In Dialogue on Conflict Prevention

Naturally, talking about conflict prevention, there was an elephant in the room: the risks of great power conflict between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

The risks of major power conflict, to many, appear less and less remote, and the mandate to focus with full attention on preventing such conflict more pressing.

“If we’re thinking about the main game: major power competition is the clear priority. It will have the most catastrophic consequences.”

Yet, many shared concerns that focusing only on great power conflict risks over-simplifying and limiting what Australia needs to do to prevent violent conflict and instability more comprehensively. There was a widely shared appreciation that the biggest geopolitical issues and local conflict risks are, in fact, intertwined.

Addressing the whole spectrum of conflict risks was broadly considered mission critical for Australia. We were reminded that seven of Australia’s Pacific neighbours are considered “fragile”, and through the examples of Myanmar, ongoing tensions in West Papua, and the Thai-Cambodia border, that conflict risks are ever-present beyond Great Powers.

Effective development policy and programs can help address potential domestic conflict drivers like inequality, state effectiveness, state-society relations, and dynamics of exclusion. Acting on these was seen by many participants to contribute greatly to states’ resilience against conflict, both domestically and as part of geostrategic dynamics, to the benefit of Australia’s own security and interests.

There was also a critical reminder of the potential for harm: elite capture, debt burdens, and corruption in the competition for influence; and that Australia’s approach to its development partners should be grounded in peace-building practice, rooted in local context, and self-aware.

Australia is not new to the conflict prevention game, and there are many tools in its toolkit. As one participant said, “…addressing conflict is in the DNA of DFAT”.

Yet, conflict prevention is not only ‘housed’ within DFAT. Activities relevant to conflict prevention stretch across other Australian agencies like Home Affairs, the Australian Federal Police and Defence. There is substantial expertise, willingness and experience to leverage, but it’s not clear if Australia’s current approach joins up all this potential.

“There are ‘conflict prevention’ hooks in policies which indicate that conflict prevention is embedded—but not always obvious—in Australia’s foreign policy.”

The experts reminded us of the instruments at our disposal: the various ODA and non-ODA activities under the Development Partnership Plans, Australia’s role in regional and multilateral institutions (e.g. Peacebuilding Commission), Track 1.5 and 2 mechanisms including think tanks and universities, NGOs, media links, diaspora networks, trade, and a significant but perhaps underappreciated, reputation for working on conflict prevention.

Many parts of DFAT engage on these issues from the Conflict Prevention branch in the National Defence and Security Division, the Development Policy Division, and the Humanitarian Division, to the Multilateral Policy Division, and of course many desks and posts.

There was a strong sense, however, as summed up by one participant, “In terms of a toolkit, there are so many activities that are working, they’re just not tied together as well as they could be.”

This became a significant theme as the discussion turned to solutions. We thought about whether Australia has a North Star, something to guide its conflict prevention efforts, and to point to as a framework for prioritisation and navigating trade-offs. Some suggested that without such a framework, conflict prevention efforts risk being tacked onto the end of a laundry list of nice ideals that finishes with “… and peace”.

There were different views as to whether the mainstreaming of conflict prevention in the development program is still commensurate with the evolving challenges the region is facing. There were some big ideas on how it could be elevated: Should there be an Australian Institute of Peace? How about an Ambassador for Peace? Should we have a document that crystallises Australia’s conflict prevention approach? Should there be more targeted conflict prevention-relevant diplomatic training?

And then there was a pragmatic reality check. The development portfolio is crowded and stretched. As ambitious as we may want to be, we were tasked to think pragmatically about trade-offs, to make recommendations beyond the usual rallying cry to “do more”, to understand hard calls, and to expect gains to be modest, at least at first.

And another reality check: “we’re obsessed with DFAT”. There are other players in the system—academics, analysts, NGOs, philanthropists—who can and should contribute to best policy practice, innovative solutions, capabilities uplift, and advocacy.

In view of increasing conflict risks globally and in the region, it is not difficult to see why the Australian Government is giving increasing prominence to conflict prevention in its foreign policy. Yet, while conflict prevention has become a clear priority for government, there is no established definition or articulation of either conflict prevention or preventive architecture.

For Australia, effective prevention must mean engaging both with the risk of interstate confrontation and with the more subtle, but equally destabilising, drivers of potential conflict within states.

Stay tuned for forthcoming analysis from the Lab on what ‘an Australian model’ for conflict prevention could look like.