SYDNEY: Wandering through the cavernous, white-tiled port building of Kupang, in Indonesia’s West Timor, you might momentarily think you’re in the maritime gateway to a much bigger place. But linger a little longer and it’s clear the glistening modern edifice is mostly a monument to future potential.

It sits largely empty, its new electronic ticket gates unused in favour of a kretek-smoking human inspector. An open area could be a food court, but women instead sell fruit and packed lunchboxes to travellers from straw mats. A few local fishing boats come and go, and a handful of passenger ferries pass through each day heading to nearby Indonesian islands, or sometimes further afield to Bali and Surabaya.

One place you notably can’t travel by ferry from Kupang is the neighbouring country of Timor-Leste, although it would be just a couple of hours’ travel by fast boat along the coast.

West Timor (part of Indonesia) and East Timor (the independent country known as Timor-Leste) occupy two halves of an island smaller than Taiwan, and their respective largest cities of Kupang and Dili are less than 300km apart. 

But travelling between the two requires either an all-day drive or flying via Darwin or Bali, both spectacularly out-of-the-way (and expensive) detours. Even getting between the national capitals of Dili and Jakarta requires a stopover.

FRUITS OF JOINING ASEAN REQUIRE PATIENCE TO RIPEN

Last week marked Timor-Leste’s long-awaited accession to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the club of now 11 nations that is the cornerstone of regional cooperation. 

Joining ASEAN has long been a top foreign policy ambition for Timor-Leste, a goal supported by its neighbours including Indonesia and Australia. Amid the excitement of accession, Myanmar has passed Timor-Leste the unwelcome torch of being ASEAN’s poorest country.

While ASEAN is an imperfect institution, it has proved itself to be a durable mainstay of regional security architecture. Perhaps most critically, ASEAN represents a roughly US$4 trillion market of 700 million consumers, made up of 10 mostly booming economies, to which Timor-Leste now...