Indonesia crisis as an example

Indonesia's Crisis: The Lesson for China

introductionIndonesia, as we have long predicted, is coming apart. This process has a great deal of relevance to China, whose army, like Indonesia's, was accustomed to making lots of money and now resents the fact that the good times are over. In both countries, making money became the basis for military loyalty to the regime, which in turn needed the army as guarantor. But in China, as in Indonesia, the military is no longer making money, and China has banned its officers from business. Now Beijing is creating international tension to soak up the military's energy and resentment. But in the end, the guarantor of the regime can bring its death, leaving warlords poised to take power.

ANALYSIS

We have long argued that the Asian economic meltdown, as its ultimate legacy, would politically reconfigure Asia. We meant this in both the international and domestic sense: Nations would behave differently after the meltdown than they did during the past generation of extraordinary prosperity. The reconfiguration of Sino-American relations is an obvious manifestation of this. But it is the domestic political changes that are the most profound and will have the most impact on international relations. It should be obvious that an economic transformation of the magnitude we have seen cannot help but have equally dramatic political consequences.

Asia is obviously a diverse region. It goes without saying that the economic meltdown will affect Japan's politics dramatically differently than Malaysia's. However, events during the last week have drawn our attention to one area of commonality: the effect of the economic crisis on the military in China and in Indonesia.

These two countries are not usually lumped together; they differ in profound ways. But they share this: they have both used their military forces for three missions ' protection against foreign enemies, enforcement of internal security and development of the economy. During the previous generation, the latter role became more and more important for both the Chinese and Indonesian militaries.

But Asia's recent economic crisis, the states and circumstance have forced both militaries to de-emphasize their economic roles. Not only are the militaries not happy about this, but their unhappiness could destabilize their respective regimes. Quite apart from the truly disturbing prospect of an Asia dealing simultaneously with both Chinese and Indonesian instability, there are important lessons to be learned from the way in which each country used the military and the consequences of that use.

The fundamental roles of both the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) were originally the same, to serve as the foundation of a regime governing a restive, multi-ethnic populace engaged in building a cohesive nation-state. Although circumstances were different in China and Indonesia, there was great commonality of purpose.

On the one hand, the armies in both countries were designed to guarantee internal security so that the state could construct its control mechanisms in safety. On the other hand, the army -- as one of the few genuinely national institutions -- was an instrument of nation-building. By recruiting members throughout society, these armies served as a means for upward mobility and as a tool for integrating diverse elements into a cohesive whole. As was the case in many new societies, the military served not only as a means for stability, but also as a tool of modernity.

The Chinese and Indonesian armies played similar roles in controlling the social instability created by their charismatic leaders. Beginning with the October, 1965, backlash against the communists, the Indonesian military steadily asserted itself, and under the leadership of then-Gen. Suharto, the legacy of Indonesia's founder Sukarno steadily diminished. The PLA intervened to crush the Mao-inspired Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The PLA's intervention not only stabilized a China that was oscillating out of control and moving toward chaos, but it created the framework that led to the victory of Deng Xiaoping over Maoist forces and set the stage for the implementation of Deng's economic reforms.

Both China and Indonesia moved cautiously toward engagement with the outside world's economic system. Both Deng and Suharto held the reins tightly on the process of development. But as economic development began to accelerate and involvement with international finance developed, both Deng and Suharto had to involve their militaries, not only to control the process but also to facilitate it.

In developing countries, the military is frequently the most modern institution in society. Preparing for war requires two things. The first is some degree of familiarity with technology and the principle of technological development. In societies in which the understanding of better and worse technology is fairly abstract, the military -- which lives and dies by better and worse technology -- is frequently the most capable of evaluating and adapting it. Second, as the largest integrated organization in the country, the army has to some degree mastered the management and coordination of large numbers of personnel in dispersed locations, cooperating to achieve the same end.

Thus, the Indonesian and Chinese armies had a more intimate understanding of technology and a more efficient means of organizing production than other institutions. In a China, where the Cultural Revolution had torn out the heart of the nation's managerial class, and an Indonesia in which the managerial class had either been Dutch or had emigrated, turning to the military to facilitate economic development was a natural choice. Moreover, in two xenophobic countries where economic development necessarily meant dealing with suspect foreigners, a commitment to national security was another reason to rely on the military.

There was another issue: Both the Chinese and Indonesian regimes depended on the loyalty of their military to survive. If economic development was to take place, the officer corps had to be permitted to participate in it. If, having saved the regime, the officers were to see other segments of society prospering while they were excluded, the inevitable dissatisfaction would threaten the regime's survival. It was simply good politics to allow the military to participate in the economic development process.

Thus, ...

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