The third paragraph was not I think said in the actual conference but looks as if it was part of an accompanying press briefing, which would be fit with a pattern of a mixture of public and more coded signals.
>>>>>>>>>>>
President Clinton on Thursday suspended immediately all U.S.
"programs of military cooperation" with Indonesia and warned Jakarta
that economic aid would also end unless the violence in East Timor was
stopped.
The president predicted "very dire" economic consequences for Indonesia because of the East Timor crisis, saying his willingness to support future assistance "will depend very strongly" on the outcome of that crisis.
The United States has veto power over billions of dollars in International Monetary Fund loans to Indonesia, and some U.S. lawmakers are calling for the funds, aimed at helping Indonesia emerge from a severe recession, to be cut unless Jakarta brings an end to the violence.
"It would be a pity if the Indonesian recovery were crashed by this," Clinton said. "But one way or the other it will be crashed by this if they don't fix it. ... Nobody is going to want to continue to invest there if they're allowing this sort of travesty to go on." <<<<<<<
The last sentence is of course not exactly accurate!
However, broadly this is clearly consistent with the aims and interests of imperialism. It needs smooth integration of world economic processes, it favours bourgeois democratic rights in the abstract rather than concretely, and it does not want a militant national bourgeoisie in Indonesia being as arkward as that in Malaysia. Meanwhile there is little point in complaining about the traces of arsenic in Anwar's urine while exemplary massacres are going on in East Timor.
Elsewhere in marxism space there has been a surprising overlap of views that the least bad intervention is economic cooercion, not strikingly different from the noises on the White House Lawn yesterday.
But these imperialist noises are progressive only by comparison with the actions of Indonesian national capital. Those advocating principled solipsism - the idea that we could never have any influence as individual even collectively - and to start to think this way, like all good intentions, is the road to ideological hell - have a problem now answering this latest turn from Washington.
It can only be answered by a more comprehensive more democratic strategic perspective for such national conflicts at the end of the 20th century, a perspective that does not proceed from the interests of capital, although it takes those into account, but proceeds from the interests of working people.
Any threat therefore of coercion by the IMF or World Bank must be denounced as anti-democratic, not because some stick is inappropriate in a situation in which bodies of armed men are using terror openly, but because there is no carrot that is genuinely in the interests of working people. And to discuss this is to discuss a struggle to take on global capital, because it is morally bankrupt and cannot provide a comprehensive answer to the needs of ordinary people.
To manage the contradictions among the people in the Indonesian archipelago more democratically and less antagonistically, any coercion about the withdrawal of international credit, must be in the context of a positive development plan that stabilises peoples lives, and allows them to resume links and normal economic as well as social intercourse. It must not be just a threat to "crash" the Indonesian economy.
As part of a new democratic solution it must be acceptable to the national bourgeoisie and give them openings for reasonable enterprise and profit. This is necessary in order to isolate anti-democratic forces, and neutralise the reactionary potential of the army, which will be related by countless family ties to the national bourgeoisie. Remember far more than the democratic rights of the East Timorese are at stake. There are the democratic rights of the people of Indonesia as a whole who would suffer much more under a renewed reactionary military dictatorship. It is important that there is no block on change arising from the recent Indonesian elections. That means a new democratic alliance must be fostered between working people and the national bourgeoisie.
One of the ironies of East Timor is that in materialist terms the autonomy option may have been the better one than full independence in the recent referendum. In late twentieth century economic conditions there is no such thing as economic independence, only self government. It is entirely understandable that a large section of Indonesian people understand the importance of the region sticking together. The more democratic elements will understand that this will be aided not impaired by a more democratic constitution giving the right of self government to many areas but also protecting the democratic rights of individuals. The technical differences between islands like Timor and other islands that might be self-governing need to be subsumed in a wider democratic economic development plan.
That is extremely hard for imperialist finance capital to address. They can address issues of global free trade for multinationals to promote the maximum profits for the sale of Coca Cola and smartly packaged cigarettes for which the market in the West is restricted on health grounds.
There needs to be a democratic economic carrot by way of a development plan for the whole of the south east Asian archipelago. Not given by condescending saviours. Demanded as the right of the intelligent people of the region. It could start off by reimbursing Indonesia for the economic destruction of 1998 as a result of the negligent management of the world economy by finance capital. That could provide a sum of money for materialist talks about stabilising the political and economic situation for the lives of ordinary people in Timor and surrounding islands. That would provide the best framework for the transition to democracy in Indonesia as a whole.
Chris Burford
London
[PS I await Carrol's scornful statement that for the thirteenth time he has long ago decided never to read any posts by me, but yet again he has, and unfortunately it is morally flawed, because on principle no one should conceive of how the world could be better and how we could campaign for a better world. But if all this gives him too sore a head perhaps it is just time for him to get ready for his winter hibernation.]