More than a week has passed since Prabowo Subianto celebrated his first presidential year. He is indeed a foreign policy president, traveling across the world and meeting with numerous world leaders to discuss pertinent issues of our times. He attended major multilateral meetings, from the UN, ASEAN, BRICS, and APEC, to the discussions surrounding the Hamas-Israel peace agreement. He visited numerous countries, including great powers like the US, China, and Russia; close neighbors in Southeast Asia such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand; and key European and Middle Eastern partners like the United Kingdom, France, and the United Arab Emirates. It is fair to say that Indonesia is coming back to the world stage. After more than a decade, the country seemed to shy away from the international spotlight: Joko Widodo was often out of the picture, leaving the Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi as the sole orchestrator and leading operator of Indonesian foreign policy.

The narrative suggests that everything is now returning to normal. Indonesia, the biggest country in Southeast Asia—the natural leader of ASEAN, and one of the largest democracies in the world—has seemingly rediscovered its global mission, ready to contribute to the fulfillment of world peace. Nevertheless, the reality is much more complicated than that. Prabowo has created the impression of putting Indonesia back on the global map, but without a distinct, well-crafted, and innovative foreign policy strategy. His adoption of a highly self-centric style has resulted in an Indonesian foreign policy that is both over-personalized and idiosyncratic. Listen to his speeches, listen to how he describes Indonesia’s position within the world order and what the country might contribute to de-escalating hostilities between Hamas and Israel, Russia and Ukraine, and other conflicts. One must wonder where the idea of deploying twenty thousand Indonesian peacekeepers to Palestine and around the world truly originated.

Ultimately, while Prabowo’s first year marks a comeback of presidential visibility on the world stage, this hyper-diplomacy risks becoming a strategic liability. The me-me-me approach currently dominating Indonesia’s foreign policy is inherently unsustainable and fails to maximise the country’s diplomatic potential. For Indonesia to truly make a meaningful and long-term impact on global affairs, Prabowo must move beyond securing photo opportunities with world leaders and focus instead on institutionalizing an innovative foreign policy that serves the national interest rather than his personal profile.