Justifying RAMSI: Geopolitical reasoning, security and New Zealand’s involvement in the Solomon Islands conflict

Abstract

This thesis investigates the factors that influenced New Zealand’s decision to intervene in the Solomon Islands Conflict, and will argue that its involvement in the decision to establish the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) was strongly motivated by concerns about state failure and regional insecurity. These fears aligned with the the global geopolitical environment in the early 2000s, including the threat of transnational terrorism after 9/11 and the way in which terrorists could potentially infiltrate weak states. Debates surrounding the subsequent War on Terror were transposed to the South Pacific in response to fears that the Solomon Islands Conflict could spill over into neighbouring states, further destabilising the region. RAMSI therefore became a ‘necessary’ measure to prevent the further escalation of the conflict, and to rebuild the state. However, by creating RAMSI as a state-centric measure for rebuilding the state on the basis of the Western concept of statehood, New Zealand paid little attention to the alternative causes of the conflict, including the islands’ colonial history, postcolonial development and economic reform. Theoretically, this thesis analyses New Zealand’s response by looking at classical geopolitics and critical geopolitics. Whereas classical geopolitics attempts to make objective links between International Relations and physical, human and cultural geography, critical geopolitics questions the nature of these assumptions by investigating the ways in which language, discourse and ideology affect political decision making. By focusing on geopolitical reasoning – the justifications a state makes for its foreign policy, with relation to geography, spatiality or territory – this thesis will examine the discourses undergirding New Zealand’s decision to participate in RAMSI.