Potential Australian/New Zealand/East Timor/Indonesia conflict (was Red Dawn Remake

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by boogiedowndonovan

anyone out there remember a guy that went by the handle Ballistix? I think his real name was Damian Robinson. He had an order of battle for the invasion of Australia by Indonesia, including a provisional battalion of US troops stranded in Australia after their convoy was sunk. I can't recall if he had anything about why Indonesia invades

I think his page can still be found via the internet wayback machine but I don't know where to look. I'll ask some friends who are more inclined to save old web addresses.

Originally Posted by boogiedowndonovan

as for motivations, my understanding is that in the 60's there was a low level conflict between Indonesia and neighboring Malaysia with Britain and Australia intervening on the side of Malaysia. That conflict was over the future of Malaysia and the sultanate of Brunei.

Suppose a radical Islamic faction takes power in Indonesia and not only talks of recovering all of Borneo, but also of establishing a Southeast Asian Islamic Emirate encompassing parts of Thailand, parts of the Phillipines and all of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. The radicalized government then provides covert support to equally radical Islamic groups based in Malaysia and Brunei. These groups then commit terrorist acts to destabilize the governments of Malaysia and Brunei, and as these two governments respond, Indonesia intervenes.

We could also throw in the East Timor situation. As Indonesian troops deploy to Borneo to assist the Islamic groups fighting the Malaysians and Brunei, they organize citizen's militias on East Timor to maintain order. The citizen's militias on East Timor act without impunity while enforcing order, which incites unrest among the pro-independence East Timorese.

The Australians intervene to help their neighbors, Malaysia and Brunei.

Indonesia has had plans for quite some time (since the 1950s at least) for expanding its land, simply because they have so many people on so little ground but also for other more 'empire building' reasons. They've not needed another excuse to believe that all of Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, parts of Thailand, all of Timor & Papua New Guinea and also a significant chunk of Australia should be part of the greater Indonesian empire. They need "living room" and resources and they claim Australia is part of Asia and should be Asian, not European.
And quite frankly, there's plenty of people in power in Indonesia who have hated Australia for quite some time because they see us as being the remnants of the old 'white' imperialist regimes

Originally Posted by boogiedowndonovan

As far as US and UK involvement, at the request of the Sultan the UK does station a battalion of Ghurkas in Brunei. I can't recall what T2k canon says for the battalion of Ghurkas stationed in Brunei, if they deployed with the other Ghurkas to Hong Kong or elsewhere. As for the US involvement...oil. There are significant oil fields in or off the coast Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. Also, consider the Straits of Malacca, which passes between Malaysia and Indonesia, huge amounts of ship traffic, including oil tankers use the Straits to cross from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.

I also read somewhere that New Zealand had an infantry battalion stationed in Singapore, so its possible this battalion would be involved. New Zealand would probably be involved anyways if Australia already is.

Now, a T2k US military straining to fight in Central Europe, the Middle East and Korea, wouldn't be able to dedicate many resources to fight a radicalized Islamic Indonesia, but I think they would devote something to protect a source of petroleum as well as a major supply line. Plus, we're the good guys.

Anyways, thats what I use in my campaign. What do you think? Too far fetched? I don't have my books in front of me, but doesn't T2k V2.0 have the Australians and Indonesians fighting over Papua New Guinea, and Merc 2000 has the Australians occupying Indonesia?

Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the UK & USA all have defence treaties regarding this region so it shouldn't really be all that difficult to invoke the clauses needed for military action once the Indonesians commit any act of aggression to a treaty member

Originally Posted by boogiedowndonovan

ps. Kato, maybe its time to split this out from the Red Dawn Remake thread?

I agree, there are some other threads I recall dealing with this issue somewhere here in the forum so perhaps if someone can find the links we can split this part into a new thread with links to the other relevant threads?