Indonesia “Active Free” Strategic Culture in Maintaining the “Balance of the Power” on the Southeast Asia Area

Wahyu Hidayanto ,Harangan Sitorus ,Mhd Halkis

doi:10.7176/iags/81-04

Abstract

The struggle for influence and power between west and east in the Southeast Asea Region needs to understand Indonesia's “Active Free” Strategic Culture as an indicator. Indonesia's neutrality in the regional political stage has been tested in the long history of ASEAN. Free and active strategic culture is a basic adaptive value that Indonesia has in understanding threats, the ability to respond to various interests and agreement not to interfere in the affairs of their respective countries. This study focuses on analyzing the free and active strategic culture in Indonesian defense diplomacy and analyzing how the Ministry of Defense uses the active and free strategic culture in strengthening Indonesia's defense diplomacy in the region of Southeast Asia. This research uses a qualitative method with a phenomenology approach. The results of the study show that officials at the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Defense Institute, and Indonesia Defence University related to a free and active strategic culture in strengthening Indonesia's defense diplomacy in the Southeast Asian region. The conclusion is that the Free Active strategic culture is still relevant as an instrument to adapt and strengthen Indonesia's defense diplomacy in the Southeast Asia region. Keywords : Strategic Culture, Free Active, Strategic, Diplomacy, ASEAN and Defense Diplomacy DOI: 10.7176/IAGS/81-04 Publication date: March 31 st 2020

Highlights

Defense Studies places defense planning as a constitutive element of defense and strategic studies
According to World Bank data, the ranking of the economies of ASEAN member countries is based on the gross domestic product (GDP) and purchasing power parity (PPP) based on current prices of the US $ 1,042 trillion or equivalent to Rp 14,837 trillion in 2018
The reality that strategic culture is a collection of traditions, values, attitudes, behavioral patterns, habits of a nation, symbols of achievement and special ways of adapting to the environment and solving problems related to a threat and the use of force into a strategic environment analysis in the form of geographic constellations, geopolitics, and geostrategy

Summary

Introduction

Defense Studies places defense planning as a constitutive element of defense and strategic studies. The dynamics that need to be observed in the five (5) years include economic growth that has implications for the development of military power, especially in the Asia Pacific region. This dynamic dramatically influences the increasingly complex and multidimensional patterns and forms of threats, in the form of military threats, non-military threats, and hybrid threats that can be categorized as real and not yet real threats (Indonesia Defence White Paper). That the dynamics of the international strategic environment always carry implications, both positive and negative, on the other side simultaneously, which directly or indirectly affect national development. These threats can be carried out by state and non-state actors

Methods

Results

Conclusion