The East-West Wire is a news, commentary, and analysis service provided by the East-West Center in Honolulu. Any part or all of the Wire content may be used by media with attribution to the East-West Center or the person quoted. To receive the East-West Center Wire, please contact John Lewis at (808) 944-7204 or EastWestWire@EastWestCenter.org.
HONOLULU (July 11) – In the eight years since the fall of Suharto’s New Order, Indonesia has launched a number of initiatives to rein in its previously omnipotent armed forces. Just how successful Jakarta has been is open to debate.
Marcus Mietzner, a political analyst living in Jakarta, says, “Human rights groups and political activists have contended that despite formal reforms … the military continues to influence, and even dominate, political and economic affairs.”
That’s one side heard from.
In a new study written by Mietzner and published by the East-West Center Washington, the political analysts adds that those on the other side of the debate, frequently foreign proponents of restoring full military-to-military ties with Indonesia, “state the armed forces are now fully subordinated to civilian democratic control, and that substantial progress has been made in imposing international human rights standards on the troops.”
In the study, Policy Studies 23, The Politics of Military Reform in Post-Suharto Indonesia: Elite Conflict, Nationalism, and Institutional Resistance, Mietzner says both sides have valid arguments.
Mietzner notes that “Indonesia has made remarkable progress in advancing first-generation military reforms, which include extensive changes to the country’s institutional framework, judicial system, electoral mechanism, composition of representative bodes, and the responsibilities of security agencies.”
When taken in concert, he says, the reforms have “successfully extracted the armed forces from formal politics, have undermined many of their institutional privileges, and have produced a policy in which the military arguably no longer holds ‘veto power’ to overturn decisions made by the civilian government.”
But, serious omissions and failures have counterbalanced the reform successes, according to Mietzner.
“Most important, policymakers did not proceed with initiatives to reform the territorial command structure,” he says.
The territorial system, under which the Indonesian army maintains units at every geographic area and level parallel to the civil government structure, was the basis of the military’s domination of Indonesian society and politics under the Suharto regime.
Mietzner adds, “…the territorial system was maintained as the power base of the armed forces in the regions, allowing them to tap into economic resources at the grassroots and defend their role as a significant player in local politics.”
Since the 1940s, the Indonesian military has raised much of its own funds through a large network of businesses, cooperatives, foundations, and other formal and informal enterprises. While partly a response to the inability of the government to fund the military, this arrangement gave the military financial independence from government control. Despite reforms over recent years this financial underpinning remains in place.
And that, according to Mietzner, means, “… the process of establishing effective and democratic civilian control over the military cannot be completed.”
Despite the reforms of the past eight years, the Jakarta-based political analyst points to several factors leading to the “failure to subject the armed forces irreversibly to democratic civilian control.”
Among these are the military’s continued ability to define its own internal reform agenda, “enabling it to fend off demands for more substantial change.” A second factor, according to Mietzner, is the deep fragmentation within Indonesia’s civilian elite that “assisted the military in gaining concessions from political leaders eager to pull the armed forces to their side and outplay opponents in their struggle for power.”
Another problem Mietzner points to is the perception in large sections of Indonesian society that “the political and economic reforms introduced after 1998 had not significantly improved their daily lives.” This gave rise, he says, “to an anti-reform sentiment that also affected initiatives for change in the armed forces.”
And, “while accepting its phased extraction from formal politics,” Mietzner says, “the military put up fierce opposition towards plans to reform the territorial command structure, and tried to circumvent government initiatives to take control of military businesses.” Those officers in favor of gradually disbanding the territorial system were sidelined by their more hard-line colleagues and the military took every opportunity to, as Mietzner puts it, “consolidate, and even expand, their network of local commands.”
The analyst says the hybrid nature of the military reforms “presents Indonesian and foreign policymakers with a set of difficult challenges.” He adds, “Indonesian politicians should pursue several reforms that would lead to improvements to the human rights courts and military justice system, the clear subordination of the military to the Department of Defense, and the creation of a civilian-led National Security Council.”
“Foreign donors, on the other hand,” Mietzner says, “have learned since Suharto’s fall that isolating the Indonesian armed forces has not triggered more extensive reforms.”
He notes that it has in fact hardened the resolve of the nationalists within the office corps, driving them closer to China and Russia.
Meitzner concludes that a lot of work remains. He maintains, “The complexity of the issues at hand does not allow for a quick fix, and standard solutions that may have worked in other countries do not necessarily apply to Indonesia.”
“A course of limited engagement is advised,” he counsels, engagement that “helps Indonesia strengthen its air force and navy vis-à-vis the army, and ultimately leads to a more professional and accountable military within Indonesia’s new democratic framework.”
###
Dr. Marcus Mietzner is a political analyst residing in Jakarta. He can be contacted at mamietzner@yahoo.com
Mietzner’s study, The Politics of Military Reform in Post-Suharto Indonesia: Elite Conflict, Nationalism, and Institutional Resistance, is available in print and PDF. Hardcopies are available through Amazon.com. The PDF is available online at www.EastWestCenterWashington.org. In Asia, hardcopies are available through the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore at http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg/
For daily news on the Pacific Islands, see www.pireport.org. For links to all East-West Center media programs, fellowships and services, see www.eastwestcenter.org/journalists