By any reasonable reading, Indonesia’s foreign ministry is right to urge caution over a new proposed US military overflight agreement.
But the deeper problem is not the deal itself. It is what the deal reveals: a foreign policy that is increasingly ad hoc, reactive and at times dangerously incoherent.
According to reports, the proposed arrangement would give US military aircraft broad access to Indonesian airspace for contingency operations and transit, with minimal procedural friction.
More troublingly, Indonesia’s own foreign ministry warned internally that such a move could entangle the country in South China Sea conflicts and expose it to heightened security risks, including vis-a-vis China.
That warning should not be dismissed as bureaucratic caution. It reflects a fundamental truth: Indonesia cannot simultaneously claim strict neutrality while offering strategic access that materially enhances external military operations in a contested region.
To its credit, the foreign ministry appears to understand this contradiction. Its concerns — that the agreement could create the perception of alignment, enable surveillance from Indonesian territory, and even make the country a potential target — are not hypothetical.
They are grounded in recent experience, including repeated US military surveillance activities that Indonesia itself has protested. The ministry’s instinct — to slow down, reassess and protect sovereignty — is the correct one.
But this episode is not an isolated misstep. It is part of a broader pattern suggesting that Indonesia’s foreign policy is losing its strategic compass.
Consider November 2024, when Jakarta signed a joint statement with China that raised serious questions about sovereignty, particularly regarding the South China Sea.
Framed as economic and diplomatic cooperation, the move carried unmistakable implications: Indonesia appeared willing to accommodate Beijing’s narrative in waters where its own rights are actively contested.
Now, barely 18 months later, Indonesia is entertaining a proposal that could give the US unprecedented operational flexibility in its airspace.
Taken together, these moves do not evidence a sophisticated balancing act. They point instead to something more troubling: a willingness to concede strategic space to multiple powers without a clear framework governing and guiding those concessions.
Indonesian officials often defend such decisions under the banner of the country’s long-standing doctrine of “free and active” foreign policy. But that doctrine was never meant to justify inconsistency.
“Free and active” was designed to preserve independence — freedom from entangling alliances — and to enable proactive engagement in pursuit of national interests.
It was not a license to say yes to everyone, nor a strategy of hedging so broadly that it erodes the very sovereignty it claims to protect. What we are seeing today is not non-alignment. It is strategic drift.
On the one hand, Jakarta is deepening ties with Beijing even as China maintains sweeping claims in the South China Sea, including areas that overlap with Indonesia’s Natuna Islands exclusive economic zone.
On the other, it is exploring an arrangement that would grant Washington expanded military access — pulling Indonesia toward precisely the kind of great-power rivalry it seeks to avoid.
A coherent foreign policy requires more than good relations with multiple powers. It requires clarity about red lines — about what is and is not negotiable. Sovereignty over territory and airspace should be among the least negotiable of all.
Yet the current trajectory suggests that sovereignty is increasingly treated as a flexible bargaining chip, adjusted to suit the partner and the moment.
That approach carries real risks. First, it undermines credibility. If Indonesia appears equally willing to accommodate competing powers, neither will fully trust its neutrality.
Second, it increases vulnerability: by offering strategic access — whether diplomatic, economic, or military — without a clear framework, Indonesia risks becoming a venue for great-power competition rather than an independent actor shaping it.
And third, it confuses allies, partners, and perhaps most importantly, Indonesians themselves. A foreign policy without clear direction is difficult to defend domestically and harder still to sustain over time.
The US overflight proposal brings these contradictions into sharp relief. Even if the agreement is ultimately watered down or even abandoned — and officials insist it remains under review — it has already exposed the absence of a consistent strategic doctrine guiding Indonesia’s external engagements.
The foreign ministry’s intervention is therefore more than a procedural disagreement with the defense ministry. It is a warning from within the government that Indonesia may be drifting into decisions that compromise its long-term interests.
That warning should be heeded. Indonesia does not need to, nor should it choose between the US and China. But it does need to choose coherence over opportunism — a foreign policy that is not merely friendly to all, but firmly anchored in clearly defined national priorities.
Otherwise, the risk is not simply that Indonesia will be drawn into other countries’ conflicts. It is that, in trying to be everything to everyone, it becomes progressively less able to defend what matters most — its own sovereignty.
Being “free and active” should mean standing firm. Right now, it looks more like drifting.
Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is director of the China-Indonesia Desk at the Jakarta-based Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) independent research institute. Yeta Purnama is a researcher at CELIOS.