Over the past few days, both to our west and to our east, there have been developments that herald a new phase of civil-military relations in the countries concerned. These act as a reminder of just how powerful a political force — both for the good and the not-so-good — the military has been and continues to be.
Pakistan obviously provides the example to our west. Notwithstanding the outrage from Pakistan’s shrinking liberal voice, most external observers were left cold by the rapid pushing through of the Constitution’s 27th Amendment. The erosion of democratic institutions and an encroachment by the military into all spheres of public life are a familiar, even predictable, trope in Pakistan, although the scale of the changes merits pause. Breaking up the Supreme Court and transferring its jurisdiction over constitutional questions to a new constitutional court certainly is radical surgery. Needless to say, greater freedom is now available to the government to appoint judges of its choice to the new constitutional court.
The second big change concerns the military directly. Here again, a new institution has been created — a chief of defence forces — and it is specified that henceforth the chief of army staff would also concurrently be the chief of defence forces. Thus Field Marshal Asim Munir is now the chief of defence forces and this elevation puts him de jure at the top of the military hierarchy. Moreover, it also strengthens his overall political position.
Put together, these changes amount to a drastic reversal of the trajectory that had begun as Pakistan’s last formal military dictatorship tottered to its end in 2007-2008. For the past decade, the military Establishment had sought to reverse that trend. Having a pliant political party as a front to achieve this goal has been an essential part of this strategy. Imran Khan proved himself to not be pliant enough and, on the contrary, had ambitions that challenged, even threatened, military supremacy.
Ironically, the past protagonists of civilian supremacy, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and the Pakistan Peoples Party, have turned out to be ideal allies for Munir in achieving this objective. For the foreseeable future, he appears to be the greatest gainer from these changes. The uncertainties surrounding Imran Khan, even if he does not appear to pose any immediate threat, are certainly an important motivating factor for both Munir and the PML(N)-PPP combine to push these changes through.
What explains the capacity of the present PML(N) government with the Pakistan army behind it to carry out such far-reaching changes? After all, it was only as recently as early 2025 when there was a near consensus that Imran Khan’s imprisonment without trial and the rigging of the 2024 general election had severely dented the public image of the government and, even more, of the army, the real power behind the throne.
The fact is that the successful selling of the narrative domestically that it had faced India down during the May crisis improved and polished that image considerably. Alongside there is a new international acceptability of Pakistan, animated most by Donald Trump’s endorsement of Munir. These two factors explain how much the power balance has shifted in favour of the Pakistan army in the past few months.
Meanwhile, to our east, in Indonesia, comes another example of the military coming back to centre stage and reversing a past trend of the strengthening of democratic forces. That is the narrative of criticism that surrounds the November 10 designation of the former president, Suharto, as a ‘National Hero’ by Indonesia’s current president, Prabowo Subianto.
Suharto’s downfall in May 1998 was a consequence of widespread rioting and protests amidst the deep chaos caused by the Asian financial crisis. Heavy-handed security crackdowns to put down the rioting and protests backfired. Suharto had then been in power for thirty-plus years and his end did mean that a new, certainly far less authoritarian, and more democratic phase of Indonesian history was beginning.
To his critics, elevating Suharto to the status of a national hero is historical amnesia of a somewhat extreme variety given the repression and the abuse he presided over and the vast corruption and nepotism that characterised the latter half of his tenure. His coming to power in the mid-1960s had certainly meant that the Indonesian army soon permeated every aspect of Indonesia’s governance. He was, after all, a general himself. To others, this view is unbalanced for it ignores the fact that during Suharto’s tenure Indonesia achieved significant economic growth and political stability and became a leader of regional stability in Southeast Asia.
Perhaps there are other deeper issues also at play in Suharto’s posthumous rehabilitation. President Subianto was himself one of Suharto’s key generals and is believed to have played a major role in the failed attempt to put down the protests that finally brought down the regime in 1998. He was then also Suharto’s son-in-law. Rehabilitating Suharto in a way also restores his reputation. As a former military officer, his election as president last year had also suggested to many that a return of the army into the political and the public life was happening after a quarter century of its non-political, even low-key, existence. In such cases, public memory is often short and to many, the Suharto phase of Indonesian history appears almost benign and a period of promise.
But there are differences between Suharto of Indonesia and Pakistan’s crop of military rulers — past and present. Suharto’s greatest contribution was in sensing how critical regional stability was to Indonesia’s own growth prospects and potential. The rise and the consolidation of ASEAN and Indonesia’s pragmatic handling of relations with Malaysia and other neighbours from the late 1960s to bring down mutual tensions certainly offer a tutorial on regional cooperation others could benefit from. When one evaluates military regimes in different geographies, the key point is how some develop and act on a forward-looking, desecuritised perspective while others remain trapped in tactical zero-sum games.
T.C.A. Raghavan is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan and Singapore