Bilateral talks between Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa and his Malaysian counterpart, Dato’ Sri Anifah Aman, in Kinabalu (Serawak) on Monday revealed a serious missing link in maintaining cordial relations between the two neighboring countries.
Indonesia, has apparently not completed the delineation of all of its maritime boundaries with Malaysia, including its Exclusive Economic Zones, Territorial Sea boundaries and the Continental Shelves.
Work on this enormous undertaking, which requires adequate funding, teams of trained experts, patience and solid mutual understanding, had apparently been halted since early last year. Good neighborly relations require well-established agreed-upon boundaries.
Norway has been generous in assisting Indonesia to delineate its maritime boundaries by providing necessary funding and technical know-how. True, some parts of the undelineated boundaries require triangular negotiations involving Singapore. The important point that needs to be made here is that apparently Jakarta’s top bureaucracy has not been seized with a continuous sense of urgency to follow up on every article of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea with intense negotiations with our neighboring countries. These negotiations require adequate budgeting, inter-agency cooperation (between the foreign affairs, home affairs, maritime affairs and fisheries ministries, as well as the naval cartographic services of the countries at stake) and firm guidance.
One gains the impression — since Indonesia succeeded in obtaining recognition that as a large archipelagic state it required special considerations, which were subsequently included in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea — that a sense of self-satisfaction prevails in the top echelons of Jakarta’s bureaucracy. Two names of Indonesia’s outstanding experts on the Law of the Sea should be mentioned: Prof. Mochtar Kusumaatmadja and Prof. Hasyim Djalal.
Prof. Mochtar had for many years served as foreign minister and is now enjoying his well-deserved retirement years, while Prof. Hasyim, who has served as ambassador in many postings and who almost 20 years ago initiated the Dialogue on the South China Sea, currently suffers from an overload of assignments. Both were instrumental in securing Indonesia’s interests in the Convention. However, we fail to notice the emergence of a younger team of Indonesian experts on the Law of the Sea.
We should welcome the Kinabalu bilateral talks since, arguably, from now on both sides — having learned from the irrational reactions to the August 13th incident off Riau Island — seem to be determined to complete the delineation of their maritime boundaries. They also realize the need to put into place effective mechanisms to expeditiously solve whatever alleged boundary violations occur. If the involvement of Singapore is required, why not organize triangular talks?
There is an overriding strategic reason why Indonesia and Malaysia (and Singapore too) should do their utmost to complete their maritime boundary agreements as soon as possible. Wounded pride and hurt feelings are not exactly dependable guidelines for reaching mutual agreements with Indonesia’s close neighbors.
Even a cursory glace at a two-dimensional map of Southeast Asia will immediately convey the crucial importance of the Malacca Strait in the regional geopolitical framework. Indonesia and Malaysia, along with Singapore and Thailand, carry the awesome responsibility of maintaining the safety and security of this strategic Sea Lane of Communication (SLOC). And the nearly double-digit economic growth of the People’s Republic of China depends very much on the safety and security of the Malacca Strait.
As Robert D. Kaplan points out in an excellent essay (appearing in Foreign Affairs, March/April 2009), titled “Center Stage for the Twenty-First Century: Power Plays in the Indian Ocean”, “China’s demand for crude oil doubled between 1995 and 2005 and will double again in the coming 15 years or so; by 2020, China is expected to import 7.3 million barrels of crude per day — half of Saudi Arabia’s planned output. More than 85 percent of the oil and oil products bound for China cross the Indian Ocean and pass through the Straits of Malacca”. In other words, the Malacca Strait is China’s potential “choke point” — a phrase that naval strategists like to evoke to outline possible worst-case scenarios. No wonder President Hu Jintao, as quoted by Robert Kaplan, at one time bemoaned “China’s Malacca dilemma”.
Given the strategic importance of the Malacca Strait in nurturing China’s peaceful rise to become “a modernized, medium-level developed country by 2050” (to quote Zheng Bijan, a theoretical thinker of the Communist Party, reportedly close to Hu Jintao), China simply cannot afford to tolerate an ever-quarrelling Indonesia and Malaysia that could impair the safety and security of the strait.
One does not need to acquire abundant geopolitical expertise to envision the possibility that China at a particular stage will feel compelled to “co-manage” the safety and security of the Malacca Strait, if and when Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur keep on bickering on issues that, seen in this wider perspective, could and should be solved amicably and cordially.
Plainly put, unless Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur are willing to risk the involvement of China in managing the safety and security of the Malacca Strait, which would mean the presence of the Chinese navy, then the negotiations initiated in Kinabalu (to be followed-up with a series of technical meetings) should be completed as soon as possible.
As a long-term assignment, Indonesia, Malaysia and, yes, ASEAN in its entirety (particularly, Singapore, Thailand and Myanmar) should think very hard about ways to reduce the increasing traffic — primarily caused by China’s rising demand for oil, oil products and mining products — flowing through the strait. Its not in the interests of preserving “peace in Southeast Asia” (to quote the 1967 ASEAN Charter) if the Malacca Strait increasingly, as China marches toward achieving great power status, becomes Beijing’s nightmare because of an unstable situation induced by bickering between Indonesia and Malaysia. It’s true that China is seeking alternative routes, among others, by completing gas and oil pipelines from Yunan, South China, through Myanmar to a still-undisclosed location along its southern coast. But its capacity is limited and the South China region is not where the demand for energy and mining products is most acute.
Sooner or later, most probably sooner, ASEAN members should consider that in order to prevent unstable developments in the Malacca Strait, the possibility of constructing a canal crossing the Kra Isthmus — the narrow land bridge that connects the Malay Peninsula with the rest of mainland Asia. The east part of the land bridge belongs to Thailand, while the west part belongs to Myanmar. To the west of the isthmus is the Andaman Sea, and to the east is the Gulf of Thailand. At its narrowest point, the Kra Isthmus is 40-48 kilometers wide. From a civil engineering point of view, constructing a Kra canal is not beyond the realm of possibility. As a matter of fact, some preliminary studies have already been made by reputable engineering companies.
The reduction of heavy shipping traffic through the Malacca Strait needs to be considered urgently by ASEAN members before serious accidents occur, which could cause widespread pollution affecting the territorial waters of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
The London-based International Maritime Organization in its 2006 report stated that approximately 65,000 ships per year move through the Malacca Strait. About 60 percent were carrying energy products to China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
There are barely any geopolitical situations in any other parts of the world similar, or almost similar, to that faced by Indonesia and Malaysia in Southeast Asia, in which the overriding strategic interests of an adjacent emerging big power, e.g. China, dwarf the perceived interests and hurt the pride of two bickering less-powerful countries.
Therefore, leaders, strategic thinkers, military commanders and opinion makers in Indonesia and Malaysia should come to their senses and recognize the reality that given this unique geopolitical situation in which their countries are placed, establishing durable cordial bilateral relations across the Malacca Strait is simply “a strategic must”.
The writer is a former ambassador to Australia and currently the coordinator of the International Security Studies Group of the Indonesian Forum of Ambassadors.
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