Indonesia and Singapore Agree to a Security Framework

On October 8, the leaders of Indonesia and Singapore held their latest annual retreat. While the outcomes of the retreat were wide-ranging, key among them was a framework agreement to make progress on contentious security issues.

The relationship between Indonesia and Singapore, two fellow Southeast Asian states, have historically been prickly. It took nearly a year for Indonesia to officially recognize Singapore’s independence from Malaysia following Jakarta’s violent opposition to the creation of Malaysia, known as Konfrontasi. This only reinforced the sense of vulnerability that Singapore, a smaller, Chinese-majority country, has perceived from Indonesia, a much larger, Muslim-majority state.

In more recent times, both sides have tried to maintain a cordial defense relationship that includes visits, exchanges, and exercises. Over the past few years, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and their administrations have worked to better manage security issues between the two countries. Despite these efforts, disagreements have nonetheless continued to simmer on occasion in the security realm, be it traditional issues such as the management of airspace or non-traditional security matters like the annual haze problem.

On October 8, these ongoing efforts were in the spotlight again with the holding of the latest leaders’ retreat held between Jokowi and Lee. The retreat, first held in Indonesia back in 2016, is a new mechanism that Lee and Jokowi established as a way to better manage their wider bilateral relationship.

At the retreat the leaders discussed the bilateral relationship in general as well as other issues of common interest. Official accounts of the deliberations noted that the two countries had addressed a range of matters across the diplomatic, economic, and people-to-people components of the relationship, with inroads including new memoranda of understanding on electronic data exchange and archival cooperation as well as the organization of a bilateral civil service forum for civil servants to learn best practices from each other.

But among the key outcomes of the meeting was some sort of framework to manage security issues. Lee noted in his remarks during the joint press conference featuring the two leaders that following preliminary discussions by their countries over the past few months on two issues – airspace management and military training – the two sides had agreed on a “framework” to serve as a “sound and comprehensive basis” to work out solutions to issues separately and concurrently.

The exact outlines of the framework are unclear. But in a statement on the meeting, Singapore’s foreign ministry made reference to an “agreed framework for discussions” that laid out the core principles and considerations. The statement acknowledged that the core interests and rights of both countries must be recognized and respected, with the idea that this would be followed with detailed negotiations on the basis of the framework with a view to concluding and implementing any agreements by relevant ministers and officials in a timely manner.

While the agreement on a framework may seem like a very modest achievement, it is nonetheless not without significance. Managing the issues both sides referred to, such as airspace management and military exercises, is important because these are the very matters that complicated ties in the past. Indonesia has long been looking to get control over the flight information region (FIR) over Riau Islands, which has been managed by Singapore since 1946. Jakarta also has had concerns over exercises Singapore conducts in some maritime areas.

More generally, looking to the future, capitalizing on the momentum achieved under Jokowi and Lee is critical. Indonesia and Singapore will gradually move beyond the two leaders who have presided over a relatively stable period in bilateral ties. Lee is expected to step aside to give way to a new generation of leadership after the next election in Singapore, and Indonesia is slowly looking toward a post-Jokowi future as he enters his second and final term.

At the same time, one should not overestimate any framework that the two sides have arrived at with respect to managing their security issues. Given the difficulty of these issues, it will likely take several years and changes in leadership before the two sides are able to not only translate a framework into implementable steps, but then institutionalize and normalize them. Even if gains are achieved in the security aspect of ties, they are only one part of managing an increasingly diverse and complex relationship. They will need to be complemented by alignments in national outlooks and understandings on regional and international developments that are arguably more difficult to achieve.

How Indonesia and Singapore move forward on this new so-called framework remains to be seen. Nonetheless, how the two countries manage this aspect of their ties will continue to be important to watch in the coming months and years amid the wider domestic, regional, and international context.