Reassessing the 2003–17 regional assistance mission to Solomon Islands

The 2003–17 Australian and New Zealand-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) is widely considered to be a comparatively successful peacebuilding mission. Jon Fraenkel argues that a fuller assessment of RAMSI needs to consider the low intensity of the preceding conflict, and the way that conflict changed over 2001–03 in ways that encouraged a law and order focus. Within Oceania, RAMSI is usually seen as fairly successful in achieving its short-term security objectives, but less effective in reaching its more ambitious state-building goals, though without much attention to the reasons for that contrast. There has been little appreciation of the longer-run ramifications of the 2006–07 crisis in relations between Australian authorities and the Solomon Islands government.