How Indonesia’s Prabowo will see the world

JAKARTA – Indonesia has the world’s fourth biggest population, boasts the globe’s largest Muslim democracy and sits at the heart of a key region geopolitically – and yet persistently punches below its weight on the global stage.

While national founder Sukarno helped create the Non-Aligned Movement and dictator Suharto was a pivotal Cold War actor, the nation at the heart of Southeast Asia has kept a lower profile since democratization in 1998.

“A thousand friends and zero enemies” has been the national refrain as political elites have focused on the domestic tasks of shaping a post-authoritarian political order and cranking up economic development.

New President-elect Prabowo Subianto, however, may herald a more active approach to Indonesia’s foreign affairs.

For the past decade, Indonesian foreign policy has run on a relatively successful autopilot. President Joko Widodo, aka Jokowi, had so little taste for foreign policy when he came to office in 2014 that after attending his first ASEAN summit he told his aides he intended to never waste his time like that again, and only changed his mind after prodding.

With rare exceptions like a spate of presidential diplomacy around the G20 hosted in Bali in 2022, Indonesia’s foreign affairs were in the hands of Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, a career diplomat who kept to Indonesia’s traditional position of non-alignment between great powers while reinforcing regional ties.

Prabowo, insiders say, can be expected to take a much greater interest in foreign policy. Unlike Jokowi, Prabowo, 72, has spent much of his life abroad and is comfortable doing business in English.

Having doggedly pursued the presidency for decades, insiders say he is keen to leave a lasting legacy, an