Prof. Richard Tanter: Achieving Peace in Afghanistan

A decade on, the war in Afghanistan appears to be a disaster for both Afghanistan and the US-led coalition including Australia. What is to be done?

Richard Tanter proposes a series of policy initiatives by which the Australian Government and civil society could move constructively towards a foundation of sustainable peace. It would start with a withdrawal of Australian troops, then focus on an interlinked set of issues. These include the partisan role of the United Nations in a civil war; the need to form linkages with like-minded countries to sustain pressure for peace; shifting military policy towards containment and deterrence of any future return to a platform for international terrorism; serious economic aid to build human security; finding alternatives to the opium economy; and getting serious about the destructive and self-destructive role being played by Pakistan. Such policies may seem too hopeful, but it is argued that they are no less utopian than current war policies.

Dr Richard Tanter is Senior Research Associate, Nautilus Institute. From 2004 - 2010 he was Professor of International Relations in the Research and Innovation Portfolio, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and Director of Nautilus Institute in Australia, where he coordinated Austral Peace and Security Net, the Australian Forces Abroad briefing book series (including Australian Bases Abroad and Australian Defence Facilities), and the Climate Change and Reframing Australia-Indonesia Security project.

Within Nautilus he has been closely involved in the Global Problem Solving project, the East Asian Science and Security Collaborative, and the Indonesian Nuclear Power Proposal study project. From 1989-2003 Dr Tanter was Professor of International Relations in the School of Environmental and Social Studies at Kyoto Seika University in Japan. Later he was senior curriculum consultant to Deakin University for its security studies graduate programme at the Australian Defence College's Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies. His Ph.D dissertation for Monash University in 1992 was on Intelligence Agencies and Third World Militarization: A Case Study of Indonesia.