In early 2025, Indonesia enacted amendments to its National Armed Forces Law that expanded the domestic and bureaucratic roles of the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI), raising alarm among civil society actors, scholars, and democracy advocates. At first glance, the move appears technical – a response to evolving security challenges such as cyber threats and terrorism. In reality, however, it risks reversing one of the most important accomplishments of Indonesia’s post-1998 reform era: the professionalization of the military and its removal from civilian governance.
For more than two decades following the fall of Suharto’s New Order regime, Indonesia pursued security sector reform with one clear goal: to build a military that was externally oriented, politically neutral, and accountable to civilian authority. That progress is now in jeopardy. The new law formally authorizes the TNI to participate in civilian governance and to appoint serving military officers to state institutions such as the State Intelligence Agency, the National Cyber and Crypto Agency, the National Narcotics Agency, and even the Supreme Court and Attorney General’s Office.
While the military has long played informal or ad hoc roles in some of these sectors, the law institutionalizes its expanded presence, granting it a legally codified role across Indonesia’s civilian bureaucracy. The change may be subtle, but its implications are profound.
A Professional Military by Design
The reformist vision for the post-Suharto military was inspired in part by global norms of military professionalism, most famously defined by political scientist Samuel Huntington as resting on three pillars: expertise in warfighting and defense strategy, a distinct corporate identity separate from civilian society, and a sense of responsibility, meaning subordination to a democratically elected civilian leadership. Contemporary scholars such as Colin Robinson have reaffirmed these principles in the context of emerging democracies, especially in Africa and Asia, where blurred civil-military boundaries have often undermined long-term democratic stability.
Indonesia’s 2025 military law challenges all three of the principles advanced by Huntington.
First, the law dilutes military expertise by assigning the TNI responsibilities beyond its core competencies. Cyber defense, public health crisis response, and narcotics enforcement require entirely different institutional capacities, including legal expertise, public accountability mechanisms, and civilian oversight. These are not domains where a military trained for conventional defense operations can simply adapt or substitute. Indonesia already has dedicated agencies for these functions: BSSN (cyber), BNN (narcotics), BNPB (disaster management), and Kominfo (digital governance). Rather than enhancing inter-agency coordination, embedding the military creates operational overlap, institutional confusion, and potential turf wars, all of which will ultimately weaken the state’s ability to govern effectively.
Second, 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 toward navigating bureaucratic politics. Over time, this erodes the military’s internal discipline and esprit de corps, as the line between soldier and state administrator blurs.
Third, and most significantly, this legal expansion undermines the principle of civilian supremacy. By embedding itself 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 entrenched, these roles are difficult to unwind, especially in environments where institutional accountability remains limited.
A Broader Pattern of Drift
Indonesia’s democratic trajectory has long been lauded as a model for civil-military reform in Southeast Asia. However, the country’s commitment to external defense modernization has faltered in recent years. The Minimum Essential Force (MEF) program, launched in 2009 to upgrade the TNI’s defense capabilities, has suffered repeated setbacks. Budget shortfalls, fragmented procurement, and wavering political commitment have left key components of the military underdeveloped. Indonesia continues to rely heavily on outdated platforms while neighboring states advance technologically. As recent reports have shown, the MEF has fallen off the radar of most policymakers, even as maritime competition intensifies in the region.
Instead of reinvesting in external defense capabilities, Indonesia appears to be turning inward, politically, institutionally, and strategically. The new military law is part of a broader trend in which the state frames domestic challenges – such as cybercrime, misinformation, narcotic trafficking, and disaster risks – as existential threats best handled by a centralized, coercive actor. This security logic justifies the TNI’s growing presence in governance but at the cost of the civilian institutions that democracy ultimately relies upon.
This inward drift is not unique to Indonesia. In his seminal 1983 essay “Security in the Third World,” Mohammed Ayoob warned that postcolonial states often construct internal rather than external threats as the primary justification for militarization. In such contexts, the military is deployed not to deter foreign adversaries but to ensure regime survival and internal order. This transformation reframes national security as a project of social control rather than sovereignty defense.
The danger of this posture lies in its normalization. When the military is legally embedded in judicial institutions, cyber agencies, and intelligence services, its presence becomes a standard feature of governance rather than an exceptional response to crisis. And unlike a state of emergency, there is no built-in expiration date. Over time, the boundary between civilian and military governance fades, making reform more difficult and democratic erosion harder to reverse.
The Stakes for Indonesia’s Future
Indonesia’s new military law does not announce a return to authoritarian rule. It does not call for martial law, suspend civil liberties, or dissolve parliament. But it codifies a structural shift in how the state conceives of security and who it trusts to maintain it. This quiet legal reconfiguration may prove more consequential in the long run than any open crisis.
The deeper question now is whether Indonesia is drifting toward a model where the military views society itself as a threat. If so, the implications for democratic accountability, human rights, and regional stability will likely be far-reaching. Southeast Asia is already home to several hybrid regimes where militaries play central roles in governance – or rule outright, as in Myanmar. Indonesia, once seen as a democratic anchor in the region, must decide whether it still aspires to be different.
Upholding military professionalism means more than preventing coups. It requires protecting institutional boundaries, reaffirming civilian control, and ensuring the armed forces are trained, equipped, and focused on external defense. Despite its progress since 1998, Indonesia’s reform project remains unfinished – and this moment could well determine its future prospects.