Australia and Indonesia yesterday agreed on a new defense treaty that will expand their security cooperation and commit them to joint consultations over shared threats.
The treaty was jointly announced in Sydney yesterday by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, who is currently on his first state visit to Australia. Standing alongside Prabowo, the two leaders said that they “substantively concluded” negotiations on the treaty, which builds on the Defense Cooperation Agreement signed last year.
The treaty will commit Australia and Indonesia to “consult at a leader and ministerial level, on a regular basis on matters of security,” Albanese told reporters. It will also facilitate “mutually beneficial security activities, and if either or both countries’ security is threatened, to consult and consider what measures may be taken, either individually or jointly, to deal with those threats.”
Albanese said that the treaty, which will be officially signed in January, was a “watershed moment” that “signals a new era in the Australia-Indonesia relationship.” Prabowo added that “good neighbors will help each other in times of difficulties.” “Our determination is to maintain the best of relationships in order to enhance and guarantee security for both of our countries,” he added.
According to a report by the ABC, the treaty was first raised in discussions between Albanese and Prabowo shortly after Australia’s federal election in May. It was then “negotiated in total secrecy, with both leaders progressing the deal over discussions in New York and ASEAN.”
While the text of the agreement has not been made public, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said it is based on the 1995 security agreement signed by then-Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating and Indonesian President Suharto. Four years later, Jakarta abrogated the pact over Australia’s involvement in the East Timor crisis. ABC reported that after yesterday’s meeting with Albanese, Prabowo met with Keating in Sydney.
The agreement caps a period of growing strategic convergence between Canberra and Jakarta, driven in part by overlapping concerns about China’s growing power and the growing geopolitical turbulence that has resulted. In response, Australia has recently sought to boost defense ties with its Asian neighbors, signing a mutual defense treaty with Papua New Guinea last month.
David Andrews from the National Security College told the ABC that the agreement could end up being “the most significant security partnership Australia has established under Prime Minister Albanese,” and said that its “language of consulting” and references to potential joint action were “consistent with Australia’s existing security partnerships with Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan.”
Other defense analysts have suggested that the treaty, for all its political significance, stops short of representing a significant strategic shift on the part of Indonesia. While Indonesia shares Australian concerns about China, it continues to adhere to a non-aligned foreign policy doctrine that emphasizes sustained defense engagements with all major powers, including China and Russia.
Since taking office in October 2024, Prabowo has paid a state visit to Russia in June, when he and President Vladimir Putin signed a “declaration on strategic partnership.” He has also visited China twice, in November of last year and then again in September, when he attended the massive military parade in Beijing marking the end of World War II. During the parade, he was granted a privileged position on the main rostrum alongside Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
Under Prabowo, Indonesia has also taken part in military exercises with both China and Russia, and became the first Southeast Asian nation to join BRICS, a global grouping that has positioned itself as an alternative to institutions dominated by the U.S. and other Western nations.
This continued engagement on both “sides” of the growing geopolitical divide counsels against grand pronouncements about the treaty, Euan Graham, a senior analyst for defense strategy at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Reuters. Unlike the treaty signed between Australia and Papua New Guinea last month, Graham noted that the agreement doesn’t specifically commit Indonesia and Australia to acting to meet a common danger. He described the agreement as “classic balancing behavior” on the part of Prabowo, and “more about raising the political symbolism” of the relationship between the two nations.
