The Transformation Of Australian Policy Toward East Timor After The Cold War: Causes And Consequence

With the resolving of Cambodian issue, East Timor issue has become the major security problem in South East Asia. Since invasion of Indonesia, East Timor has been the one of hot issue in this region. The struggle of independence for East Timor is a special case comparing with other countries' independence process for following reasons: Firstly, the independence of East Timor is one of the most difficult case in the world for it has last for 28 years form 1974 to 2002, Secondly the cost for gain independence is really high as more than one fourth of East Timorese died in this process, Thirdly the independence of East Timor gained its momentum after the end of the Cold War which is rare in the world and big power like Australia has played important role in the success of East Timor independence. This paper aims at analysis of independence of East Timor and finding out the roles of Australia in this process.The paper intends to generalize the process of East Timor independence and to analysis the roles of Australia played in the success of East Timor. This paper is divided in to following parts. Part one Introduction: this part does a literature review on East Timor issue, to put forward variables and hypothesizes of this paper and the ways to conduct research. Part two gives us a brief history of East Timor issue. Part three introduces the Australian policy toward East Timor and its transformation, especially the policy of Labor Government and Howard Administration. Part four, a key part in this paper, is to find out the reasons for the change of Australian policy toward East Timor. Part five summarizes the roles of Australia in the process of East Timor independence. The last part is lessons we learnt from the East Timor case: the logic of foreign policy for the middle power and the ways for getting independence for small countries after the end of the Cold War. The key parts in this paper are part four and part five. This paper points out Austrian are the microscope of East Timor issue, one of engines of East Timor independence, key supporter of UN agencies in East Timor and one of builders in East Timor rebuilding process.