The question of the United States’ military aircraft getting unrestricted access over Indonesian airspace has once again surfaced as a test of the country’s longstanding commitment to strategic autonomy. While permission for occasional overflights may seem a matter of marginal importance to some, in fact, granting unlimited passage would compromise Indonesia’s national sovereignty and complicate a nonaligned foreign and security policy. With tensions running high in the Indo-Pacific, such seemingly technical aviation requests are increasingly anything but. They amount, in fact, to a broad test of Indonesia’s post-independence strategic choices and its credibility as a neutral actor in a region steadily becoming more bipolar.

Indonesia is notoriously sensitive to the presence of foreign military units or assets on its territory. Ever since independence was finally achieved in 1945, Jakarta has managed to avoid permitting foreign forces to establish any sort of permanent basing rights or even long-term transit corridors. This policy has significant implications, and Indonesia is not inclined to permit unrestricted access to its airspace, facilities for in-transit refuelling, or other forms of support that would create a standing exemption to a case-by-case assessment of cooperation initiatives. The US military’s experience with its 2000s efforts to negotiate increased access to Indonesian airspace for its airlift fleet provides a salutary lesson in this regard, as does the current cooperative framework embodied in exercises like Garuda Shield and activities about maritime domain awareness.

Washington has its own set of calculations as it seeks to operationalise the........

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