Title: Molding a Strategic and Professional Indonesian Military: Policy Options for the Next Administration
Abstract: This article addresses the strategic gap between Indonesia's increasingly complex domestic, regional, and global security environment, and the country's inability to fully reform its national military generally known as the Indonesian Defense Forces or TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia). Furthermore, while not neglecting the vast literature on Indonesia's military reform, as well as key reform policies, this article looks at two fundamental problems-the military's education and training system, and the strength of the civilian defense community that must be addressed if we wish to create a strategic and professional military, one that could tackle the country's increasingly complex security environment without usurping basic democratic principles in the long-run. This article also suggests that the President himself, instead of the Defense Minister, should be directly and personally involved in pushing any reform policies within those two areas. Finally, this article tries to move away from the current Security Sector Reform (SSR) parlance and discourse that has thus focused on the military's politics, business, and accountability-and their accompanying regulations.
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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