President Prabowo’s Washington messaging pairs a principled stance on Gaza with an unusually direct signal of operational readiness. For Australia, the real question is what this shift means for the future of Australia–Indonesia “common security” and practical cooperation.
President Prabowo Subianto’s Washington messaging combined a principled position — support for a two-state solution as “the only long-lasting solution” — with a practical signal on Gaza. He indicated that Indonesian advance groups could deploy within “one to two months” and that Indonesia has been asked to serve as Deputy Commander in the mission structure.
None of this is surprising for Indonesia. Support for Palestine is strong, the two-state position is long-standing, and participation in international missions can be framed as humanitarian and consistent with Indonesia’s “bebas-aktif” tradition. What is more strategically significant — particularly for Australia — is the timing and presentation: a high-profile stance, a near-term operational timeline, and a leadership role announced in a concentrated way.
From an Indonesian vantage point, the core issue is not whether Jakarta’s Gaza stance is morally justified, but whether the way it is communicated makes Indonesia harder for partners to read. When major signals come before operational clarity, the information gap is quickly filled by others’ interpretations—often cautious or worst-case — because security planners cannot afford to assume the best.
Prabowo’s remarks acknowledge the difficulties of the path ahead. The concern is not that Indonesia is being reckless, but that public signalling is moving ahead of the operational mechanics that determine feasibility, including mandate design, rules of engagement, command arrangements, and the domestic political sustainability of any deployment.
That sequencing matters because Gaza is highly emotive in Indonesian domestic politics. On emotive issues, foreign policy messages are designed not only for external audiences but also for domestic legitimacy. Public debate then becomes part of the signal: it can harden positions, trigger walk-backs, and reveal internal coordination problems in real time. The result is not that Indonesia is “unreliable”, but that partners face a greater risk of misreading intentions while operational details remain unsettled.
Prabowo also framed the Board of Peace discussions as serious and tied to post-war governance in Gaza. In Canberra, this is likely to reshape baseline assumptions about Jakarta’s risk appetite and its tolerance for US-designed mechanisms. Those shifts are not necessarily hostile, but they do require more disciplined risk management than a relationship built mainly on atmospherics.
Pragmatism, But of Different Kinds
The Washington visit was not only about Gaza. It also produced a formally branded economic outcome, with Indonesian and US leaders signing what Jakarta described as a “historic” reciprocal trade agreement, framed as strengthening economic security and inaugurating a new phase in the strategic partnership. This matters less for the technicalities of tariff schedules than for what it signals politically: that high-profile security messaging and major transactional deliverables can be packaged together, quickly, as a single narrative of strategic momentum.
This does not suggest that Gaza diplomacy is transactional, nor that Indonesia is abandoning principle. It does, however, raise the uncertainty for partners attempting to separate symbolism from strategy. Prabowo’s approach appears pragmatic in execution, with high political messaging alongside geo-economic bargaining. The result is a portfolio-style diplomacy in which strategic messaging, economic negotiation, and domestic legitimacy reinforce one another.
Australian policymakers may view this environment differently. A rules-based approach emphasises clear mandates, institutional support, and predictable consultation processes. This is not a contrast between idealism and pragmatism, but rather pragmatism expressed through procedure — an attempt to make a volatile environment easier to understand and less prone to misinterpretation.
Why “Common Security” Becomes Risk-Management
Prabowo’s foreign policy has increasingly appeared as performance as much as policy: high-visibility positioning delivered in bursts, followed by domestic debate, institutional adjustment, and later clarification. That pattern is contested within Indonesia, particularly where identity politics, sovereignty concerns, and the boundaries of “bebas-aktif” are at stake.
Consultative security arrangements are attractive to Australia for an often-overlooked reason. They do not simply stabilise diplomatic processes; they also help Canberra’s ability to interpret Indonesia’s foreign policy under Prabowo by creating structured opportunities for early clarification and channels that distinguish headline signalling from actionable policy. The Australian–Indonesian Treaty on Common Security, therefore, resembles risk-management diplomacy more than a traditional security guarantee — an effort to turn uncertainty into manageable risk rather than leave it as diffuse strategic anxiety.
The danger, as earlier analysis of the treaty suggests, is that of placebo reassurance — an agreement that appears more substantial than it is, in which consultation is delivered at low cost while behaviour under stress remains unchanged. The real test is operational: the treaty matters only if it produces consistent patterns of cooperation, including meaningful senior-level engagement, crisis mechanisms that function under time pressure, and collaboration that strengthens shared situational awareness. Without these, “common security” remains a label; with them, it becomes a practice. Prabowo’s Washington messaging highlights why operationalising “common security” is important. For now, Canberra appears to be observing closely rather than reacting publicly, which is an unsurprising approach given the political sensitivity and the fluidity of the evolving regional landscape. The longer-term question is whether the relationship’s consultative mechanisms are strong enough to translate headline signals into timely clarification, preventing ambiguity from hardening into misinterpretation and avoidable escalation.
Hangga Fathana is a faculty member in International Relations at Universitas Islam Indonesia and a Senior Research Fellow (Indonesia–Australia Relations) at the Perth USAsia Centre.
This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.
