The term “dynamic equilibrium” has been bandied among Indonesian
officials and U.S. interlocutors with surprising frequency since
Indonesia assumed the ASEAN chairmanship in 2012. As shorthand for
Indonesia’s regional foreign policy goals, the term is not new, but it
is widely misunderstood.
Indonesia, as a rising middle power itself, seeks to strengthen the role
of middle and rising powers in the Asia Pacific region in order to
avoid a regional conflict or condominium of power between the resident
superpowers, the United States and China. The knee-jerk reaction has
been to see this as a twenty-first-century balance of power strategy,
but it is more than that.
Indonesia does not seek an Asia Pacific in which it, the United States,
China, India, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Russia avoid conflict
only through a balance of force, either individually or in coalition.
The preponderance of the United States and China makes such a
traditional balance of power improbable, if not impossible. Instead,
Indonesia and its like-minded neighbors have set their sights on
building a series of regional mechanisms, driven by middle powers, in
which none are dominant and none excluded.
