1995 – Gareth Evans
The end of the Cold War has left many nations struggling to develop foreign policies to help maintain a new world order. Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans has presented ideas that could quicken the process.
Evans’ ideas were laid out in an article, “Cooperative Security and Intra-State Conflict,” in the fall 1994 issue of Foreign Policy. That effort earned the 1995 award.
Evans believes collective security involves “consultation rather than confrontation, reassurance rather than deterrence, transparency rather than secrecy, prevention rather than correction, and interdependence rather than unilateralism.”
Evans’ ideas, also discussed in his 1993 book Cooperating for Peace, integrate several concepts, such as:
- Security is as much about protecting individuals as it is about defending territorial integrity of states.
- Economic development, human rights, good governance and peace are intertwined and mutually reinforcing.
- The central task of the international community and the United Nations is to develop a more sharply focused sense of international responsibility toward deadly conflict and, in particular, toward intrastate conflict.
- Intrastate intervention by the international community must be based on clearly articulated threshold criteria agreed upon ahead of time by a consensus of nations.
- The world community, the UN and regional non-governmental organizations should concentrate efforts on preventive diplomacy rather than on after-the-fact peace restoration.
Foreign minister from 1996, Evans may be best known for helping to develop the UN peace plan for Cambodia, helping bring to a conclusion the international Chemical Weapons Convention and founding the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
