Forces for Good?

Military Masculinities and Peacebuilding in Afghanistan and Iraq

C. Duncanson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137319425
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book utilises the growing phenomenon of British soldier narratives from Iraq and Afghanistan to explore how British soldiers make sense of their role on these complex, multi-dimensional operations. It aims to intervene in the debates within critical feminist scholarship over whether soldiers can ever be agents of peace.

1

Introduction

This book is about the experience of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It utilizes the growing phenomenon of British soldier ‘herographies’ or TiC-Lit (Troops in Combat Literature) – autobiographical reflections on their experiences of war – to explore how British soldiers make sense of what they are doing on these complex, multi-dimensional operations which are not quite war, not quite peacebuilding. It aims to intervene in the debates within critical feminist scholarship over whether soldiers can ever be agents of peace.

My particular concern in this book is the position of many feminist scholars who utilize an intersectional analysis – paying attention to race, class, nationality and other social divisions, as well as gender – in order to argue that military intervention is often justified by gendered narratives wherein representatives of civilization and democracy are tasked with addressing violent conflict in troubled lands, a story which distracts from the root causes of the violence and enables the furthering of a neo-liberal agenda. I seek to both further this feminist critique, by adding the important but hitherto neglected case of the British contribution to the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and challenge its determinism, which I argue to be normatively, empirically and theoretically problematic.

This introduction gives an overview of the argument of the book. It first elaborates the feminist critique of military interventions and outlines where I depart from it. I then turn to outlining the reasons for focusing on British soldiers, before setting out the structure of the remainder of the book.

The feminist critique of military interventions

There is a vast feminist literature on military interventions which covers both the complex peace operations of the 1990s through to Iraq and Afghanistan.¹ Although there are several feminists who see militaries as being useful in the service of peace, albeit often with some level of reform (see, for example, Stiehm 1999; Olsson and Tryggestad 2001; Beebe and Kaldor 2010; Kaldor 2012; Kronsell 2012), there is a wealth of feminist scholarship which is much more sceptical about the potential of soldiers as agents of peace (for example, Orford 1999; Enloe 2000; Razack 2004; Whitworth 2004; Al-Ali and Pratt 2008; Peterson and Runyan 2010; Khalili 2011). Although there are differences between them, which I will discuss in the following chapter, I label them the ‘feminist sceptics of military intervention’ or ‘feminist sceptics’. This section outlines the key themes of this scholarship.

The first, a theme which belongs to feminist analysis more widely, is the role of gender in explaining the causes and consequences of military interventions. There are many scholars who critique military interventions, but feminist scholars argue that gender plays a crucial role in undermining the potential for militaries to bring about long-term peace and security. In general, feminist scholars argue that the gendered dichotomy of (masculine)war/(feminized)peace means that confrontational and combative approaches to international relations are privileged over more conciliatory and cooperative approaches, both at the level of individual soldiers’ daily practice and at the level of geopolitical policy making (see Cohn 1987; Tickner 2001: 52–53; Ducat 2004). The result for military interventions is threefold: at the micro-level, soldiers are prone to excessive violence and abuse of civilians; at the meso-level, more combative strategies may be adopted by the military; at the macro-level, military strategies are privileged over political or economic solutions to insecurity. Critics of the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have highlighted these problems (see, for example, King 2010; House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee 2011; Ledwidge 2011), but a feminist analysis exposes the way in which particular constructions of gender explain the deep attachments to strategies at each level which have been largely counterproductive.

The second theme is the imperial nature of military interventions. Most feminist scholars deploy an ‘intersectional’ analysis, which sees other social divisions such as race, class and ethnicity as being as important as gender in constituting both individual identity and social structures (see, for example, Yuval-Davis 2006; Cockburn 2010). Many feminist scholars utilize such an analysis in order to argue that the gendered story of military intervention relies upon ideas of representatives of civilization and democracy coming to sort out violent conflict in troubled lands, a story which distracts from the root causes of the violence and reinforces the dichotomies which make the violence possible (see, for example, Hunt and Rygiel 2006; Shepherd 2006). For these scholars, even when soldiers engage in peacebuilding, or valorize the peacebuilding aspects of an operation, military interventions remain problematic; individual soldiers’ actions cannot challenge the overwhelmingly damaging structures of the neo-liberal world economy. Sceptical feminists thus endorse the view of Critical Security Studies scholars that military interventions are forms of ‘riot control’ aimed at upholding the ‘liberal peace’, and soldiers and humanitarians are the ‘trouble shooters of an international society that structures inequalities and fails to fulfil human needs’ (Pugh 2004: 54; also see Duffield 2001; Zanotti 2006; Chandler 2010; Richmond 2010). Feminist sceptics make the additional observation that, as well as defending an unequal world order, soldiers involved in military interventions often contribute to the discourse which constructs people in lands of conflict as barbaric belligerents or helpless victims – thus promoting the gendered story of ‘white knights’ in ‘dark lands’ (Razack 2004) legitimating interventions.

The third theme is scepticism that initiatives like United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, which aims to mainstream gender into peace operations, and thereby tackle some of the problems mentioned above, have made a difference. SCR1325 aims to mainstream gender into peacekeeping operations by addressing the impact of armed conflict on women and girls, the exclusion of women’s organizations from peacebuilding, and the lack of women, in all roles but particularly as soldiers, in peacekeeping contingents (United Nations 2000). In terms of the difference it has made to enabling soldiers to facilitate peace, feminist sceptics tend to critique SCR 1325 on four counts: firstly, that it has failed to address the culture of impunity for soldiers involved in Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA); secondly, that training is an inadequate response to the problems of militarized masculinities; thirdly, that increasing the number of women soldiers generates as many risks as it does solutions; and fourthly, emerging from and underpinning the first three, that SCR 1325 has robbed gender of its radicalism as a critical concept (Vayrynen 2004; Whitworth 2004: 120–139; Cockburn 2007; Cohn 2008; Shepherd 2008; Cockburn 2010; Puechiguirbal 2010a; Willett 2010; Cockburn 2011; Olonisakin et al. 2011).

Finally, the fourth theme is that security needs to be reconceptualized in feminist terms.² Feminist argue that genuine, long-lasting, stable and sustainable peace must also include justice – including gender justice and gender equality (Tickner 2001; Young 2003; Peterson and Runyan 2010; Sjoberg 2010; Olonisakin et al. 2011). What is required, many argue, is a redefinition of security ‘away from the deployment of militaries and security services and towards the fair distribution of resources to enable people’s access to livelihoods and to ensure political and social justice, regardless of nationality, gender, class, ethnicity/race and religion’ (Al-Ali and Pratt 2009: 18–19). The underlying principle of feminist reconceptualizations of security is an understanding that, to achieve peace, the root causes of insecurity must be tackled, including the violation of human rights, gender-based violence, inequality and injustice, poverty, disease, organized crime, sexual trafficking, political corruption, environmental degradation and terrorism. A further underlying principle is that local communities know what is required to ensure security; hence empowerment is fundamental to the realization of human security. Indeed, security is not so much something one can acquire, but a process, one which is always partial and elusive, and involves struggle and contestation, and which must involve its ‘subjects – including women – as agents in the provision of their own security’ (Sylvester 1994b: 183). The following section outlines where I am in agreement and where I depart from the feminist sceptic position.

The argument of the book

There is much in the feminist sceptic position that I am in agreement with. Along with most feminist International Relations (IR) scholars, I share the view that ‘genuine security’ (by which I mean, if it is to be meaningful and sustainable) must include (gender) justice, and also must include its referents in the realization of their own security. I also agree that identities matter: that the gender, race, class, nation and so on of soldiers make a difference to the outcome of military interventions. Furthermore, I agree that militarized masculinities are part of the problem undermining security for ordinary civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. British soldiers have been involved in the abuse of civilians (Gillan 2005; Kerr 2008), but my focus is not so much on cases of abuse, but rather on the way in which particular constructions of masculinity, connected to the valorization of the warfighting ethos, have encouraged a more combative, ‘kinetic’ approach to operations which has been counterproductive. Many analysts acknowledge the strategic errors of the British in both interventions (Cockburn 2006; Betz and Cormack 2009; North 2009; Roberts 2009; Wither 2009; Dodge 2010; Farrell 2010; King 2010; Ucko 2010; Egnell 2011; House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee 2011; Ledwidge 2011; Catignani 2012; Kaldor 2012), but I argue that we need a gender analysis to grasp fully why such strategies were adopted.

I am also in agreement about the imperial nature of the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is little doubt that the neo-liberal privatization agenda has been forced upon fragile economies, and state subsidies have been cut, with devastating effects on ordinary people. Self-serving elites in the West and within Iraq and Afghanistan have benefited from both continued violence and the massive flows of reconstruction assistance (Gregory 2004; Klein 2008; Curtis 2011b; Suhrke 2011; Gall 2012; Kaldor 2012). Indeed, in Chapter 5, I highlight this and detail how many British soldiers, by constructing Afghan and Iraqis as Other, participate in constructing a legitimizing story for the intervention which disguises the way in which Western (and local) elites are benefiting from the intervention. I thus further the feminist sceptical critique of military intervention by providing many examples of how British soldiers are ‘doing Empire’.

At the same time, however, I take issue with several aspects of the feminist sceptic case. Firstly, although agreeing that identities matter, I emphasize that these identities are not fixed. I argue that a soldier’s identity influences his or her practice, and, in turn, the everyday practices of soldiers help construct their identity. Much feminist literature has a tendency to acknowledge and discuss the multiplicity, complexity and dynamism of masculinities in theoretical introductions, but to lose sight of it in empirical applications (as I shall go on to demonstrate in the next chapter). This book attempts to remain consistently alert to that complexity and dynamism when analysing British soldier narratives of operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Secondly, and relatedly, I disagree that all military interventions are necessarily imperial, an overly determinist position which I argue is found in much of the feminist sceptic literature. Equally, I disagree with the implication that soldiers are mere pawns in the empire-building games of elites. I maintain that such positions are too totalizing, and see power as operating in too crude a way.

The determinism of feminist sceptic position is normatively, empirically and theoretically problematic. To give an example, Sherene Razack, who is emblematic of the feminist sceptics, argues that a ‘profoundly racially structured’ narrative shapes all peace operations and that ‘our very participation depends on consigning whole groups of people to the category of those awaiting assistance into modernity’ (Razack 2004: 155) (my italics). The normative problem is that this denies the possibility of change; it leaves no room for people to work towards a better world or even to envisage change. The empirical problem is that such an account of the world is inaccurate. We have ample evidence – including from Razack herself – of people endeavouring to construct relations of empathy and respect, relations which arguably destabilize the Self/Other binaries which she rightly sees as problematic. Razack cites General Dallaire, the Canadian peacekeeper who, in his reflections on the failure of the UN to respond adequately to the genocide in Rwanda, states, ‘All humans are humans. There are no humans more human than others. That’s it’ (Dallaire 2003). Yet, she concludes that this does not disrupt the ‘paradigm of saving the Other’ (Razack 2004: 155); I argue that this is exactly what it does.

Paying attention to soldiers’ narratives demonstrates that British soldiers do not always construct Iraqis and Afghans as Other. Like Dallaire, British soldiers sometimes build relationships with ordinary Iraqis and Afghans which appear to be built on equality, respect and empathy. In contrast to those who argue that individual soldiers’ actions do not make much difference, that in such imperial interventions, small good acts of individuals are just too few in number, too minor in impact to dent the structures of injustice; I argue that this is to dismiss them too quickly.

Feminist dilemmas: Interventions and the structure and agency problem

There is a real and pressing dilemma for feminists arising from contexts such as Afghanistan where women are routinely denied their human rights. Some feminist academics have suggested that the Othering of Iraqi and Afghan men as barbaric, primitive and excessively violent – the discourse of the ‘dangerous brown man’ – has been so dominant in Western justifications for imperial interventions, that it is risky even to speak of women’s human rights in Afghanistan, no matter take action to defend them, lest one reinforce the discourse.³ In other words, there is a risk that in being feminist, you inadvertently support racism. The conclusion is it is better to stay away. At the other extreme is the position that the violence and insecurity experienced by individuals, especially women, in a context such as Afghanistan, demand military intervention. The US Feminist Majority Campaign’s President, Eleanor Smeal, for example, supported military intervention on the basis that it would improve the lives of Afghan women, arguing that it was a ‘different kind of war’ (cited in Lerner 2001), one in which soldiers could really make a difference.

It appears to me to be vital not to fall into either the trap of over-playing structure – seeing the imperial nature of the intervention as preventing any possible good – or overplaying agency – permitting individual acts of decency, bravery or compassion by soldiers on the ground to take our eye off the structural forces, such as the privatization of the Iraqi and Afghan economies, which are increasing insecurity for ordinary Afghans and Iraqis. There is a need to navigate a path between these two polarized positions, to give agency its due weight, and this is what I attempt to do in this book.

This is in part because dismissing the agency of soldiers is theoretically problematic. Feminists resist the ‘few bad apples’ excuse when soldiers are found to have committed torture, so we should not resort to crying ‘insignificant’ when soldiers do good. Dismissing agency is also, for many feminists, inconsistent. Generally feminists are committed to some form of constructivist perspective, perceiving agency as a crucial avenue through which structures can be challenged. As such, it is ironic that, when it comes to military interventions, many become so determinist in emphasizing how structures dictate the impossibility of individuals making a difference.

Of course, soldiers’ actions alone cannot undo the imperial nature of interventions such as Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a need to take action at the macro-level too and challenge the imposition of the neo-liberal agenda on fragile states. Nonetheless, the encouragement of regendered soldiers is an important aspect of the solution. As Cynthia Cockburn argues in a different context, what appear to be quite limited initiatives or policies often contain within them the potential for more transformatory change. In her study of Equal Opportunities initiatives in a High Street retail organization, she argues that although its short-term aims are the minimizing of bias in recruitment and promotion procedures, ‘at its longest, its most ambitious and most progressive it has to be recognised as being a project of transformation for organisations’, because even the short-term agenda ‘brings into view the nature and purpose of institutions and the processes by which the power of some groups over others in institutions is built and renewed’ (Cockburn 1989: 218). In other words, what might seem like limited progress, or superficial changes, cannot but force us to look wider issues of how power structures institutions. I argue that in a military intervention context, small steps such as soldiers empathizing with Iraqi and Afghan Others could lead to soldiers questioning how militaries and militarism function to support neo-liberalism, and thus to decisions which might challenge such functioning.

It is also important, if we think empathy and empathetic cooperation is the solution, the way to dismantle hierarchical dichotomous thinking altogether, to be more empathetic towards soldiers, rather than dismiss them as pawns in the empire-building games of elites. This means paying attention to their lived realities in all their complexity. It does not mean accepting at face value any claims that they are a Force for Good, whether in protecting the nation or the people of Iraq or Afghanistan. But it does mean paying attention to their voices, how they make sense of what they are doing, their motivations and achievements, hopes and fears, the structures that influence their decisions and possibilities in life. It is through such an analysis that we can grasp the complexity of how power operates in social life, but also how we can perceive avenues for change. It is also about practising what we preach as the solution – empathy and respect for others.

This book is thus both a critique of the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and a critique of those who critique them as irredeemably neo-colonial endeavours wherein the actions of individuals do not count. Although I am in agreement with the feminist sceptics that the specific cases of military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have failed to increase security for ordinary people, I do not conclude that military interventions are always wrong. Injustice by its very nature involves those benefiting from it being more than willing to use force to defend their gains. As such, sometimes human rights may have to be defended by force, and military interventions may well be part of the solution to massive human rights violations, genocide or civil war (Sjoberg 2006; Beebe and Kaldor 2010: 7; Kronsell 2012). If cer...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Glossarys
• Autobiographies
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Can Soldiers Ever Be Used to Achieve Peace? Feminists Debate Military Intervention
• 3. What Can We Learn from Soldiers’ Narratives? Methodologies and Methods
• 4. British Soldier Identities and the War-Fighting Ethos
• 5. British Soldiers Doing and Undoing Empire in Iraq and Afghanistan
• 6. Regendered Soldiers and the Transformation of Hegemonic Masculinity
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index