Thread by @EvanLaksmana

<LONG THREAD> Sorry for those uninterested in Indonesian military (TNI) personnel policies, but the recently announced org. changes will have serious implications. But if you're interested, let's get into the weeds shall we?

1/ Some highlights:
- 60 new high-ranking positions (one-star and above)
- Plans to insert officers into civilian ministries
- Extend retirement age of NCOs & enlistees to 58
- New units will be created or upgraded
These are meant to address the growth of “non-job” officers

2/ I have tons of views on these changes as I’ve worked on TNI personnel for years. My assessment of the logjams is forthcoming as a journal article this year. I’ll share some of the data and insights from the paper and from other short essays as we break down each proposal.

3/ Let's be clear, the proposed changes are stopgap measures. They act as as "pressure relieve valve" for the officer logjams but they don't address broader, more fundamental personnel problems. Here's a snapshot of those problems: thejakartapost.com/academia/2019/…

4/ This "cure symptoms not causes" plan is partially due to the misdiagnosis of the problem: promotional logjams. "Non-job" officers aren't just about lack of positions but they also signify the regression in generational change and flawed personnel management system.

5/ Promotional logjams are not new or unique to the Jokowi era. They've been around since 1940s (post-revolutionary logjams lead to intra-military conflicts & rebellions). But for now, let's note that the logjams worsened under SBY era and JKW inherited a messy TNI org. 👇

6/ Logjams are correlated with what I call "horizontal" rotations: officers get rotated to the same level of position or the post is filled by officers from the same acad class. As we can see in sample👇, most rotations involving high-ranking officers were horizontal since 2005.

7/ the lack of vertical rotation (promotions across acad. class and retirements) exacerbates the logjams. For more info, I have written a short discussion of these rotational patterns in a 2016 Kompas piece 👉 tinyurl.com/y97q69au (PDF). In short, logjams are structural.

8/ SBY has sought to address these challenges using the same set of tools JKW is now proposing: expanding existing TNI structures and insert "surplus" officers into non-TNI agencies/ministries. Most of these non-TNI postings have gone to some academy classes more than others 👇

9/ why some acad classes but not others? Because of the different acad class cohort size. 👇Officer-level logjams are likely to be worse for bigger classes than smaller ones. SBY and JKW policies were meant to accommodate these larger classes.

10/ For a great scholarly work on the importance of academy class on generational change and civil-military relations, Kammen and Chandra are unrivaled and I owed my paper and studies to their work. amazon.com/Tour-Duty-Chan…

11/ So JKW's proposed policies are not new--they merely expand the scale of TNI restructuring and the insertion of surplus officers to non-TNI posts SBY had practiced. They are also unlikely to address the logjams over the long-term.

12/ They will kick the can down the road. While new positions will relieve current logjams, the growing # of grads fr academy and staff and command colleges will create another round of logjams within 5-10 years. This is esp likely if personnel policies aren't overhauled.

13/ Mil/defense officials claim that the logjam won't happen again because of a new policy on promotions nasional.tempo.co/read/1172755/t… But this claim is problematic for the structural reasons cited above.

14/ Moreover, the new ranking policy basically "slowed down" the vertical rotation by extending the required service/commission length to move up the rank by 2 years. For ex., a COL will now need at least 26 yrs of service (up fr 24) before he is eligible for promotion.

15/ So in a way, yes, the logjams will "shrunk", as in new posts will be filled by surplus officers and new ones will be "held back" from coming up "too soon". But as we've seen above, the figures and structural defects aren't fixed.

16/ Officer logjams not only undermines TNI professionalism, morale, and operational readiness, they also shape civil-military relations in often regressive ways (e.g. militarization of civilian sphere). So addressing logjams is a big deal, even politicians don't see it as such.

17/ I understand it's an election year. But quick fixes mean we would have to deal with the problem down the line when existing flaws have been "path dependent" for years. And we wonder why military reform is hard? <END>