Diplomatic junkets produce great photography. They rarely produce real power.
When retired diplomats line up to praise the latest bilateral summit between New Delhi and Jakarta, they trot out the same reliable script. They talk about shared maritime heritage, the Chola dynasty, the security of the Malacca Strait, and the inevitable explosion of economic cooperation. It sounds magnificent on paper. It falls apart completely under the cold light of geopolitical reality.
The comfortable consensus among foreign policy elites is that India and Indonesia are natural partners destined to anchor the security of the eastern Indian Ocean. This view is worse than optimistic; it is structurally blind.
The harsh truth is that New Delhi and Jakarta are running on completely different geopolitical tracks. They do not share the same adversary, their economic structures are fundamentally misaligned, and the grand declarations of maritime alignment are largely a performance designed to mask a profound lack of strategic depth.
The Sabang Port Mirage
For nearly a decade, strategic commentators have obsessed over India’s potential access to Indonesia’s Sabang port. Located at the northern tip of Sumatra, right at the mouth of the Malacca Strait, Sabang is routinely described as a masterpiece of maritime positioning that will allow India to choke Chinese naval ambitions.
I have watched defense analysts map out this scenario as if setting up a naval base is as simple as dropping an anchor. Let us strip away the fantasy.
Sabang is a commercial and logistical graveyard. Transforming a minor, underdeveloped port into a facility capable of sustaining serious naval operations requires billions of dollars, sustained political will, and explicit permission from Jakarta. Indonesia has absolutely no intention of granting that permission.
To understand why, you have to look at the foundational doctrine of Indonesian foreign policy: Bebas-Aktif, or "Independent and Active." Jakarta does not do military alliances. It does not host foreign military bases. It views the growing competition between India and China—and the United States and China—not as an opportunity to pick a side, but as a dangerous destabilizing force that threatens its own sovereignty.
When Indian naval ships dock at Sabang for "joint exercises" or "recreational visits," it is a calculated gesture of diplomatic politeness by Indonesia, not a prelude to a joint military command. Jakarta is playing a classic balancing act. They will throw New Delhi a bone to show Beijing they have options, but they will never allow India to use Indonesian soil to project hard power against China. Assuming otherwise is a dangerous miscalculation.
The Commodity Trap Masked as Economic Integration
The economic narrative is equally hollow. Commentators love to point to growing bilateral trade figures as proof of deep integration. This is a deliberate misreading of the data.
India-Indonesia trade is not built on high-value manufacturing, technology transfers, or deep supply-chain integration. It is a primitive exchange dictated by resource deficits. India buys massive quantities of Indonesian crude palm oil and thermal coal. In return, India exports refined petroleum products, commercial vehicles, and agricultural commodities.
This is not a strategic economic partnership; it is a transactional relationship based on raw resource extraction. It is highly vulnerable to regulatory whims and market shocks.
Consider what happens when Jakarta suddenly decides to ban palm oil exports to protect domestic prices, as it has done in recent years. The entire trade architecture convulses.
True economic alignment requires mutual interdependence in critical industries. Right now, Indonesian industries are look northward toward Beijing, not westward toward New Delhi, for the capital, infrastructure, and technology that drive modern economies. China is Indonesia's largest trading partner and its most significant source of foreign direct investment in critical sectors like nickel processing and high-speed rail. India cannot compete with that scale of capital deployment, and no amount of diplomatic rhetoric about "historical ties" will change the math on the ground.
The Core Divergence on China
The fundamental flaw in the India-Indonesia strategic calculus is the assumption that both nations view Beijing through the same threat lens. This is completely false.
India views China as an existential, immediate threat. The unresolved land border in the Himalayas ensures that New Delhi's entire strategic posture is calibrated toward countering and containing Chinese power. Every maritime move India makes in the eastern Indian Ocean is designed to build a counter-weight to the People's Liberation Army Navy.
Indonesia does not see China this way. Jakarta certainly has friction with Beijing over maritime boundaries in the Natuna Sea, where Chinese fishing fleets and coast guard vessels routinely intrude into Indonesia's Exclusive Economic Zone. But Indonesia treats this as a law enforcement and resource management issue, not a military flashpoint that requires joining an anti-China coalition.
Jakarta's elite recognizes that their country’s economic survival is inextricably linked to Beijing. They are masters of compartmentalization. They will lodge diplomatic protests over the Natuna Sea in the morning, and sign multi-billion-dollar infrastructure deals with Chinese state-owned enterprises in the afternoon.
When India approaches Indonesia expecting an ally ready to push back against Chinese hegemony, it misunderstands the Indonesian worldview. Indonesia does not want to contain China; it wants to manage China while extracting maximum economic benefit.
The Empty Rhetoric of "Act East"
India’s "Act East" policy has spent years trying to institutionalize relationships across Southeast Asia. Yet, the institutional tissue remains remarkably thin.
Apart from sporadic naval drills and high-level visits that result in generic joint statements, the actual operational coordination between the two navies is minimal. True maritime domain awareness requires seamless intelligence sharing, integrated radar networks, and shared logistics tables. None of this exists in a meaningful capacity between India and Indonesia.
The structural reality is that both nations are inward-looking maritime powers. India’s naval focus is perpetually pulled back to the Western Indian Ocean and its immediate neighborhood due to persistent threats from Pakistan and the growing Chinese footprint in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indonesia, an archipelagic nation of over 17,000 islands, is consumed by internal maritime policing, piracy control, and domestic inter-island connectivity.
Neither nation has the surplus expeditionary capability or the political capital to sustain a permanent, joint security architecture in the eastern Indian Ocean. The grand statements about securing the global commons are just words written by speechwriters who do not have to worry about naval budgets or fuel procurement realities.
Ditch the Sentimentality
If New Delhi wants a functional relationship with Jakarta, it must strip away the historical romanticism and the strategic wishful thinking. Stop treating Indonesia as a potential junior partner in a grand balance-of-power game against China. They will not play that role.
Instead, India needs to focus on hard, unglamorous economic engagement. Move away from the reliance on coal and palm oil. Invest in Indonesia’s digital economy, healthcare infrastructure, and pharmaceuticals—areas where India actually possesses competitive advantages.
In the maritime sphere, drop the talk of joint containment. Focus on practical, low-stakes cooperation: humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and anti-piracy coordination in the Andaman Sea. These are areas where Indonesian neutrality is not compromised, and where real operational habits can be built over decades.
The current strategy of relying on summit diplomacy to create the illusion of a strategic axis is a dead end. It creates a false sense of security in New Delhi and generates quiet irritation in Jakarta. It is time to accept that India and Indonesia are destined to be polite neighbors, not brothers in arms.
