The Malacca Strait funnels roughly 24 percent of global trade and 20 percent of global energy flows through waters where Aisha R. Kusumasomantri, Director of Partnership and External Engagement at Indonesia’s Indo Pacific Strategic Intelligence, says India and Indonesia need to deepen maritime cooperation, StratNewsGlobal reported.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue at the Manekshaw Centre in New Delhi, Kusumasomantri laid out a geography that makes the partnership hard to ignore: India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands sit near Indonesia’s Sabang Island, and both countries face the same narrow corridors where a disruption in the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait could ripple through regional and global supply chains.
Indonesia, an archipelagic nation of approximately 17,000 islands where nearly 70 percent of territory is water, has a maritime culture baked into its identity. Yet Kusumasomantri said India’s place in Indonesia’s maritime security and strategic thinking remains relatively underdeveloped, despite traditionally friendly relations between the two countries.
Sabang and the Andamans: Commercial Ports With a Security Shadow
The immediate focus is the pairing of Sabang and the Andaman region. Development at both ports focuses on commerce, tourism, and supply chains, but Kusumasomantri said security concerns must not be ignored.
“Everything can have a double function,” she said, warning that the evolving international context and growing rivalry among major powers compelled countries to consider whether commercially vital maritime infrastructure might develop military significance.
When roughly one-fifth of the world’s energy flows passes through these sea lanes, any restriction on maritime passage—whether from a regional crisis or deliberate chokepoint pressure—could have consequences for regional and global supply chains.
Indonesia already conducts joint patrols in the Malacca Strait with Singapore and Malaysia, but Kusumasomantri said cooperation with India could be strengthened. She suggested the two countries develop scenarios through tabletop exercises and wargaming to test how they would respond to possible future security challenges—contingencies for which, she said, Indonesia does not yet have a clear answer.
Partners, Not Allies
The strategist was careful to define what this cooperation is not. India’s emphasis on strategic autonomy and Indonesia’s principle of an independent and active foreign policy converge on preserving freedom of decision-making while maintaining regional stability, she said. Their partnership need not become a formal alliance or carry binding defense obligations.
Rather, Kusumasomantri maintained, India and Indonesia could establish themselves as autonomous partners who reinforce one another’s strategic standing while avoiding the formation of an additional competing power bloc.
She also pointed to Track II diplomacy as the mechanism that moves engagement beyond government agreements. Forums such as the Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue, she said, build the understanding that makes bilateral partnerships resilient.
What remains open is whether commercial development at Sabang and the Andamans will stay commercially focused, or whether the sea lanes will force both capitals to treat those ports as something more.
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