The Foreign Service Journal, January 2006

76 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 6 The Price of Realpolitik A Not-So-Distant Horror: Mass Violence in East Timor Joseph Nevins, Cornell University Press, 2005, $18.95, paperback, 273 pages. R EVIEWED BY E DMUND M C W ILLIAMS Rarely do contemporary histories address foreign policy from the per- spective of human rights and justice. Even rarer is a book like Joseph Nevins’ A Not-So-Distant Horror: Mass Violence in East Timor , which compellingly makes the case that the failure to give such concerns adequate weight in Washington’s policy formu- lation has led to ruinous results. The quarter-century-long tragedy that befell the people of East Timor fol- lowing the Indonesian invasion and occupation of that small country in 1975, and the barbarous violence they endured at the hands of the Indonesian military and its militias following their vote for freedom in 1999, have been well documented. Where Nevins’ riveting and often per- sonal narrative of that history breaks new ground is in its meticulous, ana- lytical review of the miscalculations of the major powers that facilitated the Indonesian military’s rape of East Timor from 1975 to 1999 and its near- strangling of that new nation at the moment of its birth. Most revealing and most damning is Nevins’ exposure of the deliberate policy choices made by officials in Washington, Tokyo, Canberra and London that failed even as realpolitik. Those decisions, which entailed ignoring Indonesian military brutality and sacrificing Timorese fundamental rights and well-being, were intended to promote economic and geopolitical ties with Jakarta. In fact, the policies of Washington and its allies exacerbat- ed and made inevitable an ultimate confrontation with Jakarta that deeply scarred those key relationships. U.S. provision of air-to-ground air- craft (OV-10 Broncos) and small arms and ammunition from 1976 to 1978 replenished the Indonesian military’s armory, enabling it to consummate its post-invasion assault on the Timorese resistance and civilian population. (Around the same time, it also used those planes against villages in West Papua, which Indonesia had seized in 1969.) Some have sought to rationalize U.S. support for the brutal, rightist Soeharto military regime by placing that policy in the context of the Cold War. However, continued U.S. back- ing for that regime — in particular, continuing support for Jakarta’s occu- pation of East Timor — after the col- lapse of the Soviet Union reveals U.S. policy as oblivious and bankrupt. Con- sider former Ambassador J. Staple- ton Roy’s explanation, cited in Nevins’ book, for the timid U.S. response to the post-electoral bloodshed: “Indon- esia matters and East Timor doesn’t.” Nevins documents with equal pre- cision the refusal of the U.S. and other international powers to insist on Indonesian accountability for the crimes against humanity that victim- ized not only the people of East Timor but also the international com- munity and its U.N. mission in East Timor. What remains unexplained in this otherwise excellent account is the failure of the U.S. and other interna- tional powers to demand that the Indonesian military behave responsi- bly in the period leading up to the Aug. 30, 1999, vote. Insisting that the Indonesian government provide secu- rity in East Timor, as it had pledged to do in its May 5, 1999, agreement with the United Nations, was an obvious and low-cost option. Our failure to demand the disarm- ing and disbanding of Indonesian mili- tias not only set in motion the slaugh- ter, but also assured disruption of the very bilateral relationship upon which U.S. policy-makers like Ambassador Roy put such priority. Further, it rein- forced the near-total impunity that the Indonesian military continues to enjoy there (as shown by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent announce- ment of the restoration of Jakarta’s eli- gibility for bilateral military aid), notwithstanding its notorious history of human rights abuses, anti-democra- tic conniving and continuing corrup- tion. Once again, U.S. policy-makers, in their reluctance to confront the Indonesian government, or at least its military, seriously undermine their stated desire to encourage the emer- gence of a stable and democratic Indonesia. This book should be read by all B OOKS