Forging a Resilient Alliance: Unleashing the Potential of Australia-Indonesia Relations on Disaster Management

Indonesia holds the highest number of active volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire, making it            highly vulnerable to natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. Australia is not in any more vantage point either, with an increase of devastating and tragic phenomena and extreme weather as the consequences of climate change. Considering the long history of cooperation between the two countries, including the fields of natural disaster management, this article aims to analyze how Australia and Indonesia have the prospect to strengthen their bilateral relations in addressing the challenges, by analyzing the way cooperative disaster management worked in the past between the two countries. It also seeks to argue that by cooperating together, Australia and Indonesia can build a stronger foundation for regional collaboration, promoting greater resilience, and reducing the human and economic costs of disasters for their countries and the broader region.

On 26 December 2004, there was a 9.1 magnitude earthquake struck off the west coast of Sumatra, followed by a tsunami, simultaneously attacking Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Burma, Thailand, Singapore and the Maldives. This catastrophe has been widely known as one of the deadliest catastrophes of modern history, with Indonesia alone suffering a death toll of approximately 167,000 (Athukorala & Resosudarmo, 2005). Australia, as an Indian Ocean neighbour, had implemented several disaster relief operations and aid-funded mechanisms to support all countries under the consequences of such a natural phenomenon. However, it can be easily observed that Indonesia was the biggest financial receiver, accountable for nearly half of the total $69.6 million of Australia’s contribution to humanitarian assistance (with data provided by DFAT, 2014). Furthermore, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade referred to their support to only Indonesia as “immediate” and provided a formal reconstruction package, but other countries did not experience the exact same amount of treatment. That said, the Indian Ocean tsunami is a typical case to demonstrate how Indonesia plays a significant role in Australia’s foreign policy compared to other neighbours, affirming the potential for further bilateral cooperation between them.

Since the Indian Ocean tsunami, the 28 September 2018 Sulawesi tsunami followed as Indonesia’s fourth major damaging tsunami event, caused by a 7.5 magnitude earthquake, causing a 1.5-metre tsunami waves and resulting in a loss of more than 230,000 lives in Banda Aceh (as cited in Paulik et al., 2019). Again, Australia had proved to be a reliable partner for Indonesia during both tragedies, offering immediate and substantial humanitarian aid and reconstruction contributions, which implies its long-term commitment in supporting Indonesia’s efforts to respond to the crisis. That said, the two cases of 2004 Indian Ocean and 2018 Sulawesi tsunamis are chosen to be discussed as they reveal Australia’s resilience in helping Indonesia to overcome extreme natural events, seeding for the prospect for their cooperative management. They also illustrate the need of one country for external support when facing catastrophes on a massive scale, emphasizing the importance of the interdependence between a country and another.

For fostering the development of Australia-Indonesia relations in disaster management, it is significant to look for Australia’s motives in aiding Indonesia to overcome the disasters. If looking from the academic lenses of realism, for instance, Australia seemingly did not obtain any direct benefits or fulfill its national interests by providing Indonesia with financial and humanitarian aid. Its security, on the contrary, was still pretty solid because no Australians were recorded to be affected by both cases. The dominance of international organizations’ role or significance in mutual gains, as suggested by liberalism, and the social norms or beliefs that urged Australia to help Indonesia from a constructivist perspective also tended to be somewhat vague in this case. Therefore, within the context of this essay, the author believed that a new concept like complex interdependence will be adequate in explaining the motives and prospects of Australia and Indonesia’s bilateral cooperation as it complements the other theories’ gap of explanation.

Complex interdependence should be treated as a description of certain conditions that enable its existence rather than an interpretation of the events (Cowhey, 1978). However, to a certain extent, it can be used to understand why interdependence occurs in specific countries but not others. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye as the founding fathers of the theory, in their work Power and Interdependence: World Politics (1977), framed the characteristics for complex interdependence as (1) multiple channels, (2) absence of hierarchy among issues and (3) minor role of military force. Utilizing the concept, this article seeks to emphasize the high possibility of enhancing Australia-Indonesia interdependence, arguing that all of its three conditions can be found in the area of disaster management.

With regard to the first condition, the two cases of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2018 Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami, witnessed clearly the evidence of contact through multiple channels between Australia and Indonesia. For example, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Australian Government (DFAT) in the former disaster, Australia provided financial assistance to respond to the situation via not only the Indonesian government but also several third-party international organizations acting as connectors, such as the World Food Programme, Surfaid, the International Organisation for Migration and the World Bank, UNICEF, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Health Organization. Furthermore, the contact to support the process of Indian Ocean tsunami disaster management between Indonesia and Australia was also maintained at a micro level of individuals, including technical experts, aid workers, defense personnel and medical teams that came to Northern Sumatra (DFAT, 2014), paving the way for a stronger and more meaningful societal connection of the two countries in circumstances of crises.

Similarly, in the Sulawesi catastrophe in 2018, there was involvement in facilitating states’ communication and management processes by UN agencies and local, regional and international NGOs (DFAT, n.d.). With that being said, the ties in crisis management between Canberra and Jakarta have been strengthened by all three levels of individual, national and international. In other words, they have multiple points of contact to work together to ensure a timely response to such an emergency, when relying only on state-to-state communication might not be the most optimal choice. Such a situation fits closely with what Keohane and Nye (1977) suggested as one of the needs for interdependence.  Multiple channels of interaction, whether formal or informal, are indeed necessary to pave the way for both country-to-country bond and their society and non-governmental elites (Rana, 2015). Such a characteristic of complex interdependence is framed based on the assumption that the more interaction nation-states have, the more sensitive they are to each other’s policies, therefore constructing the foundation for higher level of interdependence. Besides, higher level of communication also likely leads to lower risk of misunderstanding that facilitates them to find common goals, as well as to avoid conflicts of interests.

Moving forward to the second condition, the prospect of Australia-Indonesia cooperative disaster management also manifested in the absence of hierarchy among issues. This means that the common interests of the two nations are beyond military and security problems (Keohane & Nye, 1977). Obviously, when it comes to natural disaster responses, military-related activities are seemingly no longer the main focus, but other concerns might have more room to be taken into account. To be more specific, the Indian Ocean and the Sulawesi tsunamis had brought many other issues into the agenda, including humanitarian, reconstruction and health. In natural catastrophes, besides the loss of lives, there would also be the destruction of facilities, infrastructures and sources of livelihood. Therefore, to address these challenges, the Australian government provided initial emergency response funding of $34.4 million for humanitarian issues and an additional $1 billion package to assist Indonesia in dealing with the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami (DFAT, 2014), which demonstrates the extent of cooperation between the two nations that goes beyond political concerns. Equivalent efforts were also seen in the Sulawesi case, where Australia committed $10.25 million to support Indonesia and humanitarian partners in responding to the consequences of natural tragedies. The scope of assistance comprises fulfilling instantaneous water and sanitation needs, providing shelter, protection services and psychosocial support, and many more (DFAT, n.d). Therefore, it is safe to say that the Australia-Indonesia bilateral relationship has the potential to address contemporary challenges like environment and natural disaster issues rather than only working together on military and security concerns, indicating the absence of hierarchy among issues. This expansion of common interests between states, going beyond conventional issues, is significant in cooperation building as it strengthens their bargaining power. Considering that there are more issues being put on the table to be discussed together, one might be able to compromise its weakness in an area with its strength in another (Brown, 2007), increasing the number of shared interests and opportunities for bilateral cooperation.

The final condition for complex interdependence, which is the minor role of the military, can also be fulfilled in Australia-Indonesia cooperative disaster management. When the condition does not urgently ask for the engagement of armed forces, they might be granted an absence; however, this does not necessarily mean that the two countries could not have political and military relations at all (Keohane & Nye, 1977). In the case of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the occurrence of Australian forces was very minimal, while in the 2018 Sulawesi tsunami and earthquake, the relevance of the military could only be traced when Australian Defence Force (ADF) aircraft facilitated the victims by delivering humanitarian supplies (DFAT, n.d). However, this does not necessarily mean that the two countries do not cooperate in sensitive yet important areas like military and security. This should be perceived more like they prefer choosing a more peaceful option when the circumstances still allow. Australia, in reality, committed to having regional military cooperation with Indonesia in the forms of joint training and export of weapons, as reported by Ali MC (2022) from Aljazeera. From the analyses mentioned above, it could be seen that Australia and Indonesia have fulfilled all three conditions of complex interdependence in responding to natural catastrophes, ready to elevate the bilateral relations to a stronger and tighter one.

Nevertheless, there are still some concerns that should be taken into discussion before Canberra and Jakarta move to the next level of the relationship. When revisiting the theory, it appears that there are some worth-discussing aspects that complex interdependence has not yet explained. For example, it does not explain military-based cooperation or perhaps what happens when one country’s partnership in an alliance potentially affects its other partners. One example of this case is AUKUS – the trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States focusing on nuclear power in the Indo-Pacific in 2021. Many scholars are concerned that it has challenged the regional central role of ASEAN, an organization in which Indonesia is an active member. In addition, the concept is also limited to  explain how two countries can legalize their status of complex interdependent partners in documents, after fulfilling all three characteristics. It is necessary for countries involved to reach more de jure complex interdependence to ensure their commitment to each other and refer to it when unwanted situations ever occur. In the case of Australia and Indonesia, the assistance between the two countries in disasters so far is ad hoc rather than based on any specific agreement or framework, making their cooperation uncertain to a larger or lesser extent. Furthermore, Indonesia, in many cases, has been deemed as a weaker partner of Australia rather than an equal one, considering its incomparable amount of financial contribution to the relations. In the long run, if little effort could be shown, it might trigger concerns of an unequal partnership. While being such an interesting topic to be discussed, these challenges are not part of the scope of this essay, but are more of a suggestion for further investigation.

In conclusion, this paper on disaster management cooperation between Australia and Indonesia highlights the potential for strengthening their bilateral relations within the framework of complex interdependence, having what had been done in the two cases in the past as backup evidence. Australia’s prompt and substantial aids to various connectors, from individual and national to international images, exemplifies the multiple channels of contact between the two countries. The absence of a hierarchy among issues is evident, as both nations prioritize humanitarian, reconstruction, and health concerns over military and security matters. Additionally, the minor role of the military in disaster management cooperation is also discussed within the context of this paper. That said, Australia and Indonesia are well positioned to deepen their bilateral relations regarding disaster management. This collaborative approach not only benefits Australia and Indonesia but also sets an example for regional cooperation and contributes to broader efforts in global disaster management.

References

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Keohane, R. O., & Nye, J. S. (1977). Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company.

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