Indonesia’s One Million Soldiers Questions
Commander of the Kostrad 2nd Infantry Division Leads the Handover Ceremony of Positions Middle Officer Units of the Kostrad 2nd Infantry Division | Wikimedia Commons
In an article for War on the Rocks, Muhammad Fauzan Malufti raises concerns over Indonesia’s growing military and asserts that this military will be less effective despite its size.
When journalists or policy experts fretfully discuss arms racing and military buildups in the Indo-Pacific, they tend to focus on Northeast Asian autocracies rather than Southeast Asian democracies. And yet Indonesia, a historically non-aligned nation with no recent history of great-power war, is currently engaged in a process of unprecedented military expansion. If fully realized, this sweeping set of reforms will grow its total active-duty personnel to over 1.2 million in just five years.
This expansion will mostly come from the plan to establish “territorial development infantry battalions” in the army by 2029. Indonesian Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin announced that each battalion will consist of 1,000 personnel. That means these new units will add over 750,000 soldiers to an already sizable force. Indeed, Indonesia currently boasts around 450,000 active military personnel, and, in addition to the aforementioned territorial development battalions, there are other major force enlargement efforts currently underway within the army, navy, and air force.
Such an ambitious expansion with an extremely short timeline demands scrutiny. What threats justify a force build-up of this magnitude? Can the country realistically fund, manage, and sustain such an expansion without undermining modernization and professionalism? How will this policy affect Jakarta’s role in regional security?
By engaging in an analysis across four key dimensions — threat perceptions, budget, institutional realities, and manpower quality — it can be argued that these new battalions could leave Indonesia with a bigger but ultimately less-effective military.
