In mid-May, Indonesia will celebrate its tenth anniversary of the reformasi movement that toppled President Soeharto and brought democracy. One of the key issues then was about reforming the Indonesian military that many believed had become a ‘tool’ of Mr. Soeharto’s regime.
Thus, the focus of military reform thus far has been on three major areas: how to bring the military under democratic civilian control and out of politics, how to curb their economic activities, and how to reform the defense management process.
Although there are several critical unfinished reform agenda here, such as the territorial command structure, the past decade seems to witness relative progress.
In the political realm, for example, military officers are now banned from holding a political position without retiring, and the military’s dual function doctrine and ‘social political’ offices has been officially abolished.
Meanwhile, Law No. 34/2004 has explicitly banned military business practices, and recently President Yudhoyono established a team to takeover military businesses. The government also continues to try to raise the annual defense budget. Finally, the military continues to forge new defense ties, and renew old ones, with countries such as China, Russia, Australia, and the US.
However, despite of its significance, these ‘depoliticization’ and ‘defense management’ reforms represent short and medium term solutions which seem to overlook the fundamental problems of professional military capacity building.
There are two related fundamental issues here: military education and the strengthening of a civilian defense community. The former is perhaps the single most important long-term issue that serves as a key to change the military’s underlying culture, behavior, as well as its capability to function as a professional military.
One facet of military education reform is the curriculum of the Military Academy, Staff and Command Colleges, and the National Resilience Institute, which should no longer focus on political and social subjects. One recent study notes that since the 1960s, 53% of the academy curriculum covers non-military subjects, while the Army Command Staff and College consist of 64% non-military subjects.
This suggest that the military education was not aimed at shaping soldiers to become a thoroughly professional military but to prepare the military to play a ‘social-political’ role, which would strengthen the military’s self-conception of ‘guardians of the state’ within the dual-function framework.
Consequently, one could argue that there are many savvy officers in Jakarta playing politics, but few experts on the technical side of defense strategy. Additionally, further indications of the impact of such ‘political-heavy’ curricula can be seen today, for example, in the widely known fact that Indonesia’s Defense White Paper was mostly formulated and spearheaded by civilian academics.
Therefore, the percentage of technical military courses should be increased, and the government should devote significant sources to reform and improve the professional military education from the academy through the staff colleges. Although its implementation remains to be seen, the recently announced plan to establish an Indonesian Defense University is a nudge in the right direction.
However, to supplement the military education reform, the welfare of the rank and file soldiers must also be improved, as such reform would be pointless if they are too distracted in securing additional funding to support their family.
A final aspect of military education reform is how to gradually ‘civilianize’ the teaching staff and methods. This however cannot be accomplished without a strong civilian defense community.
Unfortunately, the capacity of civil society are lacking in this regard. Although there are a handful of highly qualified academicians, very few are actually trained in technical strategic or military studies.
In the long-run, over reliance on these academicians cannot be sustained. Younger generation of scholars needs to be trained in strategic and military studies to take over in the next ten years or so.
This however would mean that civilians need to move away from their ‘anti-military’ syndrome, which has been one of the reasons behind a currently weak civilian defense community. If this could be done, perhaps more civilians are willing to study military-related subjects thereby providing a pool of resources that could assist the military in various aspects of defense policy-making.
For example, such community could conduct ‘intellectual exercises’ on issues that practical military officers need to do but cannot readily do for themselves, they could also help provide the conceptual lens to help sort out between short-term and long-term strategic issues, while projecting future strategic trends and threats.
Additionally, a strong civilian defense community is sorely needed to overcome the ‘inferiority’ syndrome facing civilians whenever they have to confront the military.
Therefore, considering Indonesia’s authoritarian past, democratic present, and uncertain future, a strong civilian defense community would function as a ‘checks and balances’ mechanism vis-à-vis the military.
Thus, for the time being, in the midst of an under-funded military heavily imbued with a political education, the role of a civilian defense community is crucial.
It goes without saying that reforming a military institution is an uphill battle with a complex intertwining web of problems. However, without reforming military education and without a strong civilian defense community to begin with, no matter how many weapons we could procure, no matter how much military budget we could secure, no matter how ‘politically sterile’ the officer corps are, the Indonesian military will find it difficult to function as a thoroughly professional and modern military.
Evan A. Laksmana is a research analyst at the Indonesia Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Filed under: Civil-Military Relations
