Indonesia eyes the world stage

Indonesia has officially joined the Brics group, adding Southeast Asia's largest economy and most populous country to the economic and political bloc founded by Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2009.

The move bolsters the international alliance, seen as a counterpart to the G7 group, and also marks the latest chapter in Indonesia's bid to become a more influential player on the world stage.

Global leverage

In 2023, the then president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, refused to join Brics, saying the government was still mulling its options and did not want to "rush into it". But Prabowo Subianto, who succeeded him last year, "has no such concerns", said DW.

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Indonesia "does not intend to break away from the West either slowly or immediately", M. Habib Abiyan Dzakwan, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies Indonesia think tank, told DW. "In Indonesia's foreign policy DNA, all are friends," he said, and Jakarta "just wants to increase its playing field".

"As a middle power" being a member of Brics offers Indonesia "leverage in the global order", said Teuku Rezasyah, an international relations expert from Padjadjaran University in West Java. And with the US "veering towards unilateralism" under the incoming Trump administration, the move will "bolster" Indonesia's "multilateral credentials", said Alexander Raymond Arifianto, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

Grand ambitions

Two other developments could significantly help the nation's economy and global standing in the years to come. Indonesia now produces nearly half the world’s refined nickel and two-thirds of its mined nickel, said The Economist. As its market share has grown, "so too has the grandeur of its politicians' ambitions", and they plan to build a complete electric vehicle supply chain, something only China has managed so far.

This vision underpins Prabowo's "ambitious target" for Indonesia’s GDP to grow by 8% each year, but Jakarta's hope that nickel is "the ticket to becoming a developed nation by 2045" has created concern, said The Guardian. To boost the nickel industry, Indonesia has "created a loophole" on coal, permitting new coal power plants to power nickel smelters as long as they shut down before 2050, arguing that nickel production is "critical for the green transition".

So "calling the nickel industry a part of the green transition is a joke", said environmental campaigner Muhammad Taufik. Although "it is good that it creates jobs", it "also destroys ecosystems and people's lives". Indonesia is now consuming more coal than ever and setting new highs for carbon dioxide emissions.