Avoiding intervention: prospects for sub-crisis conflict prevention

Avoiding intervention: prospects forsub-crisis conflict prevention

ANU State of the Pacific conference19 June 2014

Karl Claxton

Regional security after RAMSI

A growing body of reflections on what worked well and not-so-well during major stabilisation missions

• Useful as interventions are demanding and can arise without much warning

• But interventions are risky, protracted and expensive for contributors

• And can spur dependency or dysfunction in recipient countries

• Less attention to efforts to address challenges before they turn into acute crises

Australia’s stake in a peaceful and prosperous neighbourhood remains

Elaborate schemes: the wrong answers to the right question?

Aligning our diplomacy, aid, and trade—national security remade

• The start of the quiet rehabilitation of the concept of national security

• The ‘three Ds’ of conflict prevention

• But needs more than just standard diplomacy, development, and defence- Objectives- Relationships- Already beyond a ‘more interventionist approach’ to ‘partnership frameworks’- But two paradigm shifts: a new approach to Australian aid and new Pacific diplomacy- Engaging political settlements/accommodation, hybridity, co-production, etc

Discussion