Defence Diplomacy Foreign Policy Analysis Theory And Practice Volume 5 Foreign Policy of Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia is a very heterogen country and thus have very big potential of communal conflict. The Indonesian foreign policy elite’s strategic thinking about the country’s foreign relations and how to achieve maximum security for Indonesia in the post-Cold War period have been to a great extent in line with the precepts of the balance of threat theory. However, the balance of threat theory is capable of explaining Indonesia’s foreign policy dynamics provided it extends the analysis beyond the elite’s threat perceptions by putting more emphasis on the degree of the elite’s consensus about the threat.