The East Timor Humanitarian Crisis

This chapter analyses the East Timor humanitarian crisis of 1999. It shows how interest divergence between Indonesia, the United States, and Australia following the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, led to external powers applying pressure on Indonesia, to elicit regime change in East Timor. In a weakened state, Indonesia was coerced into accepting an international peacekeeping force in East Timor, despite asserting that such a force would constitute an unacceptable breach of its state sovereignty. Critically, ASEAN institutional cohesion alone was not sufficient to prevent Indonesian sovereignty violation at this time.