Muristek
Tying gender to military intervention has often been disastrous. Is there another way?
From Laura Bush’s famous radio speech declaring that the invasion of Afghanistan would liberate its women, to the Trump administration’s invocation of women’s rights as it pulled out of the nuclear deal with Iran, war-making in the modern world is often linked to gender equality. Those who push the west to take a muscular approach to advancing its interests in distant places, through bombing, droning or economic warfare, like to weave sepia-tinted images of women in miniskirts into their advocacy. Whatever the actual motives, accompanying them with rhetoric about securing women’s freedom has become standard practice during western interventions.
These cynical moves are often what come to mind when we hear the words “ethical foreign policy”. But a whole realm of quiet work lies beyond them. As it stands, much of western foreign policy is concerned with shoring up peace and stability in areas of strategic interest to governments. That includes dispatching advisers to improve developing countries’ militaries, supporting healthcare and education through development aid, and doing diplomatic work to get disagreeing parties to negotiate before things deteriorate too far. For years now, various governments have woven gender equality into these efforts. When development aid sits formally in the same department as foreign policy, as it now does in Britain, those efforts can get serious political backing.
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