A Feminist Audit of Global Governance
NATO and Ukraine
Aside from the obvious issue that there are few, if any, meaningfully engaged female voices involved in the response to this scenario, the feminist critiques to a scenario of Canadian/ NATO response to heightened Russian aggression against the Ukraine in the Donbass are manifold. Immediately, one is faced with deconstructing the gendered nature of violence, collective defense organizations, state aggression, territorial acquisition, minority rights, and international relations. Therefore, a brief overview of the masculinized realm of international security is necessary.
Collective defense organizations such as NATO derive from a framework which privileges the Western, male-centric view of IR being characterized by realism. Realism equates power and security and views the attainment of these ideals as a zero-sum game, meaning that when one state becomes more powerful or secure, other states become less powerful or less secure. The accompanying conception of power found in realist thought, construes it as as a negative force that a state may wield over others by means of economic, military, or cultural superiority. Power therefore becomes a force of domination, as it entails shaping actors’ actions in a way which they would not choose for themselves. This type of political theorizing has been rejected by the feminisms of IR as it privileges narrow and exploitative, masculine notions of power and security.[1] The addition of NATO troops to this already militarized conflict is less than helpful in terms of promoting feminism as it contributes additional traditional masculine security measures, obscuring the gendered issues at play.
Furthermore, grounding the realist framework is the idea that states will behave as rational human-like actors. However, upon closer inspection, one discovers that this human-like tendency to which the state is supposedly prone to, is rather, a masculine tendency.[2] This is reinforced by the common perception that men will act logically and rationally, and women will behave emotionally. Coupled with the historical primacy that male actors have had in structuring, theorizing, and perpetuating the political, realism has become the orthodox way to conceive of security in international politics.
Likewise, the primary object of realist conceptions of security, is the sovereignty and impenetrability of the nation-state. Here, we are confronted with another feminist issue. If the primary concern of realist security and defense is the safety of the state and its borders, the well-being of its people are a secondary concern. This issue has been confronted by Ukrainian feminist groups as they are forced to confront the issue of nationalism and where they stand in regards to the “national question” when mobilizing to secure women’s rights.[3] Specific to this scenario is that the history of the nationalist struggle in which Russia and the Ukraine is engaged is one that is based upon a masculine nationalism. This is because it has been informed by the historical narrative of and future hope of the male actors involved. In fact, in her book Bananas, Beaches, and Bases, Cynthia Enloe discusses at length the unfortunate oppression which nationalist movements bestow on women because of their tendency to discourage conflict between the men and women involved, for the sake of national solidarity.[4] However, if feminist issues are not addressed during the struggle, it is unlikely that the future nation will prioritize these issues either. Instead, women’s issues are deemed less important than the immediate struggle, and relegated to be addressed in the distant, less combative, future. Therefore, it is imperative that feminism be included at every stage of the process.
Exacerbating this issue is the fact that in situations of conflict, women are framed as passive victims, a practice which actively denies them agency. However, they are also seen to represent the purity and prosperity of their nation.[5] Because of this framework of women as “symbols” of the nation (and in turn as living results of male action), they are used to represent the suffering, violation, reproduction, and/ or virtue of the nation. In fact, this phenomenon of relegating women to traditional symbolic roles can be found in the activity relating to the Ukrainian struggle against Russian aggression as women were encouraged to bear the children of national heroes and to stay out of harms way.[6] Furthermore, women engaged in the Ukrainian “Maidan” protests were relegated to traditional female roles such as cooking, cleaning, and coordinating protest activity led by men. Despite almost equal numbers of male and female protestors, women’s involvement was discouraged after protests became violent, as men attempted to prevent women from participating in the dangerous situation.[7] This paternalism prevents women from transcending the idea that there are appropriate spaces and circumstances where women can be involved and removes women from being active participants in the struggle. This means that they cannot meaningfully add, transform, and lead the nation in times of crises, reinforcing the orthodox tradition of politics and security as a male domain.
The masculine nature of security and combat is reflected by the fact that the gender of NATO troops which have been deployed to address the conflict, as “peacekeepers” are mostly male. Additionally, NATO is not an entity which is equipped to deal with the the human rights abuses being perpetrated in this conflict zone. Rather, the involvement of NATO in this specific context signals the geostrategic importance of this conflict to traditional high politics. As mentioned by the Honourable Chrystia Freeland in her speech, this conflict is being prioritized because of the threat which it poses to the traditional (masculine) international order and not because of the actual human detriment it is causing.[8] Therefore, a feminist engagement with the situation should be welcomed if one hopes to reduce the negative human impact of this scenario.