FOREIGN POLICY

As Sukarno's domestic grip on power was secured, he begin to pay more attention to the world stage, where Sukarno embarked on a series of aggressive and assertive policies based on anti-imperialism to increase Indonesia's prestige internationally. These anti-imperialist and anti-Western policies, often bordering on brinkmanship, were also designed to provide a common cause to unite the diverse and fractious Indonesian people. In this, he was aided by his Foreign Minister Subandrio.

Since his first visit to Beijing in 1956, Sukarno has began in the 1950s to increase his ties to the People's Republic of China and the communist bloc in general. He also began to accept increasing amounts of Soviet bloc military aid. By early 1960s, Soviet bloc provided more aid to Indonesia than to any other non-communist country, while Soviet military aid to Indonesia was only equalled by aid provided to Cuba. This large influx of communist aid prompted an increase in military aid from the Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy administrations, which worried about a leftward drift should Sukarno rely too much on Soviet bloc aid.

Sukarno was feted during his visit to United States in 1956, where he addressed a joint session of United States Congress. Soon after his first visit to America, Sukarno visited Soviet Union, where he received even more lavish welcome to Moscow. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev paid a return visit to Jakarta and Bali in 1960, where Khrushchev awarded Sukarno with the Lenin Peace Prize. To make amends for the CIA involvement in the PRRI-Permesta rebellion, President Kennedy invited Sukarno to Washington, and provided Indonesia with billions of dollars in civilian and military aid.

Despite his close relationships with both Western and Communist Blocs, Sukarno increasingly attempted to forge a new alliance called the "New Emerging Forces", as a counter to the old superpowers, whom he accused of spreading "Neo-Colonialism and Imperialism" (NEKOLIM). In 1961, this first president of Indonesia also found another political alliance, an organization, called the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM, in Indonesia known as Gerakan Non-Blok, GNB) with Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser, India's Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Yugoslavia's President Josip Broz Tito, and Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah, in an action called The Initiative of Five (Sukarno, Nkrumah, Nasser, Tito, and Nehru). This action was a movement to not give any favour to the two superpower blocs, who were involved in the Cold War. Sukarno is still fondly remembered for his role in promoting the influence of newly-independent countries; among others, his name is used as streetnames in Cairo, Egypt and Rabat, Morocco, and as a major square in Peshawar, Pakistan.
Sukarno at Borobudur with Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi during their visit to Indonesia

As the NAM countries were becoming split into differing factions, and as fewer countries were willing to support Sukarno's growing aggressive anti-Western foreign policies, he increasingly begin to abandon his non-alignment rhetoric, in exchange for a new alliance with China, North Korea, North Vietnam, and Cambodia, an alliance he called the "Beijing-Pyongyang-Hanoi-Phnom Penh-Jakarta Axis". After withdrawing Indonesia from the "imperalist-dominated" United Nations on January 1965, Sukarno seek to establish a competitor organisation to the UN called Conference of New Emerging Forces (CONEFO) with support from China, who at that time was not yet a member of United Nations.

Sukarno began an aggressive foreign policy to secure Indonesian territorial claims. On August 1960, Sukarno broke-off diplomatic relations with the Netherlands over continuing failure to commence talks on the future of Netherlands New Guinea, as was agreed at the Dutch-Indonesian Round Table Conference of 1949. After the Dutch announced the formation of a Nieuw Guinea Raad on April 1961, with the intention of creating an independent Papuan state, Sukarno declared military confrontation in his Tri Komando Rakjat (TRIKORA) speech in Yogyakarta, on 19 December 1961. He organised military incursions into the half-island, whom he referred to as West Irian, which by end of 1962 has landed around 3,000 Indonesian soldiers throughout West Irian. On January 1962, a naval battle erupted when an Indonesian infiltration fleet of four torpedo boats were intercepted by Dutch ships and planes off the coast of Vlakke Hoek. In this battle, one Indonesian boat was sunk, killing the Naval Deputy Chief-of-Staff Commodore Jos Sudarso. On February 1962, the Kennedy administration, worried of a continuing Indonesian shift towards communism should the Dutch held-on to West Papua, sent Attorney-General Robert Kennedy to Netherlands, to underline that United States will not support Netherlands in case of conflict with Indonesia. With massive Soviet armaments and even manpower aid, Sukarno planned a large-scale air and seaborne invasion on the Dutch military headquarters of Biak scheduled for August 1962, called Operasi Djajawidjaja, to be led by Major-General Suharto. Before these highly risky plans can be realised, Indonesia and Netherlands signed the New York Agreement on August 1962. The two countries agreed to implement the Bunker Plan (formulated by American diplomat Ellsworth Bunker), whereby the Dutch agreed to hand-over West Papua to UNTEA on 1 October 1962. UNTEA handed the territory to Indonesian authority on May 1963.

After securing control over West Irian, Sukarno also opposed the British-supported establishment of Federation of Malaysia in 1963, claiming that it was a neo-colonial plot by the British to besiege Indonesia. In spite of his political overtures, which was partly justified when some leftist political elements in British Borneo territories Sarawak and Brunei opposed the Federation plan and aligned themselves with Sukarno, Malaysia was proclaimed in September 1963. This led to the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation (Konfrontasi), proclaimed by Sukarno in his Dwi Komando Rakjat (DWIKORA) speech in Jakarta on 3 May 1964. Sukarno's proclaimed objective was not to annex Sabah and Sarawak into Indonesia, but to establish a State of North Kalimantan under the control of North Kalimantan Communist Party. From 1964 until early 1966, limited numbers of Indonesian soldiers, "volunteers", and Malaysian communist guerillas were infiltrated into both north Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, where they engaged in jungle warfare with British and Commonwealth soldiers deployed to protect the nascent Malaysia. Indonesian agents also exploded several bombs in Singapore. Domestically, Sukarno whipped up anti-British sentiment and the British Embassy was burned down. In 1964, all British companies operating in the country, including Indonesian operations of the Chartered Bank and Unilever, were nationalized.

By 1964, Sukarno commenced an anti-American campaign due to his growing shift towards the communist bloc, and less friendly Lyndon Johnson administration. American interests and businesses in Indonesia denounced and even attacked by PKI-led mobs. American movies were banned, American books and records of the Beatles were burned, and Indonesian band Koes Plus was jailed for playing American-style rock and roll music. As a result, US aid to Indonesia was halted, to which Sukarno made his famous remark, "Go to hell with your aid". Sukarno withdrew Indonesia from the United Nations membership on 7 January 1965 when, with US backing, Malaysia took a seat of UN Security Council. By this time, Sukarno's brinkmanship policies left him with few international allies. With the government already severely indebted to the tune of US$ 1 billion to the Soviet Union, Sukarno became increasingly dependent to Communist China for support. He spoke increasingly of a Peking-Jakarta axis, which will be the core of a new anti-imperialist world organization, the CONEFO.