‘Illegally and Beautifully’: The United States, the Indonesian Invasion of East Timor and the International Community, 1974–76

This article examines the international community’s response to Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor in light of recently declassified documents from the US, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It argues that anti-Communist and geopolitical concerns at the end of the Vietnam War were not the only, and perhaps not even the most important explanations of Western support for Indonesia’s takeover of East Timor. Rather, this article suggests that beliefs that East Timor was too small and too primitive to merit self-governance reinforced the perceived imperative of maintaining friendly relations with the Suharto regime, whose growing importance in the regional political economy overshadowed its defiance of international law. On 20 May 2002, former President William J. Clinton stood in front of the newly opened US embassy in East Timor and congratulated the world’s newest country on its independence after 24 years of Indonesian occupation and three years of United Nations Administration. ‘I am very honored to be here because we were so involved in the struggle of the people of East Timor, and so supportive of this day’, Clinton offered without a trace of irony.1 Former President Clinton’s statement passed almost without comment in the Western press, which generally praised Australia, the United States and their allies for supporting East Timor’s independence in 2002, while ignoring their role in enabling Indonesia’s invasion and occupation of the former Portuguese territory 27 years earlier.