Sea Control - Sea Control 167 - Indonesian Maritime Challenges with Natalie Sambhi, Gilang Kembara & Blake Herzinger

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

Links:1. Legacies, Lessons and Lobsters: Indonesia's Maritime Policy in a Post-Susi World2. The Next Front: China and Indonesia in the South China Sea3. The China Maritime Militia Bookshelf

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome aboard Sea Control. Today we are discussing Indonesian maritime security challenges. My guests include Natalie Zombie. Welcome, and thank you for agreeing to come on. Thank you. Next to Natalie, we have Zilong Kambara. Jilong, you're going to have to correct me if I did that pronunciation wrong.

He's a researcher for the Center for Strategic and International Studies based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Thank you for agreeing to join us. You're welcome. Hello. And finally, fresh off his deployment as a U.S. Navy reservist, Blake Herzinger, prolific writer who specializes in theater security cooperation. As always, our opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we may be otherwise associated. So first, thank you for everyone for agreeing to come on today. We're communicating across international datelines, so I'm really pleased to be granted this glimpse into the future.

But I think before we begin diving into the maritime security challenges for Indonesia, it's important to give you each the opportunity to introduce yourselves to the viewers. So, Natalie, I'd like to start with you, if you could tell us a little bit about your background and what's led you to study maritime security issues. Sure. Well, it's a pleasure to be back on SimSec. For some of you, I used to be the host of Sea Control Asia-Pacific. What? So it's nice to be, yeah, it's nice to be back on my old podcast series.

And my background, I used to work at the Department of Defense, where I started to learn a lot more about not only the Australian Defense Force, but the Indonesian Armed Forces, known as Tentara Nasional Indonesia. And that was when I really first started to think about how important understanding the military to our north is, particularly from Australia's perspective, and what an important role the Indonesian military has played within its own borders. Just on a side note, my mom is Indonesian, so there's a family tie to it. So learning more about the Indonesian military has been fun to understand more about family history, but it's certainly pertinent to being an Australian working in the strategic sector. It's absolutely important that we understand a lot about Indonesia. So yeah, I've become a writer and analyst about it, and I'm currently doing my PhD on Indonesian military history and its experiences in East Timor. Well, I legitimately did not know that you were a former sea control podcast host, and now I feel like I'm being evaluated. Okay, no, that's great. Natalie, you mentioned you're Australian. Are you joining us from Australia now? I certainly am. I am on the west coast of Australia in a town called Perth, which is three and a half hours to Bali, so actually really close, closer to Indonesia than it is to some parts of our east coast. Okay. And can I ask, because this has fallen off the radar a little bit with everything related to COVID-19, but how is it going with the wildfires in Australia? A little bit of diversion, but I think it is important to ask. Well, it's hard to see because all the headlines are inundated by COVID-19, but to be on the positive note, more or less they're under control. There were months there where it was all the only thing that was on our headlines.

And so a lot of our colleagues over east have had to deal with choking smoke. So we had some of the worst air quality in the world for a while, and the constant threat of having fires come quickly through the communities. our defense force has been engaged in that as well so we've got another battle on our hands but we're nowhere near in the same situation as a lot of countries around the world so yeah so far so good well thank you again for joining us g long over to you can you tell us a little bit about your background and what you've been studying at csis sure definitely jared so i started in csis since 2015 and my background has been on maritime policies of indonesia how i started with maritime policies. Actually, I began my career studying, researching about South China

Sea issues between the various ASEAN member states and China. And from that stint, we ended up going further into different avenues on maritime security. We had research collaborations with several countries around Asia Pacific, now Indo-Pacific. And the latest research that we conducted was on maritime safety actually so it diverged a little bit from the security traditional dynamics but we're looking into the safety aspects meaning all the sailors all the people that are within the ships the equipments how regulations are shaped and that has been a new it provides me with a new perspective on looking on maritime policies in general i suppose and we're looking forward to expanding things in the near future hopefully after all the COVID-19 subsides

definitely. Thank you and what is the situation for you personally there I think you're joining us from Jakarta is that correct? Correct yeah and as of this weekend I'm just visiting my parents so I'm not in my usual setup since it's my mom's birthday and so she needed a bit of a cheer up with all the situations. So we're here for the weekend. We'll be back in to our place just tomorrow. But so far, things are still pretty calm. But definitely the governments are pretty much under fire for some lackluster policies implemented here. Yeah, I can certainly relate. Blake, over to you for your intro. Good morning, everyone. So I joined the Navy in 2008. And honestly, it was a series of happy accidents and through no skill or intention of my own that I

ended up in the Indo-Pacific. So I'm really just kind of the lucky one. I attribute all my success to blind luck in general. So I came to Singapore in 2013, working for the U.S. Navy's Maritime Liaison Unit. And so I worked specializing in basically relationships between the U.S. Navy in the commercial maritime enterprises, kind of everywhere from south of Japan all the way out to India kind of as a solo gig, which was interesting and kept me pretty busy. And then I was fortunate enough to step from that into private sector, working as a consultant in security cooperation across the region.

So I had a lot of interaction with the Maritime Security Initiative, now the Indo-Pacific Maritime Security Initiative, So dealing directly with providing training, equipment, and interoperating with navies, again, in that same region, pretty much anywhere south of China all the way to India, the entire region. I've been in the reserve since 2017. As you mentioned, just came back to the Middle East, which made complete sense. You know, specialize in the Indo-Pacific, spend 10 months in the Middle East. So I'm happy to be home, ready to get stuck into the stuff that I'm familiar with. Okay, can I ask, were you on the Expeditionary Ford staging base? Is that right?

I was. I was indeed. The mighty ship USS Louis B. Puller, ESB-3. Can I ask how it was? Those ships look really impressive. I've always wanted to get on one. So it was a blast, honestly. I joke saying, you know, it was a bad experience. It was. I somehow managed to have over a decade in the Navy and never have been to the Middle East, never been to the Arabian Gulf. So now I've gotten to do all those things, you know, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, all that stuff that you always want to see. But the ship itself is wonderful. It's a rotational crew. So there's a blue and a gold that are each there for five months. So I did one deployment with each crew, myself and a detachment of four sailors. So we got to see a lot. We operated a scan eagle off the ship, the Navy's third large flight deck.

enormous ship, 82,000 tons. It's interesting and encouraging to see the Navy pushing into a cheaper hull that can actually do quite a lot. And really looking forward to ESB-5 coming out to the end of Pacific. So we will have that to look forward to. I think ESB-5 sits right across from where my normal office is now and is absolutely massive. I've wanted to go on ever since it started showing up, but very jealous of what you've done there. But I'm going to get into the podcast now and ask Jilang if you would kick off please with a little bit of a geography lesson for us on Indonesia because I'm not sure everyone without looking directly at a map appreciates the complexity of the maritime situation for Indonesia. Certainly Jared and I can still remember back in

my college days trying to trick my friends to sign all right so where is Indonesia and they all go pointing out their fingers all across the Indo-Pacific and I'm happy to share that Indonesia is the largest archipelagic state in the world we have at the moment if i'm not mistaken about 10 or 11 maritime boundaries from from east to west and one of the main policies for the current administration was to straighten out all these maritime boundaries because we've had many many incidents relating towards security and also towards negligence all across these boundaries So a lot of people would understand that Indonesia's main hotspots to be Malacca Strait, to an extent Sulawesi and Sulawesi Sea. But once we look into the whole archipelagic map, we see that there's actually problems all across the maritime territories.

I mean, just recently in December, January, we've all heard about the incursions made by Chinese fishing vessels and to an extent, of course, the Chinese Coast Guard. And in the past, of course, we've also had issues with migration, illegal migration that came from mainland Southeast Asia heading towards Australia. I suppose Natalie would know this as well, that's time from the east-western part towards the maritime border that we have with Australia, of course. And not to mention the various illegal fishing that happened pretty much from the Natuna area towards the southern Arafuta Sea and also our borders between the Philippines and also Indonesia. And I'll talk about this later on. This is a lot to cover. But just to give you a big sense of the immense geography and geopolitics issue that surrounds this beautiful archipelagic state, it's really hard to comprehend. But I'm very happy for people who try to, you know, get a perspective on these issues. thanks uh jilang i'm operating under the assumption that most indonesian maritime security concerns are related to china but it sounds like china may just be one part of this is that the case that is definitely correct we had a research couple years ago dealing on

uh trans boundary uh sorry transnational crime and what we see here is that there's a number of parties number of criminal issues that just came not only from china from what people would assume but but from most of southeast asia countries for example in regards with drug trafficking issues um we've had to deal with uh counterparts from thailand from um cambodia and also vietnam to an extent we are we have issues where i mentioned about illegal fisheries not to mentioned wildlife trafficking that we have uh for example in malaysia and indonesia indonesia and philippines as well so china is is a big is a big elephant and lots of people would love to address the elephant but all these smaller ones sometimes are just not um are not visible enough

or it's just being blocked off by the bigger ones uh but once we start to uh nip the butt of all these transnational crime issues, we start to see where all this harbored, where it came from, and where exactly it's going to. And since we are pretty much the cross point between Pacific and the Indian Ocean, I mean, it's just logic that a lot of people would like to traverse upon our geographical areas. Yeah, if I can just add a little bit to that as well, you know, from an Australian perspective when we look at Indonesia as Gilang pointed out strategic located between Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans you know for us are thinking about Indonesia's maritime security challenges which are by extension our security challenges as well are you know you've got to

look at the Indian Ocean what's going on there in terms of resource management as Gilang pointed out you know all the strategic lines of communication you know ensuring that those remain safe and open but certainly as Gilang pointed out like those transnational security issues. You know, you can think about China and you can think about the hard security vulnerabilities, but those range of transnational human security issues that are maritime related are of great concern. Australia and Indonesia are both co-chairs of a process called the Bali process, which relates to people smuggling, trafficking and transnational crime. And certainly a large element of that is thinking about how these sorts of activities are conducted

in the maritime space so for australia when we think about indonesian maritime issues we don't just think military we also think in terms of other civilian agencies in terms of working together with our maritime security maritime law and other issues like that so yeah for us it's it's just beyond maritime incursions by naval assets but other more broad ranging issues and that's i think the sheer scope of challenges in the space that indonesia is responsible for you know for our american listeners i think it's enlightening to think of often america thinks of ourselves as a very broad you know expansive state with a lot of maritime responsibilities but as you long mentioned with an archipelagic state if you align the western tip of sumatra with

california you know papua is going to fall east of maine um you know i'm going to fall victim to the U.S. Navy tendency to just start spouting off numbers, you know, but there's what, like 6,000 inhabited islands in Indonesia, 17, over 17,000 total islands. It's an enormous exclusive economic zone to attempt to patrol or maintain any kind of situational awareness of. So the enormity of that challenge be difficult for really any, any state. So, you know, I have nothing but respect for the Indonesian agencies and services that are tasked with trying to get their arms around all those different issues from hard security military challenges down to people smuggling, drug smuggling, just gray and black economies running through airports across the archipelago.

It's incredible, really. But just the scope is daunting. Yes. To add with just aside from the external threats, sorry, external parties, we also don't want to discount the internal parties that are also involved here. Of course, there are several parties within the country that are also responsible for all these security issues. And it's just too big to list out at the moment. So just saying that without discounting it. Natalie, I was going to ask about the work between the Australian government and the Indonesian government, because I imagine that happens across a very broad spectrum, whether you're talking about both governments trying to work against illicit criminal activity, both governments trying to work to manage resources. How is that cooperation? look our government has a very rich cooperation with the indonesian government i if i'm not mistaken i think our embassy is almost the largest presence there which is reflective not only of the number of personnel but the representation of all number of government agencies from the attorney general's department to environment to obviously defense but we've got

cooperation spanning across all services with the indonesian military and the national police as i mentioned earlier law enforcement attorney generals and so forth so it covers a broad number of areas and obviously we do a large number of maritime related activities whether that's in terms of exercises or training but certainly in terms of information exchange as well those kinds of things remain critical because you know as gilang mentioned earlier there's a lot of activity in australian waters and in indonesian waters activity crossing over we've had maritime issues in the past with boundaries that needed delimiting, especially once Timor-Leste became independent.

So there's been a long history of Australia-Indonesian maritime thinking, I would say, and that's been strengthened even more as the comprehensive strategic partnership has grown between the two countries. An important part of that has been the maritime domain. So that area of cooperation will only be set to increase. Thank you, Julang. I'm going to come back to you for our next question.

The main point of contention between the Chinese and Indonesians seems to be the waters in and around the Natuna Islands, the North Natuna Sea, which the Chinese refer to as the South China Sea. What are the conflicting flames there? In the past, seriously, Indonesia and China has managed to deal with their disputes pretty well. And the nature of the disputes definitely have a number of factors, being number one, of course, the sovereignty that China wants to exert within the South China Sea. The second one would be the claim resources within the area, both, of course, fishing, natural resources to be claimed as well. Despite the fact that fishing within the South China Sea, the fishing resources has dropped considerably in the past several decades. And the matter of the fact right now is that with some moratoriums being implemented by the Chinese authorities across several months, Chinese fishing vessels have started to encroach even more south of the sea, of the South China Sea, touching upon the exclusive economic zone of, for example, southern Vietnam, southern tip of Malaysian Borneo, and also to an extent, northern part of the Natuna Seas.

And the recent flare-up has been, of course, instigated by the Chinese fishing vessels under the protection, of course, of the Chinese Coast Guard and, to an extent, protection of the Chinese militia. That, for some reason, is not new for some of us here who have seen the flare-ups with South China Sea. But within the government circle, perhaps it just caught them a bit off guard by the sheer number of protection that Chinese vessels have at the moment. So it is, to an extent, it's still a fishing dispute that we have, fishing zones, unlike, for example, with Malaysia and Vietnam, where we've seen oil rigs coming in into their exclusive economic zones. Indonesia has not seen similar posture from China. But I suppose it's just a matter of time until a change of policies may happen. Can I ask, how has dispute resolution been handled between Indonesians and Chinese at this point? And is it largely bilateral or is it something that the Indonesians pursue as part of a larger alliance or with partners?

The perceiving notion at the moment with dispute resolution has been so far bilateral to my knowledge, and it has been managed under the table for years. jakarta and beijing does not want to have disputes being uh blow up into public proportion in the sense that number one jakarta fears repercussions and effect that would happen towards the chinese community and number two of course the chinese china beijing does not want any repercussions happening to their own economic interests within the country so most disputes we known have been settled under the table for example the 2016 tuna incursion as well despite the rhetorics from the government you saw jokowi on a warship within the area but to an extent the dispute itself was handled under the table in a very quiet manner and by the end of 2016 even though with the passing

of the pca ruling and all it's just been thrown under the rug to an extent and then and then People are just starting to, all right, let's forgive and forget. But with this, the difference is that a lot of media, a lot of observers picked up with the issue and started blowing it up in a bigger way than 2016. And I tried to make some numbers here, and in a rough counting, I saw more publications from the Chinese media as well on the issue between Indonesia and China in December and January, in contrast with the 2016 incursion. So it was definitely a bigger proportion this time, but it just then stymied off by end of January, February, early February as well. Yeah, I have to say, Jared, I agree with Gilang.

I think this issue definitely attracted a lot more media attention, both in and outside of Indonesia. As someone sitting outside of Indonesia, I watch a program called Matanajwa, which is hosted by a female journalist well-watched show amongst the middle class in Indonesia that had a lot of senior ministers and experts on the show and it wasn't just I think one program but she brought a lot of attention to this and her being quite a sort of attractive figure in the media would have shone a pretty strong light on this so I think that would have continued the public conversation about what is Jokowi going to do about the situation so I was actually quite

interested that that became a topic obviously now you know the country is is coming to grips with other challenges but this was certainly something that was i think in the forefront of a lot of indonesians minds by by virtue of programs like hers has the government expressed a long-term plan for dealing with these incursions sorry was this directed to me or i was kind of thrown in the group but go ahead julong and then we'll come back to natalie after you're done all right sorry natalie in regards with long-term policies there's no big strategy when it comes to dealing with this incursions and all jacobi wants to return normalcy as quickly as possible return back to status quo no harms done and etc underneath it all uh we know some elements within the

government wanted to have a more stronger for example a reaction and i know one individual for example uh bapak ahmad santosa that is a task force that was uh the combined elements of the military uh the police uh coast guards and other maritime security agencies including the ministry of fisheries, seas and fisheries, to deal with any illegal and unregulated and unreported fishing. And him has thrown a lot of focus to this issue. And it's not just directed to China. I mean, it is the big elephant there. But it is directed to mitigate the effects, the negative effects, and of course, the proliferation of IUU fishing across the maritime territories. Some people have shown their doubts with the new minister of seas and fisheries on how he tries to handle the IUU fishing and all the other challenges, security challenges that become part of this.

But elements within the ministry have continued to implement the policies that was conducted within the previous administration. Mas Ahmad Santosa, as I mentioned, is one of the individuals that tried to pursue the policy from the previous administration, and I see some of the individuals have started to support his initiatives as well, including some from CSIS as well. Look, I was just going to add to that. I mean, it's true that just because you change a minister doesn't mean the entire bureaucracy can change, but I think sometimes you can change the direction of where that particular ministry is headed, so I'm keen to see where that goes. Because Gilang is right, Task Force 115 did an excellent job, but apparently its future is now under revision. So we're going to see whether or not we're going to retain that interagency task force. Gilang is also right, it doesn't seem to be a coherent long-term strategy, but parts of the government have announced, in terms of dealing with these kinds of incursions, in the case of Natuna anyway is to build up a stronger not just a military presence but also an economic presence so uh Luhut Bajaitan who's in coordinating minister for maritime affairs and

investment and said that he wanted Indonesia to take a leading role in boosting sustainable maritime economy and building up around the Natuna islands trying to draw Japanese investment there trying to build up some infrastructure and that might look like things like developing cold storage around the Natula Islands and also providing a facility for fuel resupply. So there are those kinds of plans. But again, that doesn't seem to be like any kind of unveiled Natuna anti-incursion strategy. But I think as Gilang pointed out, it's a bit of a tightrope right now. The government needs to look tough on dealing with things like illegal fishing,

but it can't do it in a way that's going to be singling out and demonizing China in particular. There was a mixed government response, as Gilang pointed out, I think, because the reality is Indonesia can't afford to be too hard on what is seen as one of its most important investment partners. And now that Indonesia is seeking a significant amount of assistance from China in terms of equipment and testing kits for COVID-19, there's even more cause for restraint. So I think there's a bit of a balancing act here, and we will see what happens in terms of Indonesia, on the one hand, defending its natural resources, and at the same time, having President Jokowi trying to then realize a lot of his policies of infrastructure and human resource development by the end of his second term. may i add just one more thing i forgot to mention um natalie mentioned about the tv show and i distinctly remember on the issue with natuna and there was one a talk about inviting or inviting mobilizing the fishing fleets across indonesia particularly from java towards the northern tunisie first i thought that would be a just an ad hoc policy at at best it would be just

to scare off chinese or any other external threats that we're dealing but in recent times actually there have been talks about putting this policy in in in stone and by creating a maritime militia similar to chinese similar to the vietnamese but what we lack at the moment is a regulation to control this maritime militia but the gist of it was to mobilize elements within the civilian force or or the civilians to not only just fish around the sea in northern tuna but also to conduct some sort of like surveillance of the area if they see if they see any uh suspicious activities that came not from the indonesian boats or or from other external parties then they are to alert the security maritime security agencies at the soonest but i've not heard any more i think

the last time i heard was early march but this suppose the regulations have been put on hold or any talks have been put on hold but this is just something that's been circulating around the the capital for for a while i mean the short of the long is if you see something fishy or something okay that's true that stays in i will not edit that out blake i actually wanted to ask you because this is the first time that i've heard of another country sort of adopting the chinese practice of for lack of a better term deputizing their fishermen and part of the difficulty i think is we look as outsiders is from this region of dealing with the Chinese is the many layers of forces the Chinese can employ here, whether you

want to call that hybrid or gray zone or whatever it is. But can you explain the different Chinese forces that are in play here for countries that may enjoy a adversarial relationship in that area? Sure. So there's been great work done on this from a number of people. Andrew Erickson's kind of you know the leading authority really on this third arm of of the chinese maritime machine this kind of third navy that they have um you know they have the traditional greyhound navy the whitehold coast guard which is a synthesis of a bunch of previous maritime agencies you know put into one lyle goldstein did a lot of work on talking about how that was put together and then their maritime militia which is used to kind of push the prc flag into places where you couldn't

even send the Coast Guard, but you could send, you know, a large number of fishing vessels, 80 or 100, because then it pulls the Chinese Coast Guard forward to protect them as they kind of challenge maritime boundaries or claims. And there's a lot of interesting reporting out there on the Chinese maritime militia. There's been a lot of testimony before Congress on this. How much training are they getting? What are they receiving from the government? We know they've received subsidies for shipbuilding and fuel in the past. There have been reports of PLA uniforms on board these types of ships. They've been involved in a number of aggressive confrontations with most countries in the region, to include the United States, but certainly not limited to.

Referencing the 2016 Tuna incident, there's actually been instances of the Chinese Coast Guard intervening in maritime law enforcement of Indo-Pacific states, preventing states like Indonesia from completing law enforcement actions at sea by ramming, engaging in very unsafe activity. So the maritime militia is an interesting concept that the Chinese have used to great effect, but I'm simultaneously intrigued and concerned when I see new talk of starting up a new militia. Vietnam actually has previously employed this concept. When the Chinese oil exploration platform came into vietnamese waters they've mobilized their own fishermen to respond to chinese fishermen and there was you know there were ramming incidents vietnamese vessels were

sunk while it may be effective to kind of counter with an equivalent force it does introduce as was already mentioned i think natalie said this actually i think both yuang and natalie have referenced this that control is a very difficult issue when you push it down to a very large civilian force that is largely untrained you know what what happens when we introduce two equivalent forces of nationalistic fishermen who are out there trying to do you know what they think is right for their own country and you kind of you add that catalyst to this mix of coast guard ships naval vessels and now you've got this spark kind of in this keg of gunpowder it's an interesting concept i think but it's it concerns me now i wanted to come back to uh the iuu fishing because

You had the first article that caught my eye and was the impetus for putting this podcast together was your article from January titled Legacies, Lessons and Lobsters about Indonesia's tough enforcement measures. And you mentioned a new minister for fisheries. So what were those measures and what were they directed against? Sure, I think we've got to set some of those policies in the context that they were in. And so when Jokowi was elected in 2014, he said that he was going to promise to protect Indonesia's maritime domain, particularly fish resources. So in doing so, he appointed a self-made businesswoman named Susi Pujastuti as the Maritime Affairs Minister. And she was charged with implementing many of these tough policies, which included blowing up the boats. And so I'll explain what that is in a moment.

And it was important to say that that policy existed before Susie, but under her, it became very high profile, at least of all because she promoted it on a lot of her social media accounts, and she herself is a bit of a rock star figure. But in short, the policy goes like this. If you're caught illegally fishing in Indonesian waters, your boat is seized. The matter then goes to the courts, and then once it's decided that that was indeed what you were doing, then the boat is destroyed. Now, when I say destroyed, it's not like a bunch of people go along and just pull it

apart. It's packed with dynamite. pushed out into the waters and then blown up in spectacular fashion and what Susie did was to invite a lot of media representation to come and cover the incident so these things became quite high profile and they become emblematic as what Gilang said of nationalistic policy hey look we're actually doing something and if you come and you fish in Indonesian waters this is what's going to happen to your boat now in some ways it was a popular policy because it looked like the government was doing something. At the same time, others criticized it, said, well, it's a perfectly fine

boat. Could we have just given that to our own people? So there was a bit of a mixed response there. Nevertheless, during Susie's five years as maritime minister, 556 illegal boats were destroyed. Only 26 of them were Indonesian. And while it seems like this policy was directed against China, there were only actually three boats destroyed that were Chinese. The vast majority 321 out of the 556 were actually vietnamese and then other sizable representation includes boats from the philippines malaysia thailand png nigeria and belize so quite a mix there but just in terms of numbers it might show a propensity of one country to conduct illegal fishing in indonesian waters it might also say something about the legal process

or the preparedness of authorities to be able to be seen destroying chinese boats as well so i wouldn't necessarily take those numbers as just the figures of who is doing the most illegal fishing. But in terms of Susie's policies, they were seen as being deterrent, although I think the jury's still out. There's some academic research that shows there's a correlation there between Susie's term and a decrease in the amount of illegal fishing. But in terms of causality, it's another question because there are a number of other policies, a ban on transshipment in indonesian waters and of course environmental protection policies which banned bottom trawling and selling undersized shellfish as well so there were lots of things that she did you know she as

an individual was seen as cool and and hard-hitting so she brought a lot of attention to the portfolio and her successor is a different character and it's got different priorities so we'll see where the policies head under him jilong did you have anything you wanted to add on this i'd probably want to say that all with all the rockstar nationalistic policies that suzy has been put out she actually hasn't touched upon the integral part of the fishing industry itself which is the law enforcement part to be exactly i mean all the policies that she mentioned that's just her wanting to show to the public that hey guys i'm blowing up the shivs the fish are coming back uh the stocks of fish are good and etc but to an extent what i listen to all the people is that

the enforcement system, the law enforcement system is still pretty much corrupt. You have investigators that have a lack of integrity here. You have prosecutors that does not understand the issue at hand. And then you have courts that are specifically dealing with fishery issues that are actually considered to be most corrupt, if not more corrupt than the general court, you know. So the system that are being put in place here is rotten down to the core and has not been changed. Or maybe there are just very little changes made by the previous administration. And now with the new ones, we see some reversal of policies being conducted. But we haven't seen or at least I haven't heard from the people responsible that he, the minister himself, are trying to touch upon the issues of law enforcement,

which is for decades have been the evils that are currently residing within the bureaucracy of this issue. So I won't presume to have more granular knowledge on the effectiveness or quality of the law enforcement like Ilan does, but I will say there's been some difficulty in Indonesian maritime law enforcement just in authorities. You know, talking about corruption in agencies, there's also been issues of who can actually conduct what type of investigation. There have been current efforts at kind of streamlining maritime law enforcement, 13 agencies with at least some tangential responsibility for maritime security. And that's just an unworkable system. You know, that's so many different stovepipes of information and it's impossible to get the type of synergy you need to conduct effective enforcement and investigation. So while I am confident that, you know, there is corruption in the system, it's also been the system itself holding back people who maybe want to do the work correctly.

It's very difficult. You know, an interesting way to involve kind of a low-level aspect of surveillance has been really interesting in Malaysia, actually. They've pioneered a maritime security app called K3M. They provide that to their fishermen, and that actually is used to send information to law enforcement to provide kind of more eyes at sea. So kind of reaching back into the discussion of incorporating a civilian militia aspect of this, it's really, it's been shown in Malaysia to work just using people as a source of information at sea, because that's really, you know, how law enforcement works, right? You're out there, you know, you have feet on the street, and at sea, you can't do that, especially in a sea area as large as Indonesia's, and you have to have those people, those sources providing information. So, you know, I'd be very encouraged if the Indonesian maritime law enforcement community went that direction as far as involving the maritime community. Natalie, you'd mentioned before, or you went through a laundry list of other countries who'd had their boats seized during Zussi's reign as the fisheries minister.

How are Indonesian relations with its other neighbors? And I guess, Gilang, I'll actually start with you. We've talked about Australia. We've talked extensively about China. But Vietnam has come up. The Philippines have come up. Malaysia has now come up. How are the relations with its other neighbors at sea? In respect with the maritime relationship, if I may say, first of all, within our Southeast Asian neighbors,

it has been pretty much an ups and downs. But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have managed to deploy or at least concentrate efforts to realign issues, maritime issues between Indonesia and its Southeast Asian neighbors. As I mentioned before, the previous administration has tried to, how should I say this, realign or if not make clear of the maritime boundaries that exist between Indonesia and its neighbors. In the past, for example, there hasn't been clear delineation of maritime boundaries between Indonesia and its 10 neighbors, 10 maritime neighbors. And in the previous administration with Jokowi's Global Maritime Fulcrum, one of the key issues that was put out was to make clear of all these delineations. And so what I heard is that the MOFA has conducted negotiations with Malaysia, with Palau, with India, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Australia, and many other countries to make clear of the border demarcation delineation between the two states. What I know is that there are still some negotiations going on to an extent between Indonesia and Vietnam, as was seen by the recent incidents that we had last year between Indonesia and Vietnam, where they're still from the Vietnamese side, they would still claim, oh, this area to be part of Vietnam, whilst from Indonesia's side, no, that's Indonesians, your part is on that side.

So there are still homeworks to do. But I'm basing this from the National Ocean Policy's work plan that was finished by 2019. And we analyzed that from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they pretty much conducted a number of all these negotiations between Indonesia and its maritime neighbors. And so I'd say that relationship has been managed in a very cordial level and there is no intention, there is no ill intention in trying to push, how should I say, just a one-sided interest because when we deal with Southeast Asian, Indonesia has always tried to put forward the ASEAN interest in the foray. With China, if I may add something with China, I think we just, I think we talked about this earlier. It's still pretty much something that we try to deal with under the table. Economics is the main driving force of the relationship. And as Natalie mentioned before, it's not just with China. We also try to deal with Japan and try to invite them to invest on fishing facilities, cold storage facilities, and etc. So the economy is a driving force, and with the side effects of us trying to manage all these disputes and the issues that we have with our neighbors. So I hope that answers it. Yeah, absolutely. And I wanted to ask, though, specifically, what was the Vietnamese response to the destruction of the fishing vessels? They're not happy.

Vietnam has always been the first to raise a protest, and I don't blame them. I mean, I suppose we would also share the same reaction, I suppose, but to an extent there has been cordial level. But I suppose that explains the difficulty between Indonesia and Vietnam to try to find the same ground, same footing. And despite us having the same issue with China, for example, I think we'll cover this later on, but it's as if that we are two brothers set very apart, you know, very differently. So it's a very different foot, but I'll save that for later. Absolutely. So I did want to turn to some more naval questions here and discuss specifically naval modernization. So large portions of the world recapitalizing their navies right now. If you look at Europe, a lot of that is driven by the events of 2014 in Crimea.

I think the rise of China has also sparked a lot of recapitalization of fleets around the Pacific. So at the turn of the 20th century, you had a race to build battleships. In the 21st century, you see more procurement of submarine surface vessels with advanced air defense capabilities. How has the Indonesian Navy gone about recapitalizing its fleet? I'll ask you first, Gilang, and then turn to Blake and Natalie for that one. I do understand that with the Indonesian Navy, there has been a lot of concentration, first of all, in developing the submarine fleet. Submarine has been in the foray even before the previous administration. And with the acquisition of three new submarines from South Korea, we are thinking of expanding it further, developing more fleets, more capabilities, and to extend the arms of our subfleets to be able to cover a lot of maritime grounds.

I'd say a lot of the seas surrounding Indonesia. Second of all, that's most important, if I'm not mistaken, is the increase of ISR, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability by the Indonesian Navy, not only the Navy, but also from the other elements of the armed forces as well. This includes the expansion of radar systems across the islands, across the archipelago, improvement of communication systems between warships and ground-based systems, and also communication between different units and also between the different elements of the armed forces.

The recent addition within the TNI, and I hope Natalie can also correct me if I'm wrong here, is the implementation of a new, I can't really say it in English, but I'd say in Indonesian, Komando Bagian Wilayah, meaning that we are consolidating the elements of the armed forces into two, three different regions within Indonesia. And then all the three elements, the army, the air force, the navy, would now try or if not would implement,

would mobilize their operations in a single sort of command unit. We're really trying to let go of the old system where the army works alone, the air force works alone, the navy works alone. But we're really trying to combine all the three elements of the armed forces to better communication, to better, how should I say, I'm not too well versed on the terms, but interoperability, there we go, interoperability between all these armed forces. If I'm not mistaken, that's so far, that's the main issues there.

There are, of course, other acquisition, other equipment acquisitions are also in force there. Natalie, did you have something you wanted to add? Yeah, definitely. you know, Gilang pointed out the important elements of the Indonesian naval modernization story, you know, which is a continuation of a modernization program that started under the Yudhoyono administration. Now, a large part of this picture I would like to highlight is about money. Last year, the government earmarked what would be this year's largest allocation for

defense, which is about 10 billion US dollars or 131 trillion Indonesian rupiah, which is a significant increase of about 20%. But the problem is, of course, is it's predicated on Indonesia maintaining a particular percentage of economic growth. Now, as we know, all countries around the world are going to be experiencing economic strain as a result of coronavirus. And according to defence analyst Alamon Helves, because the government is undergoing an overall budget cut, that will include the Ministry of Defence as well. And there will be an increased focus on military medicine. So the extent to which the Indonesian Navy will have the sufficient funds available to continue to do things like rebuild its or to build up its submarine capability to

be able to invest in isr will be constrained by these budget cuts and if you look at the budget overall i think gilang highlighted a really important part about the indonesian militaries lurched towards interoperability and a jointness if we can call it that but ultimately i think the army remains a predominant element of the armed forces as it does in many militaries around the world but particularly so in the indonesian context there are historical reasons for that but i think there are just practical reasons for that and again with the onslaught of covet 19 when we see the use of the military in many countries around the world not only to be able to enforce self-isolation and the movement of people but in order to be able to do things like

distribute equipment but also man hospitals i think we may see some sort of reinforcement and continuation of those kinds of land forces and budget allocations as such. So we'll see how it goes. But an alternative for Indonesia is to help pay for some of the recapitalization of its naval forces with commodities as well. So it has in the past offered to pay for some of its modernization,

for example, with its new generation fighter jet with coffee and palm oil in addition to money. So these are just additional thoughts that go into thinking about indonesia's journey towards military modernization thank you blake from your perspective how has the naval cooperation been between indonesia and its neighbors so it's it's been really interesting so i think you know moving away from the natuna example um because that's kind of more emblematic of indonesia's push to work in a more joint manner think about the trilateral cooperative agreement in the sulu sea area particularly the subutu passage i think that

Really, naval cooperation and maritime security cooperation writ large really highlight the strength of ASEAN to work on issues without resolving some of the longstanding conflicts that may exist on border demarcation or maritime claims. But agreeing that, hey, it's pretty important for a region where millions upon millions rely on the sea as a source of sustaining life, we probably need to make sure this is still here for the next generation. So, you know, with the TCA, you have, while it's not a combined approach like we might see in the United States or like we might hope to see, you know, two ships sailing alongside one another from different countries, you have Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines cooperating together and coordinating, passing information to rein in sea robbery and kidnapping that had been going on in the Sulu Sea area and negatively affecting maritime traffic. Indonesia runs the Komodo exercise, which is an awesome example of maritime security cooperation in the region. That is an Indonesia-led exercise, and they hold that for basically whoever wants to come. And it's great. It's not a super high-level warfighting exercise, but cooperation at sea at any level is encouraging and positive. Like Yilang mentioned, there is a push to get that C4ISR question resolved, because with an archipelago the size of Indonesia's, there's no way that you could patrol that with surface vessels or with submarines. I mean, it's just it's too vast. It would be impossible. You would break your force just trying to rein in internal security problems.

But, you know, it's it's 2020. There is privatized satellites up there that you can buy imagery from. you can buy surveillance. That is a service that's available. There's a lot of maritime domain awareness technology out there that's of high value, and governments can get it at a pretty affordable rate. And I'm happy to see Indonesia kind of pushing that direction. Dr. Bernard Liu at RSIS has called submarines kind of the bling in ASEAN, that all navies are looking for that bling factor. Indonesia previously had the largest submarine force in Southeast Asia. They have been pushing back towards acquiring an effective submarine force. I don't think it's a bad thing.

You know, Indonesia is a large country. They're justifiably proud of their armed services. I do wish that we would see more activity on budget items for things that are maybe more needed in the current environment. And Indonesia has gone that way. They've acquired some new Sigma-class frigates. They're PKRs that are an excellent ship. They've allocated funding for some offshore patrol vessels, some fast attack craft. Natalie mentioned the influence of the Army.

There's been some funding set aside last year for some tank landing ships, you know, just in case you need to get a main battle tank out to sea to police some fishermen. But there has been investment in Indonesia's fleet, the surface fleet and the subsurface fleet. But particularly, like Yilang mentioned with the ISR piece, which maritime domain awareness is kind of one of the big buzzwords in the maritime community these days. I mean, you have to have it. And in a day of constrained budgets, and we're all about to hit the skids on budgets as COVID-19 kind of takes that bite out of the military spending of all of us, finding that low-cost answer to these hard questions is a great way forward. Yilang or Natalie, anything else to add on the Indonesian Navy? I just have one thing quickly. I just wanted to highlight the important role that defence industry is playing in terms of boosting cooperation in the naval domain. Indonesia

has an indigenous shipbuilding company called PT PAL, and it's been producing ships for patrol, for indigenous Lianosa to sell. And countries like the Philippines and Timor-Leste have either purchased or have been gifted patrol vessels. So I think that's a really important way that Indonesia has been able to use industry as a form of diplomacy, but also building up capability in these countries, particularly for countries like Timor-Leste that are underfunded and still has a very nascent armed forces. So yeah, I just want to think about to see where that goes in future. Perhaps if I may add also one more thing within this year that's still being kept within the Navy as in years past is that I think Jokowi still instructed that the Navy still retains

element of the law enforcement role, despite calls of more roles being delivered towards the civilian Maritimes Security Agency. But I think this role will not subside in the near future. Thank you. And so the last question here is 70% of our listeners are in the U.S. is how is the U.S.- Indonesian relationship at sea, whether it's U.S. Navy to Indonesian Navy, is the U.S. Coast Guard involved? Blake, I'll start with you. So, you know, I think it's a great relationship. Both the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard have strong long-term relationships with both the Indonesian Navy and the maritime law enforcement community. We do yearly exercises. As I mentioned, Indonesia leads their Komodo exercise, which we participate in.

The U.S. runs the Southeast Asia Cooperation and Training Exercise, CCAT. Indonesia is an enthusiastic participant there, both from the law enforcement and the Navy side, which is awesome. We love to see that. Last year, just kind of highlighting one example on the law enforcement side, in 2019, there were two deployments of United States Coast Guard national security cutters to the Indo-Pacific. The Stratton did a really neat bilateral exercise with the Indonesian Coast Guard, Bukamla. So they did some subject matter expert exchange, they did some tabletop exercise, and then they did some actual boarding exercises searching ships and people for contraband and things like that. So that was something that, you know, we really like to see both that gray-hulled cooperation and the white-hulled cooperation. I think this is one of the regions that really highlights that you can't just have one, right?

You can't expect your gray-hulled Navy to be out there apprehending fishermen and also conducting national security missions. While the TNI AL may really want to hang on to that law enforcement role, like Gilang mentioned, and I'm sure they do because, you know, more missions means more funding. How long can the force really sustain any kind of competency in both? It's pretty difficult. And as Bakamla has grown kind of and its star has sort of risen throughout the bureaucracy, I would say, and Gilang or Natalie, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Bakamla is on a trajectory to really become that agency that the people are looking to fulfill that Coast Guard role. And it's my understanding that they are now referred to as the Indonesian Coast Guard. Previously, they had that coordination role among those 13 agencies. But I think a lot of those authorities, and I hope, will be folded kind of into one organization for ease of movement and operation. But, yeah, overall, you know, very strong cooperation. We talked about the Natuna response.

There were F-16s that were part of that, that were part of U.S. security cooperation. Hope to see some more good security cooperation exchanges going forward. This year, again, COVID-19 has thrown some spanners into the works on, you know, when CCAT, how CCAT's going to happen, what will happen with the normal calendar that we have for interacting. But we'll just have to see, you know, obviously the safety and security of both forces and the populations are what comes first. But hoping to see both come out stronger on the other side and continue that upward trajectory of cooperation. Thanks. Before I go over to Yilong or Natalie for any thoughts, do you know where the Indonesians are planning on participating in RIMPAC?

Have they played there in the past? Off the top of my head, I believe so. I am reasonably confident. You've caught me out here. Yeah. Jeez, I hope you can edit this out in post because you've really caught me out. They have. They have played in RIMPAC in the past. And usually the exceptions being Russia and China, we like to see those trajectories continue, like keep participating. If you come and you're, you know, you don't really want to play with others like Russia and China, you don't really get invited back. But Indonesia, we don't have that problem because, like I mentioned, it's a positive relationship.

Thanks. Gilang, from the Indonesian perspective, how is that relationship with the U.S. viewed? Well, in my experience, I've noticed that the trajectory of the U.S.-Indonesian military relationship has somewhat maintained a positive direction, positive note. I've been involved in several workshops and some exercise, tabletop exercises within this respect. And I do see that it seems that there is no reason to hold back. And coming from the Ministry of Defense, I think they're still, I suppose, still in the budget. And I definitely see more relationship in the future. Now, perhaps if I may add my two cents within this relationship is that, as Blake certainly mentioned about the relationship and exercises between the Grey Halls and also the White Halls, I think White Halls and also capabilities of maritime law enforcement is very much the imperative here.

I suppose it's impetus for Bakamla to be the Coast Guard that we all demand it to be. And that it's true, politically speaking, Bakamla has been given the baton of the maritime law enforcement within Indonesia. And there are talks politically for an integrated Coast Guard under Bakamla. And I suppose in the future, I think one of the reasons and aspects why, to an extent, the Navy still wants to hold to the maritime law enforcement role, in a way, we see that the Indonesian Navy is still very much in between the brown water, green water Navy, in a sense that their role and their capability is still very much limited. But we see with the new equipments trying to be purchased and new roles being acquisition by the Navy, for example, if they have bigger ships, they have not just corvettes, but if they have bigger frigates, and if they really want to ascend in bigger roles, then there's no reason to, for example, deploy guided missile frigates to catch some fishermen out in the Indonesian territorial waters. They definitely give it to the Bacamla who definitely have offshore patrol vessels. But in the past, I think it's because the Navy only has offshore patrol vessels and 1,000-ton Corvettes, for example, is the reason why they're very much adamant in just, all right, we'll keep the law enforcement force or else they'll be left jobless, right? They don't have the necessary roles or equipments to conduct any other operations rather than law enforcement.

So relationship in the future, I hope, and I see not just with the U.S., but also with other countries, is that they're really trying to separate this Whitehall and Greyhall, increase capability for the Whitehalls and Maritime One Infantry for Bacamla, and, of course, increasing role with the Navy for more, I suppose, high-level operations in groundwater areas, hopefully in the couple of decades, Bluewater Navy as well. So hopefully that trajectories will go in that direction. Thanks, Natalie. Any final thoughts on this topic? Otherwise, I think we're out of time and I'll wrap it up. But please go ahead. Absolutely. I think there's a lot to be said about the important role the United States has played together with Indonesia in terms of professional military education as well. And the reason I want to highlight that, I think it's really important to maintain that exchange of personnel, of U.S. personnel going to study at Indonesian institutions, military institutions, and for Indonesians to go and take part and, you know, to go to Monterey and places like that and receive military education there. What I want to sort of, you know, cast to you and your listeners is what will happen to defence diplomacy and military exchanges on a person to person level in the era of COVID-19? Will we lose, you know, possibly six months to six to 12 months worth of people to people interactions? How will we maintain those really intimate relationships that we need in times of crisis? And I think Australia can attest to the importance of one on one relationships and their importance during times like East Timor. And so the question I have to pose there is, well, you know, how do we maintain defence diplomacy in these current times? And given how important they are, not only just in terms of those people to people relationships, but as Gilan pointed out, you know, bringing in new ideas of how to manage different kinds of shifts from going from a brown and green water navy to a blue water navy. and getting Indonesian military's personnel to think more broadly

and to think in global terms. So I'm really interested to know. I don't have an answer to this, obviously. I suspect technology will play a part. But maintaining the intensity and the tempo of those kinds of interactions, I think, is something that we should be thinking about very carefully in the next three to six months, if not 12. Either of you have any thoughts on that?

It's just as I heard that I think to myself, we're going to be more reliant than ever on the existing relationships, those people who have already studied abroad in the other country, to reach out to their former classmates and try to hold that relationship together as best they can and check in on each other. I'm really glad that Natalie brought up the professional military education piece and the military exchange, because I think, you know, that relationship is incredible. I kind of hope this is a catalyst to pushing those relationships into forums like this that are more regular, like we're using right now, video teleconference that is cheap and free

to keep those bonds strong regardless of circumstance. It shouldn't take something like COVID-19 to regularize these person-to-person links, catch-ups between classmates. We can still do PME on teleconferencing suites. We could be using Zoom like everyone else to keep these links strong. And I hope that that is something that we learn from this, that we can increase the contact that we have and strengthen those bonds without necessarily having to do the in-person meetings that can be sometimes prohibitively difficult to fund, organize, schedule. You know, it's pretty easy to get a handful of people together on something like this and discuss a topic of importance. And not everything has to be held at the classified level.

So I think that's a great note from Natalie. I really appreciate that. And to slightly redeem myself in an attack on that, yes, Indonesia did participate in the last three RIMPACs. I apologize to the entire TNI AL and basically everyone I work with who probably is going to listen to this and shame me extensively. I was going to edit it out to save you, but you having said that, I will leave it in. Jilong, final thought on Natalie's last entry there? Otherwise, I'll close it out. There was a saying I just remembered.

If you build, for example, roads or bridges and et cetera, there are bound to be just a couple of people running by it and then just seeing the roads. But there's an example set aside by the U.S. military building a school in Vietnam, if I'm not mistaken, and just saying we're building one school, but we're having about 100 students every day, every year coming by through it. And then for every student graduating, they'll be impressed or at least they'll have a lasting impression of the thing that was given by the U.S. military or by the relationship between the U.S. military and Vietnam's government. And I think that is a very good saying of how this sort of relationship not only touches between personnel, military personnel, but also how it touches civilians on the ground and how it gives a lasting impression. And I think that is the most critical component, especially here in Indonesia, is to give out a lasting impression on how countries like the United States can be seen, not only by us observers, but, for example, the children that are running right now in front of my streets. Something like that. Thank you very much, Jilong. I'd like to thank my guests for joining us today.

Natalie, where can we find you online and what's next for you? Sure. You can find me on Twitter at Security Scholar, but I also run an organization called Verve Research. So it's www.ververesearch.org, where my team and I produce research on civil-military relations with a focus on Southeast Asia. So those are the places you can find me. And Verve is also on Instagram and Facebook. And you can also find me on Instagram, where I'm quite active, at Security Scholar as well. Thank you.

And Gilang, where can we find you and what are you working on now? You can definitely find me at CSI's website and not the CSI's Washington. No, you will not find a Gilang there. But you will find me at CSI's Indonesia website. And I'm working on at the moment on issue of Indonesia's strategy and also Indonesia's relationship with China. You can also find me in Instagram and also Twitter. It's at Bara Kambara, B-A-R-A Kambara. I don't post that much, don't post regularly, but sometimes I do post some post articles published within CSIS or around.

What's next for me in a couple of minutes is that I'm scheduled to give my son his lunch. It's because we're really fast approaching lunchtime. I just I can't believe how time flies. Absolutely. And Blake, I know you recently came back from deployment. Did you manage to start any projects while you're out at sea? And where can we find you online? So I actually tied off most of my writing projects before I left the ship, looking forward to what I knew would be three to four weeks of extreme sloth.

And I am on the tail end of that, which I think some of my more notable gaffes just show how much rust can accumulate in a month of doing nothing but laying around. So yeah, I've been enjoying time with my wife and son, but doing a little research now on some Russian maritime security cooperation in Southeast Asia. So hoping to have something like that on the street shortly. I am on Twitter at B.D. Herzinger. As quarantine increases, you will get more and more pictures of my dog, cat, son, and wife. So no promises.

You might be getting a 50-50 maritime security Herzinger family mix, but I am there. Thanks, Blake. Thank you again to all our guests. And for our listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next week. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 So help me, Bob, I'm pulling me out of this. Why am I pulling me out of this?

Help me, Bob, I'm pulling me out of this. Pulling out of this shit, Bob, now.