Greenlees, Donald
Description
The thesis analyses Indonesia’s foreign policy, specifically
its alignment behavior, in the 20 years after it declared
independence in 1945. It investigates the origins of
Indonesia’s enduring bebas-aktif (independent and active)
foreign policy and its manifestation in an official policy of
neutrality and then nonalignment during the Cold War. It then
follows the evolution of alignment policy via Indonesia’s
interactions with the great powers of the era – the...[Show more] USA, the
Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. The case study
period provides a detailed account of a series of episodes that
engaged the Cold War’s great powers, including the Asia- Africa
conference, US-sponsored regional rebellions in Indonesia, the
campaign to wrest control of West New Guinea, and the attempt to
“crush” the formation of Malaysia under a policy of
Konfrontasi.
In trying to account for patterns in Indonesian alignment, the
thesis challenges conventional approaches to alignment that
explain changing behavior as purely a response to either the
capability or intentions of other powers. Instead of seeing
alignment as the result of a balance of power or a balance of
threat, the thesis finds that Indonesia’s alignment policy
during the period is better understood as a balance of risk
between competing domestic and international demands and
objectives. Policymakers are viewed as placing especially high
priority on maintaining policy autonomy, which they compromise
only when the objective that alignment serves is regarded as
critical to the state.
The analysis highlights a deep vein of Realpolitik and pragmatism
in Indonesia’s alignment behavior, which prompted it to abandon
neutrality when the international and domestic objectives of
policymakers outweighed their commitment to the bebas-aktif
policy. But the thesis found Indonesia’s most common approach
to alignment was the use of a range of ‘smart’ strategies
designed to maximise the benefits and minimise the risks of
alignment. The principal risks could be placed in two categories:
first, the risk of losing policy autonomy and, second, the risk
of alignment choice provoking a domestic or international
backlash. The thesis also reviewed methods of analysing decisions
under conditions of risk. Comparing a rational actor model with a
psychological model of choice, it found policymakers were prone
to depart from the precepts of rational choice under conditions
of crisis and uncertainty when the risk of critical loss to the
state was is high.
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