[Translated from the analysis of GegenStandpunkt Publishers on Radio Lora München from September 13, 1999]

News from the “New World Order”:

A battle for Indonesia with East Timor

Moral outrage as a means of politics and as a soundtrack to it requires that the participating actors and claqueurs get worked up and then calm down again according to requirements announced from above. In the first half of the year, for example, citizens were able to get terribly involved in the trampled human rights of Kosovo Albanians, which gave the NATO arms campaign the ethical status of a holy war. But that’s over now, and the evidence that the “ethnic cleansing” of Kosovo is continuing unabated under the protectorate of NATO soldiers against Serbs and Roma should by no means lead to the same kind of public outrage that occurred when the reason for war against Milosevic was staged.

Instead, informed democrats can now turn their attention to atrocities being committed by pro-Indonesian militias in East Timor, which are clearly working in cooperation with the army and police to boycott a decision by the family of nations to carve a new state out of Indonesia. As always, when it comes to statements by freedom-loving Western politicians on the subject of “human rights violations in the Third World,” it is clear that a high degree of hypocrisy is second nature and one of the most important qualifications for this profession. Those who are now complaining about the will of the people in Southeast Asia being ignored and are able to list any number of atrocities have to very carefully avoid the Western position of yesterday. When the same army that now evidently does not want to withdraw from the “27th province” of Indonesia invaded there in 1975 and secured its annexation with an estimated 100,000 corpses, it was a way of securing the Free World’s front against “communism in Asia.” The USA had previously massively rearmed and upgraded the very same force that had brought the West’s long-time friend Suharto to power in a coup and not only wiped out the Communist Party of Indonesia, but also parts of its popular base. At the time, this was chalked up to the unavoidable costs of freedom. This also included taking over the former Portuguese colony, especially since the FRETILIN liberation movement operating there was considered “Marxist-oriented” and had already gone up against NATO member Portugal, which by the nature of things meant that its leader, Xanana Gusmao, could not avoid a certain anti-Western tone, which has since then been drastically refined.

UN resolutions against Indonesia were therefore blocked, watered down, or rendered ineffective by the Western members of the Security Council, and regular reports on the genocidal program of the Indonesian occupying forces in the pacification of a stubborn new state for the island hardly attracted any attention apart from subscribers to the Amnesty International Annual Report. This went on for over 20 years for the same simple reason: the Western powers were interested in pro-Western stability in the region, and Suharto ensured this with exactly the same methods that his successor, Habibie, is now being criticized for.

It’s his bad luck that the world situation has changed quite fundamentally, and with it the basis of any state power in a country like Indonesia: with the end of the united front of democratic imperialism against the Eastern communist world enemy, many old friends and protégés of the West have lost importance and thus political esteem. On his forced departure, Suharto received consistently bad press, especially from his most consistent whitewashers in the editorial offices of democratic opinion pluralism. After all, he made a major mistake: he was unable to hold on to power because the severe economic crisis sweeping across the whole of South Asia had driven an unprecedented escalation of mass discontent into the streets, which the army was not willing to simply mow down – at least not for the “dictator” Suharto.

This is what shook up the entire cohesion of the Indonesian state! And a society that is ultimately only held together by force is in turmoil. The clever advice given to Indonesia was: become a democracy! For an already obviously weakened and disintegrating state, this is supposed to be the way out of the crisis; the recipe for restoring stability. In fact, Indonesia’s political class has embraced it. Elections have been conducted in a fairly orderly fashion; Habibie cut off any potential disputes about electoral fraud by officially recognizing the opposition’s victory. And he also cleared the way for an earlier UN resolution calling for a referendum to decide the status of East Timor. However, stability did not and will not come about as a result.

After all, this “democracy” is not, as in our part of the world, the civilized form of rule of a secure system of government where the state can dependably call on responsible voters to grant a blank check to power. In Indonesia, democracy has resulted from the weakening of state authority and is driving precisely this forward. In particular, the military has been stripped of its role as a stabilizing factor par excellence. The generals are ultimately resented by the West as lackeys of the failed Suharto regime. And why should the people of Indonesia react any more intelligently than their fellow human beings in Europe and elsewhere? They respond to the unpleasantness of their social situation with ethnically and/or religiously organized insurgencies. In Indonesia, this threatens the very cohesion of this multi-ethnic state. A patriotic military must find this particularly subversive in the case of East Timor, where separatism is being supervised by foreign authorities. The President’s plan to simply get rid of the stubborn part of the island and thus present his regime to the leading powers of democratic imperialism as democratically reformed obviously does not suit the decisive power holders in this state. The military leaders know instinctively that a solid state cohesion is ultimately based on force and deterrence; in times of crisis, therefore, precisely not on democratic concessions.

However, the depth of Indonesia’s crisis of state is shown by the fact that its right to use force to secure its sovereignty is being denied from outside, and that democratic concessions are causing insubordination and chaos. The President must now allow foreign armed forces to intervene. Minor powers such as Australia, which have previously been less prominent in enforcing international human rights by means of war, are allowed to get involved. The world’s major powers are holding back: the matter is with the UN. It is still undecided whether the real powers in the UN will take up the problem and thus make it their own.

The freedom-based imperialist world order is indulging in a highly sovereign opportunism: a state is collapsing, and all those in the know are realizing that everything that was once reliable is no longer of any use. The product of the collapse is nevertheless confronted with the harsh demand for stability. As a title for intervention, the Powers That Be have discovered East Timor, of all places, which even after 25 years of butchery did not compel them to recall their ambassadors from Jakarta. Now it is clear that the new regime is also an unreliable clique that must not be allowed to get away with the means and measures of law and order that were approved and supported under Suharto.

And the East Timorese? They show once again that it is not luck, but the greatest misfortune for a people to be turned into an object of interest to world politics. This is not yet an argument in its favor, but it is certainly a strong objection to the ruling interests of the world.