ABSTRACT
The central thesis of this book is that the state of the Republic of Indonesia is not viable without the active involvement of the TNI in its political and security activities, which are inextricably linked. This in turn reflects the relatively arbitrary construction of the state from a non-homogenous colony, or set of linked sub-colonies that had separate pre-colonial histories. Indeed, the TNI is constructed not as an external defence organisation but primarily as an internally focused source of state cohesion, and regards the maintenance of the contemporary unitary state as its reason for being. The state and the TNI’s current role within it are mutually dependant; the state cannot maintain its territorial integrity without unity being imposed by the TNI, and the TNI cannot exist in its present form without the demands of a potentially or actually fragmented state. That is, if one side of the relationship were to fundamentally alter its structure, the diminution or dissolution of the other would follow.
