Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

Another thing that’s never reported, though it’s completely public and was perfectly well known at the time, is that one of the main reasons why the Western powers supported the invasion was that there’s a huge offshore oil field in Timor’s territorial waters, and before 1975 the Australians and the Western oil companies had been trying unsuccessfully to make a deal with Portugal to exploit it. Well, they hadn’t had any luck with Portugal, and they figured an independent East Timor would be even harder to deal with—but they knew that Indonesia would be easy: that’s one of our boys, we’ve been running it ever since the huge massacre there in 1965 that the West applauded, when they wiped out the Communist Party and killed maybe 600,000 people.44 So for instance, leaked diplomatic records in Australia show that right around the time of the invasion, top Australian officials said that they would do better with an Indonesian takeover, and that Indonesia should be supported.45 Again, I have yet to see a word about any of this in the U.S. media.