A Tour of Duty: Changing Patterns of Military Politics in Indonesia in the 1990s

This is a study of the internal dynamics of the Indonesian Army in the decade and a half leading up to the fall of Soeharto. While the empirical analysis is limited to the Army, the findings have implications for the military as a whole. Throughout the work, we use the word Army when referring to the single service branch, and the terms "ABRI," "Armed Forces," and "military" interchangeably to refer to the four service branches together. Chapter one examines change in the Army officer corps during the 1980s and 1990s. In contrast to the existing literature, it argues that the increasing frequency of large scale reshuffles of military personnel was primarily neither a response to particular political developments nor the product of individual personalities and cliques. We argue instead that this was a reflection of changes in the size of the officer corps. Tracing these changes to the National Military Academy in Magelang, Central Java, we demonstrate that many of the current changes taking place in the Army are a result of internal structural features of the Army. Chapter two explores the career patterns of Army officers during the 1990s. Through a detailed analysis of succession patterns and the examination of class cohorts from the National Military Academy, this chapter further refines the basic model presented in chapter one. This analysis highlights several forms of institutional rationalization within the Army during the late Soeharto era. Drawing on the macro-level analysis of the Army officer corps in the preceding chapters, chapter three discusses the political implications of these structural changes for military rule in Indonesia. While the changing size of the officer corps has presented the Army with certain new opportunities, it has also raised new conflicts and tensions. Primary among these are questions of changing career prospects, alterations in the nature of the military and its ability to continue its direct role in socio-political affairs, and emerging divisions between active and retired officers.