Indonesia and Australia are advancing plans to broaden their defense cooperation by engaging Japan and Papua New Guinea in separate trilateral frameworks, signaling a calibrated effort to strengthen regional stability in the Indo-Pacific.
Rather than forming a single multilateral alliance, the initiative builds on existing bilateral partnerships and expands them into overlapping trilateral arrangements. The approach is designed to promote defense professionalism, capacity-building, and coordinated responses to emerging security challenges.
Indonesia’s Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin…