East Timor/United Nations

[Keaney Michael <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Yoshie writes:

Michael Keaney says:

>Yoshie, having gone upmarket with the FT and the Oil and Gas Journal:

Upmarket?  You're such a snob, Michael!  :->

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MK: It's important to maintain standards.

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>The "integrity" of Indonesia was its preferred option,
>rather than risk the fragmentation of a multi-ethnic state and thereby all
>its investments there, as well as lucrative arms contracts.

The USA initially thought the same thing with regard to Yugoslavia.
However, times change, and quick.  Indonesia is becoming ungovernable
by either the local despot (like Suharto) or the local democrat (like
Wahid), due to the continuing fallouts of the Asian financial crisis
that have added to decentralizing dynamics of ethnicized conflicts
(provinces against the central government).

 <snip>

How do you restore a good investment climate here?  Think like
Machiavelli's Prince.  Support the Indonesian government & crush
separatist rebels?  If so, who is to do the job?  Wahid appears
incompetent, & businessmen complain of corruptions of the government.
Which successor to pick?  Any likely candidate?  What will be the
rebels' response to strong-arm tactics?  What's an alternative?  Make
deals with the rebels, fragmenting Indonesia & managing its pieces?
Unilaterally?  Multilaterally?  Hedge your bets?  It's not a matter
of principle.  It's a matter of expediency: what works?

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MK: True, but it sometimes takes time for "big capital" to catch up with
events. They had a large vested interest in the ancien regime, having put it
into place originally via the mass slaughter of communists, suspected fellow
travellers and anyone else who got in the way. Suharto was utterly reliable
until the East Asian crisis, brought on by the Wall Street-Treasury
complex's wresting of control from the military-industrial complex, thereby
rendering former Cold War allies "crony capitalists" and requiring a good
dose of deregulation, liberalisation and subjection to the sort of plunder
by international capital that they themselves had inflicted upon their own
populations. Habibie was originally intended as Suharto Mk II, but as he and
his backers found out to their cost, events were moving fast beyond their
control. Had they not, then the "international community" would quite
happily have allowed the continued extermination of the East Timorese, as it
had for the preceding 24 years. And the UN's intervention can be explained
not as a result of US panic over its investments, but Australian concern to
protect its Timor Gap Treaty, together with public outcry over the
slaughter. But now that the UN has effectively stabilised the situation, of
course US capital can start to cherry pick, especially since it already
dominates Australia, which can be used as a proxy. But that is after the
fact. We must remember that there are other nations within the UN that see
it as one of the few available vehicles for the furtherance of what they
perceive to be their own interests (independent of the US, however illusory
that might be in practice). One of these nations is Portugal, which, as the
former colonial power, retains an interest in East Timor and has used the UN
and the International Court of Justice to repeatedly oppose Australian de
facto recognition of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. It's thanks to
even the small and essentially negligible actions of countries like Portugal
that Helms et al cannot countenance a fully functional UN unless it
absolutely adheres to a US line. The IMF is so much "better" at these
things. So is NATO.

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Empire may be good for the East Timorese elite.  This is ET Foreign
Minister Jose Ramos-Horta speaking like Hardt & Negri:

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MK: I daresay that most anything would look better to Ramos Horta et al.
than the sort of integration practised by Suharto, Wiranto and their gang. I
don't think we need worry too much about what Ramos Horta has to say on
this. As Doug reminded us, "globalisation" means very little, or whatever
you want it to mean, so how are we to know exactly how Ramos-Horta
understands the term? Secondly, what of the Cold War and its end? Didn't
that have something to do with the unravelling of the old order? Then there
is the aforementioned IMF and the Summers plan for world domination. And
then there are the contradictions internal to the Indonesian political
economy itself, which could not have continued as it had, if only because of
the impending demise of Suharto himself and the consequent fight for
succession and potential for reconfiguration of political alliances, etc.

I'll try to get back to your earlier post re Empire, but at this point I'll
say that Hardt and Negri are not the only ones to be theorising the US's
global reach. I've mentioned the work of Martin Shaw in the "Wilson Plot"
review I'm struggling to finish (largely because punters like you keep
interrupting me with good posts). His "Theory of the Global State" I am
currently reading, but I'm nowhere near finished it and I haven't thought
through its implications sufficiently to say yay or nay to it. I will say,
however, that it appears to be a lot more substantial than the idealistic
rollercoaster ride of Hardt-Negri, given its attention to actual historical
events and developments. Speaking of which, my point regarding the
"demotion" of the UN and its supplanting by NATO concerns a developmental
trend, not a discrete policy change, although that may have already taken
place (not that we, the "electorate", would ever be told until long
afterwards) or may yet take place. Regardless, there is a clear pattern of
NATO's stepping into the breach formerly filled by the UN, and there are
"good" reasons for that, as I've explained elsewhere. NATO itself, as a
quasi-autonomous organisation desperately trying, like MI5 and MI6, to seek
a post-Cold War role for itself, has a strongly vested interest in
discovering new enemies, potential flare-ups, dirty jobs for it to do.
Robertson and the organisational apparatus supporting him, including the
mindsets of the military officers leading the constituent forces comprising
NATO, have every reason ever identified by Buchanan, Tullock, et al. to
carve out an ever-larger role for themselves in the future. And it won't
escape the notice of Helms and his ilk that NATO is a lot more obedient than
the UN. That is not to say there are not tensions and contradictions within
NATO. But, compared to the UN, it's a lot cleaner.

Michael K.