Jakarta, Indonesia - In early 2025, Indonesia's passage of a revised National Armed Forces (TNI) Law is triggering significant unease across various segments of society. Framed as a technical response to evolving security landscapes such as cyber threats and terrorism, the amendments, in reality, risk severely undermining the specialization of the military and the principle of civilian control – crucial achievements in Indonesia's democratic development.
For over two decades since the fall of the Suharto New Order regime, Indonesia has pursued security sector reform with the explicit aim of building a military that is externally oriented, politically neutral, and accountable to civilian authorities. However, the newly revised TNI Law signals a potentially significant reversal of these efforts. The amendments formally authorize the TNI to participate in civilian governance and explicitly permit the appointment of active military officers to key state institutions, including the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), the National Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN), the National Narcotics Agency (BNN), and even the Supreme Court and the Ministry of Law and Human Rights.
While the military has historically played informal or temporary roles in certain areas, this legal revision institutionalizes this expansion, granting the military legally sanctioned roles across Indonesia's civilian bureaucracy. The change may appear subtle, but its implications are profound.
A Professional Military by Design: Three Pillars Shaken
The reformist vision for the post-Suharto military was significantly influenced by global norms of military professionalism. Political scientist Samuel Huntington famously defined military professionalism as resting on three core elements: expertise in the management of violence (warfighting and defense strategy), a distinct corporate identity separate from civilian society, and a sense of responsibility to the democratically elected civilian leadership. Contemporary scholars like Colin Robinson have reaffirmed these principles, particularly in the context of emerging democracies in Africa and Asia, where blurred civil-military boundaries have often undermined long-term democratic stability.
Indonesia's 2025 TNI Law poses a serious challenge to all three of these Huntingtonian principles.
Firstly, the law dilutes military expertise by assigning the TNI responsibilities beyond its core competencies. Cyber defense, public health crisis response, and narcotics enforcement demand entirely different institutional capacities, including legal expertise, public accountability mechanisms, and civilian oversight – areas where a military trained for conventional defense operations cannot simply adapt or substitute. Indonesia already possesses dedicated agencies for these functions: BSSN for cyber security, BNN for narcotics control, BNPB for disaster management, and Kominfo for digital governance. Rather than enhancing inter-agency coordination, embedding the military risks creating operational overlap, institutional confusion, and potential turf wars, ultimately weakening the state's ability to govern effectively.
Secondly, the law threatens the TNI's corporate identity as a specialized force. When military personnel serve as advisors or administrators in civilian institutions – especially those with legal or political mandates – they lose time, focus, and cohesion within their units. Their roles and incentives shift away from maintaining combat readiness or defense strategy towards navigating bureaucratic politics. Over time, this erodes the military's internal discipline and esprit de corps, blurring the lines between soldier and state administrator.
Thirdly, and most significantly, this legal expansion severely undermines the principle of civilian supremacy. By deeply embedding the TNI across Indonesia's civilian bureaucracy, the military gains direct access to policy processes, strategic information, and public budgets – without a proportional increase in mechanisms of democratic oversight. This raises concerns that the TNI may act not as a neutral protector of the state but as a vested political actor with its own interests to protect. Once these roles are entrenched, they become exceptionally difficult to reverse, particularly in environments where institutional accountability remains limited.
A Wider Current of Deviation
Indonesia's democratic trajectory has long been lauded as a model for civil-military relations reform in Southeast Asia. However, recent years have witnessed a weakening of the state's commitment to external defense modernization. The Minimum Essential Force (MEF) program, initiated in 2009 to bolster the TNI's defense capabilities, has been repeatedly hampered by budget shortfalls, disjointed procurement, and wavering political will. Indonesia remains significantly reliant on outdated platforms while its neighbors advance technologically. As recent reports indicate, the MEF has drifted from the attention of many policymakers even amidst a more competitive maritime environment.
Instead of reinvesting in external defense capabilities, Indonesia appears to be shifting towards a politically, institutionally, and strategically inward orientation. The new TNI Law is part of a broader trend that frames domestic issues like cybercrime, disinformation, narcotics trafficking, and disaster risks as existential threats best handled by centralized, coercive actors. This security logic justifies an expanded military role within the government at the expense of civilian institutions, which are the bedrock of democracy.
This inward turn is not unique to Indonesia. In his seminal 1983 essay, "The Security Predicament of the Third World," Mohammed Ayoob cautioned that post-colonial states often prioritize internal threats over external adversaries as primary justifications for militarization. In this context, the military is deployed to ensure regime survival and internal order rather than deter foreign aggression. This shift redefines national security as a project of social control rather than sovereign defense.
The danger of this posture lies in its normalization. As the military becomes legally enmeshed in judicial bodies, cyber security agencies, and intelligence services, their presence transforms from an exceptional response to crisis into a standard feature of governance. And unlike states of emergency, there is no built-in expiration date. Over time, the boundaries between civilian and military government erode, reform becomes more challenging, and democratic backsliding becomes increasingly difficult to reverse.
A Critical Juncture for Indonesia's Future
Indonesia's new TNI Law does not herald a return to outright authoritarian rule. It does not call for the declaration of martial law, the suspension of civil liberties, or the dissolution of parliament. However, it codifies a structural shift in how the state perceives security and who it believes should be responsible for maintaining it. This quiet legal restructuring could have more far-reaching consequences in the long term than any overt crisis.
The deeper question now is whether Indonesia is drifting towards a model where the military increasingly views society itself as a threat. If so, the implications for democratic accountability, human rights, and regional stability will be extensive. Southeast Asia already hosts several hybrid regimes where the military plays a central role in governance, or directly rules, as in Myanmar. Indonesia, once considered a democratic anchor in the region, must now decide if it will continue to pursue a different course.
Preserving military professionalism means more than just preventing coups. It involves safeguarding institutional boundaries, reaffirming civilian control, and ensuring the military remains focused, trained, and equipped for external defense. Despite significant progress since 1998, Indonesia's reform project remains unfinished, and this moment may well determine its future trajectory.
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