In the days following Indonesia’s decision to join Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace (BOP), President Prabowo Subianto moved quickly to contain the backlash.
Leaders of Indonesia’s major Muslim organisations were summoned. Former foreign ministers and deputy foreign ministers were gathered. Intellectuals, think-tank figures, and members of parliament were invited into a series of closed explanations.
This was not deliberation before a decision, but persuasion after the fact. And by most accounts, it worked. Critics softened. Doubts were reframed as pragmatism. What initially looked reckless was repackaged as realism. Indonesia, the narrative went, had no choice.
The official justifications came neatly bundled.
Indonesia, we were told, has not yet paid the USD 1 billion entry fee and may not have to if it chooses to remain a non-permanent member for three years. Indonesia can withdraw at any time should Palestine fail to achieve independence.
Participation, officials further argued, is the only way to defend Palestinian interests from within, especially since Israel is included while Palestine is not. By joining alongside Muslim countries, particularly the D-8, Indonesia could become a balancing force. This, finally, is realism in a realist world: power matters, presence matters, and sitting outside achieves nothing. Better to be inside the room, shaping decisions, than outside looking in.
It is a compelling story. It is also deeply delusional.
The most revealing fact is not the content of these explanations but their existence. That President Prabowo himself felt compelled to personally justify the decision, after it had been made, already tells us what this membership really is. This was not a carefully institutionalised foreign-policy move rooted in long-term national strategy. It was an impulsive, personalised decision driven by affect, symbolism, and ambition.
When Donald Trump publicly rubbed Prabowo’s shoulder and called him a “tough guy,” it was not diplomacy on display but hierarchy. The Indonesian president’s subsequent enthusiasm for Trump’s Board of Peace has far less to do with Palestinian independence or Indonesia’s national interest than with Prabowo’s desire to be seen, acknowledged, and staged in what he perceives as the world’s main theatre.
Indonesia’s foreign policy, once again, is being personalised, this time not merely around power, but around validation.
Supporters insist Indonesia has not paid the USD 1 billion and therefore retains leverage. This argument collapses under even minimal scrutiny. Trump’s politics are explicitly transactional. Influence is not granted by presence but purchased through contribution. Without payment, Indonesia’s voice will not merely be weak. It will be irrelevant.
The idea that Indonesia can “play” Trump while withholding money misunderstands the US President entirely. If Indonesia does not contribute financially this year, whether through an initial instalment or some creative accounting, Prabowo will not be respected for restraint; he will be humiliated for hesitation. And given Prabowo’s visible admiration for Trump, the likelihood that he will ultimately pay is extremely high.
Even worse, Indonesia’s current governance culture ensures that the public may never know whether payment has already occurred, how much has been paid, or under what terms. Transparency in foreign-policy expenditure under this administration is minimal. The reassurance that “we have not paid yet” is therefore meaningless. In practice, Indonesia has already committed itself to a financial logic it cannot escape. You cannot buy influence on credit and then pretend the bill may never arrive.
The claim that Indonesia can withdraw if Palestine fails to achieve independence is equally hollow. There is no clear roadmap for short term, midterm, or long term, defining the goals of the Board of Peace, let alone Indonesia’s role within it. What constitutes progress? At what point does Indonesia decide “enough”?
History offers little comfort. Israel’s strategy toward Palestinian statehood has always relied on delay, fragmentation, tactical concessions, and outright deception. This is not a diplomatic dispute awaiting a clever mediator but it is a conflict rooted in territorial claims, power asymmetry, and survival narratives.
An independent Palestinian state, if it emerges at all, is likely decades away.
Under such conditions, Indonesia will be paying up the US 1 billion long before any meaningful outcome is achieved. And if Indonesia eventually withdraws in frustration, it will have already spent vast resources; financial, diplomatic, and political, for nothing. A sunk-cost exit does not restore dignity, it merely confirms waste.
The assertion that Indonesia has “no other option” is perhaps the most intellectually dishonest of all. Indonesia does have options. It has always had options. It could maintain its long-standing position while intensifying coordination with BRICS, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Non-Aligned Movement, and Global South coalitions without becoming entangled in Trump’s spectacle.
It could rally alternative diplomatic initiatives rooted in international law rather than personal branding. Instead, Indonesia has chosen appeasement, entering a forum led by a man who has openly endorsed Israel’s most extreme positions, dismissed Palestinian suffering, and even fantasised about turning Gaza into a real-estate project, as casually as one might develop property in Las Vegas.
To imagine that Trump cares about Palestinian independence is not naïve; it is absurd. To imagine that Israel will concede sovereignty over land it claims under Trump’s sponsorship is historically illiterate. This is not realism but wishful thinking dressed up as strategy.
What finally exposes the hollowness of these justifications is the way Trump has explicitly bundled the Board of Peace with trade and tariff negotiations. This is not a side issue but the logic of the arrangement: peace is reduced to leverage, folded into a package deal where market access and tariff relief become the real currency. In such an asymmetric setting, the claim that Indonesia is “inside shaping decisions” collapses, because the agenda, sequencing, and exit costs are all controlled by the stronger party.
This is not realism in the sense articulated by power theorists, but coercive issue-linkage masquerading as pragmatism. When peace is tied to tariffs, participation is no longer a choice, it is compliance dressed up as diplomacy.
Listening carefully to Prabowo and his officials, one hears a consistent overestimation of Indonesia’s leverage. Indonesia is spoken of as a “balancing force,” a shaper of outcomes, a moral counterweight. In reality, Indonesia has zero leverage over Trump’s Board of Peace. Trump does not need Indonesia’s ideas; he needs Indonesia’s participation to legitimise his project and Indonesia’s money to fund it.
Indonesia is not shaping the board; it is being used by it. Its presence provides validation, its absence would be inconvenient, but its voice, unless monetised, will be marginal at best.
Nor is this realism in the sense articulated by scholars like John Mearsheimer. Classical realism recognises power asymmetry and advises states to maximise their own security and autonomy within it. What Indonesia is doing instead is appeasing a bully for symbolic inclusion.
History offers a well-known warning. Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler was also justified as pragmatism in a dangerous world. It bought applause, photographs, and temporary calm, until Britain was bombed anyway. Appeasing egomaniacs does not moderate them. It emboldens them.
Indonesia is not practicing realism. It is practicing insecurity. It is paying, or preparing to pay USD 1 billion not to change the structure of power, but to be regarded within it. That is not diplomacy. It signals to the world that Indonesia doubts its own weight, its own alliances, and its own principles.
Indonesia does not need Trump to validate its relevance. It is a G20 member, the largest economy in Southeast Asia, and a country whose diplomatic tradition once shaped global conversations rather than chasing them. What it needs now is the confidence to say no, to refuse humiliation disguised as access, and to reject a peace initiative that is neither peace-oriented nor credible.
The real tragedy of Indonesia’s entry into the Board of Peace is not the money alone, though USD 1 billion in a debt-burdened country is obscene. It is the mindset that produced the decision: the belief that respect can be purchased, that morality can be deferred, and that being seen matters more than standing firm. A nation that forgets its own leverage will always be tempted to rent relevance from louder powers.
The question is no longer whether Indonesia should pay USD 1 billion to be regarded. The question is why it believes being regarded by Donald Trump is worth paying for at all.
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Omong-Omong Media’s editorial is also published in The Jakarta Post every Monday.
