Full text of DOI:10.1111/1468-2346.00220

East Timor and the new humanitarian
interventionism
*
NICHOLAS J. WHEELER AND TIM DUNNE
1
‘The path of justice and honour involves one in danger.’ This advice, offered
by the Athenians to the islanders of Melos, could equally well apply to the
drama that unfolded in South-East Asia some 25 centuries later. East Timor’s
path to justice and honour had been blocked in 1975 as Indonesia sought to
impose its authority over the island following the end of Portuguese colonial
rule. After a long and bloody struggle, the new colonizers agreed to a UN-
sponsored agreement allowing for the possibility of independence. In the
months leading up to the ballot of 30 August 1999 the islanders of East Timor
and the staff working for the UN mission were in considerable danger from
pro-Indonesian forces. Following the overwhelming victory of the pro-
independence movement the island went up in flames as militias, aided by the
Indonesian army, pursued a ruthless scorched earth policy.
º
The fate of East Timor provides an illuminating case study of how local
political events can shape, and in turn be shaped by, macro-level forces of
structural change. In addition to the question how the different pieces of the
jigsaw fitted together (causation), there is the question who had the capacity to
act and according to what moral principles (agency). What happened in early
September 1999 illustrates the wide range of instruments, including force, that
international society can use to exercise leverage over a powerful and recal-
citrant sovereign state. The use of force for humanitarian purposes has become a
familiar pattern in post-Cold War international politics. In this respect, East
Timor is the most recent of several cases where the UN has passed Chapter VII
2
resolutions permitting collective enforcement of the rules. It further illustrates
the emergence of what UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has described as a
* We would like to thank Sophie Hague and Paul Williams for their research support. In addition, the
article benefited enormously from the comments provided by Carolyn Bull, Simon Chesterman, James
Cotton and the editor. The conceptual part of the title is borrowed from Tim Dunne, Cameron Hill and
Marianne Hanson, ‘The new humanitarian interventionism’, in Marianne Hanson and William T. Tow,
eds, International relations in the new century: an Australian perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001), pp. 93–116.
1
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian war, trans. Rex Warner (London: Penguin Classics, 1954), p. 361.
See Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving strangers: humanitarian intervention in international society (Oxford: Oxford
2
University Press, 2000).
International Affairs 77,  () ‒
805

Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne
3
‘developing international norm in favour of intervention to protect civilians’.
Perhaps more beguiling is the fact that, unlike the other cases, East Timor is a
barometer for how far the normative structure of international society has been
transformed. In the Cold War, powerful Western states gave the ‘green light’ to
President Suharto to invade and then looked away while genocidal terror was
4
perpetrated by Indonesian armed forces. Twenty-four years later, green turned
to red as Indonesia came under intense pressure to allow a UN-mandated inter-
5
vention force to stop the ‘worsening humanitarian situation in East Timor’.
Australia played a key role in the international intervention, providing the
leadership, the infrastructure and the biggest troop deployment. Why was it
motivated to lead the operation? Geography and history each played a part. East
Timor is only a few hundred miles from Darwin, the capital of the Northern
Territory. More importantly, many Australians believed their neighbour had
been abandoned in 1975: the Australian government knew about the planned
invasion but chose, like the rest of the world, to sacrifice the islanders in order
to maintain good relations with Indonesia. In the opening section of the article,
we consider the various dimensions of the Timor ‘triangle’ involving Jakarta,
Canberra and Dili. We explore the reasons why Australia recognized Indon-
esia’s claim to exercise sovereignty over the whole island and the steps it took to
facilitate the withdrawal twenty-four years on. Not surprisingly, the Australian
Prime Minister, John Howard, and his minister for foreign affairs and trade,
Alexander Downer, presented the transition as a triumph for Australian foreign
and security policy. Yet critics in academic and policy-making circles argue that
the Canberra government’s handling of the crisis was at best inept and at worst
culpable for the devastation wrought in the aftermath of the ballot. The crux of
the critics’ argument is that the government should not have lent its support to
the ballot process without ensuring the provision of an adequate framework for
protecting the security of the Timorese both before and after the vote. As one
commentator noted in the midst of the crisis, had Australia mobilized a quarter
of the international pressure before 30 August that it exerted afterwards, ‘We
6
wouldn’t be facing what we are facing now.’
While there are good reasons for being critical of Australian diplomacy prior
to the ballot, we contend that the Australian government could not have
exerted the kind of regional and global influence needed to win the argument
about a peacekeeping force. This is developed in the second section of the
article, where we trace the intensive diplomatic activity that occurred after the
ballot leading to the deployment of the International Force for East Timor
3
Kofi Annan, ‘Two concepts of sovereignty’, The Economist, 18 Sept. 1999, pp. 81–2 at p. 82.
By piecing together estimates from the Indonesian government, the local administration and Catholic
4
Church census data, James Cotton estimates the number of fatalities between 1975 and 1979 to be in the
region of 120,000–200,000 out of a population of 700,000. See James Cotton, ‘“Peacekeeping” in East
Timor: an Australian policy departure’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 53: 3, 1999, pp. 237–46 at
p. 237.
James Cotton, ‘Against the grain: the East Timor intervention’, Survival 43: 1, 2001, pp. 127–42 at p. 130.
Bob Lowry, quoted in Patrick Bishop and Barbie Dutter, ‘Howard defends Australia’s actions in face of
5
6
bloodbath’, Daily Telegraph, 22 Sept. 1999.
806

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism
7
(INTERFET). How was it that an intervention became possible after 30
August when it had been ruled out before? The answer lies in the fact that in the
days immediately following the ballot pro-Jakarta militias set about punishing the
population that had voted overwhelmingly for independence. The scenes of
devastation recorded by brave journalists prompted a chorus of cries from world
leaders to ‘do something’ to end the inferno. On 5 September the Australian
foreign minister pledged that his country would lead a UN force providing the
following conditions were met: there was a Security Council mandate; the
action was consented to by Indonesia; the mission was a short-term one aimed
at restoring security prior to the establishment of a UN force; and the force had
a strong regional component. We examine how pressure from a variety of sources
effectively forced President Habibie and his minister for defence and security
8
9
(and commander-in-chief of TNI ) General Wiranto into submission.
What distinguishes the East Timor intervention from other cases in the post-
Cold War era is its success in humanitarian terms. By contrast with Somalia and
Kosovo, there was no mismatch between the military means and the humanitar-
ian ends of ‘Operation Stabilize’. The Australian action was not compromised
by a similar nervousness about the risks of casualties that had undermined the
success of these earlier Western interventions. Although the Howard government
prudently ruled out war with Indonesia to save the East Timorese, President
Habibie’s promise of cooperation could not be relied upon. Consequently,
there was genuine uncertainty as to what kind of reception would confront the
Australian-led force when it disembarked on the island, and there was a real risk
of Australian soldiers returning in body bags. As we discuss, Australia, assisted by
its friends on the Security Council, notably the UK, worked hard to ensure that
its force was equipped with a robust Chapter VII mandate.
What is surprising about Howard’s and Downer’s decision to risk Australian
forces in an uncertain operational environment is that the moral impulse to ‘do
10
the right thing by East Timor’ was not supported by strong national interests.
Indeed, Australia’s decision put it on a collision course with its powerful neigh-
bour, marking the abandonment by the Howard government of the hardy peren-
nial of good relations with Indonesia that had guided Australian foreign policy
since the Second World War. One of the guiding questions considered in this
article is how the Howard government came to disregard the old certainties of
the ‘Jakarta first’ policy. A crucial dimension here is the extent to which the
7
The case study is broadly focused on the time period from December 1999 to September 2000. While
consideration is given to the UNAMET and INTERFET operations, we do not consider the UN
Transitional Administration (UNTAET) mandated to oversee East Timor’s reconstruction.
TNI stands for Tentara Nasional Indonesia (i.e. national troops of Indonesia). The army is sometimes
8
referred to as ABRI (Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia: Armed Forces of the Republic of
Indonesia). It changed its name to TNI after a reshuffle in 1999. We use the terms TNI/ABRI
interchangeably in the article.
9
These conditions are set out in East Timor in transition 1998–2000: an Australian policy challenge (Canberra:
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2001), p. 133.
The words are Prime Minister Howard’s. See Ted Bardacke, Gwen Robinson and Sander Thoenes,
10
‘Jakarta cancels Australian pact’, Financial Times, 17 Sept. 1999.
807

Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne
new normative context of humanitarianism constrained the exercise of
Indonesian sovereignty and enabled the deployment of a multinational force led
by Australia. In the aftermath of the intervention, Downer politely suggested that
East Timor and not Kosovo should be the model for future humanitarian
interventions. We end by reflecting on this contention and evaluating the lessons
of East Timor for the new humanitarian interventionism.
Ballot diplomacy and security
The INTERFET operation opens up a number of important questions about
Australia’s foreign policy priorities. Did the decision to mobilize support for an
intervention force represent a voluntary U-turn or should it be thought of as a
change of direction forced upon the government by events? A further twist in
the tail is provided by the paradox that it was a right-wing government that
eventually stood up to Indonesia, despite the fact that the previous policy of
appeasing Jakarta had been defended by conservatives and attacked by influential
voices on the left. As we reflect on the meaning of INTERFET two years on,
we should consider whether it was the Howard government who acted as a ‘good
international citizen’ and not previous Labor governments who invented this
principle as a standard by which the ethical credentials of foreign policy could
11
be judged. Was it the conservatives who, in the end, abandoned a realistic assess-
ment of narrow national interests in favour of promoting internationalist values
of democracy and self-determination at considerable political and economic costs
to themselves? We will return to many of these questions later in the article; before
doing so it is important to reflect on how Australia formulated its Timor policy.
Until 1998 there had been a consensus in Australian foreign policy that good
relations with Indonesia were more important than the self-determination of
the Timorese. On the face of it, this consensus was arrived at by a straight-
forward calculation of the national interest. There are many factors that point in
the direction of what might be called a Jakarta first policy. From a strategic
point of view, Indonesia has a population of 209 million, making it the fourth
most populous state in the world. Australian defence planning has long seen
Indonesia as a potential threat. Rather than engaging in a costly Cold War with
its northern neighbour, policy-makers preferred promoting ‘a stable pro-
12
Western government in Jakarta and maintaining friendly relations with it’.
11
The idea of ‘good international citizenship’ was first propounded by Gareth Evans in Making Australian
foreign policy, Australian Fabian Society Pamphlet 50, 1989. For an application to the first British Labour
government’s foreign policy, see Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne, ‘Good international citizenship: a
third way for British foreign policy’, International Affairs 74: 4, 1998.
12
Richard Leaver, ‘Introduction: Australia, East Timor and Indonesia’, Pacific Review 14: 1, 2001, pp. 1–14
at pp. 2–3. Interestingly, New Zealand adopted a very similar stance. Having examined ‘hundreds’ of
ministry of foreign affairs papers, Phil Goff argues that the human rights of the East Timorese were
consistently ‘subordinated to the desire to maintain good relations with Indonesia’. He quotes from a
memorandum written by the secretary of foreign affairs to the prime minister on 10 Dec. 1975: ‘New
Zealand has a strong interest in maintaining good relations with Indonesia even if this might on occasion
require some measure of compromise on matters of principle.’ See Phil Goff, ‘East Timor: lessons and
implications’, New Zealand International Review 24: 4, July/Aug. 1999, pp. 2–5 at p. 2.
808

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism
National security may be the primary justification for the Jakarta first policy,
but trade concerns are not far behind. Indonesia provides a large market for
Australian exports, and the two states recognize that there are significant mutual
economic gains to be made from cooperation. At the time of the Indonesian
invasion, Australian officials were predicting the possibilities for the joint
13
exploitation of mineral resources in the Timor Sea. This potential was realized
in 1989 when the two states signed the Timor Gap treaty.
The third cluster of reasons that underpinned the bipartisan consensus on
Jakarta first concerns the regional dimension. Indonesia is a multi-ethnic state
which includes many dissatisfied secessionist movements (for example, in Aceh,
Ambon and Irian Jaya, to name only the most high-profile instances). It stands
to reason that Canberra would prefer to deal with one sovereign state to its
north rather than several minor and unstable sovereign territories. While this
position seems to whiff of realpolitik, there have been other cases in the era of
decolonization where states emerging from colonial rule have forcibly imposed
integrationist policies on their citizens: such efforts at nation-building have
generally been tolerated by the international community. The other aspect of
regional politics that facilitated accommodation with Indonesia’s absorption of
East Timor is the commitment of the Association of South-East Asian Nations
(ASEAN) to the principles of non-interference and consensus. To its members,
meddling in Indonesia’s ‘internal’ affairs smacked unpleasantly of colonialism.
ASEAN has consistently defended a view of sovereignty whereby the rights of
states are largely decoupled from a duty to comply with humanitarian standards.
The continued prevalence of this attitude could be seen in 1997 when ASEAN
admitted Myanmar (Burma) despite its government’s appalling human rights
record.
Outside South-East Asia, key states in the international system also viewed
the Timor question through a lens that was focused on Jakarta. From the time
of the initial invasion, the view of powerful Western states has been entirely
consistent with the assessment made by Australia and other regional powers.
Two days before Indonesian forces landed on East Timor, US President Gerald
Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were in Jakarta visiting Indonesian
President Suharto. Kissinger is said to have told reporters in Jakarta that ‘the US
14
understands Indonesia’s position on the question’. To the Americans, Suharto’s
Indonesia was a prize that needed to be protected. In return for loyalty to the
13
The Australian ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Woolcott, quickly alerted his colleagues in the
Department of Minerals and Energy to business opportunities that arose in the aftermath of the
Indonesian invasion. In the ambassador’s words: ‘We are all aware of the Australian defense interest in
the Portuguese Timor situation but I wonder whether the Department has ascertained the interest of the
Minister of the Department of Minerals and Energy in the Timor situation … The present gap in the
agreed sea border … could be more readily negotiated with Indonesia … than with Portugal or an
independent Portuguese Timor [sic]. I know I am recommending a pragmatic rather than a principled
stand but that is what national interest and foreign policy is all about.’ Quoted in Mathew Jardine, East
Timor, p. 45. Citation is from an Australian Defense Department paper, in J. R. Walsh and George
Munster, Documents on Australian defence and foreign policy, 1968–1975.
14
Jardine, East Timor: genocide in paradise (Tucson, AZ: Odonian Press, 1975, p. 38. Jardine’s source here is
the Los Angeles Times, 12 July 1975.
809

Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne
West, Indonesia received significant aid, investment and arms sales. Indonesia
was not only a valuable strategic asset, it presented significant investment oppor-
tunities for multinational companies looking for cheap labour (major corpor-
ations such as Levi-Strauss and Nike have plants there) and export markets. No
one described this more effectively than a former president of Coca-Cola:
‘When I think of Indonesia—a country on the equator with 180 million people,
a median age of 18, and a Muslim ban on alcohol—I feel like I know what
15
heaven looks like.’
What the preceding discussion illustrates is how a web of bilateral relations
facilitated the absorption of East Timor into Indonesian sovereign territory. Yet
the key multilateral organ of international society—the UN—maintained a
strict policy of non-recognition of Indonesia’s invasion and subsequent annexa-
16
tion of East Timor. The view of the UN was that sovereignty did not belong
to Indonesia. East Timor had been an overseas possession of the Portuguese
since the early seventeenth century: in accordance with the norm of self-
determination, the end of colonial rule should have led to independence.
Throughout the post-invasion period, the United States did everything it could
to contradict the UN’s stance. According to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, US
ambassador to the UN during the Ford administration, the State Department
‘desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures
it undertook’—a task that, by his own admission, he carried out ‘with no
17
inconsiderable success’.
The view from Canberra was equally at odds with UN norms and policies.
As the Australian representative told the UN on 2 November 1979, Australia
‘believed the question of the decolonization of East Timor to have been
18
resolved’. Not only did Australia accept the legitimacy of Indonesian rule
over East Timor in the aftermath of the invasion, it used its influence to
19
smother criticisms of Indonesia in the UN. Richard Leaver neatly captures
Australia’s position on the Timor question: ‘Self-induced acquiescence in the face
of Indonesia’s colonization of East Timor, followed by de facto and de jure
recognition of Indonesian sovereignty, were parts of a larger price that was willing
20
if quietly paid in the name of national security.’
The bilateral relationship was at its closest during the period of the Labor
administrations led by Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating (1983–
96). Significant progress was made on both economic and security fronts. In
15
Jardine, East Timor, pp. 37–38. Jardine’s source here is Dollars and Sense (Somerville, MA).
Security Council Resolution 389, on 22 April 1976, called for Indonesia ‘to withdraw without further
16
delay all its forces from the Territory’. The UN General Assembly voted for the immediate withdrawal
of Indonesia five days after the invasion (12 Dec. 1975): the vote was 72:10, with 43 abstentions (includ-
ing the United States, Canada and many West European states). Quoted in Jardine, East Timor, p. 36.
Quoted in Jardine, East Timor, p. 37.
William Maley, ‘The UN and East Timor’, Pacifica Review 12: 1, 2000, pp. 63–76 at p. 65.
17
18
19
Gareth Evans claims that Australia ‘continued to recognise East Timor as a non-self governing territory
entitled to self-determination’. See his defence of Labor’s Timor policy, ‘Steps beyond ending the
bloodshed’, The Australian, 27 Sept. 1999.
Leaver, ‘Introduction: Australia, East Timor and Indonesia’, p. 3.
20
810

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism
1989 Australia signed the Timor Gap treaty, permitting joint exploitation of oil
and gas reserves. Six years later an ‘Agreement to Maintain Security’ was signed
by Keating and Suharto: this was the first bilateral security agreement entered
21
into by Indonesia. In response to critics of the treaty, Keating said ‘We are not
22
going to hock the entire Indonesian relationship on Timor.’ Yet this strategy
was being pursued at a time when the minister for foreign affairs and trade,
Senator Gareth Evans, was articulating an ethical dimension to foreign policy.
As well as promoting the national interest, Evans argued that it was important
for Australia to act as a ‘good international citizen’, including compliance with
human rights norms and a commitment to strengthen multilateral institutions.
The Jakarta first policy appeared to contradict both of these goals. In defence of
23
Evans, it is possible to argue (as Andrew Linklater does ), that a ‘good inter-
national citizen’ should not be expected to endanger vital security interests in its
24
pursuit of moral ends. If this was how Evans understood the Timor triangle
then it begs the question why the Labor leadership was not more explicit about
justifying the priorities to their citizens. Their attempt to reconcile ethics and
interests was not persuasive to the ‘left’ in the Australian Labor Party who con-
tinued to campaign for non-recognition of Indonesian authority over East Timor.
The election of John Howard’s coalition government in 1996 did not funda-
mentally challenge the Jakarta first policy of his predecessors; and when a
change did come about, it was not the result of a carefully thought-out strategy.
Rather, events outside the bilateral relationship transformed the East Timor
question in the late 1990s. The financial crisis that convulsed much of Asia from
1997 hit Indonesia badly: its currency plummeted and industrial output con-
tracted massively. The effect of the downturn on state–society relations was
dramatic. Intercommunal violence erupted and the government came in for
sustained attack from student-led protests. What the economic shocks revealed
to Indonesian citizens was the extent of their vulnerability, in contrast to the
security of the Suharto family and the cronies (including senior figures in the
army) who ran the state-owned enterprises for their own benefit. Suharto’s
downfall in May 1998 paved the way for a significant change in Indonesia’s
Timor policy. The leader of the interim government, President Habibie,
announced that he was prepared to offer ‘special status’ for East Timor, while
stating that this would be conditional on Indonesia’s continued sovereignty
over East Timor. Indonesia had been engaged in UN-sponsored talks with
Portugal since 1982, but this was the first time that Indonesia had opened the
21
Ibid.
22
Melissa Roberts, ‘Why Sydney is screaming: Australia’s sense of loss in East Timor goes back decades’,
Newsweek, 20 Sept. 1999, p. 26.
Andrew Linklater, ‘What is a good international citizen?’, in Paul Keal, ed., Ethics and foreign policy
23
(Canberra: Allen & Unwin, 1992). See also Peter Lawler, ‘Constituting the “good state”’, in Paul James,
ed., Critical politics (Melbourne: Arena Publications, 1994).
Looking back on the issue in the aftermath of the crisis, Evans offered up the argument that good
24
relations with Indonesia were a ‘means’ to realizing multiple ‘ends’, including ‘helping the people of East
Timor’. While other goals were achieved (particularly economic and security interests), this one was not
‘fully realised’. See Evans, ‘Steps beyond ending the bloodshed’.
811

Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne
door to the possibility of greater autonomy for the Timorese. Habibie’s
25
announcement was made on 9 June 1998 in an interview with the BBC.
Whatever the balance between endogenous and exogenous factors in
creating a new context for the Timor question, the effect was to disturb the
settled assumptions that had previously shaped Indonesian–Australian bilateral
relations. From an Australian perspective, the national interest was still defined
by the principle of recognizing Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor, but
within that constraint, the Howard government began to lobby more on behalf
of the rights of the East Timorese. According to the book published by the
Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in 2001 on the
government’s East Timor policy in the period 1998–2000, two key consider-
ations shaped policy at this time. First, there was concern that despite Habibie’s
announcement in June, there had been no progress in the tripartite talks. The
situation on the ground in East Timor was increasingly volatile, and ‘Australia
was concerned that if growing defiance towards Indonesian rule was met by
renewed TNI repression, the situation in East Timor could deteriorate beyond
control’. Second, there was growing public support in Australia, after Suharto’s
26
fall, for self-determination for the Timorese. These considerations led Prime
Minister Howard to try to influence the tripartite talks in a more positive direction.
In December 1998 he wrote to President Habibie encouraging him to con-
sider a period of autonomy for East Timor followed by an eventual act of self-
determination, the outcome of which Australia would not prejudge. This may
have annoyed Habibie, given that Australia had hitherto been a reliable defender
27
of Indonesia’s sovereignty over East Timor. Yet a month later (27 January
1999) Indonesia went considerably further than at any point since the dialogue
began. Habibie promised that if the East Timorese rejected a proposal for
autonomy within Indonesia, he would ask the People’s Consultative Assembly
28
to grant them independence. On 5 May an agreement was signed by the UN,
Portugal and Indonesia to allow a UN-supervised ballot. A key and controver-
sial element in the agreement was that the TNI had sole responsibility for law
and order. The consequences of this decision were disastrous. The UN Mission
in East Timor (UNAMET), mandated to organize the election, faced a very
hostile environment as pro-integrationist militias sought to intimidate the
mission and destabilize the process. As a result the date for the ballot was pushed
25
The key part of Habibie’s statement was: ‘I am ready to consider as the President, to give East Timor a
special status . . . under one condition that East Timor is recognized as an integrated part of the Republic
of Indonesia’ (Reuters, 10 June 1998).
East Timor in transition, pp. 29–30.
Richard Leaver, ‘The meaning, origins and implications of “the Howard doctrine”’, Pacific Review 14: 1,
26
27
2001, pp. 15–34 at p. 28. After East Timor went up in flames, former Primer Minister Keating blamed
Howard for the disaster. Had he not sent the letter, Keating rather implausibly suggested, ‘The East
Timor disaster would not have started to unfold’. See Mike Steketee, ‘Keating’s last stand’, The Weekend
Australian, 9–10 Oct. 1999. Interestingly, Keating’s foreign minister took a different line, believing that
Howard was right to send the letter. See Evans, ‘Steps beyond ending the bloodshed’.
28
Maley claims that Habibie’s change of policy was not discussed with foreign minister Ali Alatas: William
Maley, ‘Australia and the East Timor crisis: some critical comments’, Australian Journal of International
Affairs 54: 2, 2000, pp. 151–61 at p. 156.
812

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism
back from 8 August to 30 August. Unfortunately, this only delayed the coming
anarchy rather than preventing it altogether.
In the following section, we consider the various factors that enabled the
imposition of an Australian-led intervention force to bring an end to the violence
and lawlessness witnessed in early September. Prior to this discussion, it is impor-
tant to consider the charge that INTERFET represented an attempt to salvage a
policy that had failed. Even though the operation itself may have been a triumph,
there are many reasons for thinking that it came about only because of a series of
miscalculations in Australian foreign policy. The allegations can be distilled into
the following points, to be considered in turn: first, that the Australian government
knew about the Indonesian army’s plan to arm the militias and that a campaign
of violence was being planned; second, that it should have exerted greater
pressure on Indonesia to stop the intimidation; third, that it should have worked
harder to mobilize international support for a pre-ballot peacekeeping force.
What information was available to Australian ministers during the period
January–September 1999? On 4 March 1999 a Defence Intelligence Organiza-
tion brief headed ‘Indonesia/East Timor: ABRI [Indonesian army] backing
violence’ noted that ‘Unless Jakarta takes firm action, ABRI elements will
29
continue to support intimidation and violence or at least won’t prevent it.’
This report, as Desmond Ball argues, appears to have been ignored by the foreign
minister. On 7 March Downer said that a campaign of terror against pro-
independence East Timorese ‘certainly isn’t Indonesian Government policy’ and
30
is not ‘being condoned by General Wiranto’. As intelligence-gathering was
stepped up in April and May, there was mounting evidence of links between
militia leaders and the Indonesian army. The ABRI/TNI helped the militias
form, supplied them with weapons, and stood back and watched as they terror-
31
ized pro-independence East Timorese. It is noteworthy that Stanley Roth,
the US State Department’s assistant secretary for East Asian affairs, asked
Australian officials for intelligence data on the links between the ABRI and the
militias but was rebuffed owing to the need to protect sources on the ground.
Further evidence of tension between the United States and Australia emerged
in a meeting in Washington in February 1999 between Roth and Dr Ashton
Calvert, secretary of the department of foreign affairs and trade. According to a
transcript of the meeting, Roth believed that ‘A full-scale peacekeeping
operation would be an unavoidable aspect of the transition’. Calvert argued that
the deployment of an international peacekeeping force prior to the ballot was
unnecessary. Roth stressed the importance of building a UN-based constituency
32
‘for pushing the peacekeeping option’. He added that ‘It was necessary to go
forth and persuade Congress and UN member states that it simply had to be
29
Desmond Ball, ‘Silent witness: Australian intelligence and East Timor’, Pacific Review 14: 1, 2001, pp. 35–
62 at p. 45.
30
Alexander Downer, cited in Ball, ‘Silent witness’, p. 45. Downer would, of course, have wanted to play
down these reports, particularly in public.
Ball, ‘Silent witness’, p. 47.
Ibid., pp. 51–2.
31
32
813

Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne
33
done’. Some doubt remains as to whether Calvert was trying to avoid the
deployment of Australian troops in principle or whether he was simply iterating
a preference not to send in troops at this stage.
Calvert’s preferred option was to rely on ‘adept diplomacy’. Once again, we
see how the fate of the East Timorese was thought by Australia to be best
resolved in accordance with the trusted Jakarta first policy. What evidence is
there that Australia tried to exert leverage over Jakarta? This question leads to
the further, counterfactual question: Could Australia have done more? Alexan-
der Downer claims that Australia ‘was diligent in pushing hard to ensure measures
34
were taken to curb this violence in the lead-up to the 30 August ballot’. An
opportunity to push the issue arose when Habibie and Howard met in Bali on
27 April. According to Downer, the Indonesian president ‘categorically rejected’
Australia’s call for a peacekeeping force to be sent in. Downer believes that the
summit achieved some progress in that Habibie agreed to an expansion of the
UNAMET civilian police contingent. The official view of the Bali meeting has
been strongly challenged by William Maley, who argued that Australian
negotiators returned ‘empty handed’, adding that ‘They had consciously decided
35
not to press with any vigour for a neutral force’.
The need for greater ballot security was apparent to many in the summer of
36
1999. Expert commentators in the press were pushing this line, and the
opposition Labor party concurred. To compound the problem, the nature of
the ballot made it more likely to provoke violence than other kinds of election
undertaken by democracies in transition, such as where multiple parties contest
seats to a legislative assembly, for in a ballot that is to decide for or against self-
determination there can only be one winner. The danger of pursuing an
election in a hostile environment was something of which the UN had previous
experience, from which it might reasonably have been expected to learn some
lessons. Angola in September 1992 provided a stark reminder of what can
happen to free and fair elections if the loser (in this case Jonas Savimbi) decides
to ignore the results and call his supporters to arms. Reflecting on this case, the
UN special representative of the Secretary-General in Angola warned that if
there were not sufficient peacekeepers to ensure ballot security, ‘the Secretary-
37
General should be ready to say “no”’.
33
Maley, ‘Australia and the East Timor crisis’, p. 157. Maley also quotes from a ‘leaked cable’ from the
Prime Minister’s office to the effect that a peacekeeping force ‘would remove any incentive for the East
Timorese and the Indonesians to sort out their differences’ (p. 157).
Alexander Downer, ‘East Timor—looking back on 1999’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 54: 1,
34
2000, pp. 5–10 at p. 6.
Maley, ‘The UN and East Timor’, p. 70.
Alan Dupont and Anthony Bergin, ‘UN force critical to peace in Timor’, Australian Financial Review, 29
35
36
March 1999. In the article, they argued that ‘What is needed now is the early deployment of a
multinational force under UN auspices’. Quoted in Maley, ‘Australia and the East Timor crisis’, p. 154.
Dame Margaret Anstee, quoted in Maley, ‘The UN and East Timor’, p. 71. It is worth noting in this
37
regard that the Secretary-General himself appeared not to have learned this lesson. In a rare lapse of
judgement, he argued on 10 September 1999 that ‘If any of us had an inkling that it was going to be this
chaotic, I don’t think anyone would have gone forward. We are not fools.’ Quoted in Maley, ‘Australia
and the East Timor Crisis’, p. 154.
814

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism
There is no doubt that amber warning lights were flashing in the months
before the 30 August vote. But this ought not to lead us to the conclusion that
Australia is largely to blame for not creating a secure environment. A peace-
keeping force would have isolated the militias and contained the ABRI/TNI,
but was there a constituency in favour of such a move in the capitals of the great
powers? Given how much intensive diplomatic activity was needed to get a
multinational force off the ground in the early weeks of September—and this
against the backdrop of shocking images of human rights abuses—it is hard to
claim that such a ‘coalition of the willing’ could have been put together in the
summer of 1999. Reflecting on the issue some months later, Downer con-
cluded that ‘To have pushed the issue with Jakarta would have resulted in the
38
cancellation of the 30 August vote’. This is an objection that should be taken
seriously, particularly given that the UN Security Council would not have adop-
ted a Chapter VII resolution overriding the will of the Indonesian government.
These factors all suggest that the critics overstate the extent to which
Australia had a controlling influence over either the timing of the ballot or the
environment in which it was to take place. Habibie had opened a narrow
window of opportunity for East Timorese self-determination, and neither
Australia nor the UN wanted to close it. What would have been the domestic
reaction if Howard and Downer had withdrawn from UNMET because they
judged the security framework to be inadequate? It would have been further to
underline the feeling of betrayal that runs through much of Australian civil
society in relation to the Timor question.
Three other factors cast doubt on the case presented by critics like Maley.
First, it is significant that the East Timorese leaders did not want to jeopardize
the ballot, even if this led indirectly to the deaths of ‘hundreds’ of their
39
citizens. Second, Australian and UN officials handling the issue took the view
that to delay or cancel the ballot would have led to a deterioration of the
security situation—the concern being that if the militias were perceived to have
won, pro-independence supporters would have turned to violence in large
numbers, leading to a massive crackdown by the TNI. Finally, one could argue
that the ADF did begin significant military planning in case of the need for a
rapid deployment of forces to East Timor. Covert operations were undertaken
40
by the ADF as early as April, and shortly after the 5 May agreement a brigade
of ADF troops (approximately 3,000) based in Darwin was put on 30-day
readiness for deployment.
How did INTERFET become possible?
On 4 September Kofi Annan announced to the world the results of the ballot.
After an election that was relatively free of the intimidation and violence that
38
Downer, ‘East Timor—looking back on 1999’, pp. 6–7.
This figure is given by Ball on the basis of intelligence estimates: ‘Silent witness’, p. 36.
Ball, ‘Silent witness’, p. 47.
39
40
815

Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne
had characterized the activities of the pro-integrationist militias in the previous
fourth months, 78.5 per cent of registered voters had decided for independence.
Immediately after the result was announced, rampaging militiamen began killing
key figures in the independence movement and terrorizing civilians. Witnesses
41
on the ground estimated that in a matter of days over 1,000 lives had been lost,
and up to a quarter of the population had fled their homes. In the words of a
42
Newsweek reporter, ‘Dili was an apocalyptic landscape’. Leaked Australian
intelligence documents indicate that the Indonesian army ordered the massive
escalation of violence, and other intercepts of radio conversations directly
43
implicate the special forces unit of the TNI (the Kopassus) in militia violence.
Further evidence for this claim is provided by the report of the Security
Council mission to East Timor which concluded, that ‘Militia activities were
44
organized and supported by parts of TNI’. Although President Habibie gave
assurances that the Indonesian military and police units on the island would
restore order, it rapidly became clear that he was in no position to control events
on the ground. Consequently, any ending of the violence depended upon deploy-
ing a peacekeeping force onto the island. As early as 4 September, the East
Timorese resistance leader, Xanana Gusmao, under house arrest in Jakarta, had
urged the Secretary-General and the Security Council ‘to make a decision on
sending an international force to save the Maubere [East Timorese] from a new
45
genocide’.
There was a general determination in the Security Council that East Timor
would not be the next Rwanda or Srebrenica. According to William Shaw-
cross, the US permanent representative Richard Holbrooke had expressed to
Annan his government’s concern that a failure to contain the crisis could lead to
the spread of violence to other parts of Indonesia, producing a humanitarian and
46
security crisis on the scale of the Balkans. The Council met on 5 September
and demanded that Indonesia bring the violence under control. It also agreed
for the first time in its history to send a mission to Jakarta of five of its members
at ambassadorial rank (from the UK, Malaysia, Slovenia and the Netherlands),
led by the Namibian representative, Martin Andjaba, to impress upon Indon-
esian political and military leaders the gravity of the situation. Annan, who was
in regular telephone contact with the Indonesian president, was told by him
that the situation was stabilizing and that a declaration of martial law would
bring an end to the crisis. However, as the Security Council mission met with
41
Don Greenlees and Robert Garran, ‘Marching into tragedy’, The Australian, 8 Sept. 1999.
Jeffrey Bartholet, ‘The “Clinton Doctrine” is tested by murderous pro-Indonesian militias’, Newsweek, 20
42
Sept. 1999, pp. 22–6 at p. 23.
Shawn Donnan, ‘Evidence grows over Jakarta hand in violence’, Financial Times, 25 Nov. 1999. See also
43
Ball, ‘Silent witness’, pp. 47–50.
Report of the Security Council mission to Jakarta and Dili, S/1999/976, 14 Sept. 1999, www.un.org/
44
peace/etimor/docs, visited on 6 July 2001, p. 5.
Xanana Gusmao’s speech as reported by Portuguese Renascenca radio on 4 Sept. 1999, Summary of World
45
Broadcasts, Part 3: Asia–Pacific, FE/3632 B/3, 6 Sept. 1999.
William Shawcross, Deliver us from evil: warlords and peacekeepers in a world of endless conflict (London:
46
Bloomsbury 2001), p. 137.
816

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism
Jakarta-based ambassadors, it quickly became obvious to them that Habibie had
little control over the military. The Indonesian president’s growing delusion
about the crisis was reflected in his meeting with the UN ambassadors on 9
September. He tried to rationalize the violence as the result of disaffected pro-
autonomy groups, with the TNI struggling to keep the peace between the
47
warring elements. This interpretation of events was not accepted by anyone
outside Habibie’s inner circle, and it contradicted the grim reality of militia
violence aided and abetted by the army. By 9 September thousands had been
driven into the hills from burning homes; hundreds of pro-independence
supporters had been killed; UN officials, aid workers and journalists were being
targeted; and 3,000 refugees an hour were being forcibly relocated across the
border into West Timor. As Shawcross puts it, this ‘was ethnic cleansing
48
Indonesia-style’.
The violence following the referendum became front-page news in every
Australian newspaper, and television pictures of the atrocities galvanized the
Australian public into demanding action to end the violence. A major factor
behind this public reaction was the sense of shame at Australia’s continuing
betrayal of the people of East Timor; support for an armed intervention to
protect the East Timorese was a way of trying to absolve the country of its past
guilt. Political leaders were equally shocked by the scale of the humanitarian
crisis and were intensely frustrated that their method of attempting to avoid
violence had failed. More specifically, the Howard government was vulnerable
on whether more should have been done to press the Indonesians on security
during the ballot process. The opposition Labor party leader, Kim Beazley, had
criticized the government on this very issue over the previous four months, and
when the violence erupted he levelled the accusation that the Howard govern-
49
ment was ‘totally ill-prepared to respond effectively’. As we have argued in
the previous section, this criticism was overstated. Nevertheless, Howard’s deci-
sion to champion the cause of military intervention reflected a strong desire to
defuse domestic criticisms over his handling of the East Timor question. Faced
with a mounting tide of public anger, Downer announced on 5 September that
Australia was prepared to lead a multinational force to East Timor. He was
explicit that military intervention without Indonesian approval was not an
option: ‘I am sure that Australians would not want us to declare war on
50
Indonesia.’ In a context where violence had erupted as a direct consequence
of Indonesia’s refusal to accept a UN force to monitor the ballot process, the
sovereignty constraint remained firmly in place.
The difficulty of securing Indonesia’s consent was made clear to the Security
Council mission in its meeting with the Indonesian foreign minister, Ali Alatas,
47
Report of the Security Council Mission, p. 5; and Shawcross, Deliver us from evil, p. 359.
Shawcross, Deliver us from evil, p. 357; Dan Murphy and John McBeth, ‘Scorched earth’, Far Eastern
48
Economic Review, 16 Sept. 1999.
Quoted in Leaver, ‘Introduction: Australia, East Timor and Indonesia’, p. 10.
Barbie Dutter, ‘Australia ready to send in soldiers’, Daily Telegraph, 7 Sept. 1999.
49
50
817

Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne
on 8 September. He expressed Indonesia’s concern at the growing violence in
East Timor, but insisted that his government would not accept any foreign
military presence before the Indonesian parliament had met and considered the
outcome of the consultation process. A day later Habibie firmly reiterated this
51
position in his discussions with the ambassadors. Yet, within three more days,
the president had done a complete volte-face and accepted the offer of outside
military assistance. How did this change become possible? The answer is that
the international community was able to mobilize the type of pressure on
Jakarta to accept an international force that it had proven incapable of mustering
in the period when such a force might have prevented the subsequent escalation
of the violence. The pressure to make Indonesia comply took effectively two
forms: first, there was the coercive leverage of withdrawing IMF and World
Bank loans, and the ending of military assistance; second, there was the moral
censure of Indonesia that cast it in the role of an international pariah.
In terms of coercive leverage, on 9 September US President Clinton ratcheted
up the pressure by ordering a suspension of all programmes of military coopera-
tion with Indonesia, stating that if Indonesia did not end the violence, ‘It must
invite—it must invite—the international community to assist in restoring
52
security.’ Given the US role in training and supplying the TNI’s special forces
that were collaborating with the militias, the administration was politically vulner-
53
able on this issue. Senior US officers had tried to exploit their privileged
relationship with the Indonesian military by privately persuading them to end
the violence. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Henry H.
Shelton, had urged this course of action on Wiranto during two telephone con-
54
versations. Admiral Dennis Blair, head of US pacific forces, had gone to
Jakarta to meet with Wiranto on 8 September, with the threat that either the
military take control of the situation or the US would break off military relations.
Clinton’s public statement the following day reflected the failure of this
55
ultimatum to influence the actions of the TNI in East Timor.
The US decision to suspend military cooperation was followed by New
Zealand, and the net was further tightened with the EU decision to impose an
arms embargo on Indonesia. As part of this, the British foreign secretary
announced that the government was suspending shipment of the nine Hawk
‘trainer’ aircraft that Indonesia was contracted to buy from British Aerospace.
Having been given assurances by the Indonesian government that the Hawks
51
Report of the Security Council mission, p. 2.
Statement by the President on East Timor, 9 Sept. 1999, p. 3 (emphasis added), www.usinfo.state.gov/
52
regional/ea/timor, visited on 6 July 2001.
Noam Chomsky claims that the United States and the UK continued military support in the months
53
before the ballot, despite evidence of widespread TNI-backed atrocities. The United States, he adds,
even conducted ‘joint military exercises just prior to the referendum’. Noam Chomsky, A new generation
draws the line: Kosovo, East Timor and the standards of the West (London: Verso, 2000), p. 22.
54
Andrew Marshall and John Armstrong, ‘East Timor crisis: US moves nearer to intervention’, Independent,
11 Sept. 1999.
55
Mark Suzman and Sander Thoenes, ‘US halts military links in move on E. Timor violence’, Financial
Times, 10 Sept. 1999.
818

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism
already sold to Indonesia would not be used over East Timor, the Blair
government found itself in the uncomfortable position of having to explain
56
why it was that these aircraft were operating over East Timor during the crisis.
Military sanctions were one instrument for exerting pressure on the Habibie
government, but the most effective weapon in squeezing Indonesia was the
threat of financial sanctions. In his speech of 9 September, Clinton raised the
spectre of US action to prevent Indonesia obtaining much-needed IMF and
World Bank loans. He stated that his ‘own willingness to support future assist-
ance will depend very strongly on the way Indonesia handles this situation’.
The President wanted to send a clear signal to political and military leaders in
Indonesia that if the violence continued, ‘There will be overwhelming public
sentiment to stop the international economic cooperation … nobody is going
to want to continue to invest there if they are allowing this sort of travesty to go
57
on.’ One of the most fascinating and controversial aspects of this crisis was the
role played by the IMF and World Bank in coercing Indonesia into accepting
an international peacekeeping force. In an unprecedented move, the IMF
announced two days after Clinton’s call for cuts in international lending that it
was suspending its planned visit to review Indonesia’s progress, necessary before
the next instalment of US$450 million could be approved. In total, the IMF
rescue package for Indonesia was $12.3 billion, of which $2.3 billion still had to
be granted. The IMF’s Asia–Pacific director, Hubert Neiss, was reported on
Radio Australia as saying that Indonesia must end the violence and sort out a
banking scandal involving Bank Bali and members of the ruling party if it
58
wanted the review to be rescheduled. Five days later, the World Bank froze its
$1 billion aid programme to Indonesia in a move designed to put pressure on
the government to end the violence in East Timor. This move was justified as a
response to a banking scandal, but this was little more than a pretext: the
Australian director, James Wolfensohn, had written to Habibie the previous
59
week urging the government to honour the results of the referendum. The
economic threat posed to Indonesia’s recovery by the loss of IMF and World
Bank finance was compounded by the fact that this would send a clear signal to
investors that Indonesia was a bad risk, leading to greater pressure on the
stability of the currency. The growing realization that the crisis in East Timor
56
Alexander Nicoll and Sander Thoenes, ‘Indonesia defies UK to operate Hawk jets in E. Timor’, Financial
Times, 10 Sept. 1999.
57
Statement by the President on East Timor, 9 Sept. 1999, pp. 3, 7. The day before, a Financial Times
editorial had made the same point: ‘Jakarta should remember that the IMF’s major western shareholders
have difficulty justifying loans to countries condoning mass murder.’ See leader, ‘Intervening in East
Timor’, Financial Times, 8 Sept. 1999.
58
See ‘IMF suspends discussions on economic programme’, Radio Australia, Summary of World Broadcasts,
FE/3638 B/8, 11 Sept. 1999; Gwen Robinson, ‘Asia–Pacific: Jakarta warns IMF and Bank over E.
Timor’, Financial Times, 10 Sept. 1999; Philip Thornton, ‘World Bank freezes all new loans to
Indonesia’, Independent, 14 Sept. 1999.
59
Robinson, ‘Asia–Pacific: Jakarta warns IMF and Bank over E. Timor’; Stephen Fidler and Gwen
Robinson, ‘IMF and World Bank played role in climbdown: East Timor lobbying effort exposes
divisions over wisdom of sanctions’, Financial Times, 13 Sept. 1999.
819

Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne
was worsening was a key factor in Habibie’s decision on 12 September to agree
60
to the deployment of a multinational force. There is also evidence that this
factor weighed heavily on Wiranto, and this may explain why the TNI was
prepared to back its political masters. Shelton had telephoned Wiranto two days
61
earlier and warned him that his actions were bringing ruin on the country.
Material factors are certainly critical in any explanation of the Indonesian
climbdown, but the impact of the global moral outrage directed at Jakarta should
not be underestimated. There were two key elements to the moral pressure
mobilized by the international community. The first was the Security Council
mission. This was crucial in bringing home to Indonesian leaders the strength of
feeling within the Council on the question of Indonesia’s responsibility for the
violence in East Timor. In this context, it was highly significant that Malaysia
was a member of the mission. As a fellow member of ASEAN conscious of the
importance of maintaining good relations with its powerful neighbour, Malaysia
sought to avoid what it saw as the blunt language of the Western members of
the delegation. Rather than treat Indonesia as a scolded child, Ambassador Hasmy
sought in the meetings with Habibie, Alatas and Wiranto to moderate such
sentiments. He stressed that Indonesia’s actions over East Timor were not in
keeping with its respected role as a leader in the non-aligned movement. And in
conversations with Wiranto, he made the highly controversial but flattering
claim that the actions of the TNI contradicted its ‘historical role in and
62
contribution to national peace and security and regional stability’. Reflecting
on the impact of the mission’s meeting with the Indonesian army chief,
Ambassador Hasmy reflected that ‘Wiranto saw very clearly that the signal from
63
the international community was very strong’.
It would be unwise to exaggerate the role of the mission, given that Indonesia
was coming under sustained pressure from a variety of vantage points, including
the US joint chiefs of staff and international financial institutions; nevertheless,
arguments employed by the mission, especially the appeals to Indonesia’s self-
image as a responsible member of the international community, were an
important factor in persuading Wiranto that the ruin facing Indonesia was both
moral and financial. In his conversation with Shelton on 10 September, Wiranto
had said that he would personally inspect the situation in Dili, and he
accompanied the five ambassadors on their visit to the capital on 11 September.
According to the report of the mission, the scale of the destruction in Dili had a
sobering effect on his views, and Shawcross claims that at this point Wiranto
60
According to Stephen Fidler and Gwen Robinson, this pressure ‘was instrumental in persuading
Indonesia to accept an international peacekeeping force’. See Fidler and Robinson, ‘IMF and World
Bank played role in climbdown’.
See Nisid Hajari, ‘The hard part’, Time, 27 Sept. 1999, p. 49.
61
62
Interview with Ambassador Hasmy, permanent representative of Malaysia to the United Nations, New
York, 27 April 2001.
63
Interview with Ambassador Hasmy, Permanent Representative of Malaysia to the United Nations, New
York, 27 April 2001.
820

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism
began to acknowledge the need for an international force to bring the situation
64
under control.
It was not only the Indonesian minister of defence who was affected by the
devastation and human distress witnessed by the mission in Dili. The ambassa-
65
dors’ report states that ‘The Mission was left with a strong sense of shock’, and
the United Kingdom’s permanent representative, Sir Jeremy Greenstock,
described the level of human suffering in the East Timorese capital as a ‘living
66
hell’. According to Penny Wensley, the Australian ambassador to the UN
during the crisis, the mission played an important galvanizing role in overcom-
ing any remaining concerns that some members may have had about adopting a
resolution authorizing the Australian-led force. She wrote that ‘Several members
of the mission were deeply affected, very obviously, by the evidence of the
wholesale destruction and several Council delegates who might otherwise have
been reluctant, were influenced by the personal observations of their colleagues
67
who participated in the mission.’
At the same time as the ambassadors were experiencing the ‘living hell’ that
was East Timor, the Security Council, under the glare of the world’s media, was
conducting an open debate on the crisis. The growing diplomatic condemna-
tion of Indonesia’s East Timor policy constituted the second element in the
moral pressure being exerted on the Habibie government. The need for a public
debate in the Council was strongly pressed by Portugal and Australia. It was
opposed by several countries who worried that it would be counterproductive,
but the president of the Council, Ambassador Peter Van Walsum of the
Netherlands, insisted on going ahead with what turned out to be a seven-hour
debate on the crisis. By this stage, ‘International media coverage of the events in
68
East Timor had reached a crescendo’, and the UN would have lacked credi-
bility had it not publicly been seen to be addressing the crisis. The Secretary-
General opened the debate by repeating his statement of the previous day,
when he had declared that ‘The time has clearly come for [Indonesia] to seek
69
help from the international community’. This clearly set the tone for the
speeches to follow. With the exception of Cuba, Libya, Vietnam and India, all
the members who spoke in this debate stressed Indonesia’s moral and legal obliga-
tion under the 5 May agreement to provide security for the East Timorese. If
Indonesia was unwilling or unable to restore law and order, then it should accept
the offer of an international peacekeeping force. Yet while requiring Indonesia
to live up to its responsibilities, all participants agreed that any outside interven-
tion was dependent upon Indonesia’s consent and the adoption of a Security
64
Report of the Security Council, p. 4; Shawcross, Deliver us from evil, p. 360.
Report of the Security Council, p. 4.
Philip Sherwell, ‘Cook halts Hawk sale to Indonesia’, Daily Telegraph, 12 Sept. 1999.
Penny Wensley, ‘East Timor and the United Nations’, speech by Ambassador Wensley to the Australian
65
66
67
Institute for International Affairs, the United Nations Association of Australia and the Department of
Foreign Affairs and Trade, The Glover Cottages, Sydney, 23 Feb. 2000, p. 10.
Ibid.
Quoted in Shawcross, Deliver us from evil, p. 359.
68
69
821

Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne
Council resolution. It was accepted as a given of the discourse that unilateral
70
action on the model of NATO’s intervention in Kosovo was unacceptable.
The importance of the debate in the Security Council was that it enabled the
UN membership ‘to speak with a strong voice and to send an unmistakable
message to the Habibie government’. The fact that the Indonesian president
decided the next day to accept the offer of a multinational force leads Wensley to
71
claim that this ‘demonstrates the value of the debate in the Security Council’.
There is an element of exaggeration here, since it is misleading to single out one
factor as being decisive. Rather, as we have seen, a number of material and
ideational factors explain Habibie’s decision to request international military
assistance. One further component in the normative side of the equation
concerns the regional dimension. It was fortuitous that the APEC forum was
meeting in Auckland from 9 to 12 September since this provided an important
opportunity for face-to-face meetings between the key players in the region and
72
leaders from the Western grouping. Intervention in East Timor posed two
very difficult issues for Asian governments. First, they worried about legitima-
ting an action that might serve to erode the non-intervention principle, a concern
shared particularly by Myanmar (whose military went so far as to express
sympathy with its Indonesian counterparts), Vietnam and Malaysia. Second, there
was anxiety at what was seen as a white Australian government adopting a
73
colonial-type mentality in its dealings with Indonesia. To help bridge the
differences between Western and Asian perspectives, the Canadian foreign
minister, Lloyd Axworthy, organized a meeting on the crisis during the forum.
This was held on 9 September and was attended by 19 countries, including
foreign ministers from the United States, Canada, Japan and the EU, the latter
being represented by the UK which held the presidency. What emerged from
these discussions was a split between those Western states (including Australia)
that wanted to deliver a strong message to the effect that failure to live up to its
responsibilities would cost Jakarta dear, and those Asian governments that
wanted to give the Indonesian government more time to put its own house in
order. Nevertheless, the gathering shared a conviction that Indonesia’s actions
in East Timor placed it beyond the pale of civilized behaviour. This was under-
lined by Downer and Robin Cook, then UK foreign secretary. The former said
that the talks had added ‘global weight’ to the issue, while the latter said that the
meeting ‘sends a clear signal’ and a ‘strong message’ to Jakarta about the depth of
74
moral revulsion at events in East Timor.
70
For a full transcript of the speeches, see 4043rd meeting of the Security Council held on Saturday 11
Sept. 1999, S/PV.4043, www.un.org/peace/etimor/docs, visited on 7 July 2001.
Wensley, ‘East Timor and the United Nations’, p. 10.
Ibid., p. 9.
71
72
73
Anthony Smith, ‘East Timor: opting for independence’, New Zealand International Review, Nov./Dec.
1999, p. 74.
74
‘APEC ministers says Indonesia should solve Timor crisis or accept foreign help’, Kyodo news service,
Tokyo, in English, Summary of World Broadcasts, Part 3: Asia–Pacific, FE/3637 S1/1, 9 Sept. 1999.
822

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism
The Habibie government had, therefore, ‘consented’ to the deployment of
an international military force. There were attempts by the Indonesian military
75
and parliament to veto Australian participation in any UN force. While such a
position played out well among the ASEAN states, who were sensitive about
Australia intervening in an Asian state, it did not gather momentum in New
York. Australia was the only state that had both the political will and the
military capability rapidly to deploy to East Timor. Other alternatives, such as a
‘blue beret’ UN peacekeeping force led by Asian states, would take months to
put together, and it was clear from the intense media coverage of the
humanitarian crisis that action was needed immediately to end the destruction.
Downer formally wrote to the Secretary-General on 14 September with the
Australian offer to lead a multinational force (Howard had informally accepted
an invitation from Annan to lead the force in a telephone conversation on 6
September). The endorsement of this offer by the Council, coupled with the
statement by Habibie on 12 September accepting the assistance of an
international force, became the key elements in making possible the unanimous
adoption of Resolution 1264 on 15 September that authorized INTERFET.
Despite its strong reservations about Australian leadership, Malaysia, after
initially refusing to take part in the operation, contributed a token presence to
the 21-state force. The biggest Asian contributor was Thailand, which deployed
1,600 troops, and the backbone of the force was the 4,500 troops of the Austral-
ian Defence Force. The United States provided vital logistic support which
facilitated a speedy deployment of the ADF, but it ruled out sending infantry
76
forces to support the Australians. That the ASEAN states were prepared to
participate in such a force was a groundbreaking development for the region.
But they were careful to balance this military commitment with a recognition
that any such involvement had to be negotiated with the Indonesian govern-
ment. It is worth noting in this regard that Thailand’s foreign minister, Surin
Pitsuwan, flew to Jakarta after the APEC forum in his capacity as chairman of
the ASEAN Standing Committee to discuss the role of ASEAN governments in
77
the multinational force.
This sensitivity to Indonesia’s concerns and interests was reflected in the
drafting of Resolution 1264. The Council wanted to emphasize the coopera-
tion between Indonesia and the UN in establishing the multinational force.
Thus, the resolution reaffirmed respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity
of Indonesia, despite the fact that Australia was one of the few states to
75
The Indonesian military spokesperson Brigadier General Sudrajat stated that ‘The armed forces reject
Australia as part of any peacekeeping troops . . . the majority of the force [should] come from ASEAN.’
However, hours after this military statement, the Indonesian foreign minister reiterated the position that
Habibie reportedly expressed to Annan on 12 September, namely, that ‘We are putting no
conditionalities so it is all up to the United Nations to prepare the composition.’ See Stephen Fidler,
Michael Littlejohns, Gwen Robinson and Sander Thoenes, ‘Military rejects Australian troops: conflicting
signals as Indonesian Foreign Minister denies conditions placed on peacekeeping mission’, Financial
Times, 14 Sept. 1999; Shawcross, Deliver us from evil, p. 360.
76
David Usborne, ‘UN strategy—UN seeks peace force volunteers’, Independent, 13 Sept. 1999.
Stephen Fidler and Gwen Robinson, ‘Asean steps in over East Timor force’, Financial Times, 14 Sept. 1999.
77
823

Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne
recognize unconditionally Indonesia’s sovereignty over East Timor. Ambassador
Wensley, who was intimately involved in the drafting process, recalls that she
was careful to ensure that the resolution avoided ‘offering unnecessary offence
78
to the Indonesian Government whose cooperation remained vital’. There
were two key issues here. First, Indonesian military cooperation was essential if
the Australian-led force was to avoid being drawn into firefights with the TNI.
Second, respect for Indonesia’s sovereign prerogatives was crucial in facilitating
acceptance of the process by the Security Council. At the same time, there was
a strong determination on the part of Australia and some Council members,
notably the United States and the UK, that the force should have Chapter VII
authority to ‘take all necessary measures’ to fulfil its mandate of restoring ‘peace
and security in East Timor … [and to] facilitate humanitarian assistance opera-
79
tions’. Reconciling respect for Indonesia’s sovereignty with the moral imper-
ative for international action to end the violence in East Timor was a complex
political balancing act. Australia had a fundamental interest in the composition
of the resolution, but since it was not a member of the Council, it had to rely on
the UK government to steer the draft resolution through to a successful
80
outcome.
The vanguard of the international peacekeeping force arrived in East Timor
on 20 September. A few days earlier, the force commander, Major-General
Peter Cosgrove, had flown to Dili to discuss with Indonesian army commanders
the timetable for the withdrawal of Indonesian troops and their replacement by
those of INTERFET. Although Indonesia had consented to the deployment of
the international force, the operational environment was a fluid and uncertain
one. Canberra could not be ‘absolutely clear’, argues James Cotton, ‘that the
Indonesian military would comply with the will of the UN and cooperate with
81
the international force’. The TNI’s attachment to this part of the archipelago
runs very deep; it is estimated that 20,000 soldiers had lost their lives in the war
since 1975. The unpredictable character of the army’s response was heightened
by the fact that many of the soldiers were native East Timorese. The press was
replete with reports of the dangers that would face the ADF, and there was a
82
strong expectation of casualties. To reduce this risk, the ADF embarked on an
78
Wensley, ‘East Timor and the United Nations’, p. 11. Ambassador Hasmy reflected in April 2001 that he
was concerned during the drafting of the resolution that too little weight was being given to Indonesia’s
cooperation with the process. He claims that, as a result, elements in the draft resolution were watered
down. Interview with Ambassador Hasmy, New York, April 2001.
79
Resolution 1264 adopted by the Security Council at its 4045th meeting on 15 Sept. 1999, www.un.org/
peace/etimor/docs, visited on 9 July 2001.
Wensley, ‘East Timor and the United Nations’, p. 11.
Cotton, ‘Against the Grain’, p. 11.
Many threats were issued by the militiamen. Eurico Guterres, leader of the pro-Indonesian Aitarak, said
80
81
82
that the East Timorese ‘are thirsty for the blood of white people’. Opinion-formers in Jakarta agreed,
albeit in more polite language. Habibie’s adviser Fortuna Anwar noted that ‘The militias have made clear
their strong animosity toward the Australians; now the hostility will be multiplied 100 times.’ Prime
Minister Howard openly admitted the risk to his troops. As the mission was under way, he told the
Australian public: ‘There will be danger. There could be casualties. And the Australian public should
understand that.’ Excerpts quoted from Ron Moreau and Jeffrey Bartholet, ‘Marching into a trap?’,
Newsweek, 27 Sept. 1999, pp. 42–5 at pp. 42, 44.
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East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism
extensive logistical operation designed to bring to the island the requisite com-
bat capability to fulfil its mandate. In the event, the operational environment
turned out to be more benign than anticipated, owing to the cooperation of the
TNI: INTERFET faced little opposition and lost no troops in combat.
Conclusion: INTERFET and the new humanitarian interventionism
INTERFET marks an important departure from previous Western humani-
tarian interventions. The Howard government was prepared to put Australian
soldiers in harm’s way. Although the risks turned out be less than expected, this
could not be known with certainty by the decision-makers in Canberra. This
stands in stark contrast to the strong reluctance on the part of other Western
governments to incur such risks and costs in their interventions in Bosnia,
Somalia, Rwanda and Kosovo. A comparison of INTERFET with the US-led
intervention in Somalia is instructive. In both cases the action was mandated by
the UN Security Council, but the Bush administration intervened in Somalia
only because it believed (mistakenly as it turned out) that the risks of casualties
were near-zero. On the other hand, Canberra used force in the expectation that
this would lead to casualties, but, owing to the cooperation of the TNI, the
operation turned out to be almost cost-free in human terms.
Reflecting on the experience of Rwanda, where those Western states with
the power to end the slaughter had stood by and watched genocide take place,
Kofi Annan admitted that states were not prepared to incur the human costs of
83
intervention ‘where no perceived vital interests were at stake’. The case of
INTERFET is particularly significant in this respect because Australia’s ‘vital
interests’ were clearly not being served by its armed rescue of the East Timorese.
As noted in the opening section of this article, from 1975 right up to the
summer of 1999 all Australian governments viewed the East Timor problem
through a Jakarta first lens. It would be madness, so the consensus ran, to risk
national security by making an enemy of Indonesia over the rights of the islanders.
Intervention in East Timor threatened to unravel 25 years of cautious cohabi-
tation. Australian leaders have been unwilling to countenance the argument
that the INTERFET operation undermined their vital interests. Alexander
Downer believed that once the East Timor question had been resolved, ‘The
mutual interests that tie Australia and Indonesia together will again come to the
84
fore.’ This is a very naive assessment of the relationship. It would be more
accurate to say that after INTERFET, Indonesian–Australian relations were
85
‘close to free-fall’.
83
Kofi A. Annan, Preventing war and disaster: A growing global challenge, annual report on the work of the
organization (New York, UN, 1999), p. 12.
Downer, ‘East Timor—looking back on 1999’, p. 5.
The words of John McCarthy, Canberra’s ambassador to Indonesia, quoted in Leaver, ‘The meanings,
84
85
origins and implications of “the Howard Doctrine”’, p. 15.
825

Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne
In understanding how it was that the conservative government of John
86
Howard found itself championing the agenda of the pro-independence left,
the question of sovereignty looms large. Australia’s belief that it was in its core
security interest to recognize Indonesian rule over East Timor effectively
constrained it from vigorously pressing Indonesia on the security of the ballot.
At the same time, political elites in Australia viewed their own sovereign
identity in part according to the special relationship with Jakarta. Australia’s
resistance to US attempts to push Indonesia harder on security reflected both its
desire to maintain its role as the West’s interpreter of events in the region, and
its delusion that the bilateral relationship mattered sufficiently to avert the need
for a significant international peacekeeping force at any point during the
transition. In our ethical audit of Australia’s Timor policy, we criticized
Howard and Downer for not sharing their intelligence on the activities of the
TNI and the militias with the United States and at the UN. Yet we are not
persuaded by the critics’ arguments that alerting the international community to
the violence being orchestrated by the TNI would have made possible the
deployment of a preventive international peacekeeping force. Our reasoning
here is that it is very hard to imagine that the rest of the world cared enough to
get tough with Jakarta before the vote. It was the humanitarian catastrophe that
engulfed the island after the vote that galvanized the UN and the major Western
states into action. Moreover, even if significant leverage had been exerted by an
array of multilateral institutions prior to the ballot, there must be a question
mark over whether Indonesia would have capitulated.
The aftermath of the 30 August vote also poses a number of significant
questions. What, in the end, was the most significant factor in bringing Habibie
and Wiranto round to agreeing to the intervention by invitation? Realists and
Marxists will point, respectively, to the importance of material factors such as
military sanctions and the threat to cut off financial assistance. Those who tilt in
the direction of constructivism will emphasize the mobilization of shame against
Jakarta, and the significance of the relations that developed between the key
personalities involved. Our contention is that we do not have to choose
between these competing explanations. What is ignored by those who privilege
materialist accounts of Indonesia’s change of behaviour is that it became politi-
cally possible to employ coercion against its sovereignty only in a normative
context in which the Habibie government was viewed as having failed to
87
exercise sovereignty with responsibility. At the same time, the humanitarian
86
One of the leaders of the independence movement, Jose Ramos Horta, referred to Howard as the ‘only
Prime Minister in Australia in 23 years who has had the courage to respond to the appeals, to the cries,
of the people of East Timor’. He went on to say: ‘They will remember the likes of Paul Keating, who
year after year were an accomplice of the Suharto regime.’ Dennis Shanahan, ‘PM accuses Keating’, The
Australian, 6 Oct. 1999.
87
The idea of conceiving state sovereignty in terms of responsibility was first advanced by Francis Deng,
the special representative of the UN Secretary-General for internally displaced persons. Deng
encapsulated this approach in the phrase ‘sovereignty as responsibility’. See Francis M. Deng, Protecting
the dispossessed: a challenge for the international community (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1993) and Francis
M. Deng et al., Sovereignty as responsibility (Washington DC: Brookings, 1995).
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East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism
crisis tapped into the reservoir of public support for the East Timorese. This
combination of international and domestic pressure to ‘do something’ enabled
the Howard government to reposition itself by advocating an intervention
option that previously had been confined to the worst-case planning part of the
spectrum of policy responses.
What broad lessons emerge out of this latest example of the international
community deploying force in defence of human rights? For those who prefer
to see the glass half empty, the most disturbing aspect of this case is that it reveals
once again the UN’s chronic deficit in the area of conflict prevention. What
was needed in early May was a robust and effective anticipatory intervention
force to ensure the security of the ballot process. Despite the experience of
Angola and Rwanda, where there was insufficient combat capability to prevent
civil violence, the Secretariat and the Council did not provide the means
(security) to deliver the ends (self-determination). For those who prefer to see
the glass half full, this case represents a decisive break with previous humani-
tarian interventions. Until now there has been a consensus among state leaders
and diplomats that force will never be used for humanitarian goals where these
conflict with the national interest. Such a view was propagated during the
Timor crisis by realists who condemned the Howard government for allowing
‘its policy towards Indonesia and the region to become a hostage to its policy
88
towards East Timor’. What they failed to understand is that the national
interest is not a given that can be read off from fixed geopolitical coordinates.
Rather, the crisis in East Timor led the international community to challenge
the traditional interpretation of state sovereignty in ways that reconstituted the
identity and interests of the major players in the unfolding drama. Indonesia’s
exercise of sovereign rights became increasingly constrained by norms of
humanitarian responsibility. These same pressures operating at the domestic and
international level led Canberra to redefine its national interests in ways that
were consistent with the common good. In so doing, one of the traditional
coordinates of Australian foreign policy has been removed. After INTERFET,
Australia’s road to Dili no longer passes through Jakarta.
88
Richard Woolcott, ‘Hefty price to pay for meddling’, The Australian, 17 Sept. 1999. Greg Sheridan added
that the intervention had ‘enormous implications for our national security’: Sheridan, ‘This burden is
here to stay’, The Australian, 17 Sept. 1999.
827