ABSTRACT
Indonesia uses diplomacy as a means of establishing cooperative regional interrelationships to create a favourable regional environment to ensure its security well-being, thereby ameliorating or diminishing perceived security concerns without the use of force which in turn reduces the causes of insecurity and augments Indonesia's national security. Michael Leifer's significant contribution to the understanding of Indonesian foreign policy is a product of his meticulous application of sound area studies techniques to the craft of international relations. Indonesia as a political entity did not exist until the archipelago's administrative and territorial consolidation by Dutch colonial authorities in the early years of the twentieth century. National security has been a major foreign policy concern of the New Order Regime.
