Following the Asia Africa conference, with its appeals to peaceful coexistence, and the signing of accords to end fighting in Vietnam and Korea, the mid-1950s produced a relative pause in the Cold War, at least for Southeast Asia. The first Taiwan straits crisis, marked by communist China’s shelling of islands occupied by the Republic of China, was a reminder that conflict was never far away. Still, from Jakarta, the centres of conflict appeared comfortably distant. Events in Indonesia’s immediate region posed no immediate danger.
International conditions permitted Indonesia’s policymakers to focus on their priorities of national development and consolidation of sovereignty. Once again, Indonesia’s foreign policy orientation and alignment choices were set by reference to those internally-generated goals and constraints rather than by calculations of external power configurations or threat. This largely remained the case until the regional rebellions in 1958 when Indonesia was forced to make tough choices about how to deal with mounting evidence that the rebels were being actively aided by the USA. Even then, the internal priority of defeating the rebellions, and uncertainty about what level of US authority lay behind support for the rebels, resulted in Indonesia initially appeasing the USA.
Before the outbreak of the rebellions, and with a Masyumi government back in office in 1955, this time without any PNI participation, Indonesia adopted a friendly tone with the USA. In this, prime minister Burhanuddin remained true to the longstanding inclinations of his party. Presumably, once again, the Masyumi bias against communism played a role; it was an outlook shared by many of the parties that made up the coalition. Alongside the pro- American slant to foreign policy, Burhanuddin pursued negotiations with the Netherlands over the transfer of West New Guinea and better economic and financial terms under the Round Table Agreement. Burhanuddin judged that a conciliatory policy to the West in general, and the Netherlands in particular, was more likely to win support for Indonesia’s claims. A non- threatening Indonesia might be more able to win Western support for the incorporation of West New Guinea, alleviating US and Australian fears.
The actions of the Burhanuddin government were consistent with the hypothesis that low levels of external threat would allow states to pursue alignment strategies that are consistent with domestic group or individual preferences and interests. Even so, Burhanuddin
was constrained to use the strategy of undisclosed alignment in managing relations with the USA. The government did not broadcast its plans to pursue a “friendship” treaty with the USA and was at pains to keep military cooperation strictly secret. The exercise in balancing risk had two main components: The government had to avoid giving the nationalist and left-wing opposition of PNI and PKI an issue on which to attack its foreign policy credentials and it had to invest its faith in the idea a friendly attitude to the West and constructive approach to negotiations with the Dutch would support its key priorities of a settlement of the West New Guinea and Netherlands-Indonesia Union issues.
The policy was a failure because the Burhanuddin government miscalculated the degree of Dutch intransigence. Dutch foreign minister Luns found every opportunity to frustrate Indonesian aspirations, especially on the question of West New Guinea’s sovereignty. With the collapse of the Netherlands-Indonesia talks in Geneva, the Burhanuddin government suffered the double humiliation of the failure of its foreign policy and its electoral strategy, with Masyumi coming second to PNI in the parliamentary elections. It shifted the government’s reference point from one of prospective gains to actual losses. The unilateral cancellation of the Netherlands-Indonesia Union and its accompanying economic and financial accords was a high-risk gambit.
By then, the balance of risk shifted in favor of asserting a more independent, nationalist foreign policy. Masyumi, until then the party of reason and moderation in international affairs, took a more radical nationalistic stand than had been dared by Ali. Although the unilateral cancellation of a foreign treaty sent a negative message about Indonesia’s respect for the rules of international relations, it was deemed a risk worth taking, such were the emotions over West New Guinea. It is likely the Burhanuddin government did not calculate the impact on relations with the USA in making the decision. As it transpired, there was some sympathy in Washington. Still, the government’s decision making does not fit with a rational choice explanation.
The next government to take office – the second Ali government – doubled down on Burhanuddin’s anti-Dutch policy. This included a campaign to confiscate Dutch assets and expel many Dutch residents, adding to the unilateral actions that attracted international consternation. But Ali simultaneously adopted a more moderate stance in regard to the USA than in his earlier term. The first, and most obvious, reason for this would appear to be that Ali had learned from experience that there were advantages to keeping the USA on side, especially as Indonesia was ramping up pressure on Washington’s NATO ally. Ali found it was not necessary to alienate the USA, and deprive Indonesia of the benefits of US support, in
pursuing a genuinely neutral foreign policy. One of the factors that played out in Ali’s downfall the first time around was the speed with which he had fostered relations with China and the time and energy he invested in foreign affairs rather than fixing the economy. The second reason was that this time the Ali government included several Masyumi ministers and others from the right. His deputy was Mohammed Roem, who had served as foreign minister in the Natsir government. Moreover, Ali did not rely on the PKI to bolster support for the government in the parliament. These arrangements provided both the incentive and the space to avoid signals that Indonesia was antagonistic to the USA.
In contrast to his first term, Ali invested more time and energy in a domestic agenda. His big foreign policy initiative was to confront the Netherlands. He moved beyond Burhanuddin’s Dutch policy by abrogating the Round Table Agreements and repudiating sovereign debt. Although these actions were bound to be enormously popular at home and Ali worked to mollify US opinion, there were dangers on the international side. It was possible Western powers, or powerful lobbies within them, might back the Dutch, if only for the sake of upholding international conventions. As in his first term, Ali could calculate any move by them to censure Indonesia would be offset by a desire not to give an advantage to the PKI or enhance the status of the Soviet Union and China. It meant Ali could act with a reasonable degree of confidence in adopting policies that were important to Indonesian perceptions of the national interest, but that challenged Western norms of international conduct.
Complicating Ali’s foreign policy was a President increasingly inclined to escape his domestic figurehead status and drawn to the international stage to do so. It was with Sukarno’s intervention that the ambiguities of Indonesian foreign policy were most pronounced. There appears to have been genuine uncertainty over how Sukarno wanted to position Indonesia as he set off on his extended travels in 1956. Despite the success of the Asia-Africa conference, or perhaps because of it, Sukarno appeared to go on a study tour, determined to make friends for Indonesia wherever he went and ignoring the Cold War divide. One of the few concrete measures he had for judging the value of foreign partnerships was the level of support offered to Indonesia’s claims over West New Guinea.
In the USA, he made a number of symbolic gestures that reassured his hosts that Indonesia’s neutrality would be soft pro-Western in character. In the Soviet Union, Sukarno tilted the other way by agreeing to a joint policy statement without bothering to check with his prime minister and securing a large aid deal. In Yugoslavia, he was given an object lesson in how to retain autonomy by playing the great powers off against each other and was attracted to Tito’s pragmatic socialism. But it was in China that Sukarno witnessed conditions that
would have the most profound influence on the course of Indonesian politics. While observers trying to interpret Indonesia’s foreign policy direction could only be confused by Sukarno’s erraticism, the China leg of his travels demonstrated that there was more to alignment politics than treaties or pledges of cooperation. Sukarno returned to Indonesia with the inspiration for a more disciplined system of national rule. The significance of China for Sukarno was not its ability to compete by measures of material power but the example it set to another developing country with a historic grievance against colonial powers. In time, this would influence Indonesia’s attitude towards China as an international partner.
There is no simple characterisation of Indonesian alignment policy during this period. The official policy of neutrality does not capture the reality of Indonesian behavior. In their pubic positions, both the Burhanuddin and Ali governments arguably practiced a combination of hiding, competitive bidding and even wedge politics (trying to prise the USA away from the Netherlands). But in the repeated private reassurances of sympathy to the USA, and especially the desire to obtain US military assistance, these strategies played out in part via undisclosed commitments for most of their time in office. The first set of strategies served to maximise security and access to foreign assistance without the risk of compromising policy autonomy. The second strategy minimised the risk of a domestic backlash. In the midst of this, Sukarno explored his own ideas about how to position Indonesia internationally and domestically without revealing any definitive answers. Nonetheless, the behavior is consistent with the type of strategies to be expected from a state enjoying the space to explore its own preferences and interests in foreign policy.
The foreign policy picture changed again dramatically with the eruption of regional rebellions, the fall of the Ali government, and the implication that constitutional democracy was failing. These events also proved fortuitous for Sukarno’s plans to adopt a more authoritarian form of government. But the confluence of the rebellions and Sukarno’s attempts to establish Guided Democracy presented a complex scenario for foreign policy. The fall of Ali brought to power a pragmatic problem solver in Djuanda just as Indonesia faced the biggest test of its short history. It was ironic that Djuanda also was an official who Washington’s emissaries regarded as sympathetic to the USA, given that the problem he had to solve was one fuelled by US actions. The focus of government activity turned inward as Indonesia simultaneously sought to tackle a deteriorating security and economic climate. Despite growing evidence of US complicity in the regional rebellions, the Indonesian government played down its knowledge of US actions and sought to reassure the USA it was not antagonistic to US interests. Sukarno made a number of important symbolic gestures to the
US ambassador to confirm Indonesian goodwill, insisting at one point no action or policy would be hostile to the USA.
Indonesian policy then was to simultaneously defeat a US-sponsored rebellion by force of arms while maintaining the USA as a partner in economic development and security assistance. This act of Omnibalancing continued until the USA finally realised the rebellions were failing and that the army leadership was in any case anti-communist and moderately pro- Western. There was no evidence that the external threat posed by the USA in sponsoring the rebels resulted in immediate and explicit balancing by Indonesia via a strengthening of alignment with the communist powers. Feelers had gone out to the Soviet Union and eastern bloc countries on the acquisition of arms before the rebellions and after the USA proved reluctant to supply the kind of weaponry Jakarta wanted. But it was only in the year after the rebellions that Indonesia started to strenuously pursue an arms build-up from the Communist bloc.
The pattern of behavior lends some weight to the hypothesis that states lacking recourse to hard balancing policies should prefer smart alignment strategies. Omnibalancing was an intermediate response that aimed to minimise the contemporary threat until Jakarta was in a better position to balance US power and influence. The fact Indonesia did not explicitly balance raises a problem for a decision-making analysis based on the predictions of prospect theory. There is no doubt that policymakers in Jakarta saw themselves in the domain of losses after the rebellions. But Omnibalancing as a policy response is ambiguous. It could be characterised as either a risk acceptant or a risk averse option. A rational choice analysis is more direct and simpler. An open breach with the USA might have prompted it to step up support for the rebels. By appeasing the USA, Indonesia might have at least bought time and created the opportunity to drive a wedge between the rebels and their main foreign sponsor.
Other hypotheses also were given modest support by events during this period. The USA was seen as an important source of economic support, a factor that undoubtedly contributed to Indonesian restraint before and during the crisis of the regional rebellions. However, aid and commerce were not decisive factors when it came to what were viewed as critical foreign policy interests. When Indonesia faced Dutch intransigence over the union agreements and West New Guinea, it was prepared to take radical action that was sure to raise questions over its reliability among Western partners. It also was ready to shop around for aid when it could not satisfy its needs from Western sources, as with the acquisition of communist bloc arms.
There is insufficient evidence to assess the significance of transnational penetration. The USA invested heavily in the cultivation of Indonesian political elites. But the efforts were more successful in reinforcing existing beliefs than changing minds. Soviet efforts at penetration were at best modest and relied heavily on the relative influence of the PKI. Chinese penetration was of minimal significance too – other than as a potential negative given the persistent suspicion over the loyalty of Sino-Indonesians.
Shared ideology offers a more plausible explanation for alignment preferences than either economic interests or national penetration. Masyumi and others on the right continued to exhibit strong anti-communism, which made them more amenable to the West. And the PKI naturally wanted to strengthen alignment with the communist states. The PNI under Ali’s prime ministership were more determined to make neutrality a viable alternative to siding with one of the great powers. In contrast to his first term as prime minister, the second Ali government was less strident in its attempts to assert a balance between Western and communist interests. But his policies during both terms were certainly freighted with ideology, as a reflection of a commitment to Indonesian nationalism and independence. Sukarno was both pragmatic and equivocal. He saw alignment politics as a tool to obtain benefits that advanced Indonesia’s developmental and political priorities. His travels in 1956 sought to win friends where he could in accord with his belief that a weak country should obtain help wherever it was available. But the journey he went on in 1956 also was one of discovery for a president who had travelled little prior to taking office. The experience of seeing communist states at work, particularly China, had a profound influence on him even as he disavowed communism itself. Thus, Indonesia’s alignment preferences were often influenced by the ideological leanings of whoever exercised power at a domestic level, although, as stated earlier, this was conditional on the extent of external and internal pressures.
Conclusion
The final years of constitutional democracy generated significant doubt over how Indonesia would position itself as an international actor. With a new Masyumi-led government in power from August 1955, it initially shifted back to a pro-Western outlook. Even a second Ali government adopted a friendlier face to the USA than it had previously. The reassurance this gave Western governments was undermined by the unilateral actions taken after the failure of Netherlands-Indonesia negotiations. But it was possible for the USA to portray Indonesia’s
action towards the Dutch as conditioned by the specific circumstances of the dispute, rather than reflecting a wider disposition.
The initial behavior of the Burhanuddin government is consistent with the third hypothesis that an environment of low risk should encourage policymakers to pursue alignment strategies that reflect domestic group or individual preferences and interests. When negotiations with the Netherlands failed and losses to Indonesia on a critical issue were crystallised in the form of an unsatisfactory union agreement and indefinite Dutch sovereignty over West New Guinea, Indonesia demonstrated a willingness to adopt hard policies. Although the primary audience was domestic, the significance of the losses was such that the government was prepared to accept the risk of potentially alienating its preferred international partners in the West. This again is consistent with the expectations of a balance of risk model. The Ali government confirmed the hard line with the Dutch and, symbolically, toughened it. It could not expect to obtain US support against a NATO ally. But it minimised the prospect of isolation by quietly signalling to the USA that it wanted better relations than during its first term.
The emergence of the regional rebellions and evidence of covert US intervention should have prompted Indonesia to seek foreign allies, according to balance of threat theory. Instead, as stated earlier, it engaged in Omnibalancing – directing its energies to defeating the rebellions while appeasing the rebels’ principal ally. The absence of overt balancing action is consistent with a balance of risk calculation. Indonesia lacked immediate and effective balancing options and many in government were so surprised by US actions that they were reluctant to believe the White House had authorised them. Fighting the rebels, while appeasing the US, offered at least a short-term solution to try to contain the prospect of the conflict escalating and the US providing overt aid to the rebels. This fits with the second hypothesis that in a situation where