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All statements and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the views of WIIS Italy.
The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda is unique amongst UN Security Council Resolutions because it was pushed and advanced solely by civil society. It is rightfully held up as a success for feminism in legitimising gendered perspectives on security. The Resolution broke the “womenandchildren” checkbox that so often undermines real consideration for the uneven impact of conflict on women while gaining recognition for women as actors who had their own agency in conflict settings. It is nevertheless important to reflect on two elements that characterised the birth of UNSCR 1325: its roots in radical feminist thinking and the American hegemony that characterised the period.
Today, the world is more competitive, violent, and malicious. While radical feminism’s critiques continue to offer insights into very real problems, its subsequent solutions fall short in the face of imminent war. As the world faces the resurgence of interstate threats, as well as the continued and evolving menace of armed non-state actors, the WPS Agenda must go beyond its previous parameters and discover new relevance. It is time to replace Women, Peace and Security with Women, Peace and Strategy.
Feminisms
The term ‘feminism’ is often used as a shorthand to refer to any argument that covers the topic of gender or women’s empowerment. Its various strands can, at times, feel academic and out-of-touch but they nonetheless generate vastly different implications for the ways in which we take action.
Liberal feminism is the feminism that most people are likely to be familiar with. It accepts the liberal premise of the primacy of the individual as well as the need for this individual to have rights enshrined in law and protected by the state. What men and women do with those rights is entirely up to them: to be a liberal feminist is to have the choice to pursue a traditional, gender role or to take up a role in the workplace.
Radical feminism, as the name suggests, is more vigorous in its criticisms and solutions. Instead of focusing on the political decisions made in relation to gender, radical feminism scrutinises the societal interactions that legitimise and shape those decisions. When traits and values are associated with a specific gender, and organisations reward those traits, then it does not matter if women are seen to participate in political and military organisations since they are ultimately forced to concede to the dominant, masculine mode of interacting. A morbid, but compelling, example of this is Lynndie England’s involvement in the infamous Abu Ghraib torture.
Threats at Home and Abroad
Radical feminism offers a compelling understanding of security through the discussion of a ‘continuum of violence’. War is commonly defined as armed politics, but if our politics is gendered then war is more accurately armed gendered politics. Moreover, if our social dynamics have gendered, political implications then cannot be ignored in relation to conflict. The attitudes, jokes, and interactions at a household/friendship level form one end of a continuum that shapes our community environment and legitimises political decision-making at a national level. The views and interactions at one end inevitably influence and define the parameters of the other. Whether in the domestic sphere or military theatre, this includes the willingness to commit violence.
A key component to this is the construction of men as a protector and provider. While not always an intentionally malicious idea, it can often function as a sort of security racket. Men are to protect, but this requires the protected – women – to heed their authority. External threats – legitimate or otherwise – both undermine and justify this mindset. If a man cannot rise to the challenge, then he is found wanting, but to successfully best the challenge that he is responsible for handling, he requires absolute authority. It is notable and relevant that the rallying cry of far-right anti-immigration protests and riots is to “protect our women” despite 40% of the participants in the UK’s riots last year being previously convicted for domestic abuse. In this malaligned mindset, when a man’s perceived role to protect is triggered by a threat, then a woman’s inability to follow her subservient role as a domestic caretaker must also be dealt with to ensure security for the household and community.
For radical feminism, to engage in any type of war is to legitimise this masculine protection racket. Supporting a militaristic response to the threat of conflict is to incite violence and domination at international and domestic levels. In the early 2000s, this led to the creation of the ‘No-to-NATO’ campaign but more recently, it has sparked the ‘Feminists Against War’ manifesto which declares that NATO is ‘co-responsible’ for the violence in Ukraine.
This begs the question of how, exactly, one is meant to respond to the very real applications of gendered violence perpetrated by Russians in Ukraine. Roman author Vegetius wrote: Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war. The question for the WPS Agenda moving forward is this: If we want a feminist peace, how do we prepare for war?
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam
When UNSCR 1325 passed, America was enjoying its unipolar moment and Vegetius’ suggestion seemed irrelevant – the End of History had been reached. Having shelved the concept of ‘strategy’ following the collapse of the Soviet Union, ‘security’ found ascendancy as a way for Western states to pursue domestic agendas while still appearing prepared for threats. Security, in essence, is a game of whack-a-mole that often lacks a coherent understanding of either the enemy or the preparations required to face the threat they pose.
The threats in that historic period, however, were largely non-state, amorphous, and people-driven in nature (as opposed to being state-led). They also demonstrated more violent capacity than previously assumed, a point showcased on the 11th September, 2001. As several authors and generals have made clear, the West lacked any coherent policy or analysis of such threats besides vague notions of a ‘War on Terror’. When Coalition forces entered the desert of Iraq, for example, even their vehicles lacked sand filters. It is also why haphazardly attaching the WPS Agenda to concepts like ‘human security’ or ad hoc operations tends to lack meaningful results as demonstrated by NATO’s self-assessment of its WPS implementation with International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and Kosovo Force (KFOR). Instead of being a fundamental element of NATO’s strategy in these operations, gender was one tool among many that occasionally found value in the realm of intelligence gathering but had little coherent influence on NATO’s conduct.
Today, the world faces the resurgence of interstate threats armed with nuclear capabilities. It also has not extinguished the non-state threats that it has so struggled to grapple with in recent decades. The stakes could not be higher and the potential for further violence is apparent. To match this changing world, the Women, Peace and Security must find new relevance and reinvigorate itself as the Women, Peace and Strategy Agenda.
Women, Peace and Strategy would maintain the core acknowledgement that women are both uniquely affected by conflict and are active agents within it. It would also go further than the lens of ‘human security’ to which a gender perspective is often applied. Since gender is key to legitimising Russia’s actions vis-a-vis Ukraine; gender can also be used to undermine the war effort. Russian mothers once ended the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan over the deaths of 15,000-26,000 troops by playing to their traditional roles in society and pressuring the government. Today, Russian losses in Ukraine are ten times this yet the West is missing the opportunity to use targeted ads, information campaigns, and social media to galvanise Russian women to take a similar stance today.
The strategic incorporation of gender also has benefits for our armed forces. Most of the wars fought in recent decades have not been with states per se but with the people whose ideas fuel such confrontation. Properly incorporating women into the armed forces means maintaining a service that better reflects Western society and therefore can build greater credibility with local populations when deployed abroad. An American military that had not built such a toxic masculinist culture might have had a Lynndie England that did not contribute to Abu Ghraib. Crucially, it may not have had a military with the willingness to commit counter-productive crimes such as Abu Ghraib in the first place.
Advancing Forward
The Women, Peace and Strategy approach would not just have practical merits for military operations and their interactions with the surrounding political context. Fundamentally, the Women, Peace and Strategy approach can re-write the protector role allocated to men, and replace it with an equally worthy role of men and women as joint defenders of their country’s values. It would not happen quickly, but the earnest incorporation of gender equality – not just the numerical inclusion of women – into our armed forces might just reshape the understanding of gender roles across politics, business, and society. If the military can provide practical, violent utility without resting on patriarchal foundations, then there are few excuses left for maintaining such foundations elsewhere.
It must be remembered that peace is not simply the absence of conflict; it is the presence of justice. But winning war and achieving peace has always required strategy. To achieve a feminist peace; it is time to introduce Women, Peace and Strategy.
Author Bio: Alastair Nicol is the founder of the British Institute of Global Affairs, a grassroots think tank dedicated to inclusive conversations about Britain’s future. He holds a Master’s degree in Strategic Studies from the Univeristy of St Andrews in which he completed his thesis on NATO’s adoption of the WPS Agenda. He is currently undertaking an internship with the OSCE Mission in Kosovo where he works on issues related to gender, youth, and comprehensive security.
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