Seeking a strategic, professional military institution
Image Source: militaryphotos.net
By Evan A. Laksmana
The Indonesian Military (TNI) celebrated its 63rd anniversary on Oct. 5. Its formal commemoration, however, will be held on Oct. 14 because the original date was too close with Idul Fitri, which fell on Oct. 1.
Sixty-three years after its inception and ten years after the birth of the reform order, the complex challenge of repositioning the military in Indonesia’s democratic setting and building a professional military to tackle the changing security environment remains.
On the domestic front, several contentious issues seem unsettled, including past abuses of military force, despite significant and commendable progress in internal reforms. Meanwhile, the traditional challenge of fighting a conventional war is compounded by an array of modern security issues such as terrorism, disaster relief and illegal fishing.
Richard D. Kohn, a professor at the University of North Carolina, contends that creating a strategic and professional military means dealing with three challenges: the intellectual, political and moral.
The intellectual challenge deals with how to prepare the military to operate successfully in a variety of security environments. For the TNI, this would amount to providing the intellectual foundation for officers to be repositioned.
Despite commendable legal efforts to do so, the intellectual challenge of tackling traditional and modern security challenges in a democratic setting enables us to reconstruct the mind-set of the officer corps by reconsidering the military education and training system along with the military’s basic doctrine.
The former might involve a revamp of previous curricula and teaching methods, since the legacy of the old system preparing officers to play a sociopolitical role, under the now-defunct dual function doctrine, might still linger.
For example, we could consider increasing and refining core military subjects, such as geopolitics and modern warfare, while further improving existing key nonmilitary subjects, such as history, humanitarian law and international relations.
This would not only lay a stronger intellectual foundation for officers by exposing them to critical thinking, but it could also pave the way to civilianize the teaching staff as the courses could be taught by numerous qualified civilian instructors. Plus, more officers could be sent abroad for further education to expose them to other militaries, providing them with a broader strategic perspective.
Although the TNI’s external defense role is legally prescribed, given the low military budget and domestic economic problems, efforts to assist the people is commendable. After all, the devil gives work to idle hands, as the old saying goes.
However, given history, where such “civic missions” were misused by president Soeharto for his own political purposes, a continued persistence on domestic operations might raise concern about possible excesses in the future.
One often overlooked external mission might be considered to help downplay the problem of “idle capacity”, namely international peacekeeping operations. Not only is the TNI’s track record excellent in this regard, but such operations have the potential to replace domestic operations as a key consideration in career promotions while boosting Indonesia’s international image.
However, a modification of the military’s basic doctrine of Total People’s Defense — born from Indonesia’s guerrilla warfare against the Dutch in the 1940s — might be needed to complement any education and training efforts.
One could argue that an archaic formula assuming the TNI to be underdeveloped to face an external attack, and therefore needs to “prepare” the people for guerrilla warfare, could hamper the dynamic and critical thinking necessary to tackle more complicated security challenges, especially in the realm of modern security.
Meanwhile, the political challenge is the military’s political neutrality and subordination to the legally constituted civilian authority. Considering Indonesia’s turbulent civilian-military relationship, this challenge is perhaps the least clear cut.
Thus, a civilian defense community is needed to create a triangular balance and achieve the so-called concordance civil-military relations where the government, officer corps and civil society have a cooperative relationship stressing dialogue, accommodation and shared values.
This could be done through several steps.
First, the government could reduce suspicion and grievances within the officer corps by not politicizing the military, especially on the eve of next year’s elections, and by not interfering excessively in internal military affairs.
Second, the military could maintain the trust extended by the political leadership by continuing the momentum of military reform.
Finally, the moral challenge addresses the internal honor and integrity of the officer corps.
Polls have shown that the military’s public image has significantly improved over the past decade, largely due to perceived civilian corruption and political bickering. However, the recent spat between the National Commission for Human Rights and retired officers regarding investigation into past human rights abuses by the military suggests that a perceived “culture of impunity” might become a “pebble in the shoe” for the military’s public image.
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The writer is a research analyst at the Indonesia Programme at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. This article was published by the Jakarta Post.
Evan, history shows that the earliest root of TNI came from professional military that carried out civilian politicians’ orders. It started with KNIL and PETA who were under Duth Queen’s and Japanese King’s command respectively.
As we know, in its development, TNI adopted “dwi fungsi” which led to political decay in TNI institution. Coen Husain Pontoh elaborates this clearly in his book “TNI Bukan Tentara Rakyat.”
Now, TNI has started new role in Indonesia, however in line with your opinion, TNI will never be considered as a professional military institution if they do not admit and apology their wrong doing in past human rights abuses.
Beni Bevly
23 Oct 08 at 11:30 am
It should also be noted that the historical roots of the TNI in KNIL, PETA, and local laskars are the among the major reasons why the TNI was factionalized in the beginning of the post-Independence period. It should also be noted that history have shown us that the very first act of military insubordination in July 1946 was also caused by civilian weakness and intervention. The more popularly known episode of October 1952 should also be seen in the light of civilian intervention into military affairs.
My point is this Beny, it takes two hands to clap. Yes, the military had ventured in politics and business which led to their ‘decay’, but the civilians are also to blame in this regard. It should also be noted in this case that dwi-fungsi as it was originally conceived by Nasution was meant to be ‘temporary’. In fact Nasution later became dwi-fungsi’s most staunch critic. This relates to another fact regarding the TNI, they should be considered to be a ‘total’ and monolith institution. Cleavages and factions will always exists within the TNI due to their institutional fault lines (This is actually what I’m working on for my thesis, so I will let you know later on how this hypothesis went ^_^).
So in regards to military decay due to their political and business roles, it should be noted that military intervention happened due to not only because of military’s self-centered greed, but civilian incompetence and political opportunity also arise throughout our nation’s history. Look at the post-Suharto military role. It was the civilian politicians that kept dragging the military back into politics, while at the same time military officers (mostly retired ones) are also increasingly participating in local politics and political parties. A friends of mine who worked with Imparsial told me that military officers told him that civilian invitations to politics is like a ‘wedding invitation’ — it’s not polite to refuse.
At the end, I do agree that normatively speaking, the military as an institution, should have apologized for their wrongdoing in the past. Wiranto did this in 1999/2000 regarding the case of Aceh. But apologies won’t suffice, a complete historical reconstruction and disclosure of facts are of course required. This of course if another set of problems. Problems that could cause serious civil-military conflict, and when this kind of conflict escalates, usually the minorities pay. This is why my approach on military reform has been a departure from the usual approach of asking radical and quick results. No one has ever thought about what’s gonna happen in the next 20-25 years, and this is why I’m taking military education is my approach.
Yes, I have read Coen Pontoh’s book. It’s a pretty good investigatory book on the military, although I must add that nothing he wrote is entirely new in terms of facts as scholars working on Indonesian military have wrote about it decades ago, and some of its parts are I think not exactly a scholarly work. But then again, I don’t think the book is meant for an academic audience, and I do respect him personally for what he went through under Suharto.
Just a note, if you happened to have a free time, try to read a book by Jun Honna, Military Politics and Democratization in Indonesia (Routledge, 2003). He wrote a chapter on military approach to the issue of human rights violations that I think is very well written and shows how there is no ‘unified’ military approach to key issues.
Evan
23 Oct 08 at 3:53 pm
correction: This relates to another fact regarding the TNI, they should NOT be considered to be a ‘total’ and monolith institution. (2nd paragraph of my previous comment)
Sorry for the typo. =) [wrote the comment after I got out of bed this morning]
Evan
24 Oct 08 at 4:39 pm
I just thought I should re-write my previous comment (due to reasons mentioned before!). Apologies Beni, I can be a bit anal about stuff like this. ^_^
It should also be noted that the historical roots of the TNI in KNIL, PETA, and local laskars are the among the major reasons why the TNI was factionalized in the beginning of the post-Independence period. It should also be noted that, as history have shown us, the very first act of military insubordination in July 1946 was caused by civilian weakness and intervention. The more popularly known episode of 17 October 1952 should also be seen in this light of civilian intervention into military affairs.
My point is this Beny, it takes two hands to clap. Yes, the military had ventured in politics and business which led to their ‘decay’, but the civilians are also to blame in this regard. It should also be noted in this case that dwi-fungsi as it was originally conceived by Nasution was meant to be ‘temporary’. In fact Nasution later became dwi-fungsi’s most staunch critic. This relates to another fact regarding the TNI, they should not be considered as a ‘total’ and monolith institution. Cleavages and factions will always exists within the TNI due to their institutional fault lines (This is actually what I’m working on for my thesis, so I will let you know later on how this hypothesis went ^_^).
In regards to military ‘decay’ due to their political and business roles, it should be noted that military intervention happened not only because of military’s self-centered greed, but also due to civilian incompetence and political opportunity which arise throughout our nation’s history.
Look at the post-Suharto military role. It was the civilian politicians that kept dragging the military back into politics, while at the same time military officers (mostly retired ones) are also increasingly participating in local politics and political parties. A friend of mine who worked with Imparsial told me that military officers told him that civilian invitations to politics is like a ‘wedding invitation’ — it’s not polite to refuse!
At the end, I do agree that normatively speaking, the military as an institution, should have apologized for their wrongdoing in the past. Wiranto did this in 1999/2000 regarding the case of Aceh. But apologies won’t suffice, instead, a complete historical reconstruction and disclosure of facts are required. This of course is another set of problems. Problems that could cause serious civil-military conflict, and when this kind of conflict escalates, usually the minorities pay (think back to the days of 1965, 1998, and Ambon).
This is why my approach on military reform has been a departure from the usual approach of asking radical and quick results. No one has ever thought about what’s gonna happen in the next 20-25 years, and this is why I’m taking military education is my approach.
Meanwhile, yes, I have read Coen Pontoh’s book. It’s a pretty good investigatory book on the military, although I must add that nothing he wrote is entirely new in terms of facts as scholars working on Indonesian military have wrote about it decades ago, and some of its parts are I think not exactly a scholarly work. But then again, I don’t think the book is meant for an academic audience, and I do respect him personally for what he went through under Suharto.
Just a note, if you happened to have a free time, try to read a book by Jun Honna, Military Politics and Democratization in Indonesia (Routledge, 2003). He wrote a chapter on military approach to the issue of human rights violations that I think is very well written and shows how there is no ‘unified’ military approach to key issues.
Evan
24 Oct 08 at 4:47 pm