Realpolitik

East Timor, "the world's most recent nation," lies 1000 miles east of Jakarta, the Indonesian capitol.

In a February visit to Jakarta, Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger told the press that he wanted Indonesia to be "strong, unified, and democratic." Coming from anyone else, that wish might be understandable. Coming from Kissinger, it seems simply craven and almost laughable. It was Kissinger who, in 1975 as U.S. secretary of state, gave winking approval to Indonesian Suharto when the ruthless dictator mentioned he planned to invade East Timor, the tiny Portuguese colony that sits 1,000 miles east of Jakarta. Less than a day after Kissinger and President Gerald Ford left Jakarta, Suharto's troops did just that. Over the ensuing years, several hundred thousand East Timorese died of malnutrition, murder, or disease.

Today, Kissinger works as a hired gun for Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, a company that is well-known to most Austinites, thanks to its close ties to the Barton Creek PUD and UT Chancellor William Cunningham. During his February visit to Indonesia, Kissinger, who is paid $250,000 a year by Freeport, met with new Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid to plead the company's case. Although Wahid assured Kissinger that Indonesia would not nationalize Freeport's massive Grasberg gold mine in Irian Jaya, it has become clear in recent months that Indonesia is unlikely to remain strong or unified or democratic.

Wahid's government is weak, and in continual danger of being overthrown by the military. The country's unity -- over disparate cultures on far-flung islands and long maintained by Suharto's cronies in the military -- is disintegrating. Just last week, Wahid's government signed a truce with rebels in Aceh, the rebellious region in northwestern Sumatra. Ethnic violence in Ambon has turned the island into a war zone that is unlikely to be resolved any time soon. Dozens of pro-independence activists on the island of Biak have been brutalized and murdered by the Indonesian military over the past few years, yet Biak residents continue to demand independence.

Meanwhile, in Irian Jaya, the site of Kissinger's particular gold mine, pro-independence forces are gaining strength. Over the past few months, Tom Beanal, a tribal leader who unsuccessfully sued Freeport in U.S. federal court for human rights and environmental problems at the Grasberg mine, has emerged as one of the most visible leaders of the independence movement. That movement may be one of the biggest threats to Freeport's operation, a fact that Kissinger undoubtedly recognizes. As for democracy -- well, Kissinger has never been very sharp on that point, either. Suharto's long, ruthless reign was made possible in no small part by massive arms shipments from the U.S.

Much of Indonesia's future rests on its ability to wrest control of its wealth from the crony capitalists who either took bribes from, or gave bribes to, Suharto. The country's democratic potential also depends on its ability to hold responsible the murderous thugs who directed Suharto's reign of terror. The thugs include General Wiranto -- a Suharto ally who is believed responsible for instigating and arming the militias that destroyed East Timor in the weeks after last year's pro-independence referendum -- and Suharto's son-in-law, Lt. General Prabowo, the former head of Indonesia's special forces known as Kopassus. Members of Kopassus have been implicated in numerous human rights violations in and around Freeport's mine, and President Wahid himself has named Prabowo as a suspect in the killings of up to 100 people in Irian Jaya. Prabowo has also been seen as one of Freeport's allies in Indonesia.

The instability in Indonesia, and Kissinger's entanglements there, bring into sharper focus the recent controversy over Kissinger's planned, but canceled, speech at UT. Rich Oppel, the editor of the local daily, has repeatedly assailed the activists at UT who threatened to disrupt Kissinger's speech when he came to the school. Then, in last Sunday's paper, Oppel praised Kissinger's recent speech in Boston and gave great weight to Kissinger's policy of realpolitik, which advocates practical politics rather than goals based on issues like human rights or the environment. Kissinger's record clearly shows his practicality. The devastation of East Timor is evidence of that. (The bombing of Cambodia is another.) That's not to say that Oppel is wrong about Kissinger. It would have been great to have him come to Austin. And after he delivered his pronouncements on democracy and human rights, it would have been fun to watch him squirm as he answered a few impolite questions about East Timor. Or to hear his response when asked: What kind of soap do you use to wash all that blood off your hands?