Contemporary Stabilisation: New Realities, New Approaches
This paper compares and contrasts the stabilisation approaches of traditional and emerging actors, and where cooperation may support stabilisation efforts.
Overview
Emerging stabilisation actors are reshaping how security, political access and aid can be combined in conflict-affected states, creating important opportunities – and clear trade-offs – for Western defence and security partners.
This paper examines how Qatar and Turkey have become influential stabilisation actors in some of the world's most difficult conflict environments. It finds that their willingness to accept greater political and operational risk, engage a wider range of actors and use flexible bilateral channels can give them access where traditional Western-led approaches struggle.
Qatar has developed a distinct role as a mediator and humanitarian actor, using diplomatic access, rapid aid delivery and relationships with adversarial parties to contain crises and enable negotiations. Turkey combines security-sector support, military training, infrastructure and commercial engagement in a state-centred model, illustrated by its role in Somalia, Libya and Syria. Their approaches can complement traditional stabilisation practice, but also raise concerns around transparency, accountability, long-term sustainability and alignment with governance standards.
Key Recommendations
- Develop selective partnerships with emerging actors where their access, mediation capacity or security assistance can fill operational and political gaps.
- Use a division-of-labour approach combining emerging actors' reach and risk tolerance with traditional actors' capabilities in governance, accountability, institutional reform and long-term support.
- Prioritise context-specific cooperation, recognising that incentives, political alignment and value added differ across conflict settings.
- Strengthen oversight for hybrid delivery models, particularly where private contractors, informal networks or politically connected aid channels are involved.
- Invest in lessons from high-risk environments, including methods for reaching fragmented states and engaging influential non-state actors without compromising core legal and accountability standards.
- Assess sustainability from the outset, including the effects of regional rivalries, changing political priorities and uncertain funding on stabilisation outcomes.
The paper argues that effective contemporary stabilisation requires pragmatic, case-by-case cooperation rather than attempts to replicate emerging actors' models.
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Introduction
Against the backdrop of today's complex geopolitical context and growing number of enduring conflict environments, this paper explores the shifting landscape of contemporary stabilisation and the rising influence of actors who have emerged as major players in this field since 2000.
Traditional Western-led stabilisation models have faced increasing challenges to their legitimacy and effectiveness following the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and reductions in overseas development aid have also revealed growing questions about the utility and affordability of such approaches.
The research for this paper, stemming from RUSI's research project 'Contemporary Stabilisation and Security: Emerging Actors and Technologies', takes Qatar and Turkey as two examples of emerging stabilisation actors and explores their approaches, identifying their distinct, often hybridised strategies for delivering security and aid. This includes exploring how partnerships could potentially be fostered between different models to enhance stabilisation efforts in fragile and conflict-affected environments.
The key questions driving the research are:
- What do emerging actors add to (or detract from) international stabilisation efforts?
- What is the track record of these actors' effectiveness in and impact on stabilisation?
- What can be learned from the way emerging actors operate?
- What could cooperation between traditional and emerging actors look like?
The paper is organised in three sections. The first section covers the role of emerging actors in stabilisation and identifies Qatar and Turkey as important case studies for understanding emerging dynamics. The second section discusses the differences between stabilisation models, while the third focuses on the possible evolution of stabilisation approaches overall and opportunities for collaboration.
Defining Stabilisation
The UK government has defined stabilisation as an 'activity [that] is undertaken as an initial response to violence or the immediate threat of violence, where the capacity of local political structures and processes to manage conflict have broken down'. Stabilisation is to be achieved through supporting 'local and regional partners in conflict-affected countries to reduce violence, ensure basic security and facilitate peaceful political deal-making'.
The key principles, as defined by the UK government, are:
- 'Protecting the means of survival' (primarily service delivery and security provision, supporting ‘the rule of law and access to justice’), building space for peaceful political processes.
- 'Promoting and supporting a political process to reduce violence', supporting and fostering 'political deals and bargains among key conflict elites and actors'.
- 'Preparing a foundation for longer term stability' with a conflict- and gender-sensitive approach, reliance on local military actors, civilian–military integration, and 'activity undertaken with bilateral or multilateral partners', on the basis of a 'broad agreement on the parameters and objectives'.
- Local ownership, with local elites buying into stabilisation activities, despite obvious risks of state capture.
WRITTEN BY
Dr Antonio Giustozzi
Senior Research Fellow
Terrorism and Conflict
Professor Sultan Barakat
RUSI Senior Associate Fellow, Terrorism and Conflict
- Jim McLeanMedia Relations Manager+44 (0)7917 373 069JimMc@rusi.org
Footnotes
Discussions among experts at workshop, RUSI, London, 26 February 2026.
Author interview with researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, online, 23 January 2026.
Author interview with researcher at Lund University, online, 22 January 2026.
Jennifer L Jefferis, Hamas: Terrorism, Governance, and Its Future in Middle East Politics (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2016), p. 127.
Author interview with researcher at Lund University, online, 22 January 2026.
Discussions among experts at workshop, RUSI, London, 26 February 2026.
Author interview with senior Qatari military official, Doha, February 2026; author interview with senior Qatari official, Doha, January 2026.
Author interview with Syrian analyst, online, 28 January 2026.
Author interview with researcher at German Institute for International and Security Affairs, online, 23 January 2026.
Discussions among experts at workshop, RUSI, London, 26 February 2026.
Discussions among experts at workshop, RUSI, London, 26 February 2026.
Discussions among experts at workshop, RUSI, London, 26 February 2026.
Author interview with senior lecturer at King's College London, online, 15 January 2026.