US Ambassador to Indonesia Robert O. Blake Jr., at a press conference
hosted by the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club on Thursday, said
that the US government would continue to assist the Indonesian Military
(TNI) with bilateral exercises and supply it with modern equipment.
“We’ve had a growing scope of bilateral exercise with the Indonesian
military, and we’re very pleased with that,” Blake said, in response to a
question about what the US is doing to help Indonesia’s security. “We
have excellent security cooperation now between our two countries. We’re
working to help Indonesia modernize its military, helping Indonesia
with all kinds of training and other equipment needs, and we’re excited
about the prospects.”
Indonesia has been making plans to increase its purchases of military
hardware from abroad, including submarines from Russia and South Korea.
It will also buy equipment from France and Britain, and eight Apache
attack helicopters valued at $600 million from the United States. Those
will arrive in separate shipments through 2017, according to Antara.
China has been exerting its influence beyond its shores, with
warships patrolling the South China Sea, in areas that it believes are
part of its territory and not those of neighboring nations such as
Vietnam and the Philippines. The South China Sea potentially has vast
crude oil and natural gas deposits.
Some leaders across the region have been alarmed by the increase in China’s activity in disputed waters.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino recently compared China’s naval
forays to Nazi Germany’s military expansionist activities that led to
World War II.
Blake, though, says that China is within its rights in conducting
their latest activities, on the basis that certain areas of the South
China Sea are open for use by any nation.
“I would say first of all those are international routes that any
navy can use, including ourselves that can do that, so we don’t consider
that a particular provocation,” Blake said.
Aleksius Jemadu, dean of the School of Social and Political Sciences
at Pelita Harapan University, said that the US saw Indonesia’s growing
economy and increased military budget as a target market for selling it
military technology.
“The US doesn’t want to get left behind, the market is growing very
fast and looking at the coming years, it wants to use its [Indonesia’s]
market for selling weapons,” Aleksius said.
He said that while the US would profit from such sales, it wanted to
see stability in this part of the world and envisioned Indonesia playing
a big role in achieving that.
Still, growing nationalistic attitudes from East Asian countries such
as China and Japan could undermine stability in the region, he said.
“Indonesia plays a role in keeping military security in Southeast
Asia, and nationalism is on the rise. In Japan and China, with their
disputes over the East China Sea, it is a threat to stability to the
region as a whole,” Aleksius said.
He said that Indonesia still needed to modernize its military, as it
had fallen behind the military spending of neighboring countries with
much smaller borders to protect.
“Indonesia needs to modernize its system because over the last few
years, the budget is not high compared to other Southeast Asian nations.
It’s lower than Singapore and Malaysia,” he said.
Hikmahanto Juwana, professor of international law at the University of Indonesia, echoed Aleksius’s opinion.
“This is the right thing to do because of what is happening in the South China Sea and the region,” Hikmahanto said.
Despite China’s recent naval explorations in the region, Hikmahanto
said Indonesia’s real concerns were with Australian border patrol boats
encroaching into Indonesian waters. The Australian government’s
much-criticized hard-line stance against asylum seekers has seen its
navy repeatedly breach Indonesian waters.
“It’s difficult to say if China broke laws, but the Australians have
breached Indonesian territorial waters. The Indonesian government would
want to hold multilateral talks to resolve this issue,” Hikmahanto said.
When asked about the US view on the asylum seeker issue, Blake took no sides.
“I think that any issue that has to do with the asylum issue is a bilateral issue between Australia and Indonesia,” Blake said.
Source : JakartaPost
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