Indonesia

Indonesia is unlikely to be directly involved in significant armed conflict in the next three years, but the risk is not negligible due to Papuan insurgency persistence and low-probability maritime escalation in the Natuna/EEZ context.

Low risk of significant armed conflict. Expect continued Papua-related security operations and sporadic militant attacks, plus episodic protest activity that can turn violent but is usually containable. Maritime friction will likely stay in the gray-zone/law-enforcement lane; the main near-term tail risk is an accidental lethal encounter during an interception or standoff.

Risk edges higher if (a) Papuan insurgency intensifies and spreads across provinces with sustained casualties and displacement, or (b) Indo-Pacific crisis dynamics normalize coercive maritime behavior and degrade incident-management channels. Even then, Indonesia’s default posture is hedging and de-escalation; a major increase would require repeated lethal incidents or a domestic political-security rupture that weakens command and control.

Threat drivers The most credible conflict exposure remains internal: armed separatist violence in Papua continues and can generate recurring clashes, displacement, and security-force surges. This is the clearest channel by which Indonesia could meet a “significant armed conflict” threshold, though it is geographically bounded and typically does not threaten national regime survival.

Externally, Indonesia sits near major-power friction lines and faces periodic gray-zone pressure and coercive signaling at sea, including around areas where China’s nine-dash-line overlaps regional waters. The escalation mechanism is miscalculation: an interception, ramming, or exchange of fire that produces fatalities and triggers domestic political pressure to respond. However, most maritime encounters remain law-enforcement-forward and are designed to be deniable and de-escalatable.

Domestic unrest in 2025 demonstrated capacity for large-scale protest and episodic violence, but this is better modeled as political instability risk than civil war risk. Even severe riots do not automatically translate into organized armed conflict unless elite fragmentation, defections, or sustained armed group mobilization emerges.

Resilience and systemic firebreaks Indonesia’s “free and active” foreign policy remains a major firebreak: it avoids mutual-defense obligations that would automatically pull it into a U.S.-China contingency. Geography favors defense and complicates sustained external operations against the archipelago. State capacity is uneven but generally sufficient to contain unrest; recent governance and coordination improvements modestly strengthen crisis management. Economic interdependence and active trade diplomacy raise the opportunity cost of war for Jakarta and key partners.

Net assessment Compared with the baseline, new evidence points to higher domestic volatility and continued Papua-related security operations, nudging risk upward. Still, the modal outcome is contained internal violence plus bounded maritime incidents rather than interstate war or nationwide civil conflict. A material jump would require either a sharp intensification and geographic spread of Papuan fighting, or repeated lethal maritime incidents amid a wider regional crisis that collapses de-escalation channels.