Lessons from Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The Price of American Hegemony in East Timor and at Home

This article is the second of a two-part series. You can read part one here.

The global standing of the United States has been one of supremacy since the post-World War era. Domineering in its own sphere of influence, the first deep cracks of this rosy-pictured crusade on democratization appeared in Vietnam. By the time Saigon fell, Pat Moynihan believed that the end of the Vietnam War was a reason for national relief. Even with his penchant for stating sobering truths, his conviction to avoid enforcing totalitarian rule abroad, such as in the case of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, gets muddled during his tenure as Ambassador to the United Nations under President Gerald Ford. Moynihan entered his post with a stance not unlike what American hardliners and foreign policy hawks adopted after him. He expressed his view of American intervention with impassioned rigor after becoming Ambassador to the United Nations: “The United States goes into opposition. This is our circumstance. We are a minority.” A departure from his detente stance, Moynihan displayed a sort of patriotism reminiscent of the views that defined Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy several years later. It is unsurprising that Moynihan won the praise of Ronald Reagan—to the anger of Henry Kissinger’s State Department in 1976 over such a hardline approach.

Kissinger, the Secretary of State during the time Moynihan was Ambassador to the United Nations, worked together to allow for an Indonesian invasion of East Timor. The result of the invasion was the estimated 200,000 East Timorese deaths and Muslim rule over a predominantly Christian nation. The idea of explicit encouragement of war to exert a questionable American democratic influence is at best contrarian for both Kissinger and Moynihan, but the rhetoric Moynihan established in claiming that the United States is in opposition indicates otherwise. Indonesia, under the dictatorial rule of Suharto, was far from the democratic ideal that the West aspires to spread. In contrast to the logic of Wilsonian justifications of foreign interference after the First World War, Moynihan’s view that the worldwide struggle of free societies resolved through self-determinism and democracy has shifted to match the rhetoric of “The United States in Opposition.” In truth, the endorsement of an Indonesian invasion of East Timor was but a simple cold rationale for the United States. Kissinger’s realpolitik strategy of pursuing American freedom and self-preservation was easy to accomplish if the United States was not the visible actor. A proxy—through Indonesia—granted the United States moral clemency, as the dirty work done by Indonesia would, therefore, be blamed on Indonesia. With Suharto’s reputation as a dictator, there was no issue for the United States to hide under the oxymoronic protection of an Indonesian dictator’s brutal annexation of another country. 

Moynihan’s involvement in the East Timorese tragedy was the act of covert suppression of information. Whether it was his duty as a government official or his own conviction that encouraged him to aid the Indonesian invasion, one fact is clear: Moynihan—along with Kissinger and others that came after them—chose American security over democratic ideals. In secret cable conservation on January 23rd, 1976, Moynihan laid bare the progress of the silencing efforts in the United Nations on the Indonesian invasion of East Timor: “Moynihan cited considerable progress in his tactics and crowd that the United States wished things to turn out as they did and worked to bring this about. ‘The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.’ ” Considering Moynihan’s words at face value, it becomes evident that the cover-up would, in some way, aid the United States. Since President Ford and Kissinger saw a need to supply upwards of ninety percent of the Indonesian equipment after a visit to Jakarta, it is safe to assume that the United States found East Timor to be valuable in more ways than one.

The case of East Timor becoming a target of an American-backed takeover featured several factors. East Timor, although rich in petroleum oil, was vying for independence. In 1975, East Timor succeeded under the banner of the revolutionary leftist Fretilin party from Portugal. However, the gradualist Timorese Democratic Union (U.D.T.), a party that attempted to overthrow the revolutionary Fretilin party, attempted a coup to overthrow the Fretilin-led government. However, the U.D.T. was forced to retreat to the Indonesian-controlled West Timor. With the authoritarian Indonesian President Suharto’s willingness to take over the Fretilin-led East Timor, the question was whether America would support Indonesia. A cursory examination of the circumstances of East Timor—a resource-rich nation with an unstable footing with a leftist government—revealed the motive for the United States to engage with Indonesia on such Faustian terms. Even today, the approach that Moynihan, Kissinger, and others took is commonplace. Moynihan’s approach to foreign policy, especially his zero-sum anti-communist “United States Opposition” rhetoric, gave way to the neoliberalism of the Reagan administration and mainstream conservatism. Eventually, Moynihan’s confrontational and ostentatiously neoliberal approach toward foreign policy during his tenure as Ambassador to the United Nations was too out of line with Kissinger’s stances. Pat Moynihan’s vacancy from the ambassadorship and the visibly of his actions during his tenure as U.N. Ambassador opened a new opportunity for him—the Senate.

Aligning himself with a constituency vital to winning an open Senate seat, Moynihan leveraged his diplomatic position while remaining characteristically neoliberal Ambassador to the United Nations. Prior to announcing his candidacy for the Democratic nomination of the 1976 U.S. Senate race in New York, Pat Moynihan made waves with his staunch pro-Israeli stance in the United Nations General Assembly. He protested the characterization of Zionism as a form of racism in a U.N. Resolution as “antisemitism [...] given the appearance of international sanction.” In the state of New York, his zealous defense of the Jewish state in the Middle East gave Moynihan a strong base of support—a great starting point for any candidate. However, as a liberal Democrat bureaucrat serving in the tarnished Nixon administration, he was hesitant to enter the world of electoral politics. Because of his close association with conservative forces during his previous stints in public service and his controversial Moynihan report, he gained the animosity of black constituents in New York. On the same token, his record also gained him support from labor groups and the influential Jewish community. Challenged by U.S. Representative Bella Abzug on his left, Moynihan’s previous concerns about his record on foreign policy were scrutinized immediately. Denounced as an acolyte of the Nixon-Ford team, Moynihan nonetheless took upon himself as a liberal Democrat on domestic issues, which led to both his primary and general election victories. In the general election, his anti-communist neoliberal credentials, polished with New Deal Democratic ideals, allowed him to unseat incumbent Senator James Buckley—with whom he shared the same anti-communist fervor, but better aligned with New York’s labor and cosmopolitan progressivism.

As a Senator, Moynihan strived to implement his domestic and foreign policy goals by acting as a leading challenger to the executive. Holding coveted seats in the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Finance Committee as a freshman Senator, Moynihan inserted himself directly into the political fray on foreign policy. Bipartisan in his critiques, Moynihan challenged President Jimmy Carter’s soft approach when dealing with the Soviet Union and continued his advocacy of the Israeli state in the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. When the Reagan administration pushed for the invasion of Grenada under the pretense of combatting communism on the island Caribbean nation, Moynihan immediately deemed it “an act of war” that was a constitutional overreach by Reagan’s administration. Even though the United States has many times before interfered in the affairs of Latin American nations, Moynihan’s unapologetic criticisms of both Democratic and Republican administrations after his tenure as a diplomat are uniquely characteristic of Moynihan. Unafraid of repercussions, his stances on foreign policy remain aligned with his experiences as a diplomat and power player. Although, over time, Moynihan’s stances had evolved from his own justification of invading a nation over communism to being more cautious of U.S. encroachment on another nation.

Perhaps a fitting culmination of Pat Moynihan’s pursuit of instituting greater social safety nets is his fiery dissent on welfare reform in 1996. The Moynihan Democrat’s spiritual successor, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), propelled Bill Clinton into the presidency: Moynihan hoped that the presidential victory in 1992 would allow for immediate welfare reform, describing himself as “anxious, but willing” to work on a substantive welfare bill. Much to Moynihan’s chagrin, the welfare bill was pushed aside in favor of a failed healthcare overhaul. For all the implications that Moynihan’s report in 1965 has emphasized, the post-Cold War era would come to neglect addressing systemic inequalities. Moynihan bemoaned the naivete of Clinton’s ambitious healthcare plan, criticizing him by stating that welfare was the main concern, not healthcare. After the failure of Clinton’s healthcare plan, a more centrist Bill Clinton negotiated a welfare reform bill that stripped some of the most important provisions to Moynihan: the removal of guaranteed aid for dependents and the rollback of unemployment benefits. Drawing back to Moynihan’s diagnosis of systemic inequalities from his report, a crucial part of being able to reinforce American strength resides in the belief in the opportunity to succeed. Although the Soviet Union has collapsed, the perception of the United States’s strength in foreign policy is incumbent upon its strength in domestic policy. In Pat Moynihan fashion, he expressed his utter disgust for the 1996 welfare bill in four words: “History will shame them.” Moynihan believed that welfare without support for retaining family structure would result in abject failure. Comprise has never been the modus operandi of Moynihan, nor did he intend for his vision of domestic and foreign policy to fall by the wayside, if he could do anything about it.

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