Nation-Building Interventions and National Security: An Australian Perspective

Major General Michael G. Smith (retd.) is the founding Executive Director of the Australian government’s Asia Pacific Civil–Military Centre of Excellence. Rebecca Shrimpton is the centre’s Peace and Stabilisation Operations Programme Manager. Their paper was first published in PRISM, a journal of the Center for Complex Operations (vol. 2, no. 2, 2011), and was based on a presentation given to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Global Forces Conference 2010 (www.aspi.com.au). The views expressed in this paper are personal and do not represent Australian government policy.

I

n their compelling book, Fixing Failed States, Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart offer a sobering prognosis for global stability and human security. They assert that “[f]orty to sixty states, home to nearly two billion people, are either sliding backward and teetering on the brink of implosion, or have already collapsed”.¹ This global reality has profound implications for the future of foreign interventions for the purpose of nation-building. What might this entail for Australia? And what is involved in nation-building in failed or failing states—a situation which Ghani and Lockhart believe “is at the heart of a worldwide systemic crisis that constitutes the most serious challenge to global stability in the new millennium”?²

Such questions imply that nation-building interventions have a past, and arguably a present, in international politics. But as the current debate on international objectives in Afghanistan shows, nation-building is a contestable notion, meaning different things to different actors. History suggests that states undertake foreign interventions primarily in pursuit of national-security interests rather than through a desire to build capacity for independent and competent governance in other countries per se. That said, nation-building does occur as a result of international interventions, even if this outcome is not always the intervention’s primary objective, and successful nation-building demands a long-term commitment of considerable resources by donor states, as well as from organisations such as the United Nations and the World Bank.

If interventions are to occur in the future—a given if we accept the picture of global stability and security painted by Ghani and Lockhart—to what extent could they be driven by proactive and pre-conflict nation-building strategies, rather than ad hoc formulations as a response to conflict or war? And to what extent might nation-building be incorporated into the formal national-security policies of Australia in the years ahead? Could the “3D Approach” for stabilisation interventions—diplomacy, defence and development—be applied in a co-ordinated pre-conflict manner to enhance security, governance and sustainable development, rather than waiting for stabilisation in a post-conflict environment?

This paper contends that Australia should consider nation-building as an important pillar in conflict prevention and as an integral component of its national-security strategy, and addresses four related questions:

• What are nation-building interventions?

• What is meant by “nation-building”, and can it be measured?

• What is the relationship between nation-building and international military interventions?

• What is the future for nation-building interventions in which Australia might be involved?

Nation-Building and National Security

Conflict prevention and preventive diplomacy have been consistent themes in Australia’s foreign and defence policies for many years. More recently, conflict prevention was emphasised in Australia’s first “National Security Statement” in December 2008, when the then–prime minister, Kevin Rudd, announced that Australia’s approach to regional engagement should be one “that develops a culture of security policy co-operation rather than defaults to any assumption that conflict is somehow inevitable”. Rudd also saw utility in “creative middle-power diplomacy … capable of identifying opportunities to promote [Australia’s] security and to otherwise prevent, reduce or delay the emergence of national-security challenges”.³

Australia’s policy roadmap for conflict prevention, however, is yet to be articulated clearly. There are sound arguments that the next National Security Statement (and arguably a first “National Security Policy” document) should incorporate Australia’s contribution to coherent and co-ordinated nation-building strategies for fragile states, particularly those in South-East Asia and the south-west Pacific. Such an approach would go beyond intervention to effect regime change, to achieve a military victory, to kick-start stabilisation and reconstruction following conflict, or even to achieve the important UN millennium development goals—goals which currently are lagging in the Pacific region.⁴

Positive nation-building policies would enhance Australia’s long-term security by helping to strengthen the resilience of the Asia-Pacific region against conflict, natural and man-made disasters, and the impact of political and economic setbacks. To be effective, however, this nation-building approach would require Australia to continue to strengthen its commitment to whole-of-government (and whole-of-nation) civil–military⁵ analysis, planning and project co-ordination. This would demand the development of efficient mechanisms, and a cadre of trained personnel, to work collegiately with host governments and international and regional organisations. Importantly, government departments and agencies would need to contribute to nation-building strategies in a collaborative way to achieve objectives agreed by Australia and the governments of host nations. In practical terms, from Australia’s perspective, this would require enhanced synergy between the programmes of leading agencies—principally AusAID, Defence, the Australian Federal Police and the Attorney-General’s Department—to develop country strategies that assigned responsibilities and priorities in concert with those of the host nation.

Focused nation-building policies of this kind offer an opportunity to provide the assistance necessary to arrest a fragile state’s slide towards collapse before it reaches the critical tipping point—to strengthen a state’s capacity to govern and provide security for its citizens. Such policies seek to address the root causes of the systemic crisis described by Ghani and Lockhart to help reverse a state’s deterioration. Security policies can often link regional instability with national insecurity in a negative manner. More useful is a focus on building regional stability to enhance national security under a positive nation-building approach.

The implications of moving the locus of effort from perceived threats to existential opportunities are significant. Implementing an opportunity-based approach is more cost-effective over the long-term than having to respond to conflicts when they occur. Such an approach also accentuates a focus on:

• identification of positive influences and forces which can be harnessed (as opposed to negative forces which must be defeated or countered);

• empowerment of local actors (as opposed to replacement with international actors), and support for local solutions (rather than