Review of Men, Militarism & UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis
Whitworth, Sandra Men, Militarism & UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004; pp.224)
In her book Men, Militarism & UN Peacekeeping, Sandra Whitworth paints a disturbing yet not entirely convincing picture of United Nations operations as they pertain to peacekeeping missions. She argues that the so-called best practices of the UN and it’s third-party military forces have extremely detrimental and ultimately fatal implications that overshadow the missions themselves. (183) At the heart of these “best practices” is the contradiction which emerges as a result of peacekeepers being trained first and foremost as killing machines in a hyper-masculine environment. (12) Using Canada’s missions to Somalia and Cambodia, she asserts that the subjugation of feminine traits and values results in severe exploitation of women and children as they are the most vulnerable members of society. While she provides a provocative and passionate exposé littered with thorough research this book leaves many loose ends and unanswered questions – then again, perhaps answers are not her objective.
She begins with a brief explanation of the origin of UN peacekeeping in response to conflicts emerging after the Cold War. Peacekeeping, in turn, became an accessible military platform for many smaller states including Canada and gave way to the military myth that, to this day, permeates Canadian culture. This myth has not only fueled our national identity but distinguished ourself from the “other” as it hails Canada to be “a selfless middle-power, acting with a kind of moral purity not normally exhibited by contemporary states.” (14) In turn however, it “serves as part of the contemporary colonial encounter, establishing knowledge claims about both “us” and “them,” knowledge claims that then serve to legitimatize the missions themselves.” (15) Likewise, for the UN, while it is defined by peacekeeping, peacekeeping gives purpose to the UN. (25)
Through this lens, Whitworth examines the UN’s mission to Cambodia, which many deemed a success and while they did reduce the violence that prevailed there and repatriated almost 370,000 Cambodian refugees, the peacekeeping soldiers who were deployed left a trail of tragedy behind them. The UNTAC’s mission created a booming prostitution industry and left the economy in chaos. Whitworth narrows in on Canada’s peacekeeping shortcomings in Chapter four as she uses the atrocities in Somalia as a case study for evidence of the implications of an overly masculine militarism. She argues that “soldiers trained for battle often feel cheated by their peacekeeping role.” (86) So when the Airborne troops arrived in Somalia, they were ready for some kills. Some tried to write this off as a few bad apples but as Whitworth demonstrates, aggression targeted by racism, sexism and insecurity are common and a part of military rights and rituals.
In Chapter five, Whitworth recognizes the attention the UN has given to gender, peace and security issues but sees it as no more than empty rhetoric. She quotes Anne Orford in saying, “many of these understandings signal the ways in which ‘a gender perspective can be mapped onto existing ways of doing business without questioning any of the bases upon which peace, security or even the category woman is understood.’” (133) Whitworth sees these failures of conflict prevention as the result of “insufficient financial resources or properly trained staff, an inability to collect and recognize the right kinds of data, [and] failure of coordination, either within the UN or between the UN and local governments, militaries, and agencies.” (134) Finally, in Chapter six she focuses in again on Canada: it’s military practices and the results of conflict on the individual, namely, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Whitworth concludes her book with the question, “Do Warriors Make the Best Peacekeepers?” Simply put, “no” – Whitworth makes this evidentially clear throughout. But where do we go from here? One might think that she is trying to argue that there needs to be a more encompassing gender mainstreaming program, sufficient training on culture and gender or more women making military decisions and deployed on peacekeeping missions but these argument are left inconclusive. She assert that the UN’s attempt at gender mainstreaming was more a matter of theory than practice citing statistics from the past talks on Afghanistan. Moreover, their approach to gender, is inconsistent but why wouldn’t it be? The United Nations is just as it’s name implies: many nations. If “mainstreaming views gender as shaped by cultural, class, religious and ethnic differences and recognizes the power differentials between women and men, the fluid nature of those differences, and that these differences are made manifest in a variety of ways” than the expression of gender values are going to be inconsistent between nations. In Somalia, soldiers stated that they “treated their women badly, and were a bunch of homosexuals” and while I am not condoning the behavior of the Somalians, Westerns must make judgements through an internationally unbiased lens. Furthermore, based upon this argument, Whitworth would have to totally disregard any role of women in the brutalization, dehumanization, torture and abuse of men at home and abroad in cases such as Abu Ghraib in which Lynndie England ( a woman) was found equally guilty, imprisoned and stripped of her rank.
Throughout this book, I found myself questioning whether Whitworth was taking up issues with the UN, the Canadian Military, peacekeeping in general or all three or, is it with the UN’s 2000 Brahimi report that called for more “robust” peacekeeping, which she interprets to mean more militaristic? But perhaps her contention is with none of these and she ultimately just wants to prompt conversation about non-militarized peacekeeping as she concludes, “It is time to insist on the ideas that will be dismissed as impractical and idealistic by the United Nations.” “Militarized peacekeeping is founded on a series of contradictions, such that it cannot deliver on the promises it makes to those who are subject to the missions or even those who are deployed on peacekeeping missions.” (186)
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