India, explained.
HMAS Hobart during the Indonesian International Fleet Review 2025, off the coast of Bali, Indonesia (Iggy Roberts/Defence Imagery)
Mismatched strategic culture is the main obstacle to joint maritime security ambitions.
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Can Australia, India and Indonesia really sail together?Can Australia, India and Indonesia really sail together?
Emirza Adi Syailendra is right – there is an important convergence of views and interests on maritime security between Australia, India and Indonesia, as he points out in his recent article for The Interpreter. But even so, meaningful trilateral security cooperation may not be feasible. Indonesia’s strategic culture is a significant reason.
First, Indonesia has a firm stance on non-alignment (as does India, for that matter). Officials in Jakarta remain cautious of multilateral security arrangements, especially those involving actors outside the ASEAN framework, which could be seen as forming an “anti-China bloc”.
This caution is evident in Indonesia’s current security arrangements. It cooperates in the Malacca Straits Patrol and the Trilateral Cooperation Agreement in the Sulu Sea – both with ASEAN neighbours, rather than extra-regional powers such as Australia and India. Any trilateral maritime security framework involving Australia and India risks being perceived by Jakarta as part of a broader push towards “bloc building,” which contradicts its foreign policy doctrine.
Indonesia’s concerns are further heightened by Australia and India’s deepening defence ties and participation in the Quad alongside the United States and Japan. Any trilateral maritime initiative could be perceived by the Indonesians as too “Quad-adjacent,” raising suspicions among Indonesian policymakers.
Jakarta has an aversion to an external military presence within the Indonesian archipelagic waters.
This brings us to the next point – the divergence in perceptions of China among Australia, India, and Indonesia. While Australia and India increasingly view China as a security concern, Indonesia adopts a more guarded stance. The situation around the North Natuna Sea, where it has an overlapping maritime claim with China, has stabilised. Therefore, Jakarta has avoided confrontation or labelling China a threat, given that China’s naval presence in the waters, from its navy to fishing fleet, has been diminished in recent years.
Last year, during a briefing organised by the Jakarta-based think tank Indonesia Strategic and Defence Studies, the Commander of the Indonesian Navy’s 1st Fleet Command reported a significant decline in encounters with foreign warships and government vessels in the waters around the North Natuna Sea, dropping from 81 in 2021 to just 14 in 2023. Most of these vessels were from Vietnam, not China. The number of foreign fishing vessels in the area also declined during the same period. Again, these vessels were primarily from Vietnam and Taiwan, rather than China.
Jakarta also has an aversion to an external military presence within the Indonesian archipelagic waters, further working against any trilateral security arrangement. Indonesia remains uncomfortable with foreign military forces operating within its territory. In 2004, at the height of piracy activities in the Straits of Malacca, Jakarta rejected a US initiative for a multilateral maritime security initiative. It feared that the initiative would undermine Indonesia’s sovereignty.
Proposals such as coordinated naval patrols involving the navies from Australia and India in the Sunda or Lombok Straits, while appealing from an Australian or Indian perspective, are unlikely to gain traction in Jakarta.
Compounding obstacles are significant domestic governance issues. Maritime security in Indonesia is fragmented across multiple civilian and military agencies, often with overlapping mandates and jurisdictional turf wars. Effective coordination between the Navy, Coast Guard (Bakamla), and ministries involved in fisheries and maritime affairs is already challenging within Indonesia. Scaling that to include extra-regional trilateral cooperation is a logistical and political leap too far.
Despite these hurdles, limited forms of cooperation remain possible, if approached with sensitivity and pragmatism. The key is to calibrate engagement in a way that respects Indonesia’s red lines. A security-heavy narrative with an “anti-China” optic will likely alienate Jakarta, given that China does not pose a clear and present danger to Indonesia’s sovereignty.
Instead, an economic-centric approach to maritime cooperation may be more palatable for the Prabowo administration, which faces growing domestic economic pressure. Rather than aiming for ambitious objectives such as intelligence integration or joint naval deployments, the three countries might begin with non-sensitive areas, such as promoting closer cooperation in the “blue economy”, with security as a subset.
In an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific, finding a framework that respects differences while advancing shared interests is not only possible but also essential.
About the author
Rahman Yaacob
Dr Abdul Rahman Yaacob was a Research Fellow in the Southeast Asia Program at the Lowy Institute.
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