Will Prabowo Subianto cosy up to Donald Trump or to China?

In September 1985 analysts from the CIA puzzled over who might succeed Suharto, Indonesia’s dictator and a stalwart opponent of communism. If the old man stayed in power into the 1990s, they reckoned, then his son-in-law, Army Captain Prabowo Subianto, might be a plausible heir. American officials had already begun cultivating Mr Prabowo, inviting him to America to attend military courses. A Prabowo presidency, they reckoned, would keep Indonesia on their side.

The CIA’s wonks were not wrong about Mr Prabowo’s prospects—they were just early. In February’s presidential election, more than a quarter-century after Suharto fell from power and democracy returned to Indonesia, Mr Prabowo won a landslide victory. His win bore some resemblance to Donald Trump’s. They are both ageing yet irrepressible would-be strongmen, whose rhetoric is authoritarian but who have won power through free and fair elections. Last month Mr Prabowo took the oath of office. On November 8th he is due to make his first overseas trip as president.

First he will land in Beijing. His hosts in China are expected to pitch new investments in Indonesian infrastructure and, for the first time, a big arms deal between the two countries. Mr Prabowo will then visit Washington. Indonesian diplomats say he may also stop over in Florida to meet Mr Trump before going on to Latin America. Coming so soon after Mr Prabowo’s surprise decision for Indonesia to join the BRICS bloc last month, his early foreign-policy moves have rattled American diplomats. They appear to mark a shift towards China and away from the mostly non-aligned position taken by his predecessor, Joko Widodo (or Jokowi).

Relations between Indonesia and China remained icy for years after Suharto seized power in 1966—to disrupt what he alleged was an attempted communist takeover sponsored by China. It was not until 1990 that the two re-established diplomatic relations. And it was only after Suharto fell in 1998 that diplomacy between the two picked up pace. Economic and military links took even longer.

Jokowi came to office in 2014 with plans to develop transport infrastructure across the sprawling archipelago. At the same time officials in Beijing were cooking up China’s Belt and Road Initiative, an infrastructure-building scheme. Jokowi also pursued longtime Indonesian aims to use its market power in minerals such as nickel to persuade foreigners to process ore in-country before letting it be exported. These goals, most foreign investors had long told Indonesians, were unachievable due to the poor investment climate. No one would risk putting billions of dollars into a fixed asset in a country where the rule of law was not well established.

Chinese development banks, however, stepped into the breach. They funded railways, roads, airports and ports. Private Chinese investors then made deals to process minerals, particularly nickel, in Indonesia. By the end of Jokowi’s decade in office, China had become Indonesia’s most important investor (see chart). Indonesia had also become a leading processor of nickel ore used in batteries, a key part of the green energy supply chain.

Mr Prabowo thus inherits a strong economic relationship, which he seems set to expand. His brother, a billionaire businessman who has bankrolled his political aspirations, told a seminar last month that Mr Prabowo would pitch to Chinese state investors a $60bn sea wall to cover most of the north coast of Java, from the capital, Jakarta, to the second city, Surabaya, as great a distance as between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The first phase, worth $11bn, would protect just Jakarta, which suffers from severe flooding because of subsidence. Experts reckon the project will be a white elephant. China’s mandarins might balk at the sea-wall proposal, but it shows that Mr Prabowo, like Jokowi, is not too proud to go cap in hand to Beijing.

Mr Prabowo’s relationship with America is more complicated. In the waning days of his father-in-law’s rule he ordered his men to kidnap activists protesting against it. Some remain missing. Of those who returned, several claim that they were tortured, a charge Mr Prabowo denies. The Clinton administration sided with the activists, reportedly citing its obligations under the UN’s Torture Convention to deny him a visa in 2000. Only after Mr Prabowo became defence minister in 2019 did America change its mind. The re-election of Mr Trump, whose first administration lifted the visa ban, may ease co-operation.

Don’t look back in anger

The ban on Mr Prabowo was only one part of a broader American push to hold the Indonesian armed forces accountable for the role they played in suppressing democracy under Suharto. For years America refused to sell military equipment to Indonesia, leaving many of its F-16s inoperable for lack of spare parts. The arms embargo prompted Indonesia’s armed forces to look for alternative suppliers, to avoid excessive dependence on a single foreign supplier. As Jokowi’s defence minister, Mr Prabowo did deals with America, France, Italy, South Korea and Turkey, among others. Especially when it came to big-ticket items like jets and ships, Indonesia generally avoided buying Chinese kit.

Whether Mr Prabowo is willing to break this taboo in Indonesia’s relations with China is unclear. According to one person with knowledge of a proposal on the table, China is hoping to sell frigates and submarines. But Dino Patti Djalal, a former Indonesian diplomat, questions the wisdom of buying ships and boats from China while the two are engaged in a dispute over the rights to resources in a sliver of the South China Sea, where Indonesia’s claims to an exclusive economic zone overlap with China’s nine-dash line. Recently, Indonesian coastguard vessels have shadowed Chinese counterparts there.

More broadly, Mr Djalal worries that Indonesia could lose its reputation for staking out a position independent of either great power unless it is careful not to be seen as a Chinese proxy. “For a long time, America was the reference point,” he says, explaining that Indonesia was careful not to align too closely with Uncle Sam. “Now”, he says, “China is the reference point. They need to remember that.”