The Origins of Nonalignment: Great Power Competition and Indonesian Foreign Policy 1945-1965

Abstract

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 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.