Five Power was created after British withdrawal East of Suez. Its main function is to facilitate security cooperation between Malaysia and Singapore, whose external security is indivisible, and to help ameliorate differences between them. Singapore was briefly a member of the Malaysian federation, but was expelled in 1965 when the only alternative was ethnic violence. Tensions have heightened recently, arising partly out of political upheaval in Malaysia, where an unprecedented split in the Malay elite has occurred. Tensions have spilled over to FPDA, including Malaysian restrictions on Singapore's use of Malaysian air space.3
Australia also has long-standing defence connections with Thailand and the Philippines. In addition, Australia brings to the table its December 1995 alignment with Indonesia, the most important country in ASEAN.
The 1995 Agreement with Indonesia
The Agreement to Maintain Security (AMS) was a response to Chinese strategic pressure in the South China Sea. In the early 1990s, Indonesia had sponsored workshops on the South China Sea, assuming that Indonesia itself was not an interested party. But in 1995, Indonesia realised that China's extensive territorial claims in the South China Sea might stretch as far south as the Natuna Islands. These islands guard the funnel to Java, and are the site of extensive gas fields. Seeing advantage in ambiguity, China refused to delineate the extent of its claims in the area. China tried to reassure Indonesia, but the Indonesians seemed to have heard distant rumbles from 1938―"Germany has no further territorial ambition".
By moving into strategic alignment, Indonesia and Australia indicated that the security interests that united them were more important than the political and cultural issues that divided them, such as human rights. Indonesia demonstrated that it was willing to seek the external links it needed to balance Chinese power. In signing such an agreement with a US ally, Suharto departed dramatically from non-aligned Indonesia's 'active and independent' foreign policy. He even announced the AMS at an ASEAN meeting, showing what little faith he placed in ASEAN ideas about 'common security' or the ASEAN Regional Forum's multilateral security approach.
For Australia, this was the first agreement signed with a regional partner on the basis of reciprocal obligation. (An agreement with Singapore in 1996 was the second.) Australia had also moved a long way from the mid 1980s, when the Dibb defense report, by seeming to point the finger at Indonesia, had risked making an enemy4
