Editor’s note: Welcome to another installment of our weekly War Books series! The premise is simple and straightforward. We invite a participant to recommend five books and tell us what sets each one apart. War Books is a resource for MWI readers who want to learn more about important subjects related to modern war and are looking for books to add to their reading lists.
This week’s installment from Bradford Wineman showcases five books on women, peace, and security.
Six years ago, President Donald Trump signed the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Act of 2017, legally codifying the United States government’s commitment to the principles originally presented in the historic United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 passed in 2000. As the US Institute for Peace explains, WPS is “a policy framework that recognizes that women must be critical actors in all efforts to achieve sustainable international peace and security. WPS promotes a gendered perspective and women’s equal and meaningful participation in peace processes, peacebuilding and security.” Both the Trump administration and that of President Joe Biden have recognized that the initiatives of WPS directly reflect the United States’ broader strategic goals of promoting security, prosperity, equality, and democratic values throughout the world and, therefore, have made its tenets a priority in connection to the pursuit of the nation’s interests.
While the 2017 legislation has affirmed a whole-of-government approach to this effort, the US military has taken great strides in incorporating WPS concepts in its strategies and operational planning. However, even after half a decade of implementation, WPS still has not fully entered the consciousness of American strategic thought. Many within the military are still now just becoming acquainted with its existence, much less its relevance. Nevertheless, there has been a growing effort within the higher echelons of the individual services and the combatant commands to operationalize WPS into policies, doctrine and even organizational structure. These books are recommended to both scholars and practitioners to offer a familiarization to WPS’s goals, frameworks and ideas while, more importantly, highlighting how this effort can provide the US military with greater advantages when seeking solutions to the challenges of an increasingly complex global environment.
Sex and World Peace, by Valerie M. Hudson, Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli
This book is the gold standard on the understanding of gender and conflict. A groundbreaking work, Sex and World Peace provides the contextual analysis of how broad cultural gender constructs in various societies eventually impact their institutionalization of violence and war. Using voluminous amounts of quantitative data, the authors present a convincing case for the intersection of women’s security with both international and domestic security. The impact of the empirical evidence presented here will forever change the perspective of any student of conflict, providing an appreciation of the totality of gender’s impact on the nation-state and violence.
Women, Peace and Security: An Introduction, by Joan Johnson-Freese
For those unfamiliar with WPS concepts, this book is the best place to start. It is designed to serve as a primer for readers looking to familiarize themselves with the background, context, and framework of WPS. It insightfully covers elements of WPS from theoretical frameworks to the gender dynamics and world politics, as well as focusing on issues such as the impact of war on civilian women and the role of women in both combat and peacekeeping. This book covers all the bases and provides great one-stop shopping for the WPS novice.
Women and Gender Perspectives in the Military: An International Comparison, edited by Robert Egnell and Mayesha Alam
This volume highlights the remarkable work in WPS being conducted by several of the United States’ allies and partners. The essays here showcase how nations like Canada, Sweden, Israel, South Africa, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have all successfully integrated gender perspectives into their operational frameworks over the last several decades. Each of these nations has leveraged diversity in both participation and thought via WPS into its security efforts. In doing to so, they have created greater operational effectiveness by applying WPS constructs to better comprehend and attend to operational and security dilemmas. These examples from strategic partners can help US political and military leadership show what right looks like in demonstrating the usefulness of WPS.
Gender, War, and Conflict, by Laura Sjoberg
Another standout in this field, Professor Laura Sjoberg identifies the failures of both policymakers and military practitioners in excluding gender from their understanding of conflict. Her analysis appeals to those “seeking to understand the causes, dynamics and consequences of war and conflict” to actively factor in the role of women when shaping their approaches to using the military. Drawing on countless examples from both historical and recent conflicts, Sjoberg validates an inextricable connection between women and war as both the victims and appliers of violence. Much like Johnson-Freese’s book, this volume succeeds in having readers appreciate the breadth of WPS concepts across the spectrum of government policy and human conflict.
Women, Peace, and Security in Professional Military Education, edited by Lauren Mackenzie and Dana Perkins
Arguably the greatest traction that WPS has gained within the US military has been within its professional military education (PME) system. Institutions such as the National War College, Army War College, and Marine Corps University have made great strides not only in introducing WPS to their students but also in actively incorporating it into their curriculum. This work, edited by two PME instructors, explores the various methods in which PME schools have effectively integrated these concepts into lessons, case studies, and exercises to normalize WPS tenets into strategic and operational decision-making processes. These examples demonstrate how the military education system has been instrumental in demonstrating to the warfighter how WPS can serve as a value tool to pursue their increasingly challenging missions.
Bradford Wineman is a professor of military history at USMC Command & Staff College and codirector of the Marine Corps University Reynolds Scholars Program for Women, Peace and Security.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Sgt. 1st Class Shaiyla B. Hakeem, US Army
With regard to such things as the "Women, Peace and Security," consider that there is not so much a positive relationship between these such matters — yesterday and/or today — as there is an exceptionally well-known and well-understood negative relationship between same — for example — as described below from the Old Cold War:
"The overt attack on Afghan social values was presented, by the resistance forces, as an attack on Islamic values. This was also seen as an attack on the honor of women. The initiatives introduced by PDPA (the communist Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan) — to impose literacy on women and girls — inevitably raised questions as to the potential role of women outside the home. This provoked defensive actions from men, concerned with protecting the honor of women with their families, and to also ensure that traditional roles of women within the domestic sphere continued to be performed. It also generated fears that the important roles of women, as the primary vehicles for passing traditional and Islamic values from one generation to another, would be undermined if they were exposed to external and, particularly, non-Islamic values. This enabled the exiled radical Islamic parties to claim leadership of the resistance and to also declare a jihad.
(Item in parenthesis above is mine. See Page 58, Chapter 4 [The Soviet Military Intervention], of Peter Marsden's book "Afghanistan: Aid, Armies and Empires.")
In my Old Cold War example above, we can see that (a) such things as "peace and security," these were (b) routinely, commonly and readily sacrificed by the Soviets/the communists back then; this, so as to (c) transform various states and societies; this, so that same might be made to be more compatible with, then-contemporary, Soviet/communist wants, needs and desires.
Likewise in the New/Reverse Cold War of today, we should see such things as "peace and security," today, as also being routinely, commonly and readily sacrificed; in this case, by the U.S./the West. This, so as to transform various states and societies so that they might be made to be more compatible with, now-contemporary, U.S./Western wants, needs and desires.
As to this such latter suggestion, note how our authoritarian opponents today (those both here at home and there abroad) seek to take advantage of this such — not "peace and security" but indeed "conflict promoting" — phenomenon:
"The combative narratives promoted by these and other antidemocratic leaders have popular appeal in part because they take advantage of widespread anxiety about political, socio-cultural, and economic change. Over the past several decades, trends associated with globalization have included increased education for women, higher rates of female participation in formal employment, the relative decline of male-dominated manufacturing jobs in many industrialized countries, increased political power and representation for women, and the arrival of immigrants in higher numbers or from new source countries. A significant share of voters are receptive to politicians who promise to push back against one or all of these trends—often blurring the distinctions between them—and restore a sense of control and power."
(See "The Nationalist Connection" section of the June 18, 2019 "Freedom House" article "Why Strongmen Attack Women's Rights: Authoritarian Rulers Around the World are Leading Attacks on Women’s Rights" by Colleen Scribner.)
The bottom line here is that:
a. When one is talking about "revolutionary change" — of whatever kind, shape or form — and definitely as relates to such controversial things as women's rights and the roles of women — in the Old Cold War of yesterday and/or the New/Reverse Cold War of today —
b. Then one is definitely NOT — as explained and described above — talking about such things as "peace and security."
(In this regard, [a] look again to "This enabled the exiled radical Islamic parties to claim leadership of the resistance and to also declare a jihad" in my first quoted item above and [b] consider whether something similar to this has happened/is happening in various parts of the world — to include here in the U.S./the West — today.)