Rediscovering the Free and Active Foreign Policy in Bung Karno's Thought
Indonesia’s free and active foreign policy is often understood simply as the country’s stance of not siding with either the Western Bloc or the Eastern Bloc, as if the policy were primarily a strategy of keeping distance from the great power struggle during the Cold War.
If one returns to Bung Karno’s thinking as recorded in ‘Di Bawah Bendera Revolusi Djilid II’, this understanding is far too narrow, because for Bung Karno, free and active was a much larger political project: defending sovereignty, rejecting subordination to great powers, fighting for the independence of nations, building Asian-African solidarity, expanding peace, and helping to change the international political structure still overshadowed by colonialism and imperialism.
The term “rediscovery” in this article is therefore not meant as finding something entirely new, but rather re-reading the roots, meaning, and direction of free and active thinking, which in the development of Indonesian foreign policy has often been reduced to a doctrine of non-alignment or a middle position among the great powers.
This rediscovery is necessary so that free and active is understood not merely as a diplomatic technique, but as an emancipatory idea that places Indonesia as a subject of international history, with Pancasila, anti-colonialism, independence, peace, solidarity, and justice as its normative foundations.
Free as Sovereignty
The starting point of Bung Karno’s thinking on foreign policy was not the question of whom Indonesia should side with, but rather how a newly independent nation could determine its own historical direction after centuries of being an object of colonial power.
Therefore, the word “free” must first be read as a consequence of independence and sovereignty, namely Indonesia’s ability to determine its national interests, international stance, and relations with other nations without subordination to external forces.
Within this framework, free is not identical to simply not joining a particular military alliance, because a country can be a non-member of a bloc but still remain in political, economic, or ideological dependence on a great power.
Bung Karno even warned that foreign economic relations must reflect political freedom so that Indonesia does not lean too heavily towards either the West or the East, because such dependence could turn Indonesia into an arena of international influence contestation.
Thus, the idea of free has both material and political dimensions, because diplomatic independence cannot be completely separated from the economic capacity to make one’s own choices. A country that lacks the economic, political, and strategic space to make decisions independently will face difficulties in maintaining a truly free foreign policy, so for Bung Karno, political sovereignty had to be strengthened by efforts to build national self-reliance.
This understanding explains why Bung Karno rejected the notion that Indonesia only needed to take a position “in the middle” between Washington and Moscow, because a middle position does not necessarily produce sovereignty. What was more important was ensuring that Indonesia had its own political colour, was able to determine its stance based on its own principles, and did not become an object that merely followed the agenda of larger international powers.
Therefore, rediscovering the meaning of free means returning Indonesian foreign policy to the fundamental question of agency, namely the capacity of a postcolonial state to be a decision-maker and not merely a recipient of decisions in the international system.
Bung Karno wanted Indonesia to be present not as a small country seeking protection from great powers, but as an independent nation possessing will, identity, principles, and the capacity to fight for its own interests in world affairs.
Active as Politics of Change
If “free” signifies sovereignty in determining one’s stance, then “active” signifies the courage to fight for that stance in international life, so the two terms are in fact inseparable in the construction of Bung Karno’s thought.
He firmly rejected the notion that Indonesia conducted its foreign policy by washing its hands, being defensive, or becoming a spectator to various world problems, because a free policy that is not active ultimately loses its political meaning.
The expression “we are not sitting on the fence” became a very important metaphor for understanding this thinking, because Bung Karno wanted to explain that Indonesia must not merely sit on the fence while watching the great power struggle without having a position.
Indonesia indeed did not have to become part of another country’s military conflict, but Indonesia had to have a political position on issues concerning independence, colonialism, peace, and international justice.
Here lies a fundamental difference between non-alignment and neutrality, because non-alignment can still have normative partiality while classical neutrality tends to emphasise a stance of not taking sides in a particular conflict.
Bung Karno even asserted that Indonesia was not neutral towards imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism, because allowing the three to continue would mean betraying the spirit of independence that formed the basis of the Republic of Indonesia’s founding.
Active politics therefore did not mean Indonesia had to intervene in every international conflict, but rather that Indonesia sought to use all the instruments at its disposal to influence the direction of world development.
Diplomacy, international conferences, solidarity among nations, support for independence movements, shaping public opinion, and mobilising political forces were part of these activities, as seen in Bung Karno’s various stances on issues in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and colonialism.
The Suez Canal Crisis was a very clear example of how “active” was translated into action, because Indonesia supported Egypt’s right to nationalise the Suez Canal as a sovereign state while also seeking to maintain freedom of navigation and a peaceful resolution.
Bung Karno asserted that Indonesia’s presence at the London Conference did not mean accepting the premises set by the great powers, but rather being present to defend Egypt’s sovereign rights and international peace.
Thus, Bung Karno’s active politics had a transformational orientation, because the goal of diplomacy was not merely to secure a safe position for Indonesia but to help change international conditions deemed unjust.
The principle that can then be formulated from this thinking is that free determines the position, while active fights for that position, so free without active would turn into passivism and active without free would turn into dependence.
Pancasila, Anti-Colonialism, and the Morality of International Politics
Bung Karno’s foreign policy was not built on the assumption that international relations are a completely value-free arena, because Indonesia had a moral foundation derived from Pancasila. Bung Karno asserted that Indonesia’s free politics was not politics without morals, but politics guided by belief in God Almighty, humanity, nationalism, popular sovereignty, and the ideal of social justice.
From this it can be understood that for Bung Karno, Pancasila did not only function as the basis of domestic political life, but also as a normative orientation for Indonesia’s relations with the international world. Foreign policy had to be directed towards peace, world welfare, friendship among nations, the elimination of exploitation of man by man, and resistance to imperialism and colonialism wherever they occurred.
Consequently, Indonesia’s independence did not stop at being an exclusive national interest, because the colonial experience gave Indonesia a moral responsibility towards other nations still experiencing oppression.
Bung Karno even asserted that Indonesia’s support for the independence struggles of other nations was not based on cost-benefit calculations, but on the principle of anti-colonialism, the right to independence, the right to self-determination, and the ideal of relations among nations in an atmosphere of freedom and fraternity.
This is why free and active cannot be separated from the idea of anti-colonialism, because for Bung Karno it made no sense for a nation that gained independence through struggle to then be neutral when other nations were still colonised. Independence in this sense had universal consequences, namely that Indonesia had to help create a world order that allowed all nations to obtain the right to determine their own destiny.
With this perspective, peace also could not be separated from independence, because peace built on colonialism would only perpetuate injustice in another form. In Bung Karno’s thinking, Indonesia loved peace and sought to expand the realm of peace, but true peace had to go hand in hand with the elimination of colonialism and respect for the sovereignty of nations.
Therefore, when Bung Karno stated that Indonesia was not neutral towards “good and bad”, what was meant was not merely an individual moral choice, but a principle of international politics that departed from Indonesia’s own historical experience.
Foreign policy became a space for translating Pancasila and the mandate of independence into international action, so that foreign policy was not merely an instrument of national interest but also an instrument of struggle to build a more just world.
Bandung, Asia-Africa, and the Discovery of Indonesia as a World Subject
The conception of free and active then acquired a broader institutional and geopolitical form through the Asian-African Conference, because Bandung enabled nations that had previously been objects of colonialism to enter international politics as subjects speaking for their own interests.
In Bung Karno’s thinking, Asian-African solidarity was not merely regional cooperation, but a manifestation of the rise of the historical power of nations that had previously been under colonial domination.
Bandung can therefore be read as one of the most concrete forms of free and active foreign policy, because the forum provided space for new countries to discuss peace, sovereignty, colonialism, and the future of international relations without fully following the agenda of the great powers.
From Bung Karno’s perspective, the strength of Asian-African countries lay precisely in their ability to build solidarity and transform their collective position from object to international political force.
This thinking then developed into the idea that the world could not forever be determined only by two centres of power, namely Washington and Moscow, because the rise of Asia-Africa gave birth to new political centres. Bung Karno named Cairo, New Delhi, and Jakarta as centres that increasingly had to be reckoned with in international politics, an idea that showed that free and active had a strategic function to encourage the depolarisation of the world.
In this sense, Indonesia was no longer merely trying to survive in the international system, but was trying to change the distribution of power and expand political space for postcolonial countries.
Free and active thus became a strategy of Global South agency, even before the term Global South became an important category in contemporary International Relations studies, because Bung Karno had already imagined the solidarity of new nations as a force capable of influencing the direction of world history.
From here arose the further development towards the concept of New Emerging Forces or NEFO, which included socialist countries, newly independent countries, and progressive forces within capitalist societies. Bung Karno saw these forces as part of a new historical current and believed that international imperialism could only be countered through the combination of anti-imperialist forces that were also international in nature.
Thus, the journey of Bung Karno’s thought can be read as a process moving from nationalism to anti-colonial internationalism, from defending Indonesian independence to Asian-African solidarity, and from regional solidarity to efforts to build a new world political force.
Within this framework, free and active was not merely a doctrine about Indonesia’s position towards power blocs, but a project to build a more plural international society, not fully controlled by superpowers, and giving greater space to newly independent nations.
Rediscovery: From Free and Active towards a Politics of World Emancipation
In the next phase, Bung Karno’s thinking underwent both deepening and radicalisation, especially as the issues of colonialism, West Irian, Malaysia, Vietnam, Africa, and relations with the great powers were increasingly understood within a single structural framework of imperialism and neocolonialism.
This change was visible in the shift in approach towards West Irian, when Indonesia abandoned the “politics of sweet persuasion” and moved towards confrontation after diplomacy was deemed unsuccessful in returning the territory to the Republic.
West Irian in this thinking was not merely a territorial issue, because the existence of colonialism in Indonesian territory was understood as part of a broader international problem. Therefore, the struggle to defend national sovereignty was at the same time a struggle against imperialism, and Bung Karno saw the mobilisation of national and international forces as part of Indonesia’s revolutionary strategy.
The same view appeared in Indonesia’s stance towards the formation of Malaysia, which Bung Karno understood as part of the problem of British neocolonialism in Southeast Asia, so that its rejection was placed within the framework of the anti-colonial struggle.
However, interestingly, Bung Karno still asserted that regional cooperation such as Maphilindo did not mean Indonesia was abandoning its free and active politics, but rather could become a force for the principles of Bandung and the struggle against imperialism and colonialism.
At this point emerged the idea of revolutionary non-alignment, namely a form of non-bloc that not only rejected attachment to NATO or the Warsaw Pact, but also explicitly rejected a neutral position in the conflict between imperialism and anti-imperialism.
Bung Karno even stated that non-alignment that was not anti-imperialist could become a form of siding with imperialism, so that such non-alignment lost the substance of its freedom.
This radicalisation is important to read as an internal development of Bung Karno’s thought, not merely a tactical change due to international political pressure, because there is a strong continuity from the initial principle that Indonesia must determine its own stance to the final idea of mobilising NEFO.
In other words, when Bung Karno moved from non-alignment to revolutionary non-alignment, he felt he was drawing the furthest consequences of the free and active principle: Indonesia was not only free from blocs, but actively changing the world structure that was still considered to be perpetuating injustice.