If we stand back and look at the map of Asia we see three giants, China, India and Indonesia. The most strategic ground between them is Malaysia and ‘lo and behold’ the population of Malaysia is made up of Malays (the same ethnicity as Indonesians) Chinese and Indians. All three countries would like to control this territory. The Europeans sailed from the other side of the world to do just that and fought wars amongst themselves for the benefit.  Malacca, Malaysia’s most notable city of 500 years ago, has a history of having been ruled by the Portuguese, then the Dutch and then the English. The Europeans were interested in Malaysia because it controlled the shortest shipping route between China and India, through the Malacca Strait, and that strait was at the same time the safest route into the riches of the Indonesian archipelago.

All three of the Asian giants have large populations of their ethnic brethren living in Malaysia. Can anyone see the potential for conflict?

All sides already have form.
 
The Chinese
Malays/Indonesians populate the lands on both sides of the Malacca Strait, so one might assume that they were its typical rulers prior to the arrival of the European naval empires. Malacca’s pre-European history, however, centres around the tales of the great warriors Hang Tua and Hang Jabat and of the Babanonya – the princess and her 100 handmaidens who all arrived from the sea. All are now thought by many to have been ethnically Chinese; Hang being a form of Han. Thus suggesting that Malacca’s heyday as the dominant city on the Straits was a period when it was actually ruled by a Chinese elite. Certainly, there is no doubt that Chinese traders have been long established both in Malacca and throughout the Strait's major port cities.

A more striking example of the Chinese’s ability to gain influence in the Straits is Singapore. In 1800 Singapore was nothing but a swampy island with a few Malay villages on it. Sir Stamford Raffles, the British colonial administrator par excellence, however, identified it as the perfect spot to establish the Straits' next power city. The Chinese flooded in and became the dominant population of the island, then, after Malaysia’s independence from Great Britain, they broke away and formed their own independent country. Consequently, Singapore is a clear case of Malay-ruled territory being taken over and subsequently ruled by Chinese.
 
The Indians
India too has an ongoing history of involvement in Malaysia. Under the British, Malaysia was ruled from Calcutta, but the most significant influences of India in Malaysia are, like the Chinese, not the result of any officially stated government policy, but rather the result of their people’s movement (whether that be irrespective of, or as a result of, specific government policies is a matter for another article). The potential for the ‘innocent’ migration of economic immigrants to have nation changing effects has already been seen in the case of Singapore, but an Indian example can be seen in the shape of the Tamils. An Indian ethnic group, hailing from Tamil Nadu, the Tamils, migrated to Sri Lanka, the island nation which was just across the Palk Straits from their homeland. Initially, it was poor fishermen who arrived, setting up villages on the coast. The indigenous Sinhalese allowed them to stay. With the passage of years and the growth of their population, however, the Tamils eventually declared their own independent republic in the north of Sri Lanka and a decades long civil war ensued before the Tamil republic was eventually crushed. In this case, the Indian (Tamil) immigrants were unsuccessful in establishing an independent state for themselves, unlike the Chinese of Singapore, but during the long years of civil war many of those Tamils fled the fighting to settle in Malaysia, where they are now the largest of the Indian minorities. An ethnic group with a record of migrating into an area and then trying to establish their own Independence might certainly be considered a threat by the indigenous Malay population.
 
The Indonesians/Malays
So, the Chinese have taken Singapore and the Indians bear watching, but for most of the second half of the 20th century I would say the Malays have been the ones gaining ground. While it is true that Singapore gained its independence in this period. It is the case that the massive influx of Chinese to Singapore occurred under British rule. British rule was also friendly to the immigration of Indians into Malaysia. Since Malaysia gained Independence from Britain in 1957, the welfare and relative demographics of the native Malay populations have risen significantly vis-à-vis their two large immigrant communities. Indeed, part of the reason why Malaysia let Singapore go relatively amicably was because the Malays knew that if Singapore stayed in their federation then the immigrant populations would out-number the Malays. By letting Singapore leave they ensured that they would at least be able to maintain control of what was left of the country through a democratic majority. Ever since, the Malay led government of Malaysia has been pursuing policies which ‘positively discriminate’ in favour of Malay citizens. These policies have succeeded in growing the wealth and numbers of the Malay population. Malaysia has also prospered economically, such that it now has a GDP per capita which is much higher than all of its three neighbouring giants. Such success could mean that if there were ever a federation of Indonesia and Malaysia it may well be led by Malaysia rather Indonesia. That uniting the Malays into one homeland is an idea with a serious political following has been known since Indonesia's President Sukarno endeavoured to make the dream a reality, by force, during the period from 1963 to 1966. A Malaysian led initiative would be more likely to succeed peacefully, however, given that until now it is Malaysia who has resisted the idea through fear of complete domination from Jakarta. That such a possibility is increasingly likely is due to Malaysia's growing wealth, which gives it an increasingly strong position vis-a-vis its much larger neighbour: a time might come when Malaysian politicians might think that some sort of federation might present more opportunities than risks.
 
The state of play
If we stand back and look at the map, particularly an ethnic or demographic map, we see that the pieces are on the board and they are changing position (the game is in play). The Malays/Indonesians (a nation of chess lovers) are ahead, but everyone is still in the game.
In a sense there is a sort of ‘Cold War’ going on in Malaysia in the form of a battle between ethnicities for influence and power. On the ground the battle is waged every day through such acts as the Chinese sending their children to private Chinese schools rather than government ones and Indian communities turning local caves into Hindu shrines.
 
Could there be a ‘hot’ conflict in Malaysia?
Certainly, the conditions exist in Malaysia for the slow fuse of ethnic tensions to be ignited into a ‘hot’ conflict. All that is needed is a spark. And the great danger of a 'hot' conflict in Malaysia is that it has the potential to draw in all three Asian giants.
 
Potential sparks
Both the Chinese and Indian ethnicities are already positively-discriminated against in Malaysia. The discrimination has generally been accepted as ‘positive’ by the world and many Malaysians on account of the fact that when it began Malays were by far the poorest and most under-privileged segment of Malaysian society. On average they may still be less wealthy than the Indian and Chinese communities, but at what point does 'positive discrimination' become just 'discrimination'? At what point do discriminated-against minorities feel that enough is enough? Will there be a point in the future where large, globally significant countries like China and India decide that they can no longer abide having Malaysia discriminate against their ethnic diaspora?
At the other end of the stick, could an increase in Malay nationalism lead to a Pan Malay movement that would seek to unify Malaysia with the other Malay homeland of Indonesia? How would the large minorities of Chinese and Indians react to such an event? Would such an event lead to more, or less, discrimination.
 
China’s push into the South China Sea shows a growing willingness on behalf of China to make plays for increased control of its important seaways? Where does that end? There have been similarities drawn between China’s current policies and the US moves from the 19th century to control the Carribean Sea. Those moves ended in US control of the Panama Canal, the World’s 3rd most important sea route. The Malacca Straits are the World’s second most important sea route. The USA controls the Panama Canal but does not directly control Panama so the Chinese may not need to physically control Malaysia, but the US does involve itself in Panamanian affairs; the deposition of Manuel Norriega being one notable example.
 
In conclusion
Malaysia is already an ethnic battleground, albeit a very civilized one at the moment. There are, however, shifts in power and influence amongst the main ethnic groups in Malaysia and with each ethnic group having a giant nation at their back the potential for conflict, even large scale international warfare exists.

The Malays have the homeground advantage and recently the game has been on their terms, but Singapore demonstrates that there have been periods of history where they have lost ground, literally, demonstrating that their current control cannot be taken for granted.

China has made a recent aggressive surge into the nearby waters of the South China Sea, and there are suggestions that the currently embattled prime minister of Malaysia, Abdul Razak, might be susceptible to taking Chinese money and support if it helps him stay in power.
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Meanwhile, India, calmly sitting back, might be the one to win influence by not making enemies.

My feeling is that Indonesia, or some Malay based power, will be the ultimate winner in Malaysia, so long as they have better than competent leadership (certainly not a given) but the real question is not so much who will win but whether the battle to control the strategic Malay Peninsular might turn violent, leading to the involvement of one, or more, of the Asian Giants in an armed conflict.

The Twentieth Century was a Slavic century
The Slavs won the last two world wars and their tide is still rising.
 
I love historical maps. If you look at a series of historical maps over a period of a thousand or even thousands of years you can see the rise and fall of nations and empires simply by viewing the changes in the territory they control. If you apply this very simple analysis to maps that are both pre- and post- both of the world wars you will see that the Slavic people were very clearly the winners of both. Prior to the First World War much of Central and Eastern Europe was controlled by two large German run empires, the German and Austro-Hungarian empires. By the end of the war the Austro-Hungarian Empire had been replaced by the Slav controlled states of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Poland (plus Austria and Hungary) and the German Empire had also ceded some territory to the newly recreated Poland. By the end of the Second World War Poland had taken over even more, formerly German, territory.
In future centuries I have no doubt that some historians looking back will say that in Europe the story of the 20th century was the story of the Slavs. They were the people whose power was steadily growing through the century. And if you think ‘Well the maps are misleading, the Slavs were just the accidental beneficiaries of historical circumstance,’ then I would draw your attention to the Russian revolution; the event whose intellectual, philosophical, and political repercussions virtually shaped the history of every other nation of the world through the rest of that century. Need I point out that the Russian revolution took place in a Slavic state.
Indeed, the true accidental beneficiaries of history in the 20th century are the Americans and the Anglosphere. They have leapt forward while the ‘Great Tussle’ was going on elsewhere. And the great tussle of the twentieth century, by the way, was not between the Soviet Union and the USA so much as it was between the Slavic and Germanic peoples.
The Slavic territorial advances of the twentieth century were just the most recent chapters in a struggle that had been going on for centuries. The Slavs were the dominant people of Eastern and Central Europe by the 6th century AD having spread west in the wake of the westward moving Germans, but the German’s made many attempts to push back to the East over the intervening centuries. Charlemagne’s campaigns are one famous early example; and the activities of the Teutonic knights form another. In general, though, the Germans were not able to shift the Slavs from the territory they had settled on, although with the advantages of their more advanced civilisation they often did come to control them. Hence, the appearance of so many Slavic states in place of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the First World War was not on account of a sudden mass migration of Slavs into the area, but rather a removal of German overlordship from a population that was already Slavic. The humiliated Germans pushed back again after their losses in the First World War. They managed to gain control of a great deal of the German inhabited regions of Czechoslovakia and then launched the invasion of Poland which precipitated the Second World War. Eventually, though, they were repelled and lost even more territory to the Slavs. The end of the Second World War also included the removal of large ethnic German populations from many regions of both Poland and Czechoslovakia thus increasing the proportion of Europe inhabited by Slavs. During the Cold War, Slavic control extended even further than their settled populations with the virtual Russian control of East Germany marking the historical high point of Slavic power within Europe for the last 800 years. Since then, with the reunification of Germany, Slavic control has receded, although Slav inhabited territory has not.
Not only were the most significant territorial wars of the Twentieth Century conducted between Germans and Slavs, one might even say that all of the intellectual running in the twentieth century was carried on between Russia and Germany as well. Marx, after all was a German, so the German’s also have a claim to originating that great intellectual tussle of the Twentieth Century: the foment around the ideas of communism.
 
 
As Germany has this century resurfaced as the most powerful economy in Europe and Russia is struggling to deal with American hostility and low oil prices what makes you think Slavic power will trend up rather than down in the near future?
 
It is important to remember that Slavic power is not synonymous with Russian power. There are other Slavic countries in Europe, and it is in their policies that I see the source of their continuing rise. It is generally known that many Slavic countries have done well since the end of the Cold War. Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia stand out as having become countries with a good standard of living and education. The largest of these, Poland, has even become very significant politically and is charting its own independent course between the major regional powers of Germany, Russia and the USA. The Slavic countries, led by Poland, can already be seen to have the self-confidence to stand up to the European Union. Their refusal to accept hordes of refugees from very different cultures is a prime example of this. For many of these nations, having only recently gained control of a sovereign country for their people they are understandably reluctant to share it with others. In most cases these countries have a degree of cultural homogeneity that the Western European countries have already lost. That homogeneity therefore is a point of difference with the West and one that the Eastern European countries could well benefit from. Cultural homogeneity makes nation building a much easier task and with national pride comes a willingness to make sacrifices for the benefit of the country. Such national feeling has in the past made certain nations more formidable in war than other countries, it also leads to stronger community feelings between individuals with all of the intendant, though difficult to quantify, benefits which that entails. 
As an example of the benefits of strong nationalism, the Russia of today can be used. Russia appears to be surviving sanctions and economic difficulties with very little political unrest, and this appears to be the result of the peoples’ gratitude for what the Putin led government has done for Russia and Russian pride since the beginning of the century.
So, their attachment to nationalism, though it may well cause frictions and even war in some areas will, I think, be of overall benefit to Eastern Europe in the years ahead.
 
Another element of growing Slavic power will be their continuance of their westward push. The Slavs have been gradually pushing west for centuries and I see the hordes of Slav workers who poured into Britain and other Western countries at the start of this century as a continuation of the same trend. Consequently, politicians in Britain, France and Germany know that they have to consider the views of significant Polish minorities while politicians in Warsaw have no such concerns. Overall, this increases the relative power of the Slavic populations in Europe.
 
The downfall of Russia should also not be taken as a downfall of Slavic power. I am not at all convinced that Russia is about to deteriorate from its present position, but even if it did most of the likely beneficiaries of such an event would be Slavic states. And, in the event, they would probably be Slavic states with a great deal of support from the United States behind them. If one thinks about the reconstruction of Japan and Western Germany after the Second World War; a Poland or Ukraine with such backing could quickly become very influential.
 
Climate change is also a phenomenon which appears to be working in favour of the Slavs.
If the Earth is warming, and the North Pole is warming at the fastest rate, then this could significantly improve agricultural yields in Russia and increase the percentage of land where human habitation is viable. As Russia has more land above the Arctic Circle, and immediately adjacent to it, than any other country; it is the country, of all the countries on Earth, which stands to gain the most from a warmer climate. Less ice in the Arctic Ocean could also open up Russia’s northern coast to more maritime trade making that coast more economically productive, and militarily strategic, as well.
Poland too stands to benefit from a warming Northern Hemisphere. With a coastline on the Baltic, a sea which often freezes over in winter, Poland could gain all-year round maritime access and even an increased beach-tourism industry, not to mention longer growing seasons for its already fertile plains.
 
In conclusion
I feel that the facts on the ground indicate that the Slavs are quietly improving their position in Europe while the West is concerning itself with other matters. The presence of large numbers of Slavs in many of Western Europe’s major cities, where not so long ago they were almost non-existent, is an indicator of their growing influence. In similar vein, the fact that Slavs are now noticeable as tourists in places like Australia and South-East Asia also speaks to the fact that incomes and living standards in their home countries are improving to positions where they are comparable with Western countries. The evidence of the map is also telling, in that it shows that Slavic governments control a greater portion of Europe than at any time (with the exception of the Cold War period) since the 11th century. The map also shows that Russia is the biggest country in the world and has increased in size recently with the addition of Crimea. There is talk of the possibility of Russia losing territory in Europe in the next decade, but even if this were to occur, the beneficiaries of such a collapse would most likely be other Slavic states. Global warming is of geo-strategic benefit to the Slavs, as well.
Lastly, the fact that large numbers of Slavic migrants are settling in Western Europe, yet the Slavic nations keep their own countries migrant free and culturally homogeneous suggests that Slavs will have a voice amongst the many divergent cultures in Western countries in the future whilst those countries will have no voice in the culturally harmonious Slav homelands. All these trends suggest to me that Slavic influence and power in Europe is set to increase in the coming decade, rather than the reverse.
 
Before leaving off …
I would also like to point out that almost everything that has been said here about the Slavic countries, applies as well to most other non-Slav countries of Eastern and Central Europe. Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Romania do, for the most part, possess the same advantages and attitudes as their Slavic neighbours and they therefore have the potential to benefit in the same way. Indeed, the similarity in their attitude to nationalism has led the governments of Hungary and Poland to become virtual brothers-in-arms on certain issues within the European Union, and they, along with Putin’s Russia, are now looked to as examples of how countries should be run by many nationalist groups throughout the West and the rest of the world; a clarifying example of how these countries are already gaining influence in the world while the attention of the West’s governments remains focused elsewhere.

The most populous country in the world is China – and everyone has heard the predictions that China will be the next super power.
The second most populous country is India – and everyone is aware that India is Asia’s other giant.
The third most populous country in the world is the United States of America – and there is no need to mention what everyone knows about it.
The fourth most populous country in the world is …. How many people could finish that sentence correctly?
A new colleague of mine, knowing of my connection to Indonesia, went away and consulted an encyclopaedia for some facts about the country. Later she asked me if what she had read was true. Did Indonesia really have 240 million people? I thought the number sounded a little light but I acceded that it was close.
“But that means it is bigger than Germany, bigger than France,” she responded in amazement.
My colleague, it appeared, had previously thought of Indonesia as just an exotic tourist destination whose greatest importance came from being close to Australia. She was clearly stunned by the implications of Indonesia’s population statistics.
There is weight in those statistics. Any country which has that many people, my colleague clearly realised, was a country with some power. And she was very surprised that she had reached middle age without realising that Australia’s neighbour was so much more than a cheap tourist destination.
Indonesia is probably best known for the island of Bali, an idyllic island that is a Mecca for tourists. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that Bali is even better known than Indonesia. The author of this article remembers a conversation with someone who said they had never been to Indonesia, but that they had been to Bali.
This conversation was probably symptomatic of the lack of attention paid to Indonesia even by those who should know better.
Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation on earth. Only China, India and the USA are larger. It is also developing fast in ways that are important but would not show up strongly in the economic statistics by which most countries’ relative health is usually analysed.
 
Democracy
Since the fall of Suharto in 1990 Indonesian democracy has become increasingly robust. The first democratically elected President in this period, Abdurahman Wahid, was barred from running again by the country’s elite for being beyond their control and the next two presidents were consequently members of the ruling class (Megawati Sukarnoputri, a former President’s daughter and Susilo Bambang Yudhyono, a former general) but the current president Joko Widodo makes much of his humble origins and is certainly not from the military/inherited wealth background of his predecessors, a fact which suggests that democracy is now too firmly entrenched in Indonesia for the elites to control. This is a very positive sign for Indonesia, speaking to the growth of institutions that become too strong to corrupt. With increasing democracy comes increasing accountability and amidst anti-corruption drives and civil society activism Indonesia is slowly descending in the global corruption rankings - steadily falling away from its former world number one ranking under President (read dictator) Suharto.
 
The Arts
Exactly why the arts should matter is still not exactly clear to the author of this article but what is clear is that the flourishing of the arts coincides with the flourishing of a country. All countries that have had a golden age of artistic achievement have had a coinciding golden age of influence in the world as well. With this thought in mind the impressive artistic output of Indonesia should be heeded. Though Indonesian is a very new language it has already (in the author’s opinion) produced at least one great novelist, Mochtar Lubis, and many great musicians. And now its movies are starting to attract international attention, as its painters and sculptors long have.  This vibrant arts scene means that Indonesia has soft power force. The author remembers watching television in Madagascar and seeing how all of the local stars were just imitating American models. He realised then that a country’s artistic output can bind other peoples to it far more surely than any military might. Soft power comes out of the arts and Indonesia’s artistic output in the Indonesian language is part of what is helping to bind this archipelagic nation together. The author’s personal experience of this comes from noting that twenty years ago Sasak children on the island of Lombok would be speaking only Sasak as they played and would wait to learn Indonesian at school, starting in the fourth grade, whereas today Sasak children run around imitating their favourite cartoon and television characters and calling to each other in the Indonesian that those characters use. Indonesia’s art scene is increasing the internal strength and cohesion of the country. An important factor in an island nation that boasts more than 300 ethnicities, each with their own language.
 
But isn’t Indonesia too divided amongst all its ethnic groups?
The fact that Indonesia needs to work to bring its people together is something which is often cited as the reason why analysts doubt that Indonesia will ever have the influence that its population figures suggest it should. It is said that Indonesia is too divided ethnically and geographically. However, it is the authors observation that Indonesia hangs together much more easily than many imagine. It is true that there is resentment in the outer islands for the domination of Java and the Javanese, but this does not mean that there is resentment for the idea of Indonesia. In many ways it has felt to me on my travels there that the outer islands are more Indonesian than Java. You are more likely to hear Indonesian being spoken on the side of the road in Sulawesi and Kupang than you are in Java. The outer islands also share a cosmopolitan history that separates them from the central islands of Java and Bali. Java and Bali have abundant fertile plains that gave rise to cultures that derived their main source of wealth from farming. Aristocracies ruled over peasants and very hierarchical, self-sustaining, inward looking cultures developed. The outer islands by contrast were mostly mountainous with poor soils. Farming was pursued, certainly, but it was not the abundant provider that it was in Java and Bali, consequently the people of the outer islands were much more dependent on fishing and sea-craft and developed cultures that saw maritime trading as their main source of wealth. What they traded varied from location to location. In some places it might be minerals like iron, in others, spices which grew well on those islands like cloves and nutmeg, some sold swallows nests from their limestone caves, in other areas dried fish or other marine resources like trepang were sold. Whatever their trade goods, in the outer islands the richest centres were always their trading ports and their main source of wealth was trade. Consequently, the cultures that developed in these islands were led by traders. Therefore, they were more egalitarian, far more outward looking and dependant on constant interaction with other islands and other peoples for the maintenance of their standard of living.
The cultures of Indonesia’s outer islands therefore have always been living in a loose web of inter-dependence with each other, so the idea of a unified maritime empire, which is essentially what Indonesia is, sits quite naturally with them. Foreign analysts who arrive in Jakarta and see the relative wealth and power of Java compared to the other islands and consequently deduce that Indonesia is essentially a colonial system controlled by Java, can be forgiven for thinking that, given the enormity and variety of Indonesia’s peoples and geographies, the centre cannot hold. However, Indonesia is not that classic ‘core and peripheries’ colonial system. Certainly, Java is the powerful and dominating core, but there is much more binding the peripheries together than Java’s power. In many ways the true heart of Indonesia is spread among those islands and Java and Bali are the odd ones out not the uniting force.
 
Isn’t Indonesia at a massive economic disadvantage through being spread among all those islands?
Being an archipelagic nation is an economic advantage, not a disadvantage, take a look at Japan and the United Kingdom by way of quick examples.
The seas between the Indonesian islands are sheltered and narrow. It does not require ocean crossings to move between these islands; these seas, or straits, are small and calm. Furthermore, they are equatorial waters that are out of the path of hurricanes. They are very safe waters to cross. Now, given that even with today’s modern transport systems, moving goods by boat is still far cheaper than moving them by rail or truck, all of this water, is, in fact, an economic advantage. Think of all the trouble that China is having trying to develop the regions that are not either coastal or on a navigable river. That is never going to be a large problem for Indonesia. Indeed, Indonesia has prospered by its archipelagic nature in the past. Sophisticated maritime trade was already present in Indonesia when the Europeans finally arrived, looking for spice, in the fifteenth century and for a while Indonesia was the economic epicentre of the global trading system. The European discovery of the continents of the Americas and Australia were all just accidents in their search for the riches of the Indes (read ‘Indonesia’). As another example of Indonesia’s economic importance back then the island of Manhatten, where stands modern day New York, was swapped for a tiny Indonesian island called Rum.
 
But aren’t Indonesia’s people too spread out to provide economies of scale in a central location?
It is also not the case that, with all its islands, Indonesia lacks a population centre with the critical mass to sustain an advanced economy. The island of Java has more than 100 million inhabitants and according to some estimates Jakarta is the second largest city on the planet. Not only that, but Indonesia is also urbanising fast and currently stands at 54.7% urban (www.worldometers.info). Indonesia has both a concentrated core and a hinterland accessible by coastal shipping. There are economic virtues here to be capitalised upon.
Furthermore, Indonesia sits astride the sea lanes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. These are the sea lanes which connect China and Japan with Middle East Oil and connect the West Coast of the USA with India.
The Malacca Strait is the second most important sea route in the world and its waters are divided between Indonesia and Malaysia (A country which, in large parts, shares both language and ethnicity with Indonesia).
 
What about border change? Isn’t Indonesia too unstable?
Since Independence Indonesia has acquired and then released the territory of East Timor and has fought a successful war to gain the western half of Papua and an unsuccessful war to incorporate Malaysia. There is a feeling that Indonesia’s borders are not yet set and that this is a potential risk factor for the country. This is true and there is much that can be said on this topic, but I would simplify it down to saying the area it is most likely to lose would be the western half of Papua, the least developed part of the archipelago, and the area it is most likely to gain is Malaysia, a more highly developed neighbour, which shares language and ethnicity with Indonesia and really only developed as a separate nation due to one area having been ruled by the British in European colonial times and the other having been ruled by the Dutch.
Were Indonesia to merge or federate with Malaysia at some point in the future then the resulting country would have complete control of the Malacca Straits and would be an even larger and richer and well-positioned nation than the current Indonesia. That such a union could be brought about successfully at some point in the future seems quite likely given that the two nations both share the same national language, Bahasa, and are ethnically very similar as well.
Were Indonesia to lose western Papua, it would admittedly lose its richest mining province, but it would also lose its least developed and least integrated citizens. It is quite possible that the loss of western Papua would be a benefit to Indonesia as whole.
Being an island nation also means that Indonesia is far less susceptible to invasion from its neighbours than a country with land borders.
 
The Centre of Asia
In many ways Indonesia is at the centre of Asia. Certainly, some might look at a map and say Sinkiang or Tibet were at the geographic centre of Asia but it can be argued that Indonesia is at the cultural meeting point of Asia. The two great realms of Asia are China and India and those two worlds meet in Indonesia.  Most obviously, Indonesia is halfway along the sea route between these two giants and located at the natural choke point of that sea route, at the end of the Malay Peninsula, but its claim to being between them goes further than that. Many Indonesian ethnic groups have genetic and linguistic connections to southern China but culturally Indonesia is much closer to India. So, there is a fusion of both East Asia and South Asia in Indonesia. And, yes, sitting on that great trade route between the two, being able to disrupt the trade of either yet being far enough removed not to be vulnerable to invasion does give Indonesia an ability to influence the giants from a position of security that a place like Myanmar does not have.
 
If Indonesia’s geography is so good then why hasn’t it been cashed in on already?
In a sense, Indonesia’s geography has already shown its worth at various times in the past. We have already mentioned that when the Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century they found the islands were already home to sophisticated maritime trading networks. And the technology found among the islands was also comparable with what the Europeans were using. Some islanders, for example, were already using cannons (indeed there is some speculation that cannons and firearms in general might have been an Indonesian invention, combining the fireworks powder traded from China with the local penchant for using blow pipes) and their ships too were comparable to what the European’s were using, though designed for the calmer protected seas of South East Asia rather than open ocean sailing.
There were small maritime empires operating in Indonesia, at that time, such as the sultanates of Ternate and Tidore and the Bugis of Makassar, with whom the Europeans had to fight for control when they arrived. But there had been large and wealthy empires in islands before that too, with the most notable being the Majapahit and the Sriwijayan, who were known to the rulers of China. So, history shows that the island of Indonesia could provide the base for both large empires and societies that were advanced by the global standards of the time. It also shows that the islands were a relatively secure base from which to operate as they were never conquered by an external power until the arrival of the Europeans and the creation of their global maritime empires.
So, Indonesia’s geography has proved its worth in the past, and it looks to be moving toward fulfilling its potential once again. In some ways its population is providing the impetus. During colonial times Indonesia’s population was sparse, but now it is growing to a point where a certain degree of influence is inevitable. Perhaps consequently, Indonesia is beginning to take off as one of the new China’s (the countries set to take over China’s low-end manufacturing role as wages in China continue to increase), and constant visitors to Indonesia can see the steady rise in living standards that are becoming available to the general population.
 
Won’t de-globalization stall Indonesia’s growth in its tracks?
So, Indonesia is following in China’s cheap manufacturing footsteps, but what happens if globalisation fades with increased tariff boundaries, robotization, 3D printing and fear of supply route disruption in this period of terrorism and state failure? Could it not be that Indonesia is following an out of date model?
If globalization does fade, Indonesia is one of the few countries that would grow its relative strength in such a world. Such a world is all about having the resources locally and Indonesia is one of the most resource rich countries, it has oil and minerals as well as some of the most productive farmlands on the planet, combining volcanic soils with year-round growing seasons. Indonesia can be both self-sufficient due to its resources and secure thanks to its island geography. So, Indonesia it seems is poised to benefit regardless of what the future brings.
 
Conclusion
Indonesia’s growing power is already showing in how other powers treat it. In particular, its treatment by China is telling. China is throwing its weight around with other South China Sea countries at the moment; building on islands and having naval stand-offs. When Chinese fishing boats are caught fishing in Indonesian waters, however, the Indonesian president flies in to watch them be burned. And the response from China? Very low key. China may be bullying other South China Sea claimants, but it is choosing not to pick a fight with Indonesia.
Indonesia is already a G20 country both economically and militarily and its ranking in both regards has been climbing over recent years.
For mine, though, the real joker in the pack for Indonesia’s potential power is its linguistic and ethnic brotherhood with Malaysia. Regardless of how the relationship between these two countries develops, though, Indonesia is very much the unseen giant of today’s world. It goes under the radar on account of its past poor performance, but there are many reasons to believe that its future will be more significant than its recent past, and for those who look closely there are many signs of building strength.