Cultural Diplomacy: American Foreign Policy in Indonesia During the Old Order Era

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-503-4_7How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Old Order; popular culture; diplomacy; politics

Abstract

Understanding a society’s culture serves as a means of acquiring economic, social, and political power—an extension of capitalism that drives global expansion. As such, numerous overlapping interests emerge when a cultural context enters another country. This inevitably leads to changes in social norms, which in turn influence the direction and strategies of public policymaking. This article explores a period in which Indonesia experienced vivid political dynamics that significantly contributed to the nation's development and maturity. The Old Order era was marked by rhetorical contestation between the United States and the Soviet Union. During this time, the United States sought to curb the spread of communism through various policies, including cultural diplomacy. This article examines the role of the United States in Indonesia during the Old Order period, particularly in how popular culture—as a product of industry—transformed into a medium of diplomacy. As a historical study, the research method employed is grounded in the four fundamental pillars of historical inquiry: heuristics (source collection), source criticism (evaluation), interpretation (synthesis), and historiography (historical writing). As a piece of historiography, this article remains relevant today, as globalization continues to reshape societies in increasingly borderless ways—especially through the influence of industry and its production of popular culture.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Arido Laksono
AU  - Dhanang Respati Puguh
AU  - Singgih Tri Sulistiyono
AU  - Yety Rochwulaningsih
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/19
TI  - Cultural Diplomacy: American Foreign Policy in Indonesia During the Old Order Era
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Culture and Sustainable Development (ICOCAS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 51
EP  - 60
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-503-4_7
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-503-4_7
ID  - Laksono2025
ER  -