With A Focus On The South-West Pacific: Can Humanitarian Assistance Be Utilised To Our Political Advantage?

By the Editor: Winner of the Naval Review Centenary Fellowship Award for 2019, the author reflects, following her study period in Australia, on the ties between military delivered humanitarian assistance and political agendas. “The fact that naval forces can ‘loiter’ and be minimally intrusive is an important and unique contribution to deterrence. The Army can loiter, but it cannot be minimally intrusive; the Air Force can be minimally intrusive (although, because it still needs some land-based infrastructure, it is more intrusive than maritime forces), but it cannot loiter. Only naval forces…