The Bougainville peace process in the late 1990s highlights the different roles played by Australia and New Zealand in the Asia-pacific region. It also demonstrates the importance of cultural sensitivity to achieving peaceful outcomes. This paper argues that the way New Zealand operated within the peace process was determined by their liberal internationalist political ideology, which has translated into a foreign policy which in this case study demonstrates cultural sensitivity and was effective in helping to negotiate peace in Bougainville. Australia, alternatively, approached the conflict from a traditional realist perspective of threat perception, which could have been potentially damaging to the peace process were it not for New Zealand’s involvement. New Zealand’s cultural sensitivity, a by-product of their liberal internationalism was successful in the short term because of the methods used in the peace process, and because of their history of relatively successful race relations. Australia’s realist bent could also be identified through their methods of negotiation, and because of their history of cultural conflict and oppression of aboriginal people. There are valuable lessons in cultural negotiation to be learnt from this case study, and this paper also asks the question of whether this model of linkage between domestic race relations and cultural foreign policy can be found to apply to other peace processes.

Keywords

• Bougainville Peace Process
• Realism
• Liberal Internationalism
• Cultural negotiation
• Conflict resolution
• Foreign policy

(30 min. Conference Paper, English)