‘Illegally and Beautifully’: The United States, the Indonesian Invasion of East Timor and the International Community, 1974–76

This article examines the international community's response to Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor in light of recently declassified documents from the US, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It argues that anti-Communist and geopolitical concerns at the end of the Vietnam War were not the only, and perhaps not even the most important explanations of Western support for Indonesia's takeover of East Timor. Rather, this article suggests that beliefs that East Timor was too small and too primitive to merit self-governance reinforced the perceived imperative of maintaining friendly relations with the Suharto regime, whose growing importance in the regional political economy overshadowed its defiance of international law.