operation. The two countries might share the same concerns about the growing tensions in the South China Sea due to territorial disputes between China and several South-East Asian countries.
Meanwhile, Indonesia has had to deal with regular incursions by Chinese fishing boats accompanied by fully armed China Coast Guard vessels in the Natuna Sea, which Beijing claims as a traditional fishing ground.
As Indonesia and Australia deal with this and other common security challenges, we should not lose sight of the importance of forging mutual cooperation in other sectors. For example, much work remains in the economic sector since 2018, when the two countries elevated their ties to a strategic comprehensive economic partnership.
The two giant neighbours are still not trading and investing with one another as much as the potentials on offer, and Indonesia trails behind some of its much smaller regional neighbours as a trading partner or an investment destination for Australia’s business community.
Closer economic relations, increased interdependence and enhanced cultural relations through greater people-to-people exchanges are what will build greater familiarity from which the two nations can build mutual trust. These efforts will certainly beat any fear factor our leaders can cite as a reason for forging closer security ties. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
