This is not the first time that Gareth Evans has recognised that his, and Australia's, policy on reforming ABRI (Later TNI) was mistaken. As he says, it is wise to learn from one's mistakes. It is a sadly indictment, then, that Australia continues training with the Indonesian military generally and its Special Forces (Kopassus) in particular when we continue to see a range of gross human rights abuses in West Papua. It is tempting to dissect Evan's response piece by piece, but that will no doubt be done by others. His comments on the Timor Gap Treaty are particularly questionable. However, I agree with Evans and disagree with Chomsky on the issue of the doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect", of which Evans was a key global architect. Although that doctrine was formalised some years later, one of its major precedents was the intervention by Interfet in Timor-Leste in 1999. That was a good and necessary intervention then and continues to stand as an example of how the international community can, sometimes, get things right. Evans' leadership on "R2P" in a small way shows he is not a cartoon-character villain.

Regarding "Solving problems like Cambodia, where Indonesia's regional leadership mattered", it is worth noting that while Indonesia's involvement was necessary to ensure other ASEAN states, especially Singapore, were on board, it is well to remember that Australia's support for the Cambodia initiative was perhaps less idealistic than Evans portrays. As Evans' predecessor as Foreign Minister, Bill Hayden, says: "I also suspected then, and became firmly convinced over time, that [Prime Minister, Bob] Hawke had encouraged the Indochina initiative as a red herrings to distract the Party, especially the Left, from the vexatious and difficult to manage issue of East Timor. The suspicions were well-grounded" ("Bill Hayden: An Autobiography",1996:382). Perhaps, as Foreign Minister, Evans deserves opprobrium for sometimes insensitively articulating Australia's profoundly compromised policies. But it might also be worth remembering that he was a minister in a Cabinet who not only inherited a bad policy he was unable to change but was subject to the whims and preferences of others in the Cabinet, not least of whom was the Prime Minister. Focusing on individuals is simple and satisfying, but it rarely exposes the complexity of the circumstances that lead to tragedies such as that of Timor-Leste from 1975.