Organising for Peace Operations: Lessons Learned from Bougainville, East Timor, and the Solomon Islands

Abstract

This report is for the Australian Civil-Military Centre (ACMC) in Canberra. ACMC’s mission is to support the development of national civil-military capabilities to prevent, prepare for, and respond more effectively to conflicts and disasters outside Australia. ACMC spon- sors research of past Australian interventions in order to determine and record important lessons that could be of value to future operations.Because of ACMC’s whole-of-government perspective, the results of this research are valuable to a wide variety of agencies. As part of this report, the RAND Corporation examined the governmental organisa- tional structures that were used in three Australian-led interventions that commenced in the late 1990s and early 2000 in the Southwest Pacific regions: Bougainville, East Timor, and the Solomon Islands. Interagency efforts requiring participation of many parts of the Aus- tralian Government characterised each of these operations. Impor- tantly, each of these operations was unique, and different organisa- tional approaches were used to manage the participation of various agencies. Numerous lessons were learned as branches of the Austra- lian Government gained experience over time about how to interact with one another and manage complex operations such as these. The June 2015 project proposal tendered by the Australian Government is titled “Australian-led Responses to Conflict Intervention: Organisa- tional Structures for Effective Whole-of-Government Co-ordination and Decision-Making.” Citation Info: Gordon, John IV and Jason H. Campbell, Organising for Peace Operations: Lessons Learned from Bougainville, East Timor, and the Solomon Islands. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1556-1.html.