Regional powers and the Indo-Pacific: comparing India and Indonesia

The strategic approaches of regional powers to the Indo-Pacific remain under-researched. This article attempts to enhance our understanding by comparing India and Indonesia. At first glance, both countries share a number of similar general foreign policy traits (i.e. non-alignment), yet they approach the changing geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific rather differently. For example, while India has been a member of the Quad, Indonesia has remained fairly distant to U.S. led minilaterals in the Indo-Pacific, preferring ASEAN-centric multilateral cooperation instead. The article shows that these differences can be explained by taking into consideration two interrelated factors: The first factor pertains to how India and Indonesia perceive their own status in regional and international affairs, and how their status is perceived (and subsequently conferred or disavowed) by others. The second factor pertains to how India and Indonesia relate to their neighbors and their (sub)region, more specifically to their roles in regional integration processes.