The Least Bad Option? Why A US-led International Order is Preferable to a Chinese One for Indonesia
Written by: Trystanto
The new Cold War between the United States and China is heating up. China is inching closer every year into dethroning the United States as the world’s largest economy and is now making concerted offensive economic, military, and political moves in order to have as many friends as possible and, at the same time, cementing its friendly relationship with Russia to be able to present a united front against the US-led order. The United States, for its part, has largely woken up from its beauty sleep and is now acknowledging that China “…is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system” (Biden, Jr. 2021, p.8). The center of this new intense Cold War is the Indo-Pacific region and, like it or not, will have an impact on Indonesia’s conduct in the realm of foreign affairs. While the best course of action for Indonesia is to maintain the status quo and maintaining its neutrality, it is far from certain that this policy will be sustainable in the coming years. Therefore, when the push comes to shove, it would be in the interest of Indonesia to align itself with the US-led order.
Before I explain the reasons, I would like to make it clear: I do not want Indonesia to align itself with either the US or China. I continue to believe that the best course of action for Indonesia is continuing to have good relationships with both the United States and China and to reap the benefits of good relationship with both countries. That would be my fervent desire. However, it is far from certain that this will work. For one thing, we cannot predict the future with absolute certainty (For more explanation see Trystanto 2021). Thus, it is important that we develop contingency plans in order to prepare ourselves for that possibility (Rice and Zegart 2018, ch.8). Secondly, living in a hegemony suck. No one would want to live in a hegemony that control their actions. Of course, I believe that Indonesia must remain free of the hands of any hegemonic powers and be able to independently map its course of action. In spite of this, again, this is far from certain that we will able to do so. As the cold war is brewing up in the Asia-Pacific, it would be extremely difficult for one country to be able to stay neutral. There will be enormous inducements and threats for even neutral countries in the region. As a consequence, while choosing between hegemonies are not the most pleasant activity to do, when the push comes to shove, it would be, for several reasons, better for Indonesia to live in a US-led international order.
Firstly, due to the virtue of geography, the United States is less threatening militarily to Indonesia compared to China (Mearsheimer 2014, ch.10). As I would like to put it, Beijing is near, while Washington is far away. This means that to attack Indonesia, the United States could only muster its long- and ultra-long-range armament against Indonesia. Thus, the range of weapons that the United States could use against Indonesia would be limited. And, given the virtue of distance, Indonesia will have plenty of warning signs that an attack from the United States is imminent, thus allowing Indonesia to prepare as it would take a long time for a bomber to fly from the nearest US airbase to Indonesia. In contrast, Beijing is near and is able to muster its short-range and medium-range weapons against Indonesia in addition to its long-range weapons. Beijing will pose a bigger military threat to Indonesia as the range of weapons that Beijing could utilize is far greater. As a consequence, it is easier for Beijing to coerce Indonesia into acquiescing with Chinese demands in a Chinese order and a Chinese order would be more coercive than the current one (will be explained later). Therefore, “[t]he stronger China grows, the more states will see the benefits of balancing it” (Colby 2021, p.111) and joining a US-led international order.
Secondly, as order abroad is a reflection of domestic political order, a Chinese international order would likely be “more coercive than the present order” (Doshi 2021, p.302). In the course of its international relations conduct, China has employed many tactics in order to silence or, at the very least, limit negative international coverage of China. Beijing has “…deployed a campaign of transnational repression that, according to the NGO Freedom House, is “the most sophisticated, global, and complete in the world”” (Charon and Jeangène Vilmer 2021, p.165). Thus, it is extremely likely that any criticisms of China would be met with a significant reprisal from the Chinese government. For example, after Australia called for an investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, China put tariffs in Australian exports (Wong 2021, p.44). In another example, Le Monde reported that Beijing threatened to “block agricultural exports from Brazil and Uruguay” if they do not vote for the Chinese candidate for the Director-General of the Food and Agricultural Organization (Economy 2022, p.201). The attacks are not limited towards governments, but also private citizens that criticizes China, including the Chinese diaspora overseas and foreign citizens. Reprisals towards individuals include physical aggression, cyberattacks, pressuring families still in China, movement restrictions (e.g., passport confiscation and visa revocation), and social media harassment (Charon and Jeangène Vilmer 2021, p.165). For example, a report by The Guardian found that China has brought back 2500 Chinese citizens from overseas after their families are intimidated and even kidnapped (Davidson 2022). As a matter of fact, a former intern for the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs once remarked that “we know how to say no to the United States, but we don’t know how to say no to China.”
I do not deny that the United States does not use any coercive tools against any state. However, there are very few cases where the United States has utilized its powers to silence criticisms of its policy. For example, the United States does not retaliate against Indonesia when Indonesia condemned the US’ move in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017 (Varagur 2017). Furthermore, the United States does not use its powers against American YouTubers living in China that is anti-American, most notably an American YouTuber named Nathan Rich (Charon and Jeangène Vilmer 2021, p.401). Therefore, the United States allows criticisms for its conduct, while the same could not be ascertained with China. As Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew once remarked, “’[w]ill an industrialized and strong China be as benign to Southeast Asia as the United States has been since 1945? Singapore is not sure” (cited in McGregor 2018, p.253).
How could this be? Isn’t China a proponent of the so-called ‘community of common destiny’ that would ostensibly benefit all of its members? Isn’t China a supporter of a more harmonious world compared to the United States’ ‘cold war mentality’ as China uses colorful rhetoric in the conduct of its foreign relations? Well, as Dittmer (2015, p.45) argued, “[i]t has gradually become clear that the concept of harmonious world was meant to refer exclusively to China’s relations with the great powers, but that smaller powers should recognize that China is big while they are small and comport themselves with appropriate deference.” This line of thought is best exemplified with a remark by the Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in 2010 when he remarked that “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact” (McGregor 2018, p.248). Even the peaceful-sounding ‘community of common destiny’ would require some sort of acquiescence, one way or another, towards Chinese ideals as the community of common destiny is a “strategy by Xi Jinping to improve the development of international relations according to the Chinese vision [emphasis added]” (Yuliantoro 2020, p.75). While, of course, we have to follow the US’ ideals if we want to follow the US-led international order, as explained previously, the US order is less coercive than a Chinese order would likely be. Therefore, even if we put ourselves in the Chinese bandwagon, we will still have to adhere to Chinese ideals and, with a more likelihood of a coercive Chinese order and the ever-threatening Chinese military capability that could threaten Indonesia (even if we are in a Chinese-led order), why should Indonesia align itself with China? If we align ourselves with China, then our freedom of action in the international arena would be limited and China could use its superior military firepower against Indonesia to get what it wants.
How about the fact that the United States love to interfere in a state’s domestic affairs and China does not care about a state’s domestic affairs? The former argument is correct. The United States indeed had engineered coup d’états in countries such as Nicaragua, Chile, and others and has directly interfered in the domestic affairs of other countries, including Indonesia during the 1965 Communist coup d’état attempt. However, admittedly a usage whataboutism, China’s record is also not clean. In recent years, there are several revelations that China has attempted to interfere in a country’s domestic affairs. For example, in 2017, the Chinese security chief, Meng Jianzhu, reportedly urged the Australian Labor Party to support the Australia’s proposed extradition treaty with China as “it would be a shame, Meng said, if the Chinese government had to tell the overseas Chinese community in Australia that the Labor Party was not supportive of Australia-China ties” (Martin 2021, p.208). However, admittedly, China’s attempt to interfere in other countries’ domestic affairs is not as extensive as the United States. Most notably, China did not interfere in the 2020 US Presidential Election according to an unclassified report published by US National Intelligence Council (2021). In spite of this, as we cannot predict the future and as China’s interests grow exponentially in line with its growth as a world power, the possibility that China interfere in a country’s domestic affairs to achieve China’s goals should not be ruled out completely.
So, will the US interfere in Indonesia’s domestic affair in the same manner as in the 1965 coup d’état attempt? I believe the chances are miniscule as Indonesia is a proponent of the US’ rules-based international order (Price 2021) and seeing that China poses a military threat, especially given that Indonesia and China have a dispute in the South China Sea, I believe that there is a multi-partisan consensus that Indonesia must defend the North Natuna Sea against Chinese encroachment. Thus, Indonesia would choose security over economic ties with China and align itself with the US when the push comes to shove. Furthermore, China is, I believe, actually more likely to interfere in Indonesia’s domestic affair as China could try to interfere in an Indonesian election that could guarantee the victory of a China-friendly candidate that would acquiesce to Chinese demands in the South China Sea or join a Chinese-led order as Indonesia’s position in the South China Sea is absolutely critical to China’s survival.
In spite of this, there will always be those who say that the United States is declining. In this view, the age of American prowess is over and the 21st century is now a Chinese century. The United States is in a long decline. So, why do we still need to align ourselves with a declining power? While it is true that there are some shortcomings in the United States, we should not overlook and disregard the advantages that the United States possesses. The United States is about to be energy self-sufficient and it spends more on military research and development than the overall military budget of all other NATO members combined (Marshall 2015, p.89). Its universities will continue to attract the best and brightest talents from around the world and a survey by Gallop in 2018 found that 1 in 5 people chooses the United States as their first choice of destination (Pugliese, Esipova and Ray 2018; Mahbubani 2020, p.18). How about partisan bickering? While it is true that the Democrats and the Republicans are increasingly at loggerheads with one another, the China issue has a rare bipartisan unity (Sarlin and Kapur 2021). The Black Lives Matter protests following the grotesque murder of George Floyd, seen by many as the manifestation of American decline, is actually a sign of the broad appeal of American values; values so universally-accepted that it led to other protests all around the world to hold America to account to the ideals of its founding fathers (Doshi 2021, p.332). To put the nail in the coffin, predictions on America’s decline has been around since at least the 1930s and the United States has valiantly proved them wrong. In fact, it is the declinists and the pessimists that are playing “an indispensable role in preventing what they are predicting” (Huntington 1998, cited in Doshi 2020, p.331).
In conclusion, while it is my fervent wish that Indonesia’s neutrality will continue unabated and Indonesia is able to reap the rewards of a good relationship with both the US and China, this is far from certain as the future of the world is highly unpredictable. Thus, due to the virtue of geography and the less coercive nature of the US-led order, I believe that if Indonesia is forced to choose between the US and China, Indonesia should choose to align itself with the US. Lastly, both the United States and China has a history of interfering in a country’s domestic affairs and, while the threat of a US domestic intervention is present, the chances are small as Indonesia is a proponent of the US’ rules-based international order and the existence of a conflict between Indonesia and China. The upcoming cold war is heating up whether Indonesia likes it or not and Indonesia must continue to make concerted and substantive efforts in maintaining its neutrality while preparing itself for a contingency where it is forced to choose between the United States and China and it is better for Indonesia to choose the former rather than the latter. Finally, to answer the allegations of American decline, perhaps it is appropriate for me to end this article with a quote from the then-Senator John F. Kennedy in 1960 in addressing the arguments on the decline of the US relative position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union:
That is what we have to overcome, that psychological feeling in the world that the United States has reached maturity, that maybe our high noon has passed, maybe our brightest days were earlier, and that now we are going into the long, slow afternoon. I don’t hold that view at all … and neither do the people of this country (Kennedy 1960)
Trystanto is the head of the Research and Development Division at FPCI UGM. This article reflects his own views and not necessarily those of FPCI UGM
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