“Feminist foreign
policy” appears to be the flavour of the month. While we are still trying to
understand what that means, we have Margot Wallström to thank for popularising
the term. On being appointed as Sweden’s foreign minister in October 2014,
Wallström said that under her leadership Sweden would become the only country
in the world to conduct a “feminist
foreign policy”.
The fact that the
“F” word was voted as one of the top 10 words to be banned
by Time Magazine readers in 2014 certainly suggests that it has currency and
provokes debate, not least of all in the realm of international affairs. Though
Wallström is the first to coin her foreign policy “feminist” she follows
Hillary Rodham Clinton as US Secretary of State 2009-13, and William Hague as
UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs 2010-14, in
embracing a gender perspective on international security, development and aid.
Hague made “tackling
rape in warzones” the lynchpin of his Foreign Secretary tenure. Hague considered
the suppression
of women’s rights to be “the single greatest continuing injustice in the
world… the greatest single source of untapped potential available to
humanity, and the vital missing aspect of conflict resolution world.” Clinton made empowering women in developing countries one
of the six key principles of U.S. international development policy.
So what does a
feminist foreign policy mean in practice?
In a speech in
Washington DC in February this year Wallström argued
that “discrimination against women enables threats to peace and security” and
that “greater gender equality is therefore not only a goal in itself but also a
precondition for achieving our foreign, development and security policy
objectives”. In so doing, she implied that feminism
is an overall
approach to practicing foreign policy rather than a single-issue focus on
sexual violence in conflict or the economic empowerment of women in developing
countries, as Hague and Clinton advanced.
Like Hillary
Clinton, Wallstrom mentions the importance of the “take me to your women”
rather than your (read: male) leader approach when visiting conflict-affected
countries in particular. This approach to diplomacy and peace talks means
consultations have to happen outside formal channels because women are often
literally not there, recalling that New Yorker cartoon where one man suggests
“why don’t we ask the women in the room” and the realisation dawns among the
men around the table that there are none.
UN Women states
that women have been just 4 % of signatories, 2.4 % of chief
mediators, 3.7 % of witnesses and 9 % of negotiators between
1992-2011. Following her previous role as the UN
Secretary-General’s first ever Special Representative on sexual violence in
armed conflict, where she was tasked with carrying out the Security Council’s
women, peace and security agenda, Wallstrom strongly believes that including
women in peace and security decision-making will help create the conditions for
sustainable global peace.
Here we can think of women’s peacebuilding
leadership even under duress in places like Syria, Iraq and the Ukraine.
At the UN Commission on the Status of Women meetings last month in New York at panels organised by the Women’s
International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and the women’s rights
organisation, Madre we heard from Syrian women who against all odds are organising local
efforts to meet the everyday needs of people living under conflict or
fleeing extremist violence. The activation of grassroots civil society in
Syria, crucially led by women, under the most difficult conditions is the
untold story of the civil war.
But how can these women community leaders
participate in the high politics of peace negotiations from which women have for
the most part been completely excluded? This is where leaders like Margot
Wallström and William Hague come into the picture. They are crucial
interlocutors resourcing and opening spaces for actors who are making a
material difference to conflict prevention and peacebuilding on the ground and without weapons. This is the stuff of
feminist foreign policy.
So far, so good – but is a feminist
approach compatible with the use of military force and with increasing military
budgets? With respect to Sweden’s credibility in international affairs
Wallström asserts
that it is “not down to our military capacity but rather our stand on human
rights, democracy, development assistance.” She adds that Sweden will advocate
for stronger international positions on disarmament and development if elected
to a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council in 2016 (2017-2019). Yet Wallstrom's
embrace of feminist foreign policy has been forged against the reassertion
of Russian aggression in Ukraine; with Vladimir Putin flexing his muscle abroad
with threats of force in the Baltics and even sending
submarines to Australia’s northern coastline during the G20 meetings in a show
of Russian machismo. With realpolitik at the border, Sweden’s feminist foreign
policy deploys both feminine ‘soft’ and masculine ‘hard’ power. A human
rights-based foreign and security policy is advocated for alongside a 150-year
tradition of Swedish neutrality and self-defence which is resourced by
increasing military spending and a domestic arms industry that must export
weapons to be viable.
Herein lies a fundamental contradiction
from a feminist perspective. How is it possible to sell arms (when, regardless
of whom you first sell them to, they often end up perpetrating crimes) and at
the same time promote a humanitarian, human rights approach to foreign policy?
This conundrum applies to the United Kingdom and the United States as well: how
can you be a force for good in the world supporting human rights and conflict-resolution
but with a large trade including in arms with countries like Saudi Arabia?
Sweden’s answer to this conundrum has been unfolding in recent weeks in some “splendidly
undiplomatic”- we might say, ‘feminist’ diplomacy towards Saudi
Arabia.
In March,
Wallstrom declined to sign a cooperation agreement on arms exports with Saudi
Arabia also following the blocking by Saudia Arabia of her speech
to Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo in March that criticized the
Kingdom’s treatment of dissidents and women. In so doing, Wallström is the
first foreign minister to seek to implement Article 7 of the UN Arms Trade Treaty
ratified in 2013, which requires state parties to prohibit the export of arms
if they will be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of
international humanitarian or human rights law or to commit serious acts of
gender-based violence or violence against women and children. Saudi Arabia is
known to have an atrocious human rights record with respect to its own
citizens. It is currently engaged in a military bombing
campaign on Yemen which is having devastating effects on civilians. The
country is also believed to be supplying weapons
to the Syrian regime, where over 200,000 have been killed, many of them
civilians. What more evidence could you need to legally rescind an arms deal?
The ease of doing business to make war
In revoking the arms export deal, Wallström
is negotiating the tension between Sweden’s human rights-based foreign policy
with its self-defence military capacity. She is also righting past abuses of
state power in the case of the Swedish Defence Research Agency’s secret “Project
Simoon” to help Saudi Arabia build an anti-tank missile arms factory,
exposed in 2012 by Swedish
radio. Soon after announcing
Sweden’s decision to revoke the export
deal, Saudi Arabia retaliated
by denying business visas to Swedes and recalling their ambassador. Meanwhile Wallström was the subject of public
approbation in the Swedish media by the eons of Swedish multinationals
concerned about the impact on their exports, the likes of Volvo, Ikea, H&M,
so popular with especially female consumers globally. Wallström was also
visited by King Olaf who tried to persuade her to renege on her decision, while
the EU states have stood by,
silent by all accounts.
This is a feminist
fable for our neoliberal times. Even with a “feminine” social democratic
government in power, the fable shows just how hard it is to address the
unregulated global arms trade – one of the root causes of conflict – when
it is so lucrative and inseparable from most transnational business and global
trading relationships. Moreover, the fable reveals the spontaneous solidarity
of a diverse group of captains of industry and of state power, nearly all men,
who support the accumulation of profits over people’s lives and basic freedoms.
This is patriarchy at work – and a
feminist foreign policy worth its salt needs to confront regimes of masculine
hegemonies and the unequal entitlements that hold such hierarchical political
economic orders together at every level.
As WILPF Secretary-General Madeleine Rees
has argued
on 50.50, Margot Wallström shows us what can be done
when we put principles and human decency above “business as usual”. She
may have derailed an arms deal in undiplomatic circumstances, but feminist
foreign policy must be undiplomatic if it is to be transformative.
To stop wars, we need to hold to account
transnational business power, because it increasingly shapes state policies
more than it is shaped by them, and because it has the power to uphold human
rights, to be ethical, responsible, and responsive to consumers. And we need to
refocus our advocacy for international peace and security on state power. More
than ever, states value masculine qualities of competitiveness, aggression and
strategic rationality, with many governments turning their back on the security
and wellbeing of citizens and non-citizens as the analysis on the growth
in arms expenditures and tax breaks for multinational business relative to
austerity in state budgets for public health and education shows.
Gendered economic structures determine the
limits and the possibilities of security and foreign policy, but the politics
of democracy including in countries like Sweden, the United States and European
states, are the principal means through which these structures are established
and transformed. Exposing the connections between state military complexes and
transnational business will enable us to better understand how power works to fuel
and fund conflicts around the world.
A feminist foreign policy must have as its
central goal the long-term prevention of conflict and violence. It must
identify the gendered globalized structures that contribute to violence and
conflict such as economic
inequality and insecurity. And it must link demilitarisation and
disarmament to investment in people-centred development and justice. In this
way, Margot Wallström’s approach is similar to Women’s International League for
Peace and Freedom’s (WILPF) century-long
approach: that is, foreign policy needs to start at home with, to
take one example, saving
on weapons to spend on alleviating child poverty as the leader of the SNP in the
UK, Nicola Sturgeon is doing in the run up to the UK general election.
With Hillary Clinton getting ready to run
for the US Presidency, promising to be the country with the highest
military spending’s first female
commander-in-chief, it will be important to keep a close check on the
connection she makes between feminism
and foreign policy. Above all, foreign policy worthy of the adjective
“feminist” must support and resource non-militarised solutions to
conflict and challenge the self-interested masculine hegemonies in the state
and private sector that perpetuate the
business of killing. Towards this end,
establishing a US
Department of Peace – an idea muted by many in the past – would clearly
demonstrate the prioritizing of peace-building through international aid and
development initatives. In approaching
old problems using peaceful means, an initiative of this kind would be a vital
step in institutionalising a feminist foreign policy.
Jacqui True will be speaking at the WILPF centenary conference in the Hague April 22 – 29. Read read more articles in 50.50's series Women's Power to Stop War in the run up to the conference. Jennifer Allsopp and Marion Bowman will be reporting for openDemocracy 50.50.