The forgotten operation: What Australia’s Pacific policy can learn from the RAMSI intervention

6 June 2023

Since the signing of the Solomon Islands-China Security Agreement in May 2022, Australia’s policy towards the Pacific has vaulted to the top of its international priorities. Chinese security specialists’ training of Solomon Islands police and security forces and the periodic mooting of a Chinese port or security base just 1,700 kilometres from the coast of Queensland is causing deep concern in Canberra as the region is emerging as a geopolitical flashpoint. Considering this, it is remarkable that, faced with the biggest challenge in the Pacific since World War II, Australia continues to overlook one of its greatest foreign policy successes — in that very country.

The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) operation, known also as Helpem Fren, was an Australian-led intervention in 2003 that reestablished long-term stability and order after three years of ethnic violence and brutal criminality in Solomon Islands. It remains one of the very few examples of successful Western interventionism and is to this day remembered positively in the Solomon Islands and among the Pacific Island states. Such a lasting achievement in the region should hold valuable lessons and opportunities for Canberra’s Pacific foreign policy. However, it seems that Australia is suffering from some form of collective amnesia towards the RAMSI intervention. If the Australian public and policymakers hope to find directives on how to approach an increasingly competitive Pacific, they should look back on this seemingly forgotten operation.

Australia’s foreign policy was born in the Pacific

The Pacific occupies a curious place in the Australian foreign policy imagination. It was in the Pacific that Australia first discovered its independent foreign policy voice, long before becoming a Federation in 1901. Settler Australians had a deep existential anxiety about the Pacific, fearing that a hostile power would take control over one or more Pacific islands and establish a base from which to attack Australia. This was a threat the Colonial Office in Whitehall was much less concerned about than its antipodean colonies, fuelling a resolution that Australians must forge their own foreign policy towards the Pacific. At Federation, the Constitution of Australia explicitly claimed authority for the federal Parliament over “the relations of the Commonwealth with the islands of the Pacific” — separate from the Constitution’s external affairs power. Historically Australia’s policy objectives largely focused on excluding hostile interests from the Pacific and maintaining its own influence throughout the region. Australia invested extensively in the region to become its largest contributor of development assistance and periodically relied on interventions to discourage foreign interests in the Pacific.

If large numbers of Solomon Islanders see Australia as an indispensable partner, it will limit the ability of the country’s elected politicians to build closer partnerships with Australia’s strategic competitors in the Pacific.

But there is a flipside to Australia’s Pacific policy: a tendency to ignore the region and downplay its importance when Australian interests are not immediately affected. As the region decolonised in the 1960s and 1970s, Australia’s Western allies expected Canberra to ‘take care’ of the region, and for the most part that involved flows of aid and advice — a version of benign inattention. This inattention was mutually preferred by the states of the Pacific, who wanted Australia’s assistance but on strict, arms-length conditions. Additionally, Australia’s Pacific policy was influenced by the concern that if Australia became too involved in supporting the viability of the Pacific states it would be both a never-ending commitment and remove any incentive for them to develop their own capabilities.

From arms-length assistance to Australian intervention

The twin coups in Fiji in 1987 revealed to Australia the complexities of dealing with the region. The Hawke government reacted strongly to the military overthrowing the democratically elected government of Fiji, contemplating a naval intervention before imposing military sanctions and publicly condemning the coup. This reaction, however, drew a sharp response from Australia’s closest Pacific neighbours Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu, and prompted Canberra to develop the doctrine of ‘constructive commitment’ towards the Pacific, based on respect for Pacific states’ sovereignty and the promotion of shared regional interests.

This doctrine remained unchallenged at first when the twin coups in Fiji and Solomon Islands in 2000 forced the Howard government to review Australia’s Pacific policy. An extended Cabinet discussion in September 2000 placed a very high threshold on anything approaching greater intervention, opting to follow instead the established arms-length policy: advice and development assistance. This approach determined the government’s response to the escalating ethnic violence and brutal criminality that engulfed Honiara between 2000 and 2003. Consequently, the Townsville Peace Agreement it brokered in October 2000 and supported with unarmed peace monitors had little effect on curbing the criminality and ransacking of state finances.

But on 23 April 2003, John Howard received a letter from his Solomon Islands counterpart Allan Kemakeza appealing for Australian help to suppress the armed militants and corrupt police. The letter prompted a revolution in Australia’s Pacific policy and led to one of the country’s most audacious and successful foreign policy initiatives. Over the next two weeks, Howard and his foreign minister Alexander Downer rejected the advice of their departments for more of the same policy approach, and resolved to send an Australian-led state-building intervention to Solomon Islands. Between 13 June and 24 July, the Australian government planned the complex military-civilian intervention named RAMSI, gained the support of the entire membership of the Pacific Island Forum (PIF) and the endorsement of the Solomon Islands Parliament, assembled and trained thousands of soldiers and police, and gained bipartisan support for the operation.

There are several factors that contributed to this sudden shift in Australian policy. Early 2003 was the apex of the global state-building moment and the 9/11 attacks had drawn attention to the problem of ‘failing states’: polities beset by violence and lawlessness where terrorists and transnational criminals could base themselves to attack the West. There was also an unquestioned optimism about the effectiveness of armed Western intervention in developing states to recast them as the West preferred. This was before the carnage of Iraq and the chaos of Afghanistan. Just four years before, Australia had led an intervention into East Timor and faced down rampaging militias. Finally, the early 2000s were a time of strong finances for Australia; probably the only time it could have contemplated a large, open-ended intervention of this kind.

A success among the wreckage of failed interventions

What made RAMSI a success among the wreckage of other failed interventions? The primary reason was RAMSI’s comprehensive restoration of law and order. Before the intervention, the mission’s priorities, actions, performance measures, and public communications were planned to the day. It meant that when RAMSI deployed in July 2003 it was able to collect and destroy nearly 3,000 guns, arrest militants and corrupt police, and restore the law and order and public trust on which the rest of the mission’s success was to be built.

Another major reason was RAMSI’s development of a relationship of trust and affection with everyday Solomon Islanders. Opinion polling showed that between 80 and 90 per cent of Solomon Islanders supported the intervention. This was an asset that RAMSI was able to draw on time and again as it confronted resistance among Solomon Islands’ elected leaders. Equally as important, Australia never lost sight of the fact that achieving and maintaining regional solidarity was crucial to the legitimacy and local success of the mission, providing a ready antidote to post-colonial sensitivities. And finally, there was a clear willingness to commit to the long term. When RAMSI was launched it had no exit strategy, sending a clear signal to militants, the government, and ordinary Solomon Islanders that it was there until the job was done.

However, even with all its achievements RAMSI was not an unqualified success as several important causes of the original disorder remain unsolved. Most importantly, the intervention failed to address some of the most central social issues in Solomon Islands like land tenure and ownership, youth unemployment, rapid urbanisation, unsustainable natural resource exploitation, and the breakdown of traditional forms of authority. The intervention also accentuated how many from Solomon Islands’ political class use traditional forms of Melanesian authority and patronage to gain influence over the electorate and access to government funds. Even as RAMSI tried to strengthen the institutions of governance, elected governments were draining the Solomon Islands’ state of its resources and developmental agency, siphoning public money into larger and larger Constituency Development Funds for individual MPs’ discretionary use in their own electorates. And finally, RAMSI served to demonstrate the extent of the shortfall between the requirements of effective governance of Solomon Islands and the inability of its state and economy to provide these. Just the provision of basic law and order, health, and education over that vast archipelago would require resources far beyond those available to the government in Honiara.

The legacy of RAMSI in a newly competitive Pacific

Australia’s legacy in the Solomon Islands is paradoxical. On the one hand, it gained the lasting gratitude and affection of ordinary Solomon Islanders. To visit Honiara today is to see an almost universal reaction of warmth and trust once people learn you are Australian. On the other hand, RAMSI has taught the Solomon Islands’ political class to be wary of allowing Australia to come too close to their interests. Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has admitted publicly that keeping China close is useful for allowing him to “stand up to Australia”. RAMSI also provided Australia with a strong reliance on the solidarity among Pacific nations. This is a legacy that has been squandered by Australia’s climate change policies, and its willing adoption of a competitive relationship with China in a region that is focused on collective security.

So, what did Australia gain from the RAMSI intervention, and how can those gains be used to navigate the challenges of a newly competitive Pacific? Undoubtedly the most powerful legacy of RAMSI is the gratitude and affection for Australia among the Solomon Islands public. This is a formidable but wasting asset, and Canberra needs to commit to maintaining this sense of goodwill. It should do this by investing in the education and health needs of Solomon Islanders, backfilling the withdrawal of these services by the government of Solomon Islands and the shortfall following RAMSI’s departure. If large numbers of Solomon Islanders see Australia as an indispensable partner, it will limit the ability of the country’s elected politicians to build closer partnerships with Australia’s strategic competitors in the Pacific.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Dr Michael Wesley is Deputy Vice Chancellor (Global, Culture and Engagement) and Professor of Politics at the University of Melbourne. His academic research covers Australian foreign policy, the geopolitics of Asia and the Pacific, and the politics of university governance. He recently published the first comprehensive history of the RAMSI Intervention: Helpem Fren: Australia and the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, 2003-2017 (Melbourne University Press, 2023). Image credit: Flickr/ramsi_images.