- 期刊
The Missing Puzzle Piece: Examining the Factors Underlying Indonesia's Stagnant Defense Budget in the Minimum Essential Forces Era
摘要
The efforts of Indonesian Government to accelerate the modernization of armaments through the Minimum Essential Forces (MEF) 2024 program is an inevitability. As a country that must ensure survivability on its own, Indonesia's defense power is far from ideal. Based on data submitted by the Ministry of Defense in 2005, the combat readiness rate of the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) is below 40%. The low level of the combat readiness is due to the age of the majority of armaments that are over 20 years old. The urgency of developing a defense posture through MEF 2024 is increasingly high considering that Indonesia is faced with a dynamic strategic environment and the emergence of multidimensional threats. Until 2019, which indicates a decade of thr MEF 2024 program, the defense budget allocation has never reached the target of 1.5% of Indonesia's GDP. In fact, the existing empirical data shows that Indonesia's defense budget to GDP ratio has decreased since 2016. This condition occurs when Indonesia's economic strength is getting better in general which is characterized by consistent economic growth above 5% every year. The analysis in this article was carried out using an analysis framework built from various previous literature that discusses the determinants of a country's defense budget allocation. The analysis framework is then crossed with existing empirical data in the form of quantitative and qualitative data to produce the main findings. This article concludes that the stagnation of Indonesian defense budget allocation is a result of three things. First, the low perception of threat to the potential invasion by other countries from the Indonesian. Second, Indonesia's low ambition to launch expeditionary and expantionist operations. Third, the stagnation of the defense budget is also an impact of the implementation of the democratic system as a national political system. This article also concludes that post MEF 2024 arms modernization efforts is also not under promising conditions, as long as there are no changes to the factors mentioned earlier.