Tantangan Tata Kelola dalam Strategi Pengadaan Alutsista Multi-Sumber Indonesia

Abstract

Middle powers in the Indo-Pacific increasingly hedge between the United States and China, and arms procurement shows this choice clearly. Indonesia buys weapon systems from the United States, France, South Korea, Russia, and China at once, yet the domestic governance cost of this strategy is rarely studied. This study aims to explain how Indonesia's multi-source procurement strategy produces and reproduces governance deficits in defence procurement. Drawing on middle-power hedging theory and the defence governance literature, it applies qualitative process tracing to procurement regulations, Transparency International's Government Defence Integrity Index, official statements, and academic studies. The findings reveal four mutually reinforcing mechanisms. Every acquisition must pass at least six veto players, from the Ministry of Defence to parliament. The 85 percent offset obligation becomes a different arrangement with each supplier, from industrial partnerships with France and KF-21 co-development with South Korea to commodity countertrade for the Russian Su-35, raising transaction costs and weakening legal certainty. Lex specialis provisions and broad information exemptions keep most arms purchases outside public oversight; Indonesia scored 47 (grade D) in the 2020 index and received an F for disclosure of actual purchases. Platforms with different communication standards are hard to integrate into a network-centric air defence system and widen cyber exposure. The study concludes that diversification remains strategically rational, but its institutional costs have been underestimated. Separating legitimate security secrecy from administrative opacity, coordinating offsets nationally, and testing interoperability before contracts are signed would reduce these costs without sacrificing autonomy.