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Indonesia Southeast Asia
In the early 1990s, the defense aspect of the armed
forces
military mission continued to take second place to that of
maintaining internal security. This was due primarily to
the
absence of a credible external threat. The Suharto
government
maintained close and cordial relations with its nearest
neighbors, which, in any case, possessed little offensive
military capability. The growth of a series of bilateral
military
relationships within the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations
(ASEAN--see Glossary)
and among such selected non-ASEAN
friends
as Australia and the United States provided a web of
bilateral
military ties that strengthened regional stability as well
as
reduced the external threat to the country.
Attention to potential external threats grew during the
1970s
as planners became concerned with the growing military
power of
the newly unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam and its
allies,
including the Soviet Union after 1975. Vietnam made claims
in the
late 1970s over sections of the South China Sea adjacent
to the
Natuna Islands, considered by Indonesia to be part of its
own
territory. The possible presence of foreign submarines in
national waters and the problems of illegal fishing and
smuggling
were also accorded increased attention, particularly after
Indonesia declared a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic
zone in
March 1980
(see National Territory: Rights and Responsibilities
, ch. 2).
The gradual move toward a forward deployment
strategy
that began in the late 1970s appeared to be at least
partly
motivated by these changed perceptions. That strategy
entailed
the use of paratroopers, long-range transport aircraft,
transport
and attack helicopters, and attack jets.
On one hand, subsequent political developments in
Southeast
Asia during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including
efforts to
bring peace to Cambodia--in which Indonesia was intensely
involved--the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from
Cambodia, and
a reduced perceived threat overall from Vietnam relieved
tensions. On the other hand, the potential for regional
conflict,
for example, over territorial claims in the Spratly
Islands
continued to trouble strategic planners
(see Foreign Policy
, ch.
4). The dramatic end of the Cold War and retrenchment of
former
Soviet forces in the Pacific brought new strategic
thinking on
the nature of a potential external threat. In the
post-Cold War
era, Indonesia quietly continued to support the
maintenance of a
United States regional security presence to prevent a
vacuum that
could be filled by potentially less benevolent outsiders.
Data as of November 1992
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