Tensions in the South China Sea Series: A Five-Part Series (Part 2)
Introduction
Maritime disputes and strategic competition in the South China Sea have long been a critical strategic challenge for successive Indonesian governments. The country, however, has so far been able to maintain its diplomatic position as a “non-claimant state”, allowing Indonesia, whose foreign policy has long been guided by “free and active” and “non-aligned” principles, to keep a healthy distance from the conflict and present itself as an “honest broker.”
However, this year, Indonesia seems to be deviating from its long-held foreign policy. In March, during atwo-plus-two dialogue, Indonesia and Japan agreed to deepen their security cooperation amidst the increasingly volatile situation in the East and the South China Sea. Indonesian defence minister Prabowo Subianto and his Japanese counterpart voiced their opposition to China’s unilateral actions in regional waters that could escalate tensions and change the status quo. The two ministers then signed an agreement that would allow Indonesia to procure defence equipment from Japan and announce the plan to conduct a joint exercise in the South China Sea.
In the following month, British foreign secretary Dominic Raab visited Jakarta. In a joint conference with Indonesian foreign minister Retno Marsudi, Raab reiterated his government’s plan to deploy a carrier strike group to the South China Sea as part of Britain’s “Indo-Pacific tilt.” The carrier strike group will be led by the new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, giving the plan substantial political weight. Indonesia welcomes the plan.
These recent diplomatic manoeuvers, therefore, provoke several questions. What is behind Indonesia’s latest attempt to secure closer relations with extra-regional powers? Has Indonesia finally got on board the balancing coalition against China? How do Indonesian policymakers perceive the threats in the South China Sea? What is really at stake for Indonesia?
What is at stake for Indonesia
Indonesia’s threat perception in the South China Sea stems from several factors, ranging from the immediate concern of repeated incursions into its maritime areas to the broader, long-term interest in preserving the status-quo rules-based order.
The immediate concern is China’s challenge to Indonesia’s control of its maritime jurisdiction and resources. While it agrees there is no territorial dispute with Indonesia, China insists that areas that fall within Indonesia’s EEZ north of the Natuna Islands form part of its historical fishing ground, thereby leading to overlapping claims on maritime rights and interests. They would also overlap with the EEZ and continental shelf derived from the Spratly Islands should China declare straight baselines around them.
Since at least the late 2000s, when China started to press its claims in the South China Sea more assertively, Natuna has seen repeated standoffs between China’s maritime militias and coast guards and Indonesia’s maritime security forces. Moreover, Indonesia’s lack of maritime patrol capability and chaotic maritime security governance makes it an easy target for China’s grey zone strategies that seek to gradually alter the status quo through coercive measures deliberately designed to remain below the threshold of conventional conflict by using nonmilitary tools.
At the end of 2019, for instance, only a couple of weeks after President Joko Widodo’s second administration was sworn in, China tested Indonesia’s resolve by sending dozens of fishing boats, accompanied by China Coast Guard (CCG) vessels, into Natuna. Due to the limited capability of its own coast guard (BAKAMLA), Indonesia had to rely on its Navy to expel the Chinese vessels, thus risking itself to give in to China’s grey zone playbook by escalating the situation. Realising the disadvantage, Indonesia beefed up its deterrence in Natuna and reinvigorated the plan to reform its maritime security governance. In the most recent incident in September 2020, BAKAMLA, not the Navy, took the lead in driving away a CCG vessel found patrolling in Natuna.
While direct security threats from China and the possible spillover from great powers conflict have increasingly found their way into Indonesia’s defence calculus, in a broader sense, Indonesia’s interest in the South China Sea is to preserve the status quo order. This status quo consists of many layers, the most important of which is the recognition and adherence to international norms, especially UNCLOS, in governing the conduct of states at sea and determining maritime entitlements.
The importance of UNCLOS for Indonesia cannot be overstated. After all, it is the international adherence to the law of the sea that constitutes the basis for Indonesia’s territorial integrity as an archipelagic state, along with its rights and obligations. Moreover, UNCLOS allows Indonesia to draw straight archipelagic baselines joining its outermost islands and claim complete sovereignty over the internal and archipelagic waters. Therefore, a challenge to UNCLOS means a challenge to the very notion of Indonesia’s territorial integrity.
In recent years, this status quo has been undermined by China’s self-centric reinterpretation of UNCLOS. With the grounds for the “nine-dash line” have been practically removed by the 2016 arbitral tribunal award -despite China’s rejection-, Beijing is shifting its approach. Several official statements suggest China’s intention to treat the Spratly Islands as a single archipelago and declare straight baselines and rights over the extended maritime zones around the features it claims. If so, Indonesia will vehemently reject such a move as UNCLOS only grants rights to draw archipelagic baselines for states constituted “wholly by one or more archipelagos” like Indonesia.
Defending UNCLOS
Indonesia’s recent move to engage external powers should be placed within this context of addressing its South China Sea challenges. For Indonesia, it serves at least three purposes.
First, an increased presence of external powers would hopefully put a brake on China’s assertiveness in the region. It would ease the burden for Indonesia to take on China on its own. Recent attempts to accelerate its defence modernisation notwithstanding, it will take some time before Indonesia can pose a meaningful challenge to China’s aggression in the South China Sea beyond its own maritime jurisdiction. There is also the question as to whether Indonesia is willing to do so. Engaging friendly states to whom it can pass the buck of containing China’s assertiveness, therefore, is a pragmatic option for Indonesia for the moment. With the great powers continued competition to balance against each other, Indonesia itself can maintain the distance and reap benefits from all sides.
Second, closer cooperation with diversified partners would benefit Indonesia in terms of its defence modernisation. Access to Japanese-made defence equipment and technology, for instance, would benefit Indonesia in its ongoing efforts to strengthen its maritime patrol capability and reform its maritime security governance. Indeed, Indonesia is the latest Southeast Asian country, after Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, that has benefitted from Japan’s expanding portfolio in the region. For example, in May, Japan handed a second offshore patrol boat to the Indonesia after the first in February 2020. Moreover, having diversified suppliers of weapon systems would also keep Indonesia from overreliance on any particular state.
Third, and most importantly, closer ties with UK and Japan would provide much-needed reinforcement for the status quo rules-based order in the South China Sea in the face of China’s revisionist challenges. Indeed, Indonesia’s interest aligns with those of the UK and Japan’s. In his remarks after the meeting in Jakarta, Dominic Raab called Indonesia and Britain two “maritime powers with strong maritime interests … in making sure that the rules-based system, the tenets of which reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea are upheld.”
Earlier, both UK and Japan also joined a list of countries that participated in the battle of diplomatic notes against China that ensued since 2019. In its note verbale, submitted jointly with France and Germany in September, UK emphasised that the provisions for treating archipelagos or marine features as a whole entity and drawing straight archipelagic baselines apply only to archipelagic states. Thus, anticipating China’s move to declare baselines around the features it claims in the South China Sea as implied in its earlier statements.
Japan concurred with the UK in its note submitted in January 2021. It rejected China’s position that the drawing of territorial baselines on islands and reefs in the South China Sea is in line with UNCLOS and general international law. “There is no room for a State Party to justify the application of baselines that do not satisfy the conditions stipulated under UNCLOS,” Japan said. Both UK and Japan also underlined their interest to uphold freedom of navigation and overflight and rights of innocent passage in the South China Sea.
Indonesia’s emphasis on maintaining rules-based order is also reflected in its approach towards the alliance politics in the region. A survey released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in 2018, for instance, revealed that Indonesia, while sceptical about the Quad, of which Japan is a member, hopes that it plays a role in enforcing rules-based order in the region, including the Arbitral Tribuna’s ruling and freedom of navigation.
What to expect
What lies ahead for Indonesia, China, and the maritime rules-based order in the South China Sea? If recent events are taken as an indication, we would likely see more countries consolidating their support behind UNCLOS and firmly rejecting China’s interpretation of its provisions. We would also likely see Indonesia play a more active role in building the so-called coalition of “UNCLOS defenders“. Already, Indonesia has renewed its interest to lead the early conclusion of the South China Sea code of conduct, presumably to ensure that the eventual provisions would not contradict UNCLOS. To what extent this would actually affect China’s behaviour remains to be seen. However, at the very least, China would no longer have a free pass to rewrite the international laws in its favour.
Part 1: South China Sea: The Need for Strong and Persistent Policies
Part 3: Changing Realities for Malaysia in the South China Sea Dispute
Part 4: Malaysia’s Diplomacy in the South China Sea: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Part 5: A Matter of Firm Resolve: The Philippine’s Strategic Posture in the South China Sea
