Prabowo in Paris: liberté, égalité, and the autonomy that isn’t

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has now travelled to France three times this year, and four times since he took office (Opens in new window). The first, in January, was a stopover of under five hours (Opens in new window) behind visits to Britain and Switzerland. In April, Prabowo made a 36-hour circuit that took in Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin (Opens in new window) and a new defence understanding with Washington (Opens in new window). This month, he returned for a reception at Les Invalides, a state banquet at the Élysée (Opens in new window), and Eid al-Adha prayers with Indonesians in Paris. The visit produced four commercial agreements worth US$3.5 billion (Opens in new window), signed at the launch of a France-Indonesia High-Level Business Council.

That figure is worth examining, because it carries less than it suggests.

The equipment that defines the relationship was contracted years ago. Indonesia ordered 42 Rafale fighters in 2022, in a package worth roughly $8 billion, and the first six were handed over at Halim Perdanakusuma on 18 May (Opens in new window), along with four Falcon jets, an A400M and the first Meteor missiles. Two Scorpène submarines are to be built at PT PAL (Opens in new window), a program that only reached pre-production at the end of May (Opens in new window).

The $3.5 billion announced in Paris added no new capability to any of this. It was a set of commercial commitments placed on top of the $11 billion in memoranda (Opens in new window) signed during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Jakarta a year earlier, and Indonesia’s own investment minister now describes the council’s purpose as making those earlier promises real.

Each visit produces another announcement, and the meeting that surrounds it. In a personalist foreign policy (Opens in new window), the meeting is itself the outcome.

Prabowo signalled this preference before his inauguration. He prefers to deal leader-to-leader, in person, on instinct, rather than through the foreign ministry. The embrace with Macron on the Élysée steps, the joint statement, the claim that ties have never been stronger (Opens in new window) – these are what the visit delivers, and they work by making one idea feel natural, namely that Indonesia is acting with full autonomy.

The arsenal tells a more complicated story. Jakarta is now buying combat aircraft from five sources at once (Opens in new window): the Rafale from France, the KAAN from Turkey, the KF-21 it co-develops with South Korea, a Chinese J-10C under evaluation, and a stalled F-15EX plan with the United States. Each comes with its own training, spare parts and political relationship to manage, which looks less like strategic freedom than like a costly maintenance problem (Opens in new window) spread across several capitals.

The French aircraft, the air force has confirmed (Opens in new window), arrive with French instructors and French logistics. Diversification of this kind does not escape dependence; it distributes it. Macron underlined the point by urging Jakarta not to rely on the major powers (Opens in new window) for critical minerals, an appeal to autonomy made by the very supplier who profits from it.

The harder question is who gains from these deals at home in Indonesia. The business council brings together 30 firms worth a combined $1.3 trillion, and it is co-chaired (Opens in new window) on the Indonesian side by Anindya Bakrie, head of the chamber of commerce and a member of one of the country’s larger business families, and on the French side by the chief executive of Danone. Every contract carries a promise of technology transfer, from the submarines to the jets. Yet developing economies rarely climb the value chain through licensed co-production; more often they assemble another country’s design and remain a customer. The limit on what is shared is decided in Paris.

The official reason for all this travel is energy. Prabowo says he goes abroad to secure oil, and the decision to freeze subsidised fuel prices was presented as a direct result of his trips to Russia and France (Opens in new window). Indonesia’s exposure to oil prices is real, so the claim is not empty. But it also recasts a political choice as a necessity, turning the concentration of foreign policy in one man’s hands into something the situation seems to demand.

The cost of that choice is visible at home. While the president toured Europe, Indonesians were asked to work from home to save fuel (Opens in new window) as the subsidy bill rose (Opens in new window) and the rupiah weakened. The Eid prayers in Paris were more than awkward staging; they measured the distance between the citizens who carry the cost and the leader who performs the remedy abroad.

The domestic setting makes this sharper still. Since the 2025 revision of the armed forces law (Opens in new window), military officers have moved steadily into civilian government, a process that continues quietly while the president builds an image of statesmanship overseas.

None of this is a case against dealing with France, which offers Indonesia what Washington and Moscow will not, namely co-production with fewer conditions. The point concerns what is reproduced when the same partnership is staged three times in a single season, an autonomy that exists mainly in the language of the visits, a foreign policy shaped by one man's instincts, and a public account in which all of it appears as something imposed from outside rather than chosen in Jakarta.

The Rafale will fly, the submarines will eventually be built, and the next $3.5 billion will be announced. Whether these commitments become real capability, and whether buying from everyone ever amounts to autonomy, is the question the ceremony leaves unanswered, a question that another trip to Paris will not answer either.