ASPI at 25 – shaping Australia’s relationship with its most important neighbour
ASPI at 25 – shaping Australia’s relationship with its most important neighbour
Few bilateral relationships matter more to Australia than the one with Indonesia, and few have changed as much over the past 25 years. It is almost forgotten that Australia’s Cold War defence strategy was built around an assessed threat from Indonesia. That assessment shifted in the 1970s, but in the past two decades, the relationship has deepened to the point that Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has said there is ‘no more important partner for Australia than Indonesia.’
ASPI, marking its 25th anniversary this week, has occupied a distinctive place across this period of change – one shaped by the joint fight against terrorism, expanding trade and shared interests in regional stability and defence cooperation. ASPI has held open a space between policymakers, researchers and practitioners in both countries, keeping conversations alive even when official relations faltered.
ASPI has been a steady contributor to the intellectual and institutional life of the relationship. Formal agreements such as the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement and the Jakarta Treaty provide the architecture, but the relationship depends on sustained non-government engagement, policy dialogue and think tank networks that furnish continuity and stability. Here, ASPI made its mark by building institutional knowledge and pressing Australian policymakers to see Indonesia as more than simply a neighbour.
In ASPI’s first decade, its Indonesia research was concerned above all with understanding the country in a post-Suharto era. The 2002 Bali bombings transformed Australia’s security relationship with Indonesia, yet ASPI recommended cooperation that reached beyond a shared terrorist threat. Joint counterterrorism work was only a band-aid to deeper wounds: sensitivities around Timor-Leste, where Jakarta saw Canberra abet the loss of its then youngest province, had already ruptured defence ties and unravelled the 1995 Agreement on Maintaining Security. Even so, ASPI sought common ground, publishing a report that gathered Indonesian and Timorese perspectives alongside Australian ones.
Arguably, ASPI’s most important contribution in this period was ideational. The 2008 report Seeing Indonesia as a normal country: implications for Australia, launched by then foreign affairs minister Stephen Smith, confronted Australia’s tendency to view Indonesia through episodes of instability, terrorism and crisis rather than as a large, democratising neighbour with its own interests and ability to choose. By addressing perception – one of the deepest problems in the relationship – ASPI helped lay the intellectual basis for deeper cooperation in defence, development and trade and became a bridge of trust.
The second phase, from 2011 to 2016, was defined by work to reinforce relations and manage tension. This was soon tested when in 2013, Edward Snowden exposed that Australian intelligence had wiretapped president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and several other senior officials. This revelation plunged relations into crisis. The 2015 executions of Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, members of the Bali Nine drug smuggling ring, further strained the relationship.
ASPI’s analysis created room to think about how Australia might rebuild trust without abandoning its own positions. Its earlier work on police cooperation had shown how collaboration might mature beyond counterterrorism. Meanwhile, as Indonesia’s power grew, ASPI produced a report in 2015 analysing its military modernisation. Beyond research, the organisation’s 2013 Australia–Indonesia Next Generation Defence and Security Forum deepened ties between practitioners and experts. The 2016 Lombok Dialogue, co-convened with the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia and building on that year’s inaugural defence and foreign ministers’ meeting, showcased ASPI’s role. The relationship’s restoration was demonstrated when Yudhoyono, whose phone had been tapped three years earlier, delivered the keynote at ASPI’s 2016 Defence White Paper conference.
The third phase, from 2017 until today, has seen sustained strategic dialogue on shared concerns. Defence is still the focus. In the work leading up to February’s Jakarta Treaty, ASPI staff pressed for practical, feasible cooperation in capacity-building, joint exercises and maritime security. But alongside defence, ASPI’s work on Indonesia has expanded to cover climate security, cybersecurity and hybrid threats. Its collaboration with the University of Indonesia, supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, produced Indonesia’s first virtual cyber diplomacy course.
The emphasis has shifted from understanding each other to solving shared problems and building capabilities, including through capacity-building workshops, professional development programs and private engagements with officials on both sides. ASPI has also produced two podcast series on the bilateral relationship: SBY’s Tears in 2021 and What’s in a Name? in 2022, interviewing prominent Australians and Indonesians.
People-to-people engagement has remained central. The organisation’s roundtables, seminars, and flagship events, such as the annual Defence Conference and the Sydney Dialogue, have welcomed prominent Indonesians. They have included former vice foreign minister Dino Patti Djalal, former National Resilience Institute head Andi Widjajanto, prominent defence thinker Curie Maharani and former presidential candidate Anies Baswedan. ASPI has also hosted many senior officials from Indonesia’s foreign ministry, defence ministry and national defence council. It has equally drawn prominent Australians, such as former defence minister Linda Reynolds and Special Envoy for Indian Ocean Affairs Tim Watts. ASPI has also hosted Indonesian fellows, including an army fellow, and today employs four staff members of Indonesian descent. This expertise helps ensure ongoing understanding of Indonesia’s role within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Outlook on the Indo-Pacific.
Across 25 years, ASPI has played a pivotal part in the Australia–Indonesia relationship. It has helped shape Australian perceptions of Indonesia, strengthened channels of communication and built institutional understanding across traditional and non-traditional security issues. Following the Jakarta Treaty, which marks a new high point in the bilateral relationship, ASPI is well placed to continue leading the way as a strategic think tank that supports the future development of Australia–Indonesia cooperation.
Significant ASPI publications on Indonesia
| Publication date | Publication title | Authors | Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 November 2002 | Beyond Bali: ASPI’s Strategic Assessment 2002 | Aldo Borgu | Highlights that Indonesia’s stability, democratic governance, territorial integrity, and capacity to combat terrorism are directly linked to Australia’s security and should therefore be central to Australian regional policy. |
| 20 May 2002 | New Neighbour, New Challenge: Australia and the Security of East Timor | Elsina Wainwright, Alan Dupont, James J Fox, Ross Thomas, Hugh White, Jose Ramos Horta and Hadi Soesatro | Argues that Australia should help build a stable and secure independent Timor-Leste while carefully managing relations with Indonesia and avoiding policies that could heighten Indonesian suspicions of Australia’s strategic intentions. |
| 1 September 2005 | Local Jihad: Radical Islam and terrorism in Indonesia | Greg Fealy and Aldo Borgu | Highlights that while groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah might have global links, their motivations, recruiting and operations are inextricably caught up in regional issues. The report makes recommendations as to what a regional counterterrorism strategy might involve. |
| 1 May 2008 | Seeing Indonesia as a normal country: Implications for Australia | Andrew MacIntyre and Douglas Ramage |
An important early post-Reformasi (democratic transition) reassessment. Encourages Australia to understand Indonesia as a stable democratic partner rather than predominantly through crisis and instability. |
| 1 January 2012 | Two steps forward, one step back: Indonesia’s arduous path of reform | Damien Kingsbury | Assesses Indonesian democratic development and explicitly argued that Australia should proactively build a stronger strategic relationship. |
| 26 September 2012 | More than words: Australia–Indonesia strategic relations | Natalie Sambhi | Breaks down what Indonesia as ‘strategic partner’ means for Australia more than just a term of endearment and highlights the importance of recognising the complementarity across both countries’ capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. |
| 21 May 2013 | Australia–Indonesia relations: all marriages need effort | Peter Jennings and Natalie Sambhi | Assesses Australia–Indonesia relations through the analogy of marriage, concluding that they are strategically vital and broadly positive but that stronger defence cooperation must be supported by deeper trust, mutual understanding and people-to-people ties. |
| 12 November 2013 | Moving beyond ambitions? Indonesia’s military modernisation | Benjamin Schreer | Concludes that Indonesia is likely to become a more capable but still constrained regional military power, creating an opportunity for Australia to deepen defence cooperation and help shape the Indonesian military into a stronger regional security partner. |
| 25 March 2014 | A return on investment: the future of police cooperation between Australia and Indonesia | David Connery, Natalie Sambhi and Michael McKenzie |
Documents how cooperation between the Australian Federal Police and Indonesian National Police developed after Bali and survived wider bilateral tensions. Recommends continued people-to-people cooperation. |
| 1 September 2014 | Joko Widodo’s Indonesia: possible future paths | Peter McCawley | Highlights that Indonesia’s future regional influence would depend on whether Joko Widodo could overcome political and economic constraints to pursue outward-looking reforms, strengthen institutions, and sustain Indonesia’s leadership role in ASEAN. |
| 26 November 2014 | Waves of opportunity: Enhancing Australia–Indonesia maritime security cooperation | Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto | Proposes policymaker interaction, inter-agency integration, capacity building and cooperative maritime-domain awareness. Demonstrates ASPI’s move from analysing Indonesia to proposing practical bilateral cooperation. |
| 19 February 2015 | Australia, Indonesia and the prisoner’s dilemma | Andrew Davies, Peter Jennings and Rod Lyon | Produced amid the Bali Nine executions, brings together competing perspectives to keep discussion focused on the longer-term importance of the relationship. |
| 21 February 2017 | The future of the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation: Indonesia’s chance to promote a new era of regional law enforcement cooperation | John Coyne | Argues that Indonesia should use the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation to strengthen regional counterterrorism and law-enforcement cooperation by expanding it into a more ASEAN-focused institution, rather than allowing it to become primarily a national Indonesian training centre. |
| 26 December 2019 | Augmenting maritime domain awareness in Southeast Asia: Boosting national capabilities in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia | Peter Chalk | Argues that strengthening Indonesia’s maritime security agency through better interagency coordination, surveillance, patrol capacity and intelligence-sharing would enhance Indonesia’s maritime security while directly supporting Australia’s regional security interests. |
| 16 December 2022 | Indonesia economic cyber-espionage country assessment | Treviliana Putri, Janitra Heryanto, Perdana Karim and Gatra Priyandita | Presents research that supports Indonesia’s strategic landscape awareness and involves Indonesian expertise on an Indonesian security challenge, rather than Australian analysis simply about Indonesia. |
| 9 April 2025 | Indonesia in 2035: Climate risks to security in the Indo-Pacific | Michael Copage, Robert Glasser and Isabelle Bond | Finds that, in little more than a decade, Indonesia is likely to experience major climate disruptions that also amplify climate and security risks in the region, and that therefore it’s important for Australia to have a whole-of-government effort in supporting Indonesia to mitigate the risks, including cross-border risks. |
| 5 August 2025 | Australia–Indonesia defence and security partnership: overcoming asymmetric aspirations to tackle common threats | Euan Graham and Gatra Priyandita |
A major contemporary bilateral assessment that identifies maritime insecurity, cyberattacks, disinformation, illegal fishing and transnational crime as areas where functional cooperation could deepen even without complete strategic alignment. |
| 28 August 2025 | Curbing the cost of cybersecurity fragmentation: an agenda for harmonisation across the Indo-Pacific | Bart Hogeveen, Gatra Priyandita and James Corera | Identifies Indonesia’s fragmented cyber laws and limited institutional capacity as risks to national and regional resilience, arguing for stronger regulation and greater Indo-Pacific cybersecurity harmonisation. |
| 28 October 2025 | Indonesia’s first virtual cyber diplomacy course | Gatra Priyandita | ASPI and Universitas Indonesia, with DFAT support, developed Indonesia’s first virtual cyber diplomacy course, created by Indonesians for Indonesians. Rather than simply analysing the bilateral relationship, the initiative invests directly in Indonesian human capital and builds a community across government, academia, civil society and the private sector. |
| 12 November 2025 | Indonesia’s digital direction under Prabowo | Fitriani and Jascha Ramba Santoso | Expands Australian understanding of Indonesia into digital transformation, technology and cyber policy, illustrating the broadening definition of bilateral security. |
| 14 November 2025 | Old words, new realities: what the Australia–Indonesia security treaty means | Gatra Priyandita | Provides independent analysis of the new treaty and places it in the historical trajectory from the 1995 security agreement to contemporary cooperation. |
| 21 January 2026 | Indonesia is focused on resilience. Australia can help | Fitriani and Jascha Ramba Santoso | Identifies cyber, AI, dual-use technology, infrastructure and digital diplomacy as opportunities for practical Australia–Indonesia cooperation. |
| 29 July 2026 | As Australia looks to partnership, Indonesian military builds internal role | Jascha Ramba Santoso | Examines the gap between Indonesia’s growing external defence diplomacy and the Indonesian armed forces’ expanding domestic responsibilities, asking what this means for Australia’s expectations of Indonesia as a defence partner. |
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