In the broadest sense, this thesis aims to explain Indonesian foreign policy in the first two decades after it declared independence. The term foreign policy is used here to describe the full range of diplomatic, economic, cultural and military tools a state uses to pursue its national interests.101 But the specific behavior being analysed relates only to those aspects of foreign policy that implicate alignment. The focus on alignment, in turn, brings in a dimension of foreign policy referred to as “grand strategy”, or the actions a state takes so that “it can ‘cause’ security for itself”.102 It follows that particular weight is usually placed on military power in any discussion of alignment. The use or the threat of the use of force in international relations or “how the instruments of force influence relations between states” is also the realm of strategy or strategic studies.103 When the term foreign policy is used here it relates to the application of all the tools of state or the widest level of interaction between states; references to strategy or the strategic dimension of foreign policy relate to the use of military power, perhaps in conjunction with other
101 A more technical definition is that it is the “sum of official external relations conducted by an independent actor (usually a state) in international relations”. Christopher Hill, The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan (2003), p. 3.
102 Walt, Origins of Alliances, p. 2.
103 Craig A. Snyder, “Contemporary Security and Strategy”, in Craig A. Snyder (ed.), Contemporary Security and Strategy, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan (1999), p. 3.
tools, to allow states to “gain their political objectives”.104 A reference to an event or geography as “strategic” is a reference to its significance in the narrow military sense.
But this common emphasis on the role military power in creating security means that alliances rather than alignments have tended to be the topic of most interest to writers in the field. One of the shortcomings of a focus on alliance is that it fails to capture the full array of state behaviors aimed at enhancing security. Given the centrality of the terms alliance and alignment to this study, it is important to provide clear definitions of what they mean. Alliances are agreements between states primarily designed to enhance mutual security. They are “formalised by an explicit agreement, usually in the form of a treaty”.105 Among the features of alliances is that they contain a “degree of specificity, legal and moral obligation and reciprocity”.106 The sense of obligation that comes with an alliance is underscored by two qualities – first, they are legal documents that often undergo some process of ratification, which can involve parliaments and the public, and, second, they also usually are invested with considerable ceremony and the imprimatur of leaders.107 This does not mean alliances cannot be disavowed or abrogated. But it offers a degree of surety to the parties.
Alignments lack this precision. One important distinction is that they shift the focus of analysis away from the purely instrumental to the behavioral. Alignments are not characterised by formal treaties, “but [are] delineated by a variety of behavioral actions”.108 In consequence, there are “degrees of alignments in political, economic, military and cultural spheres” that lead to a “multifaceted sculpture of national and supranational postures”.109 Alliances, therefore, are “simply one of the behavioral means to create or strengthen alignments.110 The behavioral dimension is captured by the general
104 Ibid. For example, Indonesia’s use of Confrontation in the 1960s could be terms a strategic policy because it employed military, diplomatic and economic tools in concert.
105 Snyder, Alliance Politics, p. 8. 106 Ibid.
107 Ibid., pp. 8-9.
108 Michael D. Ward, Research Gaps in Alliance Dynamics, University of Denver (1982), p. 7. 109 Ibid.
definition, repeated here, that alignment can be “defined as expectations of states about
whether they will be supported or opposed by other states in future interactions”. 111
Previous attempts to develop a taxonomy of “alignment archetypes” have classified them instrumentally – alliance, coalition, security community, strategic partnership, and sundry others.112 But an analytical emphasis on instruments fails to capture the full range of behaviors that represent alignment. Nonalignment, for example, is a conscious decision that represents an alignment choice too. More generally, this thesis has noted a range of smart strategies in the alignment literature that meet the conditions of a behavioral definition of alignment, but not necessarily an instrumental definition.
Theory in the main has failed to describe the conditions under which alignment behavior shifts beyond suggesting power or threat induce states to do one of two things – bandwagon with the state or states of relevance or balance against them. As described above, balance of risk is an attempt to provide an explanation for the wider range of behaviors observed in the Indonesian case. Seeing alignment as a behavioral rather than an instrumental phenomenon is central to the accommodation of a much wider range of alignment policies and outcomes. From the perspective of a work on Indonesia’s patterns of cooperation or non-cooperation with the great powers, a focus on alliance as opposed to alignment would be too narrow. Indonesia eschewed formal security pacts. But, as will be argued, it did not eschew the manipulation of international relationships, or alignments, to enhance its security.
Methodological Issues:
The use of a narrative case study lends itself to the technique Alexander George termed “process tracing”.113 It is an approach “closely analogous to traditional historical
111 Ibid., p. 6. Emphasis added.
112 Wilkins, “‘Alignment’, not ‘alliance’”, pp. 59-72.
113 Alexander L. George, “Case Studies and Theory Development: The Method of Structured, Focused Comparison”, in Paul Gordon Lauren (ed.) Diplomacy: New Approaches in History, Theory and Policy, New York: Free Press, (1979), pp. 43-68.
methods” and to “methods of developing and testing explanations of individual cases”.114 It marries analytical concepts of political science with empirical study of history, seeking to link observed political and social phenomena to their presumed causes via historical description.
Process tracing draws attention to the underlying mechanisms at work in producing political outcomes. As a result, it requires historical accounts that are detailed, selective and episodic. In the words of David Collier, process tracing “focuses on the unfolding of events or situations over time” but needs to be able to “adequately describe an event or situation at one point in time”. This requires “taking good snapshots at a series of specific moments”.115 Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow argue longer streams of events can be chopped up “into segments for the purposes of systematic observation, comparison, and explanation”. 116
It does not mean process tracing is limited to occasions where decision making can be minutely described by reference to contemporary records. George and Bennett argue process tracing can support an account “at a higher level of generality and abstraction”. This allows it to be applied to “the explanation of macro-phenomena” as well as the “individual decision-making level of analysis”.117 The ability to apply process tracing to the development of both macro and micro accounts is one of its strengths. It provides a consistent way to examine the mechanisms at work in individual episodes of crisis or routine decision-making and in the pattern of state behavior over time.
Still, data requirements for effective process tracing can be onerous. Bennett and George emphasise that its effectiveness in providing causal inference depends on establishing “an uninterrupted causal path linking the putative causes to the observed effects”.118 This is particularly difficult in the case of Indonesia. Contemporary
114 Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman, “Case Study Methods”, in Reus-Smit and Snidal eds., The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, Oxford University Press, (2008), p. 504.
115 David Collier, “Understanding Process Tracing”, Political Science and Politics, Vol. 44, No. 4 (2011), p. 824.
116 Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, Contentious Politics, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers (2007), p. 27.
117 Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press (2005), pp. 211-212.
documentary sources are scarce and notoriously unreliable. Reading the historical record necessarily calls on a degree of judgment built on familiarity with the subject. But poverty of data can limit the strength of conclusions and this has to be borne in mind when conducting research in Indonesia, especially on a topic where many important decisions were necessarily discussed and made in confidence.
For this reason, it is necessary to draw on as wide a range of sources as possible, placing particular emphasis on primary source material or accounts derived from it. This includes official archives and records, policy documents, speeches, and accounts by insiders or contemporary observers in articles and memoirs. In many instances, archival records and confidential accounts of meetings are available. The most abundant source of this material comes from US sources. Some valuable Soviet and Chinese foreign policy documents have become available through independent research projects in Moscow and Beijing. The large volume of material that has been declassified in recent years has been especially valuable. These records make up for the paucity of Indonesian records by conveying the private views Indonesian policymakers expressed at the time to their foreign counterparts. The historical time frame means preference has been given to interviews carried out closer to the time of events as part of oral history projects. The events are too long passed and the surviving senior policymakers too few to make contemporary interviews of value.
There are several limitations and difficulties to the approach adopted here. There are restrictions on the extent to which generalisations can be drawn from a single case study. The best that can be suggested of conclusions is that they represent a special or contingent case. But a single case does somewhat compensate by allowing for much greater detail.119 It also remains difficult to measure variation in alignment. Because alignments are not always accompanied by written agreements it is necessary to draw
119 Stephen Van Evera argues the tests of predictions in a single case are often strong because of the greater detail permitted by in depth case documentation and the unique circumstances to which they apply. 119 Stephen Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press (1997), p. 54. Harry Eckstein, single case studies are most useful when it comes to testing theories of “macro political phenomena” or “units of political study of considerable magnitude or complexity such as nation states and subjects virtually coterminous with them (party systems or political cultures)”. See, Regarding Politics: Essays on Political Theory, Stability and Change, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (1992), pp. 119-120.
judgments from the sum of interactions rather than a specific instrument. This requires a careful reading of the public and private evidence of the intentions of policymakers. It is harder still to separate individual factors bearing on alignment decisions when multiple intersecting influences might be at work. The depth of detail permitted by the use of single case can help distinguish the preponderance of influences, but it will still leave room for debate. Wendt argues the problem of accounting for numerous, unobservable mechanisms can be addressed by asking whether it is “reasonable to infer the existence” of a phenomenon. This requires the researcher to make an “inference to the best explanation”.120 Still, any conclusions arising from the Indonesia case need to be seen as contingent on its particular circumstances.
Chapter Outline:
This study consists of two parts. The first part covers the period of constitutional democracy in Indonesia and the second part the period of Guided Democracy.
Part One of the theses starts with an overview in Chapter Two of the international and domestic context in which foreign policy was set under constitutional democracy. Chapter Three covers the revolutionary years and the foundations of Indonesian foreign policy; Chapter Four the early constitutional democracy period; Chapter Five the late constitutional democracy period and US-sponsored regional rebellions against Jakarta.
Part Two of the thesis will start with an overview of the international and domestic context of the Guided Democracy period in Chapter Six, which includes the US entry into the Vietnam war and the growth in rivalry between the great powers. Chapter Seven covers the early Guided Democracy up until the start of Confrontation; Chapter Eight the Indonesian campaign to wrest control of West New Guinea; Chapter Nine the Confrontation against Malaysia, Sukarno’s downfall, and the start of the transition to Suharto’s New Order. Each of the case study chapters will conclude with an analysis of Indonesia’s patterns of alignment and an assessment of the main drivers of alignment.
120 Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (1999): 62.
The two main periods of the case study reflect a division between the types of government – an early experiment in democracy and the later adoption of an authoritarian system. But the two periods also reflect a change in the orientation of alignments and the way decisions about alignments were made.
Chapter Ten will draw the conclusions of the study and assess the causes of Indonesian alignment and the persistence of the bebas-aktif policy. It will analyse the efficacy of the proposed balance of risk model against balance of power and balance of threat. It will then present the potential relevance of these findings for understanding patterns in Indonesian foreign relations, particularly with the great powers, and for future scholarship on its foreign policy.