Can we ensure our civil security by physical force?

A letter to the editor in Melbourne's The Age:

Lessons from Timor
East Timor is a classic example of the consequence of the precipitous withdrawal of stabilising forces.

Despite the fact that the United Nations had forces in the country for three years, the wheels fell off the ship of state within 12 months of the departure of that international presence.

The descent into anarchy that has been witnessed in recent days in and around Dili is a small-scale model of what would almost certainly occur in Iraq should the US and its allies leave that country before the democratic process has been introduced and fully tested. Both East Timor and Iraq are 10-20 year investments on the part of the international community.
MICHAEL J. GAMBLE, Belmont


This is a view that has been repeatedly asserted by The Australian's Foreign editor, Greg Sheridan. For several weeks now, he has been arguing that the crisis in Solomon Islands (ie here and here), East Timor (ie here), Iraq (ie here) can be solved essentially by sending in the troops (see here). Others have suggested that the army might be able to address some of the problems in Australia's remote indigenous communities (see here).

I have no doubt that army and police personnel can, by sheer strength of numbers and the threat of superior physical force, achieve some gains in restoring law and order in all of these situations. This then provides the context in which other gains - social, economic and political - can be made. However security forces are not development agencies, and they cannot address the root causes of civil conflict. They can put a lid on violence for a short period of time, but only if their numbers and their weaponry are significant enough. Real security requires livelihood security, as all but the situation in Iraq quite easily demonstrate - in remote indigenous communities such as Wadeye, and in the Solomon Islands, young men play a key role in perpetrating violence and are also those who are particularly marginalised, with few opportunities to participate in social or economic structures and little to believe in. In East Timor, violence broke out again after 500 soldiers began to riot after being dismissed from the national service. While the roots of conflict in Iraq are obviously different, it is unlikely that physical security will return as long as local people feel disenfranchised from the social, political, economic and cultural processes occurring on their own soil.

Armies and police forces are equipped to use brute force to achieve immediate results, they are not equipped to address the root causes of civil conflict. We can, as Sheridan seems to consistently suggest, keep pumping more money into these forces, yet physical security at home and abroad will remain an illusion for as long as these root causes remain unaddressed.