{"id":34979,"date":"2017-10-23T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2017-10-22T19:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=34979"},"modified":"2017-10-23T08:59:25","modified_gmt":"2017-10-22T21:59:25","slug":"australia-solomon-islands-and-ramsi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australia-solomon-islands-and-ramsi\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia, Solomon Islands and RAMSI"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"668\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-34980\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/JPAU24DEC04NR130-1024x668.jpg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/JPAU24DEC04NR130-1024x668.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/JPAU24DEC04NR130-205x134.jpg 205w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/JPAU24DEC04NR130-768x501.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/JPAU24DEC04NR130.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Australia spent years saying no to a central role in the mounting crisis in Solomon Islands. Then, in 2003, Canberra did a huge U-turn and led the intervention that ran for 14 years and ended in June this year.<\/p>\n<p>Here are two interpretations of Australia\u2019s 2003 decision:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oz academic orthodoxy<\/strong>\u2014Australia was driven by the US alliance and the \u2018war on terror\u2019. Australia\u2019s \u2018new interventionism\u2019 was a mix of neo-liberal dreaming about fixing weak states and security fears about the South Pacific \u2018arc of instability\u2019.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Canberra official story<\/strong>\u2014The Solomons was a failing\/failed state pleading for help. As regional leader, Australia responded. The Pacific Islands Forum embraced \u2018cooperative intervention\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>The interpretations cover the same ground, but clash. In seeing how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australia-and-the-south-pacific-trade-security-and-media-soft-power\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Australia thinks about the South Pacific<\/a>, the regional assistance mission <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ramsi.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">RAMSI<\/a> is a rich study.<\/p>\n<p>The official story tells some truth while glossing over much. The academic orthodoxy is a bleak understanding, seeing Australia\u2019s South Pacific policy as not actually derived from the South Pacific.<\/p>\n<p>The academic logic is that if 9\/11 hadn\u2019t happened to the US, Canberra would have stood back, watching the Solomons slide into hell; no push from Washington, no Pacific action from Oz. Two examples from academic journals:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/10357718.2013.806023\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dan Halvorson<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> argues that the central driver for Canberra was Australia\u2019s international reputation: \u2018A primary concern for the Howard government was to bolster Australia\u2019s reputation in the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d vis-\u00e0-vis the USA and the international community more broadly by being seen to maintain order in its regional sphere of responsibility\u2019.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/app5.120\/abstract\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Matthew Allen and Sinclair Dinnen<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: \u2018We see RAMSI as having been conceived in the global \u201cstate-building moment\u201d, as accentuated by the events of 9-11, 2001, when there were palpable concerns about the security threats posed by \u201cweak\u201d and \u201cfailing\u201d states &#8230; The intervention had all the hallmarks of a classic liberal peace intervention&#8230;\u2019<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A superb account of RAMSI (with less orthodoxy) is the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eastwestcenter.org\/sites\/default\/files\/filemanager\/pidp\/pdf\/Independent%20RAMSI%20Review%20Report%20Final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">review<\/a> done for Honiara and the Pacific Islands Forum by academics from New Zealand, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. It offers tough judgements about Australia\u2019s performance, but the analysis is grounded in the realities of Solomon Islands that drove Australia and the region. One of the authors, Jon Fraenkel, offers <a href=\"http:\/\/insidestory.org.au\/bringing-the-politics-back-in\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this short account<\/a>, dryly noting that RAMSI\u2019s 14 years of ups, downs, evolutions and episodes meant that \u2018only a few could recall precisely what the mission was initially intended to accomplish, or assess how it might be judged\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Canberra\u2019s official story glibly skips Australia\u2019s hesitations in the five years before intervention, and the trial and error of RAMSI\u2019s long life. The gloss obscures the truth of policy creation: ad hoc responses to cascading events, and indecision masquerading as flexibility while panic rises.<\/p>\n<p>Glibness glides over Australia\u2019s failed policy until 2003: namely, to \u2018intelligently manage trouble\u2019 by not getting close to the trouble (a description I got from DFAT secretary Ashton Calvert). As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/comment\/john-howard-ramsi-ends-with-its-mission-accomplished-for-solomon-islands-20170628-gx04zy.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">John Howard recalls<\/a>: \u2018From the late 1990s onwards, my government received numerous requests for assistance of various kinds from the Solomon Islands government. Each time we firmly but politely declined. The response was always that Australia did not wish to become embroiled in Solomon Islands\u2019\u00a0internal affairs.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Each refusal forced Canberra to stare again at the Solomons, which was stumbling fast from failing to failed. Solomon Islands is a classic weak state atop a strong(ish) society\u2014the five years of unrest to 2003 tore society and shook the state.<\/p>\n<p>Life in the villages went on, while in Honiara the prime minister was taken <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2000\/jun\/06\/solomonislands\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">hostage at gunpoint<\/a> in a coup; cabinet couldn\u2019t convene for fear of armed men barging in demanding money; the new (British) police commissioner couldn\u2019t arrest one of his senior officers who walked into the Treasury demanding money; Honiara had a police force by day that turned into a militia force at night.<\/p>\n<p>Events, not ideology or the international vibe, forced the Howard government to act.<\/p>\n<p>One reason Australia acted: it could. This circular statement points to the regional dimension.<\/p>\n<p>After winning office in 1996, the Howard government learned about Australia\u2019s power in the arc: extended police and military deployments in Bougainville and Timor; Canberra applying maximum pressure on the Chan government that fell in Papua New Guinea\u2019s 1997 Sandline crisis, acting decisively that year to get food to half a million Papua New Guineans hit by drought; imposing the boat-people camps\u2014the \u2018Pacific solution\u2019\u2014on the broke nation of Nauru; helping to rebuild Fiji\u2019s police after the coup crisis of Suva\u2019s parliamentary siege in 2000.<\/p>\n<p>Despite those experiences, Canberra agonised over intervention in the Solomons. Australia couldn\u2019t recolonise the South Pacific, Foreign Minister <a href=\"https:\/\/nautilus.org\/publications\/books\/australian-forces-abroad\/solomon-islands\/australian-government-rationale-for-ramsi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alexander Downer<\/a> argued in January, 2003: \u2018Sending in Australian troops to occupy Solomon Islands would be folly in the extreme. It would be widely resented in the Pacific region. It would be very difficult to justify to Australian taxpayers. And for how many years would such an occupation have to continue? And what would be the exit strategy?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>My response to the \u2018exit\u2019 question was one of the more useful lines I\u2019ve injected into the Canberra milieu: You can\u2019t have an exit strategy from your own region. I hammered the exit mentality in a paper to the <a href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/12.000\/www\/m2009\/teams\/students\/kennyd\/australia.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Menzies Research Centre<\/a> in February 2003 with this concluding line: \u2018There is no exit strategy for us in the South Pacific. After all, this is where we live.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>RAMSI began on 24 July 2003, after Australia had exhausted its alternatives. The dramatic language John Howard used was cover for ditching failed policy. If you have to U-turn, deploy noise and smoke, then zoom on the new course with fresh flags flying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Australia spent years saying no to a central role in the mounting crisis in Solomon Islands. Then, in 2003, Canberra did a huge U-turn and led the intervention that ran for 14 years and ended &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":34980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[509,150,227,228,229],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Australia, Solomon Islands and RAMSI | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australia-solomon-islands-and-ramsi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Australia, Solomon Islands and RAMSI | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Australia spent years saying no to a central role in the mounting crisis in Solomon Islands. Then, in 2003, Canberra did a huge U-turn and led the intervention that ran for 14 years and ended ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australia-solomon-islands-and-ramsi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-10-22T19:00:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-10-22T21:59:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/JPAU24DEC04NR130.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"783\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Graeme Dobell\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Graeme Dobell\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI&#039;s analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australia-solomon-islands-and-ramsi\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/JPAU24DEC04NR130.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/JPAU24DEC04NR130.jpg\",\"width\":1200,\"height\":783,\"caption\":\"Private Shaun Dwyer from the 1st Battalion The Royal Australian Regiment based in Townsville conducts a patrol with a Royal Solomon Islands Police Officer in Honiara Markets in the Solomon Islands. Deep Caption In light of the fatal attack on an Australian Federal Police officer, the Australian Defence Force has deployed a rapid response capability to demonstrate its ability to deploy at short notice. The rapid deployment group is based on an infantry company of approximately 100 personnel from 3 Brigade in Townsville and will reinforce the military component of the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI). 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