A Janus-faced policy: explaining Indonesian counter diplomacy toward West Papua’s quest for nationhood

One noteworthy feature of Indonesia's policies against West Papua's struggle for self-determination since 1998 is increased diplomatic activity aimed at countering independence activists' efforts to gain wider recognition abroad. Unfortunately, few articles have discussed Indonesia's foreign policy approach to challenging West Papuan secession, and none of them have explained the variables that influence the Indonesian government's decision to pursue that policy. Using neoclassical realism as its theoretical foundation, the current study aims to fill this gap by identifying factors that shaped Indonesia's decision to begin a vigorous international campaign to contest West Papua's quest for independence as well as its policies between 1998 and 2019. Several findings have been made; first, an examination of Indonesia's foreign policy regarding the issue of West Papuan secessionism highlights the importance of the composition of foreign policy elites involved. This study observes that the President, foreign minister, and senior KEMLU officials—who could be called foreign policy elites—are critical stakeholders when making decisions regarding Indonesia's counter diplomacy. Second, this study observes that the interplay between external and internal factors shaped Indonesian foreign policy elites' decision to not only challenge Papuan aspirations for nationhood abroad but also to maintain that policy over the past two decades. Externally, the strengthening of international concern for West Papua since the end of 1990s has certainly presented Indonesia's foreign policy elites with new pressures. However, international imperatives alone do not dictate the output of Indonesia's foreign policymaking; internal elements also have a role in shaping the output of the decision-making process. To this extent, internal elements—specifically, KEMLU and Indonesia's long-embedded cultural opposition to the secession of West Papua—have served as "intervening variables" in Indonesia's use of counter diplomacy to respond to Papua's aspirations for nationhood and related external imperatives.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference