Indonesia will celebrate the 80th anniversary of its Constitution in August 2025 amid growing security cooperation with Australia, the United States, and other Allies and Partners in the Indo-Pacific.
“I am here in Indonesia because no relationship is more important to Australia than this one,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in mid-May 2025 after meeting with Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in Jakarta.
The nations’ Defense Cooperation Agreement, signed in August 2024, is Jakarta’s “greatest commitment yet to enhancing defense collaboration and addressing shared security challenges,” according to Aisha Kusumasomantri and Benedicta Nathania, researchers at Indo Pacific Strategic Intelligence (ISI), a Jakarta-based think tank.
For Indonesia, the agreement “is historic as it allows military drills and mutual force operations within each other’s territories. For Australia, this agreement offers better operational proximity to potential flashpoints, such as the South China Sea,” they wrote in March 2025 in the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s The Strategist.
Indonesia and the U.S., which commemorated 75 years of diplomatic ties in November 2024, “share an abiding common interest in a more prosperous, secure, and democratic Indo-Pacific region,” the U.S. State Department said.
Super Garuda Shield illustrates that mutual commitment. The exercise began as a bilateral exchange between the Indonesian and U.S. armies in 2007 and grew into a multilateral event in 2022. The 2024 iteration drew participants from Australia, Canada, France, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the United Kingdom. Brazil, Brunei, Fiji, Germany, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Papua New Guinea (PNG), the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Vanuatu sent observers.
The roster of participants highlights the Indonesia-U.S. partnership’s effectiveness in enhancing regional stability and supporting a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, according to the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.
Other Indonesia-U.S. engagements include Cope West, which began in 1989 and allows the Indonesian Air Force and the U.S. Pacific Air Forces to exchange tactics and training procedures. Indonesia also partners with the Hawaii National Guard through the U.S. State Partnership Program and participates in bilateral and multilateral exercises including Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training and Rim of the Pacific.
Under its “free and active” foreign policy, Jakarta seeks to balance its partnerships while maintaining strategic autonomy, and its participation in multilateral exercises exemplifies that principle, analysts say.
Indonesia and the U.S. elevated their ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in November 2023 to expand collaboration in counterterrorism, cybersecurity and maritime domain awareness, while deepening defense cooperation in areas such as military medicine, space and countering weapons of mass destruction.
FORUM, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025, has highlighted Indonesia’s engagements with Allies and Partners throughout the decades, including when Jakarta:
- Affirmed its defense partnership with Malaysia in April 2025 in the face of shared threats from terrorism, piracy and cross-border crime.
- Bolstered ties with South Korea’s defense industry, with a focus on aerospace development.
- Worked with Vietnam on an exclusive economic zone agreement to settle a long-standing debate on overlapping maritime territories and present a united front against China’s expansive and illegal claims in the South China Sea.
- Conducted maritime security training with the Philippines, Vietnam and the U.S.
- Embarked on a goodwill mission that deployed the Indonesian Navy’s hospital ship to Fiji, PNG, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
