The key was that Indonesia found it necessary to seek approval, before it invaded. Therefore to stop the invasion all that had to happen was for one of the key players, and we were a key player, to say no, and then taken some kind of action to demonstrate that when we say no, we mean no.
For instance, we could have gotten the East Timorese Government to invite Australia to conduct a joint live fire exercise on its soil and for that purpose we could have, within a few days flown in a rounded out 1RAR with rounded out 107 Field Battery, and moved a few Mirages’ and F111’s Darwin.
As for acting alone, so what you are saying, if you see a wrong is being, or about to be committed, it’s OK to turn a blind eye as long as everyone else does the same. Not me. In any event, the Indonesian Defence Force, though numerically superior, was then, and remains now, one of the most rag tag poorly equipped and even more poorly trained armies in the world, and they know it. That is, they were not then, and are not now, up to a stand up fight with anyone let alone us.
Therefore if we had said no and shown that we meant it, then the likelihood is they would not have invaded; and even if they did, and we had to withdraw, we could have continued the fight in the UN on East Timor’s behalf.
To me that is a far better outcome than simply standing back and watching the murder for a fifth of a countries population.
