>- East Timor intervention respects international law.
Certainly the US felt more constrained by the formalities. But would-be progressives in the west should not under-estimate the extent to which Indonesians feel that the old colonial borders had no fundamental legitimacy, that the islands of the archipelago need to stick together, and that it is an internal matter of communal divisions between christians and muslims which cannot be allowed to spread. The militias may be brutal and ruthless but they are not mindless or without certain reasonable arguments. Fascism is not crazy. It is at times a rational political strategy. And in this scenario it has in part a progressive nationalist aspect versus imperialism and neo-liberalism, unpalatable though it may be to say that.
>- There seem to be no ulterior motives for intervention in East Timor.
That is most unlikely, even if many agree as I do, that the intervention is on balance progressive.
Australian dominance means broadly a neo-liberal agenda and hegemony for IMF pressure. There is a slight advantage in intervention being led by Australian rather than US ground troops. As Kosovo showed, even apparently loyal allies like Britain may not always do what the US commands, as when Jackson refused to block the runway of Pristina airport with tanks to prevent the arrival of Russian planes.
Chris Burford
London