Timor-Leste in 2011: A more confident or overconfident foreign policy actor?

The year 2011 in Timor-Leste was marked by the national leadership's growing confidence in the governance of the country's challenging institutional and political affairs. This confidence, which is essentially about the ability to demonstrate sovereign state identity, has developed against a background of compounding tensions between the Gusmäo-led Parliamentary Majority Alliance (AMP) government and the UN mission (United Nations Integrated Mission in TimorLeste, UNMIT) and the flow of increasing offshore petroleum revenues over the past few years. It has been manifest in the emphasis Timorese leaders placed on different platforms throughout 2011 on three key policy objectives prioritized in the context of a broader nation-building process: phasing out the foreign military and civilian presence; joining ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations); and setting a model for "post-conflict" development. A most recent example of this approach can be noted in Prime Minister Xanana Gusmäo's speech in September before the UN General Assembly, where he proudly cited the national petroleum fund's $8.9 billion balance to "transform Timor-Leste from a low income country to an upper middle income country" over the next two decades by maintaining the recent high economic growth rates.