East Timor vs Somalia

Enrique Diaz-Alvarez enrique at anise.ee.cornell.edu
Wed Sep 29 07:27:19 PDT 1999


Chris Burford wrote:


> At 21:27 28/09/99 -0400, Enrique wrote:
>
> >- 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.
>

The East Timorese have voted 4-1 in favor of independence. That's all the legitimacy they should need.

What are those reasonable arguments?


> 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.

How do you think intervention in ET favors the neoliberal agenda? Any public enterprises about to be privatized? Worker protections to be dismantled?

Enrique



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