Taiwan wants Jakarta to explain the drill Indonesia called routine

Taiwan has asked Indonesia to explain what its warship was doing off the island's east coast. Writing for Indonesia at Melbourne, Aristyo Darmawan, an Indonesian scholar of the law of the sea, dates the joint exercise with China's navy to 11 August and says Taipei called it provocative and asked Jakarta for clarification. Taiwanese intelligence officials put the frigate KRI Gusti Ngurah Rai about 80 nautical miles off Taiwan's east coast, roughly 150 kilometres.

Jakarta's answer came in two parts. The defence ministry said the ship was sailing home from the Orruda exercise in Vladivostok, Russia, and that it runs a "passing exercise", or PASSEX, with navies it meets along the way. A PASSEX is a light piece of seamanship: two vessels that happen to meet line up for a while and check that they can talk to each other. The ministry stressed it was not a war-fighting exercise. The foreign ministry said the ships behaved professionally in international shipping lanes, and repeated that Indonesia keeps its "free and active" policy of taking no side between big powers.

Darmawan does not argue the law, because the law is vague. He notes that under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the rules on military exercises inside another country's exclusive economic zone, the belt of sea where a state controls fishing and the seabed but not passage, are still unsettled, so nobody had to ask permission. His objection is about judgement. He says Beijing used Indonesia to push its own campaign to squeeze Taiwan, and that Jakarta showed a political insensitivity that produced a provocation it did not need. Indonesia recognises the One China policy and says it keeps out of the Taiwan dispute. Sailing with the Chinese navy a short distance from the island reads differently.

Why it matters

The criticism here comes from an Indonesian scholar rather than a foreign government, which makes it harder for Jakarta to wave away as outside pressure. Taipei's request for an explanation turns one encounter at sea into a standing diplomatic question, and the answer sets the price of the next one. If you work in trade, shipping or manufacturing that runs through the Taiwan Strait, watch whether Jakarta replies in public or lets the request sit, because that choice decides whether Taipei treats the next Indonesian warship in those waters as ordinary traffic or as a signal.