DBWI: The 1999 Australian-Indonesian doesn't happen.

Indonesia's foolish actions in Timor escalated into a full war between them, the Timorese (and later Papuan) rebels that eventually ended up involving Australia.

Is there any way this could've been avoided?
 
Indonesia's foolish actions in Timor escalated into a full war between them, the Timorese (and later Papuan) rebels that eventually ended up involving Australia.

Is there any way this could've been avoided?
I mean sure it was foolish in retrospect given the loss of life on all sides and the leaked Morgan cables showing the Australians would have accepted Indonesian control of Timor with some preconditions.

But the Indonesians held their own and got a good settlement out of it all. Maybe earlier negotiations could have prevented the spiral we saw, but it’d be tough.
 
Talking about the limited SAS/CDT engagement of Australia as aiding Indonesia is ridiculous. Kopassus train in Perth all the time and those Australians in Timor were on exchange to unit 81.
 
Prevent the war also prevents Australia from being hit during 911, Bin Ladin used the war as a pretext to hit Sydney and we all know how much that changed ozzy culture.
 
Prevent the breakdown of the Soviet Union and breakup of the Balkans and you might have a shot of getting through the 99 crisis without a shooting war. However by then all Australians knew that 75 was wrong, Whitlam was making 2 hour speeches nobody believed justifying his actions, and were more than happy to "F111" the fuck out of Indonesia to set things right and salve a guilty national conscience.

Fortunately the ADF was able to disjoint the TNI like a well-cooked crayfish and take East Timor with little wider bloodshed.
 
Maybe no war would have prevented the re-escalation of indepentist movements in aceh, the moluccas and west papua , after losing the war the indonesian really f*cked up in Aceh and made up for it by savagely repressing the region, killing dozens of thousands in the process...
 
Ironically, if Indonesia had tried to annex East Timor earlier, during the Cold War when everyone was trying to cozy up to the Indonesia regime, the rest of the world would probably have just accepted it. Trying to do this just after the world mobilizes to defend national sovereignty in the first Gulf War was just really bad timing.

This is easy to prevent. Change domestic politics in either Portugal, Indonesia, or Australia, you only need to do this to one country, and Portugal keeps its colonial empire longer, you don't have an unstable Indonesian regime trying foreign adventures to rally domestic support, or get a Liberal government of Australia at the time that doesn't particularly care about human rights, and no crisis and you only have to do this with one of these countries.
 
Indonesia's foolish actions in Timor escalated into a full war between them, the Timorese (and later Papuan) rebels that eventually ended up involving Australia.

Is there any way this could've been avoided?

Yeah have Australia being a bit more forceful politically earlier (and this is not leveled at Australia alone - all of the Regional powers equally showed a great deal of disinterest at the time) and this would very likely have given the regime in Indonesia pause

As it was they believed that they could 'Do a Goa' and take all of Timor before the international community could bat an eyelid and then it be accepted as a fait accompli with no one having the stomach to do anything about it

What actually happened was that Australia 'Did a Falklands' and surprised the Indoniaisans with their robust response. Had the Indonesians fully understood Australian resolve earlier then I think that there would be zero chance that this resolve would be tested.

Very easy for me to say this almost 20 years uptime with all the facts before me but this was another sad example of history repeating itself.
 
Let's be honest for a sec. Australia intervened only because they were pissed about the annexion of Papua by Indonesia and they couldn't react at this moment. The Australian Defence Party was elected on the promise that the same thing wouldn't happen with Timor, New Zealand or Philippines. That was their choice to chose this defender of christians policy.

The thing that actually surprises me is that Willhelmina III of Oranje herself condamned the invasion of Timor, she risked the life of the 4 millions of Insulinders and her own life, that's hardcore.


Prevent the war also prevents Australia from being hit during 911, Bin Ladin used the war as a pretext to hit Sydney and we all know how much that changed ozzy culture.

The Opera attack with the hijacked cruise ship is definitely the worst thing that ever happened to them, but in the same time, it triggered an enormous change : it profoundly changed the mentality of the whole country for the better. I'm not saying it's excusing Sidney's attack at all ... but Ozzies found out what was an actual war on their ground, and indigenous people reminding them that horrible events like this happened to Australian Natives during the colonization. Most people know that the Sidney and Ground Zero memorials were inaugurated the same day, but apart from Ozzies, many people forget that the Mausoleum of Truganini was inaugurated a few fays after.
 

Vuu

Banned
You all seem to forget that the mess of that war caused the current situation - 2 Timors and 4 Papuas. Not that the alternative would be better, the counties are actually governable this time around
 
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