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Indonesia Foreign Policy under Suharto
Indonesia's foreign relations after 1966 can be
characterized
as generally moderate, inclined toward the West, and
regionally
focused. As a founding member of the
Nonaligned Movement (see Glossary)
in 1961, Indonesia pursued a foreign policy that
in
principle kept it equidistant from the contentious Soviet
Union and
the United States. It was, however, dependent upon Japan,
the
United States, and West European countries for vital
infusions of
official development assistance and private investment.
Jakarta's
perceptions that China had intervened substantially in its
internal
affairs by supporting the PKI in the mid-1960s made the
government
far less willing to improve relations with Beijing than
were other
members of ASEAN. Although Indonesia differed with its
ASEAN
counterparts over the appropriate response to the
Cambodian crisis
after the Vietnamese invasion of that country in 1978, its
active
role in promoting a negotiated end to the Cambodian civil
war
through the Jakarta Informal Meetings in 1988 and 1989
reflected a
new sense of confidence. Policy makers believed that since
the
country had largely achieved national unity and was making
ample
progress in economic development, it could afford to
devote more of
its attention to important regional issues.
Given Indonesia's strategic location at the eastern
entrance to
the Indian Ocean, including command of the Malacca and
Sunda
straits, the country has been viewed as vital to the Asian
security
interests of the United States and its allies. Washington
extended
generous amounts of military aid and became the principal
supplier
of equipment to the Indonesian armed forces. Because of
its
nonaligned foreign policy, Jakarta did not have a formal
military
alliance with the United States but benefited indirectly
from
United States security arrangements with other states in
the
region, such as Australia and the Philippines. The New
Order's
political repressiveness and its pacification of East
Timor,
however, were criticized directly and indirectly by some
United
States officials, who in the late 1980s began calling for
greater
openness.
In terms of international economics, Indonesia's most
important
bilateral relationship was with Japan. During the 1970s,
it was the
largest recipient of Japanese official development
assistance and
vied with China for that distinction during the 1980s.
Tokyo's aid
priorities included export promotion, establishment of an
infrastructure base for private foreign investment, and
the need to
secure stable sources of raw materials, especially oil but
also
aluminum and forest products. Jakarta depended on aid
funds from
Tokyo to build needed development projects. This symbiotic
relationship, however, was not without its tensions.
Indonesian
policy makers questioned the high percentage of Japanese
aid funds
in the form of loans rather than grants and the heavy
burden of
repaying yen-denominated loans in the wake of the
appreciation of
the Japanese currency in 1985. Although wartime memories
of the
Japanese occupation were in general not as bitter as in
countries
such as the Philippines, Malaysia, and China, there was
some
concern about the possibility of Japanese remilitarization
should
United States forces be withdrawn from the region. In the
context
of Indonesia's long history, the forces bringing about
greater
integration with the international community while
creating
political and economic tensions at home were not
unexpected.
Historians of the twenty-first century are likely to find
remarkably similar parallels with earlier periods in
Indonesia
history.
* * *
Peter Bellwood's Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian
Archipelago is an excellent source for understanding
the early
development of Indonesian society. Jacques Dumarçay's
Borobudur provides an extensive description of the
temple
complex and an account of historical developments during
one of the
earliest periods of Indonesian history. An overview of the
ways in
which Islam reached and spread through the archipelago is
provided
by M.C. Ricklefs in his A History of Modern
Indonesia, which
also provides an excellent account of events leading up to
the 1965
coup d'état. A good discussion of both the pre-Islamic and
Islamic
periods is also found in Koentjaraningrat's Javanese
Culture, although, as the title indicates, it devotes
little
attention to events outside Java. C.R. Boxer's The
Dutch
Seaborne Empire: 1600-1800 describes the adventures
and
misadventures of the VOC in Indonesia, but also places
them in the
broader context of worldwide colonial history. In
Search of
Southeast Asia, edited by David Joel Steinberg, has
the merit
of placing Indonesian historical development after the
eighteenth
century in comparative perspective with other Southeast
Asian
countries.
Anthony Reid's "Indonesia: From Briefcase to Samurai
Sword,"
published in Alfred W. McCoy's Southeast Asia under
Japanese
Occupation; and Nugroho Notosusanto's The Peta Army
during
the Japanese Occupation of Indonesia discuss the
relevance of
the Japanese occupation. A good discussion of the National
Revolution period is found in Audrey R. Kahin's
Regional
Dynamics of the Indonesian Revolution: Unity from
Diversity and
Reid's Indonesian National Revolution, 1945-50.
Bernard
Dahm's Sukarno and the Struggle for Indonesian
Independence
and John D. Legge's Sukarno are well-written
portraits of
this interesting individual. Hamish McDonald's
Suharto's
Indonesia provides an extensive examination of events
leading
up to the New Order and its subsequent policies. An
excellent
supplement to the whole course of Indonesian prehistory
and history
is Robert B. Cribb's Historical Dictionary of
Indonesia.
Periodicals with extensive coverage on Indonesia
include
Asian Survey, Journal of Asian Studies,
Journal of
Southeast Asian Studies [Singapore], Modern Asian
Studies [London], Indonesia, Pacific
Affairs
[Vancouver], and Southeast Asian Affairs
[Singapore]. The
Dutch periodical Bijdragen tot Taal-, Land- en
Volkenkunde
[Leiden] has numerous articles in English on Indonesia.
The weekly
Far Eastern Economic Review [Hong Kong] and its
annual
Asia Yearbook provide timely updates to the
historical
record. The Bibliography of Asian Studies,
published
annually by the Association for Asian Studies, and the
semiannual
Excerpta Indonesica [Leiden] also provide
additional
reference material. (For additional information and
complete
citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of November 1992
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