The world's youngest nation, East Timor, is again in crisis. A week ago the President, Jose Ramos-Horta, was wounded in a gunfight, the country's Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao narrowly escaped injury, and the rebel military leader Alfredo Reinado was shot dead.

East Timor's Consul General Abel Guterres, and Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University, speak to Jim Middleton about the ramifications of the incident for the poorest nation in the Asia Pacific.

Jim Middleton, Presenter: Now to assess just what happened in East Timor, and why, as well as the implications for the struggling nation's future and for Australia, I'm joined by the country's Consul General, Abel Guterres and strategic analyst, Professor Hugh White.

Hugh White, thanks for joining 'Asia Pacific Focus' from Canberra.

Professor Hugh White, Australian National University: Nice to be with you, Jim.

Jim Middleton: Abel Guterres, welcome to the program, from Sydney.

Abel Guterres, Consul General, Timor Leste: Yeah, nice to be with you too.

Jim Middleton: I guess the first question is to you, Mr Guterres, why does this simply keep on happening in East Timor?

Abel Guterres: I suppose you can put that down to what East Timor has experienced since 1975.

There has never been a normality of living for the people and therefore a lot of things have happened in between, and a lot of politics, power play, and therefore things cannot, given that people are not used to what democracy is all about, and that is difficult for people to follow a certain form or certain guide in terms of society.

Jim Middleton: Hugh White, given the chronic level of instability in East Timor, should Australia have seen this coming?

Professor Hugh White: Look, I think in a very complicated political situation like the one we have in East Timor, it is very hard for external players, or for that matter for internal players, people on the ground themselves, to predict every twist and move.

I think what should perhaps have been better recognised in Canberra is that Australia's very substantial long-term commitment to East Timor, dating back to the redeployment back in 2006, has failed to produce any long-term fundamental improvement in the kinds of political problems that Mr Guterres has referred to.

And I think perhaps a high level of expectation that things on the ground were not going well and that these sorts of new crises could erupt, would've been expected.

Jim Middleton: Mr Guterres, to you, apart from the armed men in his group, how would you judge the level of Reinado's support in the East Timorese community?

Abel Guterres: Well, definitely there are some support from the youth groups, because the youth mostly are unemployed, and therefore these provide a good set of activity.

So then they engage in you know, like youth everywhere in the world, they're always looking for exciting things to do, the youth, so he would have some support within the youth community in East Timor.

Jim Middleton: When Jose Ramos-Horta was elected to the presidency, he pledged to address the concerns of the youth of East Timor. It appears that not a huge amount of progress has been made there?

"You can have all the good intentions in the world but if you don't have the means…" Abel Guterres

Abel Guterres: Well, I suppose the difficulty is the means, you know, you can have all the good intentions in the world but if you don't have the means, that means money, expertise, skills, to provide a meaningful living for the youth, give them employment, then, it's not easy to get it in a few weeks.

It has to, it will take time and I think one of the very important aspects is that the conditions on the ground has to be good for investors to come in and invest in different areas of the economy.

Jim Middleton: Hugh White, what about Kevin Rudd's initial response, what difference are a few more Australians troops going to make?

Professor Hugh White: Frankly Jim, I don't think they're going to make much difference. I think there was a certain naivety about Kevin Rudd's initial response to this crisis. This is of course his first serious foreign policy crisis, the first issue upon which he had to decide about the deployment of Australian forces.

But I think there is something rather perplexing about the explanation he has given for what he has done, several times now, he has said that the reason that he deployed extra forces was because Xanana Gusmao asked for them. But the idea Australian forces are deployed in these sorts of operations just because they're asked for, without really asking the question, what precise operational role are they going to play, how are they going to make a difference to what's happening in the ground.

And in the present case, what difference is another 150 troops going to make when the 780, 800-odd troops we've had on the ground there now for two years have failed to prevent the kinds of crises we've seen over the last two years, and indeed, over the last week.

So I think for myself it's a fairly doubtful piece of policy making.

Jim Middleton: It sounds to me like you believe the balance of Australia's approach to East Timor is somehow out of kilter, in other words, with a different prescription, could this have been avoided?

"I think we've got to be very modest about what Australia can do about the situation in East Timor." Hugh White

Professor Hugh White: I think we've got to be very modest about what Australia can do about the situation in East Timor. That's not to say we shouldn't care about it. I think that most Australians rightly feel we have both interests and responsibilities there.

But I think we've got to be very careful not to claim or expect or make our policy on the idea that Australia can make a huge difference to what happens on the ground. The fact is that East Timor has very deep problems, interconnected problems, political, social, economic of the sort that Mr Guterres just described, and the capacity for an outside power like Australia, even one as close as us, even with close linkages as we have, to really fundamentally change the nature of politics in East Timor, that's what we're really talking about, is very limited.

And I think it's unwise for Australia to promise too much, and then find as I think we are finding it, so hard to deliver.

Jim Middleton: Mr Guterres, if what Hugh White says is correct, it does rather suggest that Australia's ability to influence the course of events in East Timor is somewhat limited.

That obviously has pretty significant implications, doesn't it, for your government, for the East Timorese community in general?

Abel Guterres: I think we in a way are grateful that Australia is readily stand-by and supporting us, you know, having the military personnel and police there helping us, but I think the most fundamental aspect is the engagement of the local people.

And I think because locals, because East Timor being small, everybody knows each other, therefore in the security intelligence, if you have locals operating, it has to be properly done, of course, but then a lot of things can be achieved. Not all, but a lot of things can be achieved, given that during the resistance period, the East Timorese clandestine network operated very successfully against the Indonesian occupation.

So there are elements of those aspects there. It's a matter of how you bring them together and work for the benefit of the new country, and to create conditions so that investment can run and people can have a meaningful life.

Jim Middleton: Hugh White, one final question for you: what does Mr Rudd's reaction to this specific crisis say, do you think, about the way in which he's going to conduct Australian foreign policy in general?

Professor Hugh White: I think there is a couple of things we can say.

"Kevin Rudd is obviously going to continue the very strong focus that John Howard placed on the immediate neighbourhood." Hugh White

One is that Kevin Rudd is obviously going to continue the very strong focus that John Howard placed on the immediate neighbourhood as a core focus for his foreign policy. And he's prepared to accept as Howard did, very high levels of Australian responsibility for what happens in small neighbours like East Timor.

I think in some ways he has almost overstated what Australia can sensibly achieve. I think it might be too early to say whether his use of the ADF in this crisis is typical of the way he is going to run these things in future. I guess one of the things that surprised me is the speed with which Kevin Rudd reached for an ADF deployment as the best way to express Australia's views of what had happened in East Timor was surprisingly reminiscent of the rather sort of militarised approach to foreign policy that John Howard often took.

So I think it's hard to tell whether that's just a new government with its trainer wheels on, not used to manipulating the leavers of power, or whether Rudd really is going to adopt in the long-term, a very emphasis on the role of armed force as the best way to achieve Australia's objectives in our immediate neighbourhood, or will move to a broader approaching that Mr Guterres was talking about in terms of a higher emphasis on education, training and other forms of support.

Jim Middleton: Hugh White, thank you very much.

Professor Hugh White: My pleasure. Thank you very much, Jim.

Jim Middleton: Mr Guterres, thanks very much to you too.