Brian Toohey – Australian policy makers have fought long and hard to get the international community to trust Indonesia's security forces to prevent a bloodbath in East Timor. So it is little wonder that the Defence Minister, John Moore, claimed he was merely taking a "routine precaution" when he announced on Thursday that Australian forces were being put on alert to evacuate people from East Timor.

The only trouble was that the rest of Moore's statement highlighted how Australian policy is in ruins. Far from the security situation improving in East Timor as envisaged by Australian policy, Moore admitted: "There is a real risk that the violence could become more widespread in the lead-up to [Monday's] ballot and thereafter."

It is now clear that the Indonesian security forces have deliberately destroyed the chances of a free and fair independence ballot in East Timor on Monday. Unfortunately, it is also clear that, thanks mainly to Australian diplomacy, it is much too late to put any alternative policy in place if the same security forces prove they can't be trusted to prevent a bloodbath after the ballot.

The Indonesian military has never given any sign it wants to end its brutal occupation of East Timor, which began with the 1975 invasion. The signs certainly did not improve when it started organising, funding, training and arming anti-independence militia groups last October.

Given this backdrop, it is not surprising that the US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Stanley Roth, has described Australia's opposition to a UN peace-keeping force in East Timor as "defeatist".

Roth's blunt expression of his disappointment occurred during talks in February with the head of the Australian Foreign Affairs department, Dr Ashton Calvert. Roth had asked Australia to help build support for a peace-keeping force to prevent bloodshed while the East Timorese moved towards an act of self-determination.

But Calvert was adamant that "adept diplomacy" would ensure this was unnecessary. (This was not Calvert's first diplomatic foray involving Indonesia. As an adviser to the former Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating, he helped bring about the ignominious 1995 Security Treaty with the Soeharto regime.)

According to the leaked record of the February conversation, Calvert stressed the importance of encouraging the East Timorese to sort out their differences without resort to the UN. Given one side was being armed and incited by the Indonesian military to kill the other side, Calvert seemed a little short of practical suggestions on how this encouragement might be conveyed.

After all, the Australian policy of relying on the instigators of the violence to maintain the peace would scarcely seem a convincing way to build trust.

Calvert's performance was further distinguished by his bizarre observation that the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Ali Alatas, was more of a problem than the head of the military, General Wiranto. As is now plain, the Indonesian military, under Wiranto's command, is responsible for much of the violence that will prevent a free and fair ballot on Monday.

Yet the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, seems immensely pleased with the policy urged upon the US by his departmental head. Downer told Parliament earlier this month that Roth was "grateful" for the insight Calvert had given him about Indonesian resistance to peace keepers; "only a child", he said, would continue to push for peace keepers in these circumstances.

Downer also boasted that Australia had taken a leading role in formulating international policy on East Timor.

Unfortunately, Downer is correct: US officials say privately that they were not prepared to push for peace keepers in the teeth of such determined opposition from an ally so close to the problem.

No-one claims that getting UN support for a peace-keeping force would have been simple. But due largely to Australia's opposition, the effort was not even made. As a result, Alatas signed an agreement with the UN on May 5 which left the responsibility for ensuring a free and fair ballot to Indonesia. Alatas specifically agreed that it was essential that the Indonesian security forces stay "absolutely neutral".

There is now a mountain of evidence – especially from Australian intelligence sources – that this has not occurred. Instead, Indonesian forces have masterminded a terror campaign.

The violence has become so bad that most outside observers, including journalists, now look like being evacuated from East Timor within a couple of days of the ballot.

No-one knows for sure if the bloodbath repeatedly promised by the militias will ensue. But the evacuation of potentially damning witnesses will scarcely act as a deterrent.

The prospect of a bloodbath prompted the head of the US military command in the Pacific, Admiral Blair, to meet the commander of Australian Theatre forces, Air Vice Marshall Treloar, in Honolulu in June. They discussed contingency plans to dispatch 15,000 US troops to East Timor to stop militia violence and facilitate an evacuation.

Treloar agreed to pass on a request for US forces to transit through Darwin. In an extraordinary display of confidence, Australian officials did not bother to pass this on to either Moore or Downer. Instead, they rejected the request out of hand – thus reassuring the militia that they were in no danger of being disarmed by a well-equipped US force.

Australian policy makers were aghast at the proposal, which they saw as guaranteeing that the Indonesian military would go to war with the US.

The idea is fanciful. The US Pacific Command was not planning to fight the Indonesian military but to take over the job the latter was failing to do on behalf of the UN in a territory that had just voted for independence.

General Wiranto may be brutal and untrustworthy, but he is not mad. He is well aware that the US military could destroy his entire command and control structure if he starts a war.

Except, of course, against the East Timorese. In that case, he knows he can rely on Australian policy makers to stay the US hand.

Meanwhile, the Australian military is getting ready for the next in its ongoing series of friendly exercises with the Indonesian military, imaginatively codenamed Kakadu, Cassowary, Rajawali Ausindo, Elang Ausindo, Albatross Ausindo, Trisetia and New Horizon.