Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes how past successes in security sector reform might be endangered by the adoption of an overly broad concept of security by Indonesia's armed forces.

Paper long abstract:

The security sector reform process in Indonesia has widely been hailed as successful compared to many other young democracies, especially in Southeast Asia. However, even though foreign models of SSR have provided a framework that helped civil society and civilian governments push for important reforms like the expansion of civilian input into defense policy and a depolitization of the military, SSR language also opens a door for new kinds of military influence on public policy. Modern notions of human security enable the Indonesian TNI to get involved in discussions about climate change, deforestation, geostrategic issues in the South China Sea or Policing through their wide definition of security when the military had just been pushed out of civilian topics and restricted to classic security issues. This paper aims to analyze how this process that could endanger past reform came about and plays out in practice during current policy deliberations.