When tanks and missiles steal the headlines, the quieter tools of diplomacy — a phone call, a modest memorandum or a principled public statement — can feel faint by comparison. Yet those quieter tools are doing the world’s heaviest lifting right now.
Indonesia’s recent outreach to Qatar is a vivid demonstration: a maritime, pluralist democracy with the world’s largest Muslim population stepped into Doha’s bruised salon of mediation not to grandstand, but to shore up the fragile scaffolding that keeps talks alive. That matters for lives on the ground, for the credibility of small-state mediation, and for the health of a rules-based diplomacy the world urgently needs to salvage.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s September visit to Lusail Palace with Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani was not merely ceremonial. Jakarta and Doha agreed to launch a formal Strategic Dialogue and signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) that signal new economic ties.
These economic ties included a reported $2 billion commitment to Indonesian infrastructure — but the political subtext was clear: Indonesia is buying influence through patience and partnership, not weaponry. It is an investment in convening capacity and in the fragile habit of maintaining neutral space, where enemies can be encouraged to talk.
That posture is Indonesia’s comparative advantage: it can simultaneously leverage Muslim-majority legitimacy and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-style discretion.
Diminished back-channels for diplomacy
Why does this matter now? Because mediation is a fragile capital — easily squandered, painfully hard to rebuild. Qatar has for years been one of the few states able to talk to Hamas, to Israel’s interlocutors and to Western and regional capitals simultaneously. The Israeli strike on Qatari soil in early September shattered that immunity. It prompted Doha to pause parts of its mediation work — a dramatic, costly response that shows how quickly sanctuary can evaporate.
The result is predictable: fewer back-channels, more diplomatic paralysis, and greater risk that conflicts calcify into perpetual violence. In that void, great-power rivalry deepens and civilians pay the price.
Indonesia’s “free and active” (bebas-aktif) diplomacy and ASEAN’s quiet, consensus-driven approach are not flash-in-the-pan doctrines. They are institutional habits — patient, low-profile, sometimes maddeningly slow, but often effective at keeping dialogue alive where loud condemnation drives parties further apart.
The ASEAN Way’s emphasis on noninterference and private consultation buys endurance, not immediate headlines; Jakarta’s strength is converting that endurance into something operational in the Middle East: convening second-track dialogues, cosponsoring humanitarian corridors or hosting technical talks on prisoner releases and ceasefire mechanics. Those are the small, essential things that make a ceasefire stick.
But perks and principles alone are not enough. If Indonesia wants to meaningfully augment Doha’s tapering role, it must be strategic and inventive. First: protect negotiation sanctuaries. International law still treats sanctuaries for diplomacy as sacrosanct; practice often does not. Jakarta should champion an ASEAN-Gulf compact — a multilateral statement, practical and enforceable — that establishes clear protocols for protecting host-state venues, mediators and humanitarian couriers.
This compact could be modest — rapid fact-finding mechanisms, agreed “no-strike” notification channels for high-risk meetings, and joint diplomatic demarches that raise the political cost of violations. A pledge does not stop bullets; it makes the political fallout for attackers immediate and collective.
The Indonesia-Qatar partnership
Second: institutionalize two-track diplomacy with teeth. Indonesia and Qatar make a credible pairing: Doha brings access to armed nonstate actors; Jakarta brings multilateral legitimacy and Southeast Asian convening power. Together, they could underwrite an “Inclusive Track” secretariat — small, agile and designed to keep negotiators talking even when capitals shout.
Funded by Gulf and ASEAN donors and housed in a neutral location, it would stabilize the very back-channels that prevent escalation. Australia, the EU and middle powers should seed this organ as a practical alternative to the zero-sum politics that now paralyze the UN Security Council.
Third: convert moral solidarity into durable humanitarian architecture. Indonesia has used its UN platform to cosponsor ceasefire language and demands for aid access; now it should push for protected humanitarian corridors under multilateral supervision, with donor-backed rapid response financing.
When mediators lose leverage, civilians die — and that must not be the bill for failed diplomacy. A simple rule: where a mediator can secure a humanitarian route, a pooled fund activates within 72 hours to keep aid flowing. That is operational charity, not rhetorical condolence.
Indonesia’s role as a middle power in global diplomacy
This will be politically uncomfortable. ASEAN’s preference for quiet diplomacy will chafe against louder calls for immediate accountability. Some Gulf partners will resist anything that feels like external interference.
Yet the cost of inaction is higher: shrinking mediation space invites unilateral military solutions, drives proxy escalations and shifts the regional balance toward securitized blocs. Indonesia’s skill — modest but durable — is precisely the kind of middle-power resource the world needs if wartime bargaining is to have any chance at peacetime outcomes.
Indonesia cannot rebuild Doha’s unique access on its own. But it can be the coal that keeps the embers alive: offering platforms, underwriting small, technical talks and convening coalitions that translate solidarity into safeguards for diplomacy. That is a practical power: not the dramatic thrust of aircraft carriers, but the patient craft of keeping channels open until politics catches up with humanity. In a time when great powers posture, middle powers must deliver the quieter instruments of survival.
Indonesia and Qatar, together, can — if the international community supports them — transform the devastation of a struck capital into the foundation of lasting negotiation. The alternative is to watch the last hospitable spaces close, one by one and for diplomacy that prevents war from dying in the silence that follows the guns.
[Liam Roman edited this piece.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
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