ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore issues of self-determination within the context of East Timor, first, exploring East Timor’s colonial and post-colonial history, and then turning to a discussion of self-determination within the context of East Timor. The chapter will conclude that East Timor, although oppressed for many decades by its colonizer, Portugal, and later by its neo-colonizer, Indonesia, only achieved independence in the 1990s with significant support from the great powers (the United States, in this instance). In the post-Cold War political scene, Indonesia was no longer needed as an ally against the communist evils of Vietnam, and thus East Timor garnered the great powers’ support to separate from Indonesia, which no longer enjoyed the great powers’ unconditional allegiance. The case of East Timor exemplifies perfectly the development of the great powers’ rule in the post-Cold War world.
