Beyond the ‘Bandung divide’? Assessing the scope and limits of Australia–Indonesia security cooperation

Abstract

Despite sharing many strategic interests, Indonesia and Australia have often struggled to forge effective security cooperation. In this article, the authors evaluate the ‘Bandung divide’ as a potential explanation for this difficulty. The ‘Bandung divide’ refers to the legacies of the 1955 Asian-African Conference, which saw Indonesia and Australia adopt different normative orientations towards the liberal international order, and divergent security strategies for South-East Asia. Having sketched the contours of the ‘Bandung divide’ and established its heuristic utility as a shorthand for the two countries’ divergent approaches to international order and regional security, the authors then evaluate its contemporary significance as a barrier to bilateral security cooperation in relation to two key challenges: Chinese revisionism in the South China Sea and transnational jihadist terrorism. Indonesia and Australia’s divergent approaches to regional security—themselves partially legacies of the ‘Bandung divide’—have prevented meaningful bilateral collaboration in engaging the South China Sea dispute. By contrast, the two countries have built an effective and heavily institutionalised counterterrorism partnership, proving that the ‘Bandung divide’ is not an insuperable barrier to cooperation. The highly restrictive circumstances that made this success possible nevertheless caution against unduly optimistic assumptions that the two countries will be able to forge a more comprehensive security partnership in the foreseeable future.