Shadows of the Pyramid: Indonesia and the Dilemma of Progress

The world is not a level playing field. It is a pyramid—grand, towering, and merciless. At its peak sit the core nations, dictating global trade, finance, and technology. At its base lie the peripheries, where resources are dug and workers labor for wages that barely sustain them. And in between, suspended in ambiguity, stand the semi-peripheries: restless, aspiring, yet tethered to the same structures that hold them down.

Immanuel Wallerstein’s World-System Theory remains one of the most compelling frameworks for reading this inequality. As Sorinel (2010) notes, the system was never designed for balance; it was designed for extraction. The prosperity of the core, as Roberts & Parks (2009) argue, rests on “ecologically unequal exchange”—a cycle where the environment and labor of the periphery subsidize the lifestyles of the wealthy.

When we apply this lens to Indonesia, the reflection is unmistakable. We are not periphery, but neither are we core. We are semi-periphery: growing, aspiring, yet always dependent (Jacob, 2023).

The Illusion of Ascent: Morowali and the Nickel Dream

Consider Morowali, the epicenter of Indonesia’s nickel boom. In 2020, the government banned raw nickel exports, forcing foreign industries to build smelters domestically. Analysts saw this as Indonesia’s attempt to disrupt the global order (Tritto, 2023). At first glance, this was a bold step—a refusal to remain a mere supplier of cheap ore.

Yet the reality is more sobering. Chinese companies dominate the capital flows, environmental damage intensifies, and workers remain underpaid (Ginting & Moore, 2021). The structure of dependency remains intact, even if the form looks new. Our climb did not dismantle the pyramid; it merely shifted our place upon it.

The Fragile Prosperity of the New Order

History deepens this paradox. Under Suharto’s New Order, Indonesia experienced rapid growth, celebrated as part of Asia’s economic rise (Gupta, 2021). But this prosperity was fragile, built not on equality, but on cronyism and political patronage. As Kochanova et al. (2018) show, competition was curtailed by favoritism, and wealth accumulated in the hands of those closest to power.

The Asian Financial Crisis of 1998 exposed the weakness of this model. Growth collapsed, capital fled, and inequality deepened (Juwono, 2017). The semi-peripheral foundation crumbled—neither strong enough to be core, nor resilient enough to withstand shocks.

Between Diagnosis and Possibility

Wallerstein’s framework illuminates this history, but Indonesia’s story also complicates it. We are not only victims. At times, we resist—as in the nickel policy. Yet too often, we replicate the system’s injustices within our borders. As Ariani et al. (2022) argue, industrial policy in Indonesia continues to be shaped by external pressure and internal inequality.

This reveals the deeper dilemma: to aspire to the core risks becoming an oppressor; to remain semi-periphery is to remain suspended. The challenge is not merely analytical, but moral.

Imagining Another Horizon

What might a different horizon look like? Wallerstein himself left the question open (Chirot, 2015). Perhaps it begins with solidarity among semi-peripheral nations, who choose not to compete as suppliers, but to cooperate as equals. Perhaps it means redefining progress itself—not as GDP growth, but as the capacity to sustain dignity, justice, and ecological balance.

Indonesia’s nickel experiment shows both possibility and peril. It is a glimpse of agency, but also a warning that without structural change, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchy we wish to escape.

The question, then, is not whether Indonesia will one day be “core.” The question is whether we dare to reject the pyramid itself—and begin to build a world where prosperity is no longer purchased at the cost of exploitation.

Because if we cannot imagine beyond the pyramid, we will remain trapped within it: climbers forever ascending, never questioning why the pyramid must stand at all.