East Timor, Australia and Regional Order: Intervention and its Aftermath (Politics in Asia Series)

206 Pages·2004·3.33 MB·English

by  James Cotton

East Timor, Australia and
Regional Order
While humanitarian intervention was the major innovation in global governance
in the 1990s, until the East Timor case it was always in the territory of a failing
state. This book explains the exceptional nature of the East Timor intervention of
1999, and deals with the background to the trusteeship role of the UN in building
the new polity. All of these developments had an important impact on regional
order, not least testing the ASEANnorm of ‘non-interference’.
Australian complicity in the Indonesian occupation of East Timor was a major
factor in the persistence of Indonesian rule in the territory which was maintained
for 25 years despite international censure and which required an unremitting
campaign against the independence movement. This work reviews the reasons for
that history of complicity, and explains the extraordinary change of policy that led
ultimately to the occupation of the territory by the Australian-led INTERFET
coalition.
This book will be essential reading for students of political science, Asian studies
and international relations.
James Cotton is a highly respected Australian academic who has written
extensively about Asian politics and political thought. A professor in the University
of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, he is the author
of over 150 publications and currently acts as consulting editor of the Australian
Journal of International Affairs.
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East Timor, Australia
and Regional Order
Intervention and its aftermath in
Southeast Asia
James Cotton
First published 2004 by RoutledgeCurzon
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USAand Canada
by RoutledgeCurzon
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2004 James Cotton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-42099-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-68096-0 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–33580–9(Print Edition)
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
List of acronyms x
Introduction 1
1 East Timor and Australia: the 25-year policy legacy 4
2 Australian relations with Indonesia and the East Timor issue 22
3 The failure of Indonesian policy 49
4 The East Timor intervention, humanitarian norms and
regional order 68
5 Australia’s East Timor commitment: causes and consequences 89
6 Australia’s East Timor: the official version and its critique 110
7 Outcomes: peace-keeping lessons, security dilemmas,
bilateral tensions 125
8 Conclusion: independent Timor-Leste in a regional and
global context 146
References 164
Index 182
Acknowledgements
I am obliged to the following friends and scholars for their counsel and advice:
Peter Bartu, Anthony Bergin, Jean Berlie, James Brew, Peter Carey, Jarat Chopra,
Ross Cottrill, Antonio Barbedo de Magalhães, Peter Bartu, Des Ball, Derek da
Cunha, Peter Edwards, Jim Fox, David Goodman, Paulo Gorjão, David Hicks,
Robert King, Michael Leifer, Liem Sioe Liong, Michael Maley, William Maley,
Anthony Milner, Gavin Mount, John Ravenhill, Leonard Sebastian, Anthony
Smith, Mike Smith, Hadi Soesastro, Bong-Scuk Sohn, ‘Max Stahl’, John Taylor,
Ramesh Thakur, Jusuf Wanandi, Hugh White, Phillip Winn, two anonymous
referees acting for Routledge and especially Geoffrey Gunn; to Sue Moss and Susan
Cowan for research assistance; and to the libraries of the Australian National
University, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, the Australian
Defence Force Academy, the London School of Economics, and the School of
Oriental and African Studies, London for their assistance in obtaining materials.
Madeleine Davis prepared the index. I wish also to record my thanks to officials
and politicians in East Timor, the United States, the United Kingdom, Indonesia,
South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore and Australia for finding time
to answer my inquiries.
Parts of this book incorporate in revised form some material drawn from the
following previous publications:
‘East Timor and Australia – 25 years of the policy debate’, in East Timor and
Australia. AIIA Contributions to the Policy Debate (Canberra: ADSC/AIIA, 1999);
‘“Peacekeeping” in East Timor: an Australian Policy Departure’, Australian Journal
of International Affairs, 53 (1999), no. 3, 237–46, reproduced by permission of Taylor
and Francis <www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/10357718.html>; ‘“Part of the
Indonesian world”: lessons in East Timor policy making, 1974–76’, Australian
Journal of International Affairs55 (2001), no. 1, 119–31; ‘Against the grain: the East
Timor intervention’, Survival43 (2001), no. 1, 127–42, reproduced by permission
of Oxford University Press and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, ©
Oxford University Press <www.oup.com>; ‘The emergence of an independent
East Timor: national and regional challenges’, Contemporary Southeast Asia22 (2000),
no. 1, 1–22; ‘Australia’s commitment in East Timor’, Contemporary Southeast Asia
23 (2001), no. 3, 552–68, reproduced with the kind permission of the publisher, the
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore <http://bookshop.iseas.edu. sg>;
Acknowledgements ix
‘The East Timor commitment and its consequences’, in (edited with John
Ravenhill) The National Interest in a Global Era: Australia in World Affairs 1996–2000
(Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001), 213–34, by permission of Oxford
University Press Australia, © Oxford University Press <www.oup.com.au>; ‘Timor
Gap to Timor Sea’, Australian Quarterly75 (2003) no. 2, 27–32, 40.
I am obliged to the editors and publishers for permission to use this material.
The map in Chapter 5 is reproduced by permission of the Australian Senate,
Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee.
James Cotton
University of New South Wales
@The Australian Defence Force Academy,
Canberra