Stephen R. Shalom

East Timor faces the future

Abstract The long struggle for East Timorese independence, the 500-year funu, has been won. The last battle is not yet over, and the painful residues of colonialism and war will scar East Timorese society and culture for many years to come, but for the people of East Timor, the taste of freedom is in the air. By way of conclusion, it may be worthwhile to survey the most important obstacles likely to face East Timor in its trajectory from Indonesian colony to United Nations temporary protectorate to full independence, and to consider some of the choices for the transition era.

Just War Theory: Restraint or Enabler of War?

There are three different general approaches to the moral assessment of war. One view, the realist school, holds that war is not a moral question at all: “all is fair in...war,” as the saying goes. A second view, pacifism, rejects war on moral grounds. And a third view, just war theory, argues that wars may be just or unjust depending on whether they meet certain criteria. Each of these approaches comes in many different variations. Among pacifists, there are those who oppose all violence; those who oppose all killing; those who oppose all killing in war, but not in individual self-defense; those who oppose all wars waged by existing states, but do not oppose revolutionary violence. There are absolute pacifists and contingent pacifists; the latter oppose war not unconditionally, but because war as it has actually been fought has not been, and seemingly cannot be, waged in a morally acceptable way. Among just war theorists, too, there are many views. Some use just war criteria as nothing more than a rhetorical device to permit wars they want to pursue for reasons entirely unrelated to morality. At the other extreme are just war pacifists: those who believe that a war could in principle be just, but that any war under modern conditions would necessarily violate one or more just war criteria and thus would be unjust. In between are a range of views, including the position that holds that any war by an imperialist state is unjust. Obviously, there is overlap between some of the pacifist and just war views, and their judgments of many specific wars will be the same. Note, though, that while advocates of both positions will have no trouble declaring the U.S. war in Vietnam to have been unjust, they may well differ in their assessment of whether armed Vietnamese resistance to the U.S. invasion was justified. The peace movement, broadly defined, includes proponents of variants of both just war theory and pacifism. The debate between these different views is an extremely fruitful one that can benefit both sides. Philosopher Laurie Calhoun is a pacifist who accepts the permissibility of personal self-defense, but rejects war. In this engaging and powerful book, drawing on classical and contemporary authors, films, and numerous examples (and with a useful glossary of philosophical terms), Calhoun makes a Critical Asian Studies

The East Timor Question: The Struggle for Independence from Indonesia@@@Bitter Flowers, Sweet Flowers: East Timor, Indonesia, and the World Community@@@Self-Determination in East Timor: The United Nations, the Ballot, and International Intervention

Originally colonized by the Portuguese, East Timor was brutally invaded and occupied by Indonesian military forces in 1975. According to the UN, this resulted in the death of about a third of the population through massacres, starvation and disease. Subsequent events in Indonesia, however, have given rise to expectations of a fundamental change in its position on East Timor. Considering the potential for change against a backdrop of growing popular and political support for the Timorese cause, this book addresses its emergence as an issue of global importance. The authors set out to show how local, grassroots, individual, organizational and campaign initiatives have contributed to this state of affairs, in the context of an increased international-relations emphasis on ethics, international morality and human rights.

East Timor, Indonesia, and the world community

Abstract Why has the Bulletin chosen to publish a special issue on East Timor? There are, in fact, many good reasons for doing so.