Defense Focus: Jets for Jakarta -- Part 2

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 (UPI) -- Sukhoi’s announcement of sales of six new fighter planes to Indonesia last week for $300 million marks a small significant Russian advance in what has been for nearly 40 years a market totally dominated by major U.S. defense contractors.

It is particularly striking that the Indonesian government that approved the memorandum of understanding announced at the MAKS-2007 air show at Zhukovsky outside Moscow last week is led by strongly pro-American President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The earlier, smaller sale of four Sukhoi jets worth $192 million to Indonesia in 2003 was approved during the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, under whom relations with the United States were generally strained. Although Megawati herself was a strong secular democrat and political centrist, Bush administration policymakers found her initially naive or complacent in taking the Islamist terror threat in Indonesia seriously. They believed she failed to prod her security services to act aggressively enough on intelligence that Washington provided that might have prevented the 2002 terror bombings on the resort island of Bali that killed 200 people.

By contrast, Yudhoyono has won high marks from Washington for the cool, efficient rapid-response way he has successfully cracked down on Islamist terror cells, and the quality of U.S.-Indonesian security cooperation has vastly improved on his watch.

This makes the nature of the Sukhoi fighter aircraft sale all the more interesting. It does not reflect Indonesia’s current geopolitical orientation. It is certainly a tribute to the attractiveness of the Sukhoi aircraft and the skill of the parent United Aircraft Building Corp. and of the Russian government in negotiating the sale.

This is not to say that Russian arms salesmen and Sukhoi executives relied only on the efficiencies of their company within the free market to win the deal. As we have previously noted, selling three new Su-27 SKM and three Su-30MK2s for only $300 million is a steal.

And there have already been reports suggesting that Russia may negotiate a $1 billion loan to Indonesia to help it pay for the fighters and even buy a project 636 Kilo class diesel submarine as well.

Significantly, Indonesia cannot buy diesel submarines from the United States because no U.S. shipyard builds them anymore or has for years. The U.S. Navy was insistent on moving to a nuclear sub-only undersea fleet. The Kilo deal therefore could offer Moscow the opportunity of making a much larger long-term niche for itself in selling more submarines to Indonesia. And where undersea boats go first, sales of surface warships could very easily follow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has put a strong emphasis on boosting Russia’s trade and diplomatic ties with the 10 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. With a total population of 500 million, they are estimated to account for 40 percent of global gross domestic product by 2040. Putin attended and addressed the first Russia-ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last December.

As political commentator Dimitri Kosyrev wrote at the time for RIA Novosti, Putin told the ASEAN representatives that “as the only nation with huge and so far untapped hydrocarbon resources in Asia, Russia could guarantee power supplies to Asia and the Pacific.”

Russia’s growing diplomatic and military sales clout in ASEAN has a powerful ally in former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, a longtime critic of the West who masterminded his nation’s rise to advanced industrial free-market prosperity and sophistication. Another ASEAN member state, Vietnam, has always been a strong ally of Russia and the Soviet Union before it. “Russia fits in well here, as is seen from its growing mutual understanding and cooperation with India, China and ASEAN,” Kosyrev wrote in his December 2005 analysis.

The latest Sukhoi fighter sale to Indonesia, and the easy financial terms Moscow offered to ensure it, should therefore be seen as part of a far larger regional grand strategy slowly but steadily pursued by the Russian government.