Weak Civilian Institutions Are Pulling Indonesia’s Military Into Governance
Norman Joshua argues that Indonesia’s 2025 expansion of the military’s role into cybersecurity, border management and disaster response reflects a broader model of “governance through security,” in which the armed forces compensate for weak civilian administration. While Indonesia faces legitimate defense and regional-security pressures, he contends that assigning civilian functions to security institutions blurs democratic lines of accountability and can entrench the military in domestic governance. His proposed remedy is stronger civilian capacity, not a diminished defense posture.
Indonesia’s expanding military role reflects a governance model, not just a new law
In March 2025, Indonesia’s parliament revised the armed forces law, expanding the military’s mandate beyond national defense to include cybersecurity, border management, and disaster response. Officials described the measures as a way to strengthen state capacity and national resilience.
Norman Joshua argues that the significance lies in the governing logic behind the expansion. He calls it “governance through security”: a process in which administrative or social problems are redefined as security threats, allowing military or police institutions to take a larger role in civilian life.
When ministries lack resources or expertise, governments turn to the security forces as a substitute for effective administration.
Joshua does not dispute that the state must address cyber threats, borders, disasters, and resilience. His concern is institutional: when security forces compensate for weak civilian administration, the boundary between civilian and military authority erodes. In post-authoritarian states, he says, that erosion has often marked the onset of democratic backsliding.
The military’s return to civilian governance has a long institutional history
Joshua places the current expansion in a longer Indonesian pattern. From the 1945 revolution through Sukarno’s Guided Democracy and Suharto’s New Order regime, the armed forces served as both a political and administrative pillar of the state.
Indonesia’s democratic transition in 1998 did not eliminate that institutional presence. The army’s territorial system remained, Joshua says, while successive crises—including terrorism and natural disasters—pulled the military back into non-military roles. The new law’s inclusion of cybersecurity, border management, and disaster response extends that pattern.
Under President Prabowo Subianto, military personnel also hold roles in food security, forestry, and social-welfare programs. These assignments place the armed forces not only in defense policy but in the administration of domestic priorities.
When security institutions fill governance gaps, they often become difficult to dislodge.
Joshua’s concern is that blurred boundaries between civilian and military authority can turn security institutions into durable substitutes for civilian governance. Where that process goes unchecked, he argues, it risks hollowing out democracy from within.
Real defense needs do not settle who should govern civilian functions
Indonesia is undertaking what Joshua describes as its most ambitious defense modernization in decades, acquiring aircraft, submarines, and naval systems from France, South Korea, Turkey, and the United States.
He situates that modernization amid real geopolitical pressures: persistent regional instability and increased Chinese maritime activity near the Natuna Islands. Those circumstances provide a direct rationale for strengthening Indonesia’s national-defense capacity.
But defense modernization and the domestic expansion of military functions raise different institutional questions. External risks do not determine whether civilian-facing functions should be led by the armed forces or by civilian institutions accountable for them.
Joshua’s proposed direction is not to exclude the military from national development. It is to make civilian institutions capable of leading it: disaster-management bodies with the expertise to respond to emergencies; civilian border-protection capacity; social-welfare institutions able to administer public programs; and civilian cyber-defense expertise. Building those capabilities, he argues, would allow Indonesia to maintain state capacity without treating each governance shortfall as a security function.