November 5, 2024
JAKARTA – In stark contrast to his predecessor’s hands-off approach to international relations, President Prabowo Subianto has demonstrated a bold foreign policy approach just two weeks into his term, notably by teasing potential accession to BRICS.
Fresh from attending the BRICS Summit in Russia, Foreign Minister Sugiono, a protégé from Prabowo’s Gerindra Party, expressed the government’s intention for Indonesia to join the group of emerging economies.
Many consider the pursuit of BRICS membership proof of Prabowo’s “good neighbor” policy. This also resonates with the country’s free and active foreign policy stance, which led to first president Sukarno founding the Non-Aligned Movement at the height of the Cold War.
However, it would be prudent to subject any future diplomatic maneuvers to careful scrutiny, taking into account their potential consequences vis-á-vis contemporary contexts.
It is well understood that Indonesia’s accession to BRICS will serve more geopolitical than economic purposes. This is not only because the country has established more fruitful bilateral ties with individual BRICS member states, but also because the grouping’s economic engagement has been scarce and short of concrete actions.
Aside from setting up the New Development Bank, a multilateral development bank mainly supported by China, it hasn’t launched any economic or development initiatives that benefit its members or other emerging economies.
True, the group has plans to push for de-dollarization to help reduce global dependence on the US currency, especially amid the Federal Reserve’s hawkish stance in past years. But this, too, hasn’t been implemented.
In fact, Indonesia has taken more progressive action by establishing a local currency settlement system with its ASEAN peers and major trading partners, such as China and Japan.
Moreover, insofar as the geopolitical polarization and fragmentation in international trade were rooted in the big power rivalry during the Cold War, the countries involved have evolved and gone on to pursue their own interests, which are vastly different to those that shaped international relations in the 1960s.
Countries today are less motivated by the ideological war between capitalism and communism of the past. Democracy and capitalism, despite their flaws, have been largely adopted across the world to fit each country’s political and economic contexts. China, for example, has been hailed for its system of state capitalism.
In addition, almost all countries have embraced international trade, regardless of their political leanings.
More and more countries are looking to India, which has managed to sail through the current geopolitical tensions and benefited from the competing major economies, strengthening its economic ties with the US while continuing to buy oil from Russia.
At the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met in their first bilateral talks in five years since they agreed to resolve their countries’ military standoff on the disputed Himalayan borders.
Indonesia’s decision to join BRICS is not unique. Other ASEAN countries including Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand have also expressed interest in joining the group and, like Indonesia, have become partner countries of BRICS.
Under Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia might also deserve credit for maintaining good relations with both Russia and China while still securing significant investments from Big Tech like Apple and Microsoft.
By joining BRICS now, Indonesia could recoup last year’s wasted opportunities of then-president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who made a rare attendance at a major international event by joining the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, only to announce afterward that becoming a member was “not urgent”.
The Jokowi administration later began the process of its accession to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which was seen as a move to adhere to Western economic and trade principles to gain wider access to the global supply chain.
What Prabowo and his administration must consider is which ties can advance Indonesia’s interests at the end of the day.
While it is fine to be a good neighbor, it will not feel so great when it is always one’s neighbors that keep benefiting and prospering from a one-sided relationship.