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View all search resultsIndonesia must put an agenda behind ‘bebas-aktif’
A great power that loses access to adjudication substitutes its own power. A middle power that loses it has nothing to substitute.
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Heads of state and government of member, partner and external engagement countries pose for a family photo during the BRICS Summit on July 7, 2025, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (AFP/Pablo Porciuncula)
O
n Sept. 2, 1948, Mohammad Hatta stood before the working committee of Indonesian National Central Committee (KNIP) in Yogyakarta and delivered the speech we still remember today, Mendayung antara Dua Karang (rowing between two reefs).
The republic was three years old, barely recognized and already being asked whose side it was on. Hatta's answer was not that Indonesia would drift. It was that Indonesia would grow. The metaphor reflects one of navigation and effort. We have spent 78 years quoting the title. It has become a reflex; the phrase we quote for whenever great-power competition leaves us unsure what to do.
After Indonesia’s independence on Aug. 17, 1945, the question of alignment had become unavoidable. The Cold War hardened around the new states of Asia and Africa. Out of that pressure came the Asian African conference in Bandung in April 1955, which was then followed by the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade in 1961.
Something similar is happening now. The Global South again finds itself in the middle of a great power contest.
But the contest is now different. Today, great powers weaponize the global economy through trade, technical standards, payment systems and supply chains conditions.
At the same time, multilateralism is decaying. Global trade rules that have brought prosperity to the Global South for decades are in crumble. What happens on the international trade rules matters far more to us than to Washington or Beijing.
A great power that loses access to adjudication substitutes its own power. A middle power that loses it has nothing to substitute.
