Academia
Drilling with the Pentagon in the west while exercising with Beijing in the east isn’t Indonesia playing a double game, it’s a masterclass in surviving between two superpowers without answering to either.
Indonesian, Australian, Singaporean and United States military personnel attend the opening ceremony of the Super Garuda Shield 2023 joint military exercise in Situbondo, East Java on Aug. 31, 2023. (AFP/Juni Kriswanto)
When more than 4,700 troops from Indonesia, the United States. and 19 other partners fanned out across Sumatra, Java and Kalimantan last week for Super Garuda Shield 2026, it was easy to read it as Jakarta leaning westward.It's the largest, most complex exercise Indonesia hosts, jungle warfare, live Stinger fires, naval maneuvers, amphibious landings, cyber and space, grown from a modest 2006 bilateral drill into an event drawing partners from Australia to Germany. Washington notes the two countries now conduct more than 170 joint military activities a year.
Three weeks earlier, a different picture unfolded. East of Taiwan, Indonesia’s frigate KRI I Gusti Ngurah Rai, returning from exercises in Russia, ran a passing exercise, communications drills, formation maneuvering, replenishment at sea, with the Chinese frigate Honghe. Beijing called it the first such exercise in those waters; Jakarta called it routine.
