Could Vietnam dethroned Indonesia as the regional power of Southeast Asia in the near future? <https://www.quora.com/Could-Vietnam-dethroned-Indonesia-as-the-regional-power-of-Southeast-Asia-in-the-near-future> <https://www.quora.com/profile/James-Wu-43> James Wu <https://www.quora.com/profile/James-Wu-43>, Studied Southeast Asian history and politics Answered Mar 18 <https://www.quora.com/Could-Vietnam-dethroned-Indonesia-as-the-regional-power-of-Southeast-Asia-in-the-near-future/answer/James-Wu-43>
I will answer this from the perspective of a Singaporean, a fellow Southeast Asian. The phrase “regional power of Southeast Asia” is rendered somewhat meaningless by geographical realities. Southeast Asia is not an organic region. It is very clearly disaggregated into 2 components: mainland SEA and maritime SEA The old name for mainland Southeast Asia is Indochina (the French used this term to refer to their colonies but originally it referred to the entire mainland), which makes sense because the states here are located at the crossroads of Chinese and Indian political/economic/cultural influence. The operative geostrategic concept here is land power (military and economic): infantry, armour, high-speed railways, pipelines, etc. The old name for maritime Southeast Asia is the Malay Archipelago, or Nusantara. It contains a number of key maritime trade routes and chokepoints which became increasingly salient from the beginning of the Age of Sail. The operative geostrategic concept here is sea power (military and economic): warships, submarines, merchant fleets, sea ports. Mainland and maritime Southeast Asia are divided by two seas: the Andaman Sea (which narrows into the strait of Malacca) and the South China Sea What this means is that any Southeast Asian regional power, to attain hegemony over the ENTIRE region, must project their power over these substantial bodies of water. I cannot imagine either Indonesia or Vietnam doing this for the foreseeable future (China is a different matter but we will exclude it from this discussion since it is not, strictly speaking, part of Southeast Asia). Hence, hegemony can only be partial. Moreover, Vietnam and Indonesia’s considerable geopolitical strengths are counterbalanced by significant geopolitical challenges which pose difficulties for each of them attaining regional preeminence. In terms of demography, Indonesia has the largest population of the maritime SEA states; likewise Vietnam has the largest population on the mainland. Human resources are important: not just in terms of manpower for labor-intensive agricultural or manufacturing jobs but also in terms of generating intellectual capital and innovative ideas in a knowledge-based society and economy. You need people to build stuff, invent stuff, grow stuff, run stuff, etc. Indonesia’s population far outstrips that of all the other Southeast Asian states, dwarfing that of Vietnam by a factor of about 2.5. Hence it is fair to say that Indonesia has the greatest POTENTIAL of all the Southeast Asian states. Culturally, Vietnam has an advantage (somewhat akin to that of China) because of its ethnic and religious uniformity. The ethnic Kinh, or the Viet people, comprise an overwhelming 85.7% of the population, and most are secular/atheist. A predominant cultural mindset/values, shared historical background and standardized/mutually intelligible linguistic framework is highly conducive to national unity and social cohesion. Indonesia is slightly disadvantaged here. The majority Javanese only make up about 40% of the population, with the rest being segmented into a multiplicity of ethnic minorities. This presents difficulties for national integration, as Indonesian leaders like Sukarno found out in the early years of independence, when ethnic secessionist movements and rebellions erupted all across the archipelago and had to be put down by the TNI. Then again, an overwhelming 87% of Indonesians are Muslim, so Islam might constitute a centripetal unifying force in the construction of national identity. (although if I am not wrong, the Islam practiced in Indonesia tends to be more syncretic and pluralistic than the stricter “orthodox” Arabized version of Islam practiced in the Middle East). Economically, Indonesia is in the lead by far. The IMF graph below does not adequately reflect this, but in absolute terms, Indonesia’s GDP is about 4 times that of Vietnam. Indonesia’s economy started off as largely reliant on the primary sector i.e. resource extraction like agriculture, mining, oil production etc. The vast resource endowments and natural wealth of the massive archipelago undoubtedly grants it an advantage in this aspect. But from the 1960s onward under Suharto, the Father of Development, it really industrialized and its growth took off spectacularly. Today it is still in the midst of transitioning away from the secondary sector (manufacturing) toward the tertiary one (services). It no longer relies as much on resource extraction for wealth, which is good. Vietnam’s lagging GDP is understandable because it was slightly late to the economic development game, having lost a few decades under the stifling command economy, and before that, being embroiled in 30 years of continuous war. It only embraced the free market around the 1990s, when the Doi Moi reforms were implemented. Vietnam is currently in a similar stage of development as Indonesia, transitioning from the secondary to tertiary sector, but still lagging behind somewhat. The primary sector (Agriculture + Others) remains a relatively larger part of GDP than Indonesia, meaning Vietnam is still industrializing. Militarily, qualitative assessments of military strength are just as important as quantitative assessments. Both are pretty formidable, but in different ways. Having mentioned the relative importance of land power and sea power in mainland and maritime SEA earlier, it makes sense that Vietnam has a comparatively larger army and Indonesia has a comparatively larger navy. This is due to divergence of geostrategic focus. The Vietnamese army is battle-hardened: for 3 consecutive decades from about 1945 to 1975, Vietnam had known no other experience but war. Its army had fought four Great Powers (Imperial Japan, France, the US, and China) to win and preserve its independence. In the course of the three Indochina Wars, it had access to and experience handling Soviet, American, and Chinese military hardware and equipment. I can say with moderate confidence that of all the Southeast Asian countries, Vietnam has THE most well-tested and robust military capabilities, ranging from small-scale guerrilla warfare to regular conventional operations, hence the well-deserved title “the Prussians of Asia”. In the mid-to-late 1970s the great fear was that the Vietnamese army, after taking Cambodia, would overrun Thailand and the rest of mainland Southeast Asia. Vietnam alone in Southeast Asia has tasted war, endured its lessons, and, to a significant degree, mastered its practice. As they say, experience is the best teacher. It is militarily well prepared to repulse and defend against threats from potential Great Power adversaries (China), or to project power offensively against its slightly weaker mainland Southeast Asian neighbors. In short, its well-honed military’s function is external. In comparison, Indonesia’s military has fulfilled a function that is mostly internal. The TNI’s main expertise and mission has always been the quelling of regional unrest or rebellions mostly within the operational reach of its amphibious capability. The army has mostly been used to reimpose domestic order by force. As such I would imagine it specializes more in counterinsurgency and stabilization operations. This is not to say that Indonesia does not have some experience dealing with external threats, real or perceived. The fledgling TNI fought a fierce guerrilla war against the returning Dutch colonial masters in the war for independence, buying time for an eventual diplomatic solution. Under Sukarno, Konfrontasi was waged against the Federation of Malaya, mostly on the island of Borneo but also on the Malay Peninsula. During the Confrontation Indonesia deployed light infantry, commandos/special forces, and demonstrated its amphibious and airborne capabilities. The conflict was of a low-intensity nature, and operations were mostly confined to small-scale infiltration, raids, and ambushes. Success was limited in the face of British air and naval superiority. Finally, a geographical analysis of both Vietnam and Indonesia reveals that both face significant constraints. In Vietnam’s case, it possesses a tremendous geographic advantage in the form of not one (Thailand only has one) but two territorial-population “cores”: the Red River Delta in the north and the Mekong River Delta in the south, both of which are highly productive in terms of their agricultural output, and commercially vital in terms of their access to seaborne and coastal trade. Both river deltas are lowland plains, meaning that they are highly conducive to military consolidation and political centralization as well. The Red River Delta is well shielded by mountains and jungles, rendering it defensible against invasion from the north. But the disadvantage is that those two cores are separated by an extremely thin coastal spine, a strip of territory which, to make it worse, is very mountainous. Mountains are just about the best natural barrier you can ask for, meaning that this mountainous spine impedes connectivity between the northern and southern cores, exacerbating political and economic divisions (see: North and South Vietnam). Imagine having two brains or hearts but connected only by a fragile, narrow conduit of nervous tissue or blood vessels. Another geographic problem (but also an opportunity) for Vietnam is that it is territorially contiguous with China - the two share a border. Now this has historically been good because Vietnam has benefited from the influx and absorption of the Chinese language, culture, political institutions, technology etc. But it also presents an occasional security threat, as a thousand years of Chinese domination and more recently the 1979 war have illustrated. China has demonstrated the increasing reach of its naval power as well in the case of the disputed Paracel and Spratly Islands. Vietnam is of course powerful when compared with its Southeast Asian neighbours. But this intimate geographic access/proximity to and from China (which Myanmar and Laos do not share) means, if I may quote George R.R. Martin, “however bright a torch might burn it can never match the rising sun”. What about Indonesia’s geography? The first thing that stands out is its size. Indonesia is very clearly and indisputably the largest member of ASEAN, meaning that it can likely support a population to match that size. Moreover Indonesia’s islands are endowed with an abundance of natural resources which can be transmuted into wealth: tin, oil, natural gas, copper, and spices. In the early years of development this fuelled a burgeoning primary-sector economy. Indonesia’s other major geostrategic advantage is that it sits astride multiple key maritime lines of communication i.e. shipping routes . It is also a major gatekeeper of several vital strategic straits/maritime chokepoints in the First Island Chain (the Sunda Strait, the Malacca Strait, Makassar Strait etc). This means that it benefits greatly from the lifeblood of seaborne commerce circulating through maritime Southeast Asia; it also means that if Indonesia develops a sufficiently robust naval capability it is well-placed to exercise sea control and denial against potential adversaries. But Indonesia is also constrained by one major geographic weakness, namely its archipelagic fragmentation. Its heartland is the island of Java, but the Indonesian state as a whole has a liquid core (the Java Sea). For Jakarta to exert political control over the disconnected outlying islands it must be able to project sea power across a vast stretch of scattered, dispersed islands. The lack of territorial contiguity is not conducive to political centralization. Instead it facilitates the emergence of regional identities and secessionist or separatist movements (Aceh, East Timor, etc.) Indonesia is hard-pressed to manage and administer its multiple islands and control its maritime core. This is a challenge that is very taxing in terms of resources and attention. Moreover, only about 6000 of Indonesia’s 17000 islands are populated - that’s a lot of potential left undeveloped. So, what this all means, in geopolitical terms, is that Vietnam and Indonesia, if they achieve pre-eminence, will do so in their SEPARATE spheres of influence. And these spheres of influence are unlikely to encompass the whole of the mainland or maritime realms respectively, but only a PART thereof. Historically, Vietnam’s sphere, although never fully achieved in reality during the three Indochina wars, has been expressed in the form of an Indochinese communist bloc encompassing Laos and Cambodia: Indonesia’s sphere, also never fully realized during Konfrontasi, was historically articulated in terms of Sukarno’s Indonesia Raya encompassing Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore: In any case, I do not think either Indonesia or Vietnam are close to achieving such a sphere of influence in the foreseeable future. Neither are likely to become pseudo-hegemons in the respective mainland and maritime subregions, much less become the sole hegemon of Southeast Asia. But the fact that they already are, or are likely to become SUB-REGIONAL MIDDLE POWERS cannot be denied. This does not mean they will dominate their respective spheres - indeed we can see Singapore and Cambodia practicing power-balancing to hedge against that (Cambodia by seeking Chinese patronage, Singapore by maintaining a considerable military deterrent) - but rather, it means that Indonesia and Vietnam are or probably will be primus inter pares (first among equals) in their respective sub-regions by virtue of their geopolitical weight. They will always be important in the grand strategic calculus of the region, and neighboring states will take into consideration this importance. In conclusion, competition is not, as OP’s question seems to suggest, a zero-sum game. There will be no “dethroning” simply because there is no “throne” of hegemony for any Southeast Asian state to sit on in the first place. The regional dynamics of Southeast Asia have always been characterized by complexity, diversity, plurality, and some degree of “multipolarity”. I see this as a good thing for Southeast Asia and foresee a hopeful future for ASEAN: Indonesia and Vietnam will be a ballast for our otherwise lightweight region which is likely to be tossed about in the waves of Great Power competition (namely China and the US, but to a lesser extent Japan, India, etc.) in the decades to come. This is not to say that ASEAN will agree on everything, but incoherence has a virtue of its own. The point I am making is that having these two important sub-regional middle powers, with substantial weight of their own, exuding their own geopolitical gravity, will ground us (the smaller ASEAN states) more firmly and prevent us from being drawn into the orbit of one hegemonic Great Power or another. It is there, suspended between multiple gravitational fields, that we will find our maximum autonomy. Otherwise we face the danger of being polarized and becoming beholden to one Great Power or another. Southeast Asia has been described as a potential “shatterbelt”: a fragile region caught between externally colliding/competing Great Powers, internally fractured by ethnic and cultural divisions, and under persistent geopolitical stress. Other “shatterbelts” include the Eastern European Balkans and the Middle East. With any luck, Vietnam and Indonesia will act as regional stabilizers, lending some geopolitical solidity to ensure we do not crumple and crack in the decades to come. There is a Chinese proverb that goes: “As there cannot be two suns in the heavens, there cannot be two emperors on earth” (天无二日，地无二王). I will end by happily rebutting that proverb with another saying: “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend” (百花齐放，百家争鸣) Diversity is ASEAN’s destiny. Below: Indonesia’s national animal, the Garuda, happily embraces Vietnam’s national animal, the Water Buffalo 6.9k views View Upvoters View Sharers
