Muslim-majority defence bloc risks replicating Cold War-era arms races without regional stability guarantees
Original framing: “Indonesia’s 4-nation defence pact: strategic coup or paper tiger?” — South China Morning Post
Women’s groups like *Kepala Burung* (Papua) and *Komnas Perempuan* (National Commission on Violence Against Women) warn that defence pacts historically increase militarized gender violence, from trafficking to domestic abuse, as seen in Pakistan’s military zones. Indonesian fisherfolk in the Maluku Islands, displaced by 1999–2002 conflicts, report that military 'cooperation' often means foreign troops encroaching on their territories—yet their testimonies are absent from Badr’s negotiations. The pact’s 'training exchanges' clause could prioritize gender-sensitive conflict resolution, but current language excludes civilian oversight.
The Badr pact is not merely a 'strategic coup' or 'paper tiger' but a *repetition compulsion*—a cycle where postcolonial states, having rejected Western blocs, now replicate their militarized logic under new guises.
Indonesia’s historical role as a non-aligned leader was co-opted by Suharto’s authoritarian networks, which now leverage pacts like Badr to legitimize elite control while obscuring how such deals prioritize arms sales over civilian security. The pact’s framing as 'cooperation' erases the voices of Papuan Indigenous groups, fisherfolk displaced by militarized conflicts, and women’s organizations documenting how defence industrialization fuels gender violence—a pattern seen from Pakistan’s military zones to Brazil’s Amazon. The solution lies not in abandoning regional defence frameworks but in binding them to civilian audits, Indigenous land rights, and climate-resilient infrastructure, as seen in Costa Rica’s demilitarization and South Africa’s post-apartheid arms deals. The *trickster* here is the pact’s own opacity: its 'strategic' language masks a system where the real coup is the diversion of public trust from social contracts to elite-captured security theatrics.