Indonesia Crisis as an Example

Indonesia's Crisis: The Lesson for China introductionIndonesia, as we have long predicted, is coming apart. This process has a great deal of relevance to China, whose army, like Indonesia's, was accustomed to making lots of money and now resents the fact that the good times are over. In both countries, making money became the basis for military loyalty to the regime, which in turn needed the army as guarantor. But in China, as in Indonesia, the military is no longer making money, and China has banned its officers from business. Now Beijing is creating international tension to soak up the military's energy and resentment. But in the end, the guarantor of the regime can bring its death, leaving warlords poised to take power. ANALYSIS We have long argued that the Asian economic meltdown, as its ultimate legacy, would politically reconfigure Asia. We meant this in both the international and domestic sense: Nations would behave differently after the meltdown than they did during the past generation of extraordinary prosperity. The reconfiguration of Sino-American relations is an obvious manifestation of this. But it is the domestic political changes that are the most profound and will have the most impact on international relations. It should be obvious that an economic transformation of the magnitude we have seen cannot help but have equally dramatic political consequences. Asia is obviously a diverse region. It goes without saying that the economic meltdown will affect Japan's politics dramatically differently than Malaysia's. However, events during the last week have drawn our attention to one area of commonality: the effect of the economic crisis on the military in China and in Indonesia. These two countries are not usually lumped together; they differ in profound ways. But they share this: they have both used their military forces for three missions – protection against foreign enemies, enforcement of internal security and development of the economy.