Preparing stabilisation for 21st century security challenges

Abstract

Stabilisation, as a concept and set of practices, has proliferated over the past two decades and is now implicitly integrated into a range of global frameworks. However, this enthusiasm has at times risked turning this increasingly common, albeit contested, idea into a piece of jargon that discounts its unique facets: a focus on all sorts of violence, not just conflict, that create political instability and human harm and a problem-solving approach that draws selectively on various forms of intervention (e.g., statebuilding, counterinsurgency, peacekeeping, etc.) without being beholden to any one toolkit. The pragmatism inherent within the concept of stabilisation will grow increasingly important as new security challenges emerge or proliferate. These include the fragmentation and regionalisation of conflict systems, transnational organised crime, large-scale migration and new, disruptive technologies. Novel approaches rooted in big data and technology will increasingly need to be applied. Most importantly, in foreign policy, military and development communities often driven by perceptions about what causes, ends or prevents violence, stabilisation must maintain its agnostic, problem-solving roots and allegiance to evidence over ideology.