Indonesia is the largest archipelago state in the world comprising 17,480 islands, with a maritime territory measuring close to 6 million square kilometres. It is located between the two key shipping routes of the Pacific and Indian Ocean. Indonesia’s cooperation in maritime security initiatives is vitally important because half of the world’s trading goods and oil pass through Indonesian waters, including the Straits of Malacca, the Strait of Sunda and the Strait of Lombok. This book analyses Indonesia’s participation in international maritime security cooperation. Using Indonesia as a case study, the book adopts mixed methods to assess emerging power cooperation and non-cooperation drawing from various International Relations theories and the bureaucratic politics approach. It addresses not only the topic of Indonesia’s cooperation but also engages in debates across the International Relations, political science and policy studies disciplines regarding state cooperation. Based on extensive primary Indonesian language sources and original interviews, the author offers a conceptual discussion on the reasons underlying emerging middle power participation or non-participation in cooperation agreements. The analysis offers a fresh perspective on the growing problems of maritime terrorism and sea robbery and how an emerging power deals with these threats at unilateral, bilateral, regional and multilateral levels. The book fills a significant gap in literature on Indonesian foreign policy making in the post-1998 era. It provides the first in-depth study of Indonesia’s decision making process in the area of maritime security and will thus be of interest to researchers in the field of comparative politics, international relations, security policy, maritime cooperation, port and shipping businesses and Southeast Asian politics and society.

Until the mid-1950s nearly all the waters lying between the far-flung islands of the Indonesian archipelago were as open to the ships of all nations as the waters of the great oceans. In order to enhance its failing sovereign grasp over the nation, as well as to deter perceived external threats to Indonesia’s national integrity, in 1957 the Indonesian government declared that it had “absolute sovereignty” over all the waters lying within straight baselines drawn between the outermost islands of Indonesia. At a single step, Indonesia had asserted its dominion over a vast swathe of what had hitherto been seas open to all, and made its lands and the seas it now claimed a single unified entity for the first time. International outrage and alarm ensued, expressed especially by the great maritime nations. Nevertheless, despite its low international profile, its relative poverty, and its often frail state capacity, Indonesia eventually succeeded in gaining international recognition for its claim when, in 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea formally recognized the existence of a new category of states known as “archipelagic states” and declared that these states had sovereignty over their “archipelagic waters”. Sovereignty and the Sea explains how Indonesia succeeded in its extraordinary claim. At the heart of Indonesia’s archipelagic campaign was a small group of Indonesian diplomats. Largely because of their dogged persistence, negotiating skills, and willingness to make difficult compromises Indonesia became the greatest archipelagic state in the world.

This is the fourth, revised and updated, edition of Geoffrey Till's Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-first Century. The rise of the Chinese and other Asian navies, worsening quarrels over maritime jurisdiction and the United States’ maritime pivot towards the Asia-Pacific region reminds us that the sea has always been central to human development as a source of resources, and as a means of transportation, information-exchange and strategic dominion. It has provided the basis for mankind's prosperity and security, and this is even more true in the early twenty-first century, with the emergence of an increasingly globalised world trading system. Navies have always provided a way of policing, and sometimes exploiting, the system. In contemporary conditions, navies, and other forms of maritime power, are having to adapt, in order to exert the maximum power ashore in the company of others and to expand the range of their interests, activities and responsibilities. While these new tasks are developing fast, traditional ones still predominate. Deterrence remains the first duty of today’s navies, backed up by the need to ‘fight and win’ if necessary. How navies and their states balance these two imperatives will tell us a great deal about our future in this increasingly maritime century. This book investigates the consequences of all this for the developing nature, composition and functions of all the world's significant navies, and provides a guide for anyone interested in the changing and crucial role of seapower in the twenty-first century. Seapower is essential reading for all students of naval power, maritime security and naval history, and highly recommended for students of strategic studies, international security and international relations.

The Asia-Pacific region has emerged as the hub of global geo-political, geo-economic and geo-strategic significance in the post-Cold War period. The rise of China and the resurgence of India will be the hallmark for the next 50 years. How this surge in power is accommodated by the incumbent powers like the United States and Japan, and how the new regional powers like China and India manage the power politics that emerge will be the key determinants of regional stability.This volume examines the national maritime doctrines as well as the nuclear weapons developments at sea of the four major powers in the Asia-Pacific, namely, China, India, Japan and the United States, to see if the evolving dynamic is a cooperative or a competitive one. In particular, the volume looks at the evolving paradigms of maritime transformation in strategy and technology; the emergent new maritime doctrines and evolving force postures in the naval orders of battle; the role and operations of nuclear navies in the Asia-Pacific; and the implications and impact of nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and sea-based missile defence responses in the region.

This book is an ethnographic study of several coastal communities in the Kei Islands of eastern Indonesia. Central to Dr. Adhuri’s argument is an insistence that systems of local marine resource management cannot be studied on their own, in isolation from either the complex cultural and historical conditions that give impetus to community action or from the equally complex regional and national contexts within which such action is undertaken.

Although irregular warfare includes a range of activities in which naval forces have played an integral role, there has been little examination of the characteristics or potential of such operations in maritime environments. An assessment of the maritime component of a series of historical and ongoing operations reveals that current notions of irregular warfare would benefit from increased recognition of potential maritime contributions.

Alverdian explores how a distinct national character of maritime governance has influenced the nature of Indonesia's aspiration to go beyond archipelagic towards a maritime nation, through focusing on the intersection between the nation's political culture, historical changes and geopolitical contexts, which gave rise to the primacy of the theme of unity in the nation's discourse. The main theme of this research is the three-pillar framework of the Tanah-Air concept, which includes the political culture of persatuan nasional (national unity), the strategic culture of cakra manggilingan (turning of the times from dark to golden periods), and the geopolitical context of posisi silang dunia (world crossroad position). The findings of this publication indicate the dominant influence of Javanese political culture, philosophy, values, and traditions on the distinct character of Indonesia’s maritime orientation. Specifically, Javanese political philosophy and traditions within each pillar of Tanah-Air have influenced continuity rather than change in the evolution of Indonesia’s maritime policy. This book helps readers understand how the defining theme of unity in national political culture has shaped the evolution of Indonesia’s maritime policy from 1945 to 2019. It illustrates how the continuous influence of the theme of national unity as devised by the political elites through history has addressed the realities of the archipelago’s geography, and it is significant from both an academic and practical policy perspective. A book designed for academics and the general public interested in gaining greater insight and knowledge on Indonesia’s maritime policy and maritime nation aspirations.

“Indonesia’s Path toward Middlepowership” is a book deliberately constructed by scholarship around Indonesia and ASEAN to raise awareness of Indonesia’s potential, new leanings and efforts made towards the title of middlepowership in the International order. The content is a rewritten version of papers contributed by scholars for the event called Renaissance which is a short form of Reaffirming Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs in Airlangga International Seminar and Conference. As this book aims to explain the broad elements and concept of Indonesia’s middlepowership it is then divided into 4 distinct chapters that is chosen based on its significancy and reliability on being indicators of middle power country which are: (1) Indonesia’s Maritime Security and its Dynamics (2) Political Economy as Material Modality towards Middlepowership (3) Socio-Cultural Aspects as Imaterial Modality towards Middlepowership and (4) Indonesia’s Domestic Political Affairs and Its Dynamics.

In the twenty-first century, the Indo-Pacific, which spans from the western Pacific Ocean to the western Indian Ocean along the eastern coast of Africa, has emerged as a crucial geostrategic region for trade, investment, energy supplies, cooperation, and competition. It presents complex maritime security challenges and interlocking economic interests that require the development of an overarching multilateral security framework. This volume develops common approaches by focusing on geopolitical challenges, transnational security concerns, and multilateral institution-building and cooperation. The chapters, written by a cross-section of practitioners, diplomats, policymakers, and scholars from the three major powers discussed (United States, China, India) explain the opportunities and risks in the Indo-Pacific region and identify specific naval measures needed to enhance maritime security in the region. Maritime Security in the Indo-Pacific opens by introducing the Indo-Pacific and outlining the roles of China, India, and the United States in various maritime issues in the region. It then focuses on the security challenges presented by maritime disputes, naval engagement, legal issues, sea lanes of communication, energy transport, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, as well as by nontraditional threats, such as piracy, terrorism, and weapons proliferation. It compares and contrasts the roles and perspectives of the key maritime powers, analyzing the need for multilateral cooperation to overcome the traditional and nontraditional challenges and security dilemma. This shows that, in spite of their different interests, capabilities, and priorities, Washington, Beijing and New Delhi can and do engage in cooperation to deal with transnational security challenges. Lastly, the book describes how to promote maritime cooperation by establishing or strengthening multilateral mechanisms and measures that would reduce the prospects for conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.