Indonesia Will Play A Key Role In Russia’s Asian Balancing Act

Indonesia Will Play A Key Role In Russia’s Asian Balancing Act

By Andrew Korybko

Their close Soviet-era strategic cooperation before General Suharto’s mid-1960s coup serves as a nostalgic reference point for the level of relations that their contemporary leaders are eager to revive.

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto was Putin’s guest of honour during mid-June’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The privilege that was bestowed upon him wasn’t surprising since bilateral ties have greatly strengthened since last year as documented here in January. Russia envisages Indonesia playing key role in its Asian balancing act, which will only grow after their newly signed strategic partnership agreement. The present piece will detail some of the forms in which this will take.

To begin with, Russia helped Indonesia complete its accelerated accession to BRICS as a full-fledged member, for which Prabowo thanked Putin during their meeting and in statements to the press afterwards. The evening beforehand, Putin told the heads of international news agencies during his meeting with them that Indonesia’s nearly 300 million people enable it to play a larger role in the global economy, with the innuendo being that this will lead to it playing a greater role in global governance too.

It’s here where the relevance of Indonesia’s Russian-assisted accession to BRICS comes into play. Although cooperation within BRICS is purely voluntary, the group can still collectively contribute to accelerating financial multipolarity processes and then gradual reforms to global governance afterwards. Accordingly, given Indonesia’s growing economic and corresponding political weight in the world coupled with their traditionally friendly ties, Russia expects that they can cooperate more closely to this end.

In pursuit of this goal, which is assessed to be the driving force behind their strategic partnership, both countries are prioritizing the comprehensive expansion of their economic, political, and military ties. From Russia’s perspective, the economic dimension can open new markets for all manner of energy and real-sector exports, closer ties with de facto ASEAN leader Indonesia can give Russia more of a presence in that bloc, and more military-technical cooperation can strengthen Indonesia’s own balancing act.

About that, Indonesia multi-aligns between rival powers just like India does, and closer military-technical cooperation with Russia could help it avoid the growing zero-sum dilemma to commit to China or the US. After all, closer such cooperation with either of them could unsettle the other and lead to more pressure upon Indonesia, but China probably wouldn’t mind its Russian strategic partner supplying Indonesia with arms while the US might not overreact to this if their incipient rapprochement remains on track.

As for Russia’s Asian balancing act, it aims to preemptively avert disproportionate dependence on China, some of the consequences if troubled Indo-US ties improve, and being caught in a zero-sum dilemma to commit to one over the other. Closer economic ties with Indonesia therefore help Russia hedge against trade dependence on China, closer military-technical ones could partially replace declining market share in India, and closer political ties with ASEAN can give Russia more flexibility amidst the Sino-Indo rivalry.

Altogether, Russia and Indonesia play complementary roles in one another’s balancing acts, with each serving as valve of sorts from the pressure to commit to China-India and China-US respectively. Their close Soviet-era strategic cooperation before General Suharto’s mid-1960s coup serves as a nostalgic reference point for the level of relations that their contemporary leaders are eager to revive. Now is the perfect time to do so, and since there aren’t any impediments, the future of their ties looks very bright.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Voice of East.

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