Feminism Addendum - International Relations - WNDI 2006

WNDI 2006 1
Feminism IR Addendum Negative

Charlotte, Dareell, Hunter, Morgan and KC
Fem IR Addendum
Fem IR Addendum..........................................................................................................................................................1
IR Gendered Identities..................................................................................................................................................2
I/L-realism=warring........................................................................................................................................................4
Link-Negative Peace.......................................................................................................................................................5
Imp-Negative Peace........................................................................................................................................................6
Link—National Serive....................................................................................................................................................8
Link--security/Uniqueness .............................................................................................................................................9
Link-“women are peaceful”..........................................................................................................................................10
Link—“Proliferation Bad”............................................................................................................................................11
Link—National Development Economy......................................................................................................................12
I/L-Masculine Ecology.............................................................................................................................................13
Impact—Ecology..........................................................................................................................................................14
Impact—Structural Violence.........................................................................................................................................17
AT: Permutation............................................................................................................................................................19
AT: Hegemony..............................................................................................................................................................20
AT: Realism Good.........................................................................................................................................................22
AT: Try/Die-Security o/w..............................................................................................................................................29
AT: Women in International Arena................................................................................................................................31
AT: We incorporate women...........................................................................................................................................32
AT: Ivory Tower............................................................................................................................................................33
Alternative Solves.........................................................................................................................................................35
Framework....................................................................................................................................................................36
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IR Gendered Identities
Any attempts to alleviate exclusionary practices must begin with the construction of gender
identities by the realist discourse of international relations.
Hooper [Charlotte] MANLY STATES: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics
Columbia University Press 2001.
Postpositivists, in contrast, have tended to view the question from the opposite direction, asking rather how
both the practices and the theories of international relations might be implicated in the construction of
politicized identities. For example, David Campbell (1992) has shown how U.S. foreign policy has been used
to construct a U.S. identity; Roxanne Doty (1996) has argued that British postwar Commonwealth and
immigration policy helped to reconstruct British identity; and Cynthia Weber (1995) has explored the
performative nature of apparently stable sovereign identities. That theories, too, might be implicated in
identity construction follows from the observation that the production and circulation of theories is a power-
and culture-laden set of practices in itself. Thus Richard Ashley (1989) has been able to show how realism
uses dualistic language and the notion of “anarchy” to construct a “sovereign” identity, and William Connolly
(1991) has discussed how the notion of identity has always, in one way or another, been predicated on
difference.5 The approach to identities taken by postpositivists runs counter to the tradition of regarding
identities as biological, sociological, or psychological givens. In the postpositivist view, identities are seen as
mutable and as constituted through political, social, and discursive processes, rather than as 6 Introduction
Introduction 7 foundational or fixed. Examining the politics of identity construction forms part of the
expansion of “the political” out of formal politics and international relations and into other areas of life that
were perhaps previously assigned to sociology (Rowe 1995). However, what counts as political is itself a
political question. Politics has no natural borders but is defined and contested differently in each age.
Different things get politicized, and identity is politicized right now—as is testified by contemporary
controversies over multiculturalism, feminism, race, and religious and ethnic identities. Traditional political
conceptions of the self that pay no attention to the politics of identity but merely take identities as the
foundation of politics are not adequate to the task of mapping such contemporary struggles (Emmett and
Llewellyn 1995). Nor can they account for the ways in which the politics of identity construction might
intersect with and inform other, more conventional forms of politics. Feminist contributors to international
relations share this interest in the politics of identity construction with other postpositivist approaches. The
politics of identities is, after all, heavily gendered, and has long been at the core of feminist concerns
(Nicholson 1990). Virtually all feminist international- relations scholarship that examines gender
constructions, divisions, and exclusions deals with, implicitly if not explicitly, the oppositional construction
of masculine and feminine gender identities.
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International relations shape gender identities prioritizing all that is masculine will
denigrating what is feminine.
The focus here is not on the practices of international relations per se, but on the symbolic role they play in
linking the politics of culture and gender identity with the discipline of IR. The chapter therefore considers
some of the connections between masculinist practices, multiple masculinities, and theoretical controversies
within the discipline itself. International Relations and the Production of Masculinities There is an interesting
anomaly between the significant role that international affairs play in the production of identities, including
gender identities, and the relative absence of discussions of identity in mainstream approaches to the
discipline of IR. Masculinities are not just domestic cultural variables: both political events and masculine
identities are the products of men’s participation in international relations. As noted earlier, the Victorian
English Gentleman was defined and constructed in relation to a complex, global set of racialized gender
identities. As a type, therefore, he was at least as much a product of imperial politics as of domestic
understandings of Englishness, aristocracy, and masculinity. In terms of the three dimensions of gender
identity discussed in chapter 1, a number of two-way links can be made between international relations and
the production of specifically masculine identities, as depicted in figure 3.1. It is a commonplace observation
that international relations reflects a world of men in that they influence international affairs through their
physical capacities, through (masculinist) practices at the institutional level, and through the symbolic links
between masculinity and power.
IR has embedded gendered identities into every aspect of our society. It is also the best
forum for attacking gendered relations and reconstructing identies.
These cultural connections, between notions of masculinity and the “international” and media representations
of glamorized masculinities in an international context, whether fictional or in the guise of news and current
affairs, are no less important in constructing masculinities than practices on the ground. They provide a
continuing source of imaginative inspiration that informs the meaning of such practices and also help to
reflect and produce the highly gendered cultural framework within which such practices are shaped and
interpreted. Although they are not all directly relevant to international politics, they form a network of
cultural meanings within which international relations are embedded, and without which its practices cannot
be fully understood. As well as operating at a general level, these cultural connections must also inform the
nexus of personal, intellectual, and professional interests that practitioners and academics bring to their work.
Academics and practitioners do not work in a cultural vacuum. It would be interesting to investigate how
much men in the field use their own participation in internation- 88 Masculinities, IR, and Gender Politics
Masculinities in International Relations 89 al relations to achieve or bolster masculinity for themselves, as a
core of their identities, whether self-consciously or otherwise. Challenging the gendered nature of IR will be
an uphill task if it not only proves threatening to mainstream practitioners at an academic or even a
professional level, but also at the level of personal identity and psychology. Academic IR and the Politics of
Identity There may be numerous ways in which international relations are implicated in the construction of
masculinities and masculine identities: through the direct disciplining of male bodies, through numerous
political and institutional practices, and through broader cultural and ideological links. In contrast to this
possible wealth of examples, IR as a discipline has generally shown little interest in, and has been ill-
equipped to deal with, issues related to the politics of identity construction. Before the intervention of
feminists, the closest mainstream IR got to acknowledging the relevance of gender identities was in the
assumptions about (masculine) human nature that underpinned theory in the classical tradition—assumptions
that tended to mirror the prevailing naturalized discourses of gender.
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I/L-realism=warring
Realists’ version of states’ security depends on a partial representation of human nature. A

more inclusive perspective of human nature will include not only conflictual behavior but
cooperative behavior as well.
Tickner, J. Ann, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the College of the Holy Cross, where she teaches
International Relations. She is 1993-94 Vice President of the International Studies Association and has been a
Visiting Research Scholar at the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. She is the author of Self-
Reliance Versus Power Politics: American and Indian Experiences in Building Nation-States, also published by
Columbia University Press, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security,
1992
Realists have offered us an instrumental version of states' security-seeking behavior, which, I have argued,
depends on a partial representation of human behavior associated with a stereotypical hegemonic
masculinity. Feminist redefinitions of citizenship allow us to envisage a less militarized version of states'
identities, and feminist theories can also propose alternative models for states' international security-seeking
behavior, extrapolated from a more comprehensive view of human behavior. Realists use state-of-nature
stories as metaphors to describe the insecurity of states in an anarchical international system. I shall suggest
an alternative story, which could equally be applied to the behavior of individuals in the state of nature.
Although frequently unreported in standard historical accounts, it is a true story, not a myth, about a state of
nature in early nineteenth-century America. Among those present in the first winter encampment of the 1804-
1806 Lewis and Clark expedition into the Northwest territories was Sacajawea, a member of the Shoshone
tribe. Sacajawea had joined the expedition as the wife of a French interpreter; her presence was proving
invaluable to the security of the expedition's members, whose task it was to explore uncharted territory and
establish contact with the native inhabitants to inform them of claims to these territories by the United States.
Although unanticipated by its leaders, the presence of a woman served to assure the native inhabitants that
the expedition was peaceful since the Native Americans assumed that war parties would not include women:
the expedition was therefore safer because it was not armed. This story demonstrates that the introduction of
women can change the way humans are assumed to behave in the state of nature. Just as Sacajawea's
presence changed the Native American's expectations about the behavior of intruders into their territory, the
introduction of women into our state-of-nature myths could change the way we think about the behavior of
states in the international system. The use of the Hobbesian analogy in international relations theory is based
on a partial view of human nature that is stereotypically masculine; a more inclusive perspective would see
human nature as both conflictual and cooperative, containing elements of social reproduction and
interdependence as well as domination and separation. Generalizing from this more comprehensive view of
human nature, a feminist perspective would assume that the potential for international community also exists
and that an atomistic, conflictual view of the inter-national system is only a partial representation of reality.
Liberal individualism, the instrumental rationality of the marketplace, and the defector's self-help approach in
Rousseau's stag hunt are all, in analagous ways, based on a partial masculine model of human behavior.
These characterizations of human behavior, with their atomistic view of human society, do not assume the
need for interdependence and cooperation. 93 Yet states frequently exhibit aspects of cooperative behavior
when they engage in diplomatic negotiations. As Cynthia Enloe states, diplomacy runs smoothly when there
is trust and confidence between officials representing governments with conflicting interests. She suggests
that many agreements are negotiated informally in the residences of ambassadors where the presence of
diplomatic wives creates an atmosphere in which trust can best be cultivated. 94 As Enloe concludes, women,
often in positions that are unremunerated or undervalued, remain vital to creating and maintaining trust
between men in a hostile world.
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Link-Negative Peace
The affirmative represents peace as an absence of war this is only a negative peace which
perpetuates the vicious cycle of violence and militarism in contrast, positive peace
recognizes mutual relations of non-violence which creates the possibility of structural
change.
Ha Poong Kim Philosophy Department, Eastern Illinois University, USA Bulletin of Peace Proposals, Vol. 18, No.
1, 1987
Peace denotes a nonwarring condition. This condition may be consequent upon a particular human relation
committed to nonviolence, as is the case with a relation between family members or between friends. On the
other hand, peace may be simply accidental to an interplay between forces of violence, as is the case with
peace imposed upon the vanquished by the victor, peace following a cease-fire between two enemies, or
peace maintained by a balance of nuclear terror. I call peace inherent in a relation committed to nonviolence
positive peace, and peace merely accidental to an interplay of forces negative peace.' Generally, the solidness
of positive peace between two parties is dependent on the degrees of their mutual confidence in each other's
commitment to nonviolence. The stronger their mutual confidence, the less likely that they resort to violence.
And vice versa. Here we see a happy circle of mutual trust and nonviolence. By definition, positive peace is
incompatible with armament. On the other hand, negative peace is not only compatible with armament, but it
actually stimulates armament. Obviously there is no mutual trust in a relation of negative peace. And this
results in a vicious circle of fear and armament. In the absence of a commitment to nonviolence, a relation of
negative peace is entirely subject to a mechanical interplay of forces and impulses, both physical and
psychological. Although a relation of peace necessarily rejects any act of violence, it may be possible to
speak, in an extended sense, of a relation of positive peace in which violence may break out from time to
time, as long as there is a general commitment to nonviolence. And similarly we may speak of a relation of
negative peace in which peace somehow prevails despite occasional out bursts of violence. Here we may do
well to remember Hobbes' comparison of a state of war to foul weather. Noting that the nature of weather
involves 'the notion of time', he says that 'the nature of foul weather lies not in a shower or two of rain but in
an inclination thereto of many days together'.' A state of positive peace may be compared to fine weather,
which may include occasional sprinkles and even thunderstorms. Analogously, we may compare a relation of
negative peace to cloudy, threatening weather, which may or may not break into actual showers or storms.
Once a relation of positive peace is understood in its extended sense, it is clear that such a relation is
observable practically everywhere, wherever people live or come together – for example, between members
of the same family or of the same country, and even between individual citizens of two enemy nations. The
relation of positive peace is thus not at all a utopian one: it is a relation humanity is fully capable of.
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Imp-Negative Peace
Focus on war as an isolated event produces a politics of crises control that attempts to
manage outbreaks of violence from flashpoint to flashpoint. This mode of being reproduces
militarism and perpetuates the structural violence of “peacetime militarism”
Chris Cuomo. Ph.D., 1992, University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Philosophy University of
Cincinnati Hypatia Fall 1996.Vol.11, Iss. 4; pg. 30
In "Gender and `Postmodern' War," Robin Schott introduces some of the ways in which war is currently best seen
not as an event but as a presence (Schott 1995). Schott argues that postmodern understandings of persons, states, and
politics, as well as the high-tech nature of much contemporary warfare and the preponderance of civil and nationalist
wars, render an eventbased conception of war inadequate, especially insofar as gender is taken into account. In this
essay, I will expand upon her argument by showing that accounts of war that only focus on events are impoverished
in a number of ways, and therefore feminist consideration of the political, ethical, and ontological dimensions of war
and the possibilities for resistance demand a much more complicated approach. I take Schott's characterization of
war as presence as a point of departure, though I am not committed to the idea that the constancy of militarism, the
fact of its omnipresence in human experience, and the paucity of an event-based account of war are exclusive to
contemporary postmodern or postcolonial circumstances.(1) Theory that does not investigate or even notice the
omnipresence of militarism cannot represent or address the depth and specificity of the everyday effects of
militarism on women, on people living in occupied territories, on members of military institutions, and on the
environment. These effects are relevant to feminists in a number of ways because military practices and institutions
help construct gendered and national identity, and because they justify the destruction of natural nonhuman entities
and communities during peacetime. Lack of attention to these aspects of the business of making or preventing
military violence in an extremely technologized world results in theory that cannot accommodate the
connections among the constant presence of militarism, declared wars, and other closely related social phenomena,
such as nationalistic glorifications of motherhood, media violence, and current ideological gravitations to military
solutions for social problems. Ethical approaches that do not attend to the ways in which warfare and military
practices are woven into the very fabric of life in twenty-first century technological states lead to crisis-based
politics and analyses. For any feminism that aims to resist oppression and create alternative social and political
options, crisis-based ethics and politics are problematic because they distract attention from the need for sustained
resistance to the enmeshed, omnipresent systems of domination and oppression that so often function as givens in
most people's lives. Neglecting the omnipresence of militarism allows the false belief that the absence of declared
armed conflicts is peace, the polar opposite of war. It is particularly easy for those whose lives are shaped by the
safety of privilege, and who do not regularly encounter the realities of militarism, to maintain this false belief. The
belief that militarism is an ethical, political concern only regarding armed conflict, creates forms of resistance to
militarism that are merely exercises in crisis control. Antiwar resistance is then mobilized when the "real" violence
finally occurs, or when the stability of privilege is directly threatened, and at that point it is difficult not to respond
in ways that make resisters drop all other political priorities. Crisis-driven attention to declarations of war might
actually keep resisters complacent about and complicitous in the general presence of global militarism. Seeing
war as necessarily embedded in constant military presence draws attention to the fact that horrific, state-sponsored
violence is happening nearly all over, all of the time, and that it is perpetrated by military institutions and other
militaristic agents of the state. Moving away from crisis-driven politics and ontologies concerning war and
military violence also enables consideration of relationships among seemingly disparate phenomena, and therefore
can shape more nuanced theoretical and practical forms of resistance. For example, investigating the ways in which
war is part of a presence allows consideration of the relationships among the events of war and the following: how
militarism is a foundational trope in the social and political imagination; how the pervasive presence and symbolism
of soldiers/warriors/patriots shape meanings of gender; the ways in which threats of state-sponsored violence are a
sometimes invisible/sometimes bold agent of racism, nationalism, and corporate interests; the fact that vast numbers
of communities, cities, and nations are currently in the midst of excruciatingly violent circumstances. It also
provides a lens for considering the relationships among the various kinds of violence that get labeled "war." Given
current American obsessions with nationalism, guns, and militias, and growing hunger for the death penalty, prisons,
and a more powerful police state, one cannot underestimate the need for philosophical and political attention to
connections among phenomena like the "war on drugs," the "war on crime," and other state-funded militaristic
campaigns. I propose that the constancy of militarism and its effects on social reality be reintroduced as a crucial
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locus of contemporary feminist attentions, and that feminists emphasize how wars are eruptions and manifestations
of omnipresent militarism that is a product and tool of multiply oppressive, corporate, technocratic states.(2)
Feminists should be particularly interested in making this shift because it better allows consideration of the effects of
war and militarism on women, subjugated peoples, and environments. While giving attention to the constancy of
militarism in contemporary life we need not neglect the importance of addressing the specific qualities of direct,
large-scale, declared military conflicts. But the dramatic nature of declared, large-scale conflicts should not
obfuscate the ways in which military violence pervades most societies in increasingly technologically sophisticated
ways and the significance of military institutions and everyday practices in shaping reality. Philosophical
discussions that focus only on the ethics of declaring and fighting wars miss these connections, and also miss the
ways in which even declared military conflicts are often experienced as omnipresent horrors. These approaches also
leave unquestioned tendencies to suspend or distort moral judgement in the face of what appears to be the
inevitability of war and militarism.
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Link—National Serive
The promotion of nationalism promotes the political/public priorities which involves the
domination of women by men.
The relationships between international relations, masculine identities, and popular culture (as represented here) are
summed up in figure 1. These relationships all involve influences running in both directions. In the figure, the arrow
running from masculine identities toward international relations is the one more usually considered, whereby
international relations is said to reflect the interests and identities of men and masculinity. To mention just a few of
these connections: international relations is a world of traditionally masculine pursuits—in which women have been,
and by and large continue to be, invisible (Enloe 1990; Halliday 1991; Peterson and Runyan 1993, 1988). The focus
on war, diplomacy, states, statesmen, and high-level economic negotiations has overwhelmingly represented the
lives and identities of men. This is because of the institutionalization of gender differences in society at large and the
consequent paucity of women in high office. Between 1970 and 1990, for example, women worldwide represented
under 5 percent of heads of state, cabinet ministers, senior national policymakers, and senior persons in
intergovernmental organizations (Peterson and Runyan 1993, 6). States have historically been oppressive to women,
who have often been denied full citizenship. Rights and duties of citizenship have depended on the bearing of arms,
a duty by and large confined to men (Stiehm 1982). Men form not only the decision makers, but also the law
enforcers, backed by the threat of violence (Enloe 1987). In fact, masculine violence has become thoroughly
embedded, institutionalized, and legitimized in the modern state (Connell 1990). Meanwhile, the rhetoric of
nationalism has been found to be heavily gendered (Parker et al 1992), with national identity often being articulated
through control over women (Kandiyoti 1992). Although many women have been active in national- liberation
movements, nonetheless, nationalism has been found to have “a special affinity for male society [which] legitimizes
the dominance of men over women” (Steans 1998, 69).
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Link--security/Uniqueness
The early 90s marked the beginning of an era to promote human security. Their attempts
at an emotive appeal to enhance national security which is diametrically opposed to human
security will replicate the security crises responsible for militarism. A critical feminist
perspective is crucial to enhance human security which will enhance the well-being of every
form of life.
Hudson, [Heidi Heidi Hudson is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of the
Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Current research activities include a National Research Foundation-funded
project on globalization and security in South Africa] “‘Doing’ Security As Though Humans Matter: A Feminist
Perspective on Gender and the Politics of Human Security” Security Dialogue vol. 36, no. 2,
http://sdi.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/36/2/155 June 2005.
THE NEW ‘MACHISMO’ heralded by the post-9/11 global war against terror threatens to drown out the
progress made during the 1990s with regard to building a global normative consensus on the importance of
human security. Today, more than ever, human security coexists uneasily with national security. Since the
analytical potential of feminist epistemology cannot be divorced from its political and transformative value, a
critical feminist perspective on the study of security, and especially human security, is crucial to overcome
certain gender silences. Feminist critiques of so-called natural or depoliticized gender dichotomies within
state-centric discourse1 delegitimize discriminatory practices and institutions as socio-historical
constructions and ‘repoliticize’ orthodox views on security by challenging the role of the state as provider of
security. Gender is intrinsic to the subject matter and politics of security. In the context of the present article,
feminism refers to the area where theory and practice meet with regard to transforming the unequal power
relationships between women and men. It is more than an intellectual enterprise for the creation of
knowledge. It also draws on the struggles of the women’s movement and the theorizing emanating from those
experiences. In this article, gender as unit of analysis is viewed as socially learned behaviour and
expectations that distinguish between masculinity and femininity (Peterson & Runyan, 1993). Gender
identity as social construction is malleable over time and place, thus allowing for the possibility of female
emancipation (Tickner, 2002a). Thus, gender not only personifies a specific relationship of power, but also
serves as a dynamic analytical and political tool by means of which gender as a unit of analysis and women
and men as identity groups are used in tandem (but not interchangeably). This means that statements about
femininity are necessarily also claims about masculinity, and that a challenge to our understanding of
women’s security necessarily transforms our understanding of men’s security. A feminist redefinition of
power in relational terms, where the survival of one depends on the well-being of the other, would not only
enhance women’s security but also that of men, who are similarly threatened by the conventional gendered
approach to security.
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Link-“women are peaceful”
The myth that women are more peaceful than men only perpetuates the notion of citizen-
warrior as masculine and necessitates the need for women to be protected.
1992
Building on the notion of hegemonic masculinity, the notion of the citizen-warrior depends on a devalued
femininity for its construction. In international relations, this devalued femininity is bound up with myths
about women as victims in need of protection; the protector/protected myth contributes to the legitimation of
a militarized version of citizenship that results in unequal gender relations that can precipitate violence
against women. Certain feminists have called for the construction of an enriched version of citizenship that
would depend less on military values and more on an equal recognition of women's contributions to society.
Such a notion of citizenship cannot come about, however, until myths that perpetuate views of women as
victims rather than agents are eliminated. One such myth is the association of women with peace, an
association that has been invalidated through considerable evidence of women's support for men's wars in
many societies. 79 In spite of a gender gap, a plurality of- women generally support war and national security
policies; Bernice Carroll suggests that the association of women and peace is one that has been imposed on
women by their disarmed condition. 80 In the West, this association grew out of the Victorian ideology of
women's moral superiority and the glorification of motherhood. This ideal was expressed by- feminist
Charlotte Perkins Gilman whose book Herland was first serialized in The Forerunner in 1915. Gilman
glorified women as caring and nurturing mothers whose private sphere skills could benefit the world at large.
81 Most turn-of-the-century feminists shared Gilman's ideas. But if the implication of this view -was that
women were disqualified from participating in the corrupt world of political and economic power by virtue
of their moral superiority, the result could only be the perpetuation of male dominance. Many contemporary
feminists see dangers in the continuation of these essentializing myths that can only result in the perpetuation
of women's subordination and reinforce dualisms that serve to make men more powerful. The association of
femininity with peace lends support to an idealized masculinity that depends on constructing women as
passive victims in need of protection. It also contributes to the claim that women are naive in matters relating
to international politics.
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Link—“Proliferation Bad”
Scenarios that describe proliferation as a threat perpetuate realism’s gendering of non

Western states
1992
Such images, although somewhat muted, remain today and are particularly prevalent in the thinking of Western
states when they are dealing with the Third World. In the post-World War II era, there was considerable debate in
Western capitals about the dangers of premature independence for primitive peoples. In the postindependence era,
former colonial states and their leaders have frequently been portrayed as emotional and unpredictable,
characteristics also associated with women. C. D. Jackson, an adviser to President Eisenhower and a patron of
Western development theorists in the 1950s, evoked these feminine characteristics when he observed that "the
Western world has somewhat more experience with the operations of war, peace, and parliamentary procedures than
the swirling mess of emotionally super-charged Africans and Asiatics and Arabs that outnumber us." 60 According
to Hunt, Eisenhower himself regarded the English-speaking people of the world as superior to all the rest; thus they
provided a model for right behavior in the international system. This idea is not incompatible with contemporary
realism, which, while it has been an approach dominated by white Anglo-Saxon men, has prescribed the behavior of
states throughout the international system. As we have witnessed the enormous buildup of nuclear weapons on the
part of the United States and the former Soviet Union beyond any level that could be considered "rational," our
policymakers caution that only a few of these same weapons in the hands of people in the Third World pose a greater
threat to world security.
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Link—National Development Economy
National development priorities exclude ignore the subsistence sector where much of
women’ s work is performed.
1992
As I have already discussed, Third World development strategies have tended to ignore the subsistence sector
where much of women's labor is being performed, with the result that modernization has had a differential
impact on men and women and has in certain instances actually reduced the position of women. Due to the
virtual absence of women from local and national power structures, development programs have tended to
support projects in areas of production that are dominated by men. To achieve economic justice for rural
women in the Third World, development must target projects that benefit women, particularly those in the
subsistence sector. Improvements in agriculture should focus on consumption as well as production; in many
parts of Africa, gathering water and fuel, under conditions of increasing scarcity and environmental
degradation, are taking up larger portions of women's time and energy. Since women are so centrally
involved in the satisfaction of basic needs in households and in the subsistence economy, feminist approaches
to international political economy must be supportive of a basic needs approach where basic needs are
defined inclusively, in terms of both material needs and the need for political participation. I have argued that
export-oriented development strategies have tended to contribute to domestic inequality and, in times of
recession and increasing international indebtedness, have had a particularly detrimental impact on women; a
strategy that seeks to satisfy basic needs within the domestic economy may thus be the best type of strategy
to improve the welfare of women. Local satisfaction of basic needs requires more attention to subsistence or
domestic food production rather than to growing crops for export markets. A more self-reliant economy
would also be less vulnerable to the decisions of foreign investors, whose employment policies can be
particularly exploitative of women. 48 Basic needs strategies are compatible with values of nurturance and
caring; such strategies are dependency-reducing and can empower women to take charge of their own lives
and create conditions that increase their own security. As Anne Marie Goetz claims, women have been
completely absent from the process of setting national development priorities. I argued previously that
women must be seen as agents in the provision of their own physical security; creating conditions under
which women become agents in the provision of their own economic security is also imperative. Just as
women are seen as victims in need of protection in the protector/protected relationship, when women become
visible in the world economy, they tend to do so as welfare problems or as individuals marginalized from
mainstream development projects. Separating women from men, often as an undifferentiated category,
ignores the importance of relations between men and women and the detrimental effects of hierarchical
gender relationships on women's economic security. It also ignores the ways in which women's varying
identities and development interests as farmers, factory workers, merchants, and householders bear on gender
relations in different contexts. 49 To overcome the problems of essentialization as well as the perception of
victimization, women must be represented at all levels of economic planning, and their knowledge must be
seen as valuable rather than unscientific. At a time when existing political and economic institutions seem
increasingly incapable of solving many global problems, feminist perspectives, by going beyond an
investigation of market relations, state behavior, and capitalism, could help us to understand how the global
economy affects those on the fringes of the market, the state, or in households as we attempt to build a more
secure world where inequalities based on gender and other forms of discrimination are eliminated. Looking
at the world economy from the perspective of those on its fringes can help us think about constructing a
model concerned with the production of life rather than the production of things and wealth. Maria Mies
argues that the different conception of labor upon which such a model depends could help us adapt our life-
style at a time when we are becoming increasingly conscious of the finiteness of the earth and its resources.
50
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I/L-Masculine Ecology
The realist reliance on a mechanistic view of nature reordered reality around a masculinist
notion of order and power.
1992
.By the end of the nineteenth century, the expansion of the European state system had brought the entire
world into an integrated space upon which the geopolitical tradition imposed the hierarchical notion of order
and power that has been fundamental to traditional international relations theory and practice. While
geopolitics made explicit the domination that states have attempted to impose on their natural environment,
modern science's mechanistic view of nature provided the framing assumptions basic to the Western tradition
of international relations theory. Hobbes's Leviathan, his solution to the dangers inherent in this system, is a
mechanistic model of society in which order can be guaranteed only by an absolute sovereign operating the
machine from outside. 33 The lack of such a sovereign in the state of nature leads to disorder, which results
from unbridled competition for scarce resources. As discussed in a previous chapter, this condition of
"anarchy" has been used by realists as a metaphor to portray the international system; the wildness of nature
beyond the boundaries of an orderly "domesticated" political space demands that states try to control and
dominate this external environment through the accumulation of national power that can protect their
attempts to appropriate necessary natural resources. Hobbes's Leviathan was a model for a society developed
in the seventeenth century when the perception of the universe shifted from organic to mechanistic.
According to Merchant, one of the most significant achievements of mechanism as a worldview was its
reordering of reality around a masculinist notion of order and power. 34 In addition to their potential for
dominating nature, machines brought certainty and control. In international relations, the search for control
has also led theorists and practitioners to mechanistic models such as power balancing with its seeming
promise of imposing order on a disorderly international system. But power balancing and its resultant
practice of self-help through military means if necessary do not offer solutions for the security of the natural
environment. Paradoxically, the quest for national security, which involves the appropriation of natural
resources through the domination of global space, is a historical process that has actually contributed to a
decline in the security of the natural environment. Given the potential of modern weapons for mass
destruction, military force, the last resort of states for security enhancement, has become the ultimate threat
to the natural environment. This paradox has stimulated some international relations scholars to begin
reconceptualizing security in ecological terms and to challenge the traditional formulations of geographical
space. Such thinking attempts to move beyond a worldview whose boundaries are imposed by traditional
national security concerns to one that reconceptualizes geographical space in terms of the fragility of the
natural environment and its human inhabitants
WNDI 2006 14
Impact—Ecology
The international arena excludes ecological concerns in response to the dichotomization of

the public and private and the positing of feminine characteristics with all things nature.
1992
Until very recently ecological concerns have not been at the center of the agenda of international relations
theory or practice. A global issue that defies national boundaries and calls for collective action, caring for the
environment does not fit well with the power-seeking, instrumental behavior of states that I have described in
previous chapters. Barry Commoner's definition of ecology as the "science of planetary housekeeping" 1 is
not the business of Realpolitik; such metaphors evoke images of the devalued private domain of women
rather than the "important" public world of diplomacy and national security. Ecological bumper stickers with
such messages as "Love Your Mother" are hardly designed to appeal to those engaged in the "serious"
business of state-craft and war. Therefore the inattention to environmental problems and the silencing of
women in international relations may be more than coincidental. The term ecology, which means the study of
life forms "at home," is based on the Greek root for house; its modern meaning is the interrelationships
between living organisms and their environment. 2 These definitions evoke images of a domestic space
traditionally populated by women, children, and servants. Ecology's emphasis on holism and reproduction
and metaphors such as global housekeeping connect it to women's rather than men's life experiences.
The masculine approach to international relations promotes the view of nature as a

resource to be competitively exploited.
1992
Since its birth in seventeenth-century Europe, the modern state system has had an uneasy relationship with its
natural environment; natural resources and geographical spaces have been viewed as resources for increasing
state power and wealth. Feminist writers such as Carolyn Merchant and Evelyn Fox Keller describe a
fundamental change in the Western scientific community's attitude toward the natural environment that also
began in seventeenth-century Europe. Before this scientific revolution, nature had been seen as a living
system of which humans formed an integral part; in the seventeenth century, human beings became
preeminent, and nature began to be viewed as a machine to be exploited for human benefit. This mechanistic
view of nature has been highly compatible with the needs of a competitive international system, a world
divided into antagonistic political units, each seeking to enhance its power by securing and increasing access
to natural resources, through geographical expansion when necessary. Since this is a worldview that has had
important, although often implicit, implications for the evolution of the theory and practice of international
relations, I shall begin this chapter with a feminist account of the way nature has been viewed by Western
Enlightenment science. This changed perception of nature, from living organism to inert machine, was
accompanied by shifting attitudes toward women whose lives were gradually being moved into domestic
spaces where they were to become increasingly marginalized from the productive system. These changes can
be linked to the competitive security-seeking behavior of an expansionary state system, whose colonizing
activities have caused ecological changes in larger geopolitical spaces. This power-seeking behavior poses
dangers for the security of the natural environment and its inhabitants, women and men alike.
WNDI 2006 15
Realism’s reliance on state of nature myths reinforces a dominating and exploitative
attitude toward nature.
1992
Hans Morgenthau's text Politics Among Nations, discussed in more detail in chapter 2, pays scant attention to
the natural environment, an omission common to many traditional texts in international relations.
Morgenthau discusses natural resources only in terms of their role as essential elements of state power. 4 He
emphasizes the importance of natural resource self-sufficiency as crucial for national power, particularly in
wartime. He describes dramatic historical shifts, such as the disappearance of the Near East and North Africa
as centers of power, caused by a notable decline in agricultural productivity. Consistent with the Western
geopolitical tradition of the early twentieth century, Morgenthau claims that the United States owes its status
as a great power in part to its advantageous geographical position in the international system. As a large land
mass protected by bodies of water on both sides, the United States has been in a strategically advantageous
position throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, particularly for purposes of making credible
nuclear threats. Morgenthau's treatment of natural resources and geopolitics typifies the way the natural
environment has been viewed in the dominant traditions of Western international relations "theory. In a
hierarchical international system, access to natural resources and a favorable geographical position have been
key elements for the achievement of state power; for those with the capabilities to do so, these assets should
be protected by military means and increased through overseas expansion or conquest if necessary. 5 "State-
of-nature myths, used by realist theoreticians to explain and prescribe for states' behavior in the international
system, have reinforced this dominating and exploitative attitude toward nature. Metaphors that depict a wild
natural environment devoid of controlling political institutions, "the war of everyman against everyman,"
demand the erection of "strong boundaries to protect tamed domestic spaces against uncontrollable outside
forces. States with the capacity to do so may move beyond these boundaries to reap the bounties of nature
through projects of expansion and subjugation.
WNDI 2006 16
Gender hierarchies that posit nature with feminine traits result in the dominion over
nature approach toward ecological concerns.
1992
These views of the natural environment as spaces to be tamed, mastered, and used for profit and advantage
are also reflected in the shift toward a mechanistic view of nature that appeared in seventeenth-century
Europe at the time the modern state system was born. In her book The Death of Nature, Carolyn Merchant
documents this changing attitude toward nature generated by the scientific revolution. Although humans'
"dominion over nature" has been traced back to Greek and Christian roots, 6 Merchant claims that in
medieval Europe nature was viewed as an organism or living system in which human beings and their natural
environments were highly interdependent. Nature was generally depicted as female, the earth as a nurturing
mother who provided for the needs of humankind. Nature could be dangerous, however; its wild and
uncontrollable behavior could produce chaos. 7 In the seventeenth century nature was gradually conceptually
transformed from a living organism into a lifeless inert machine, thereby permitting its exploitation and use
for purposes of human progress. This evolving view of nature as machine was vital for the goals of the
emerging new science, which sought to tame nature through the discovery of predictable regularities within a
rationally determined system of laws. According to Merchant, a central concern of the scientific revolution
was to use these mathematical laws in order to intervene in an increasingly secularized world. 8 Changing
attitudes toward animals provide further evidence of the taming and depersonalization of nature in early
modern Europe. In her book The Animal Estate, Harriet Ritvo describes the legal system of medieval
England, which had implicitly invested animals with human rights and responsibilities. Animals were held
accountable for their crimes: dogs, cats, and cocks were permitted, as members of households, to testify in
court-- or at least their presence there was considered to strengthen the aggrieved householder's complaint. 9
By the nineteenth century, however, animals could no longer be sentenced to die for their crimes. Ritvo
claims that this seemingly humanitarian policy had a reverse side; animals were no longer perceived as
having any independent status. This changing relationship between animals and people ensured the
appropriation of power by people as animals became objects of human manipulation. As animals' position in
the human world changed so did the way in which they were studied. According to Ritvo, modern scientific
methods of classification of animals and plants, which employ anthropocentric binary distinctions such as
wild/tame, useful/useless, edible/inedible, also attempt to impose order on a chaotic natural environment. Just
as many feminists see gender dichotomizations as instruments of domination, Ritvo views the classification
of natural objects as the human attempt to gain intellectual mastery and domination of the natural world.
Although Ritvo's study is not specifically a feminist text, she makes reference to language employed by
naturalists and animal breeders that sets both women and animals below human males in the natural
hierarchy. 11 The use of sexual metaphor, which feminists believe had the effect of establishing a male-
dominated hierarchy, was also employed in the language of the scientific revolution. The taming of nature
was usually described in gendered terms that reflected the social order. Feminist scholars have drawn
attention to the sexual metaphors employed by Francis Bacon and other Enlightenment scientists. Central to
Bacon's scientific investigations was a natural world, frequently described as a woman, that required taming,
shaping, and subduing by the scientific mind: "I am come in very truth leading you to nature with all her
children to bind her to your service and make her your slave." 12 Social ecologist William Leiss agrees that
Bacon's scientific project was centrally concerned with mastery over nature. But while Leiss notes the
sexually aggressive overtones in Bacon's language, he is less concerned with the implications of Bacon's
sexual metaphors than with a scientific tradition that has resulted in the domination of certain men over other
human beings. This system of domination has spread outward from Europe to the rest of the world through
the appropriation of nature's resources. 13
WNDI 2006 17
Impact—Structural Violence
Structural violence kills more than any war- our impact outweighs
Dr. Robert C. Gilman, Ph.D. President of Context Institute Founding Editor of IN CONTEXT, A Quarterly of
Humane Sustainable Culture One of the articles in The Foundations Of Peace (IC#4) Autumn 1983, Page 8
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:p_T2jwNn8g4J:www.context.org/ICLIB/IC04/Gilman1.htm+nuclear+war+%2
2structural+violence%22&hl=en
THE HUMAN TENDENCY toward, and preparations for, open warfare are certainly the most spectacular obstacles
to peace, but they are not the only challenges we face. For much of the world's population, hunger, not war, is the
pressing issue, and it is hard to imagine a genuine peace that did not overcome our current global pattern of
extensive poverty in the midst of plenty. Hunger and poverty are two prime examples of what is described as
"structural violence," that is, physical and psychological harm that results from exploitive and unjust social, political
and economic systems. It is something that most of us know is going on, some of us have experienced, but in its
starker forms, it is sufficiently distant from most North American lives that it is often hard to get a good perspective
on it. I've come across an approach that seems to help provide that perspective, and I'd like to describe it. How
significant is structural violence? How does one measure the impact of injustice? While this may sound like an
impossibly difficult question, Gernot Kohler and Norman Alcock (in Journal of Peace Research, 1976, 13, pp. 343-
356) have come up with a surprisingly simple method for estimating the grosser forms of structural violence, at
least at an international level. The specific question they ask is, how many extra deaths occur each year due to the
unequal distribution of wealth between countries? To understand their approach, we will need to plunge into some
global statistics. It will help to start with the relationship between Life Expectancy (LE) and Gross National Product
Per Person (GNP/p) that is shown in the following figure. Each dot in this figure stands for one country with its LE
and GNP/p for the year 1979. All together, 135 countries are represented (data from Ruth Sivard's World Military
and Social Expenditures 1982, World Priorities, Box 1003, Leesburg VA 22075, $4). Kohler and Alcock used a
similar figure based on data for 1965, and I'll compare the 1965 data with the 1979 data later in this article. Except
for a few oil exporting countries (like Libya) that have unusual combinations of high GNPs and low Life
Expectancies, the data follows a consistent pattern shown by the curve. Among the "poor" countries (with GNP/p
below about $2400 per person per year), life expectancy is relatively low and increases rapidly with increasing
GNP/p. Among the "rich" countries, life expectancy is consistently high and is relatively unaffected by GNP. The
dividing line between these two groups turns out to also be the world average GNP per person. The value of the life
expectancy curve at that point (for 1979) is 70 years. Thus, other things being equal, if the world's wealth was
distributed equally among the nations, every country would have a life expectancy of 70 years. This value is
surprisingly close to the average life expectancy for the industrial countries (72 years), and is even not that far below
the maximum national life expectancy of 76 years (Iceland, Japan, and Sweden). Kohler and Alcock use this
egalitarian model as a standard to compare the actual world situation against. The procedure is as follows. The
actual number of deaths in any country can be estimated by dividing the population (P) by the life expectancy (LE).
The difference between the actual number of deaths and the number of deaths that would occur under egalitarian
conditions is thus P/LE - P/70. For example, in 1979 India had a population of 677 million and a life expectancy of
52 years. Thus India's actual death rate was 13 million while if the life expectancy had been 70, the rate would have
been 9.7 million. The difference of 3.3 million thus provides an estimate of the number of extra deaths. Calculating
this difference for each country and then adding them up gives the number of extra deaths worldwide due to the
unequal distribution of resources. The result for 1965 was 14 million, while for 1979 the number had declined to 11
million. (China, with a quarter of the world's population, is responsible for 3/4 of this drop since it raised its life
expectancy from 50 in 1965 to 64 in 1979.) How legitimate is it to ascribe these deaths to the structural violence of
human institutions, and not just to the variability of nature? Perhaps the best in-depth study of structural violence
comes from the Institute for Food and Development Policy (1885 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94103). What they
find throughout the Third World is that the problems of poverty and hunger often date back hundreds of years to
some conquest - by colonial forces or otherwise. The victors became the ruling class and the landholders, pushing
the vast majority either on to poor ground or into being landless laborers. Taxes, rentals, and the legal system were
all structured to make sure that the poor stayed poor. The same patterns continue today. Additional support is
provided by the evidence in the above figure, which speaks for itself. Also, according to Sivard, 97% of the people
in the Third World live under repressive governments, with almost half of all Third World countries run by military
dominated governments. Finally, as a point of comparison, Ehrlich and Ehrlich (Population, Environment, and
Resources, 1972, p72) estimate between 10 and 20 million deaths per year due to starvation and malnutrition. If their
WNDI 2006 18
estimates are correct, our estimates may even be too low. Some comparisons will help to put these figures in
perspective. The total number of deaths from all causes in 1965 was 62 million, so these estimates indicate that 23%
of all deaths were due to structural violence. By 1979 the fraction had dropped to 15%. While it is heartening to see
this improvement, the number of deaths is staggeringly large, dwarfing any other form of violence other than nuclear
war. For example, the level of structural violence is 60 times greater than the average number of battle related deaths
per year since 1965 (Sivard 1982). It is 1.5 times as great as the yearly average number of civilian and battle field
deaths during the 6 years of World War II. Every 4 days, it is the equivalent of another Hiroshima. Perhaps the
most hopeful aspect of this whole tragic situation is that essentially everyone in the present system has become a
loser. The plight of the starving is obvious, but the exploiters don't have much to show for their efforts either - not
compared to the quality of life they could have in a society without the tensions generated by this exploitation.
Especially at a national level, what the rich countries need now is not so much more material wealth, but the
opportunity to live in a world at peace. The rich and the poor, with the help of modern technology and weaponry,
have become each others' prisoners. Today's industrialized societies did not invent this structural violence, but it
could not continue without our permission. This suggests that to the list of human tendencies that are obstacles to
peace we need to add the ease with which we acquiesce in injustice - the way we all too easily look in the other
direction and disclaim "response ability." In terms of the suffering it supports, it is by far our most serious flaw.
WNDI 2006 19
AT: Permutation
The integration of women only replicates structural violence. Any action involving the
static notions of mainstream security discourse will fail.
However, the prescriptive nature of such political commitment does raise questions about the degree to which
feminism in itself represents universalizing (and by implication exclusionary) tendencies. The liberal empiricist
paradigm integrates women into the mainstream security discourse without questioning the dominant scientific
assumptions of positivist inquiry. Such an uncritical treatment of universalism reproduces existing meanings of what
constitutes humankind. The only difference is that – through the pursuit of the norm of equality (women becoming
like men) – a more inclusive but hegemonic universalism is produced.
Adding women without revaluating security perpetuates human security as only allowing
masculine inclusivity.
Women’s concerns as victims of human rights abuse are added but not integrated, which thereby extends the notion
that human security is essentially masculine in its inclusivity. So has the argument come full circle? Are we back to
endorsing an unqualified reification of state security? Yes, if one ignores the contextualized responses of women to
peace and conflict on the continent and the ways in which ‘gender’ is conceptualized in the context of African
feminisms. Yes, if one overlooks the fact that gender is but one of many identities. I argue to the contrary. While the
proposed framework for human security in Africa is not revolutionary, it is nevertheless significant in that it raises
important points about the role of identity and difference and drives home the claim that contextualized responses to
human security and contextualized feminist responses to insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
WNDI 2006 20
AT: Hegemony
US hegemonic imperialism will cause devastation on an unprecedented scale, causing

global war and unleashing new global holocausts. We must reject this endless cycle of
violence. Vote negative to resist imperialism
John Bellamy Foster is co-editor of Monthly Review, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon 2k3
[“The new Age of Imperialism,” Monthly Review 55.3]
At the same time, it is clear that in the present period of global hegemonic imperialism the United States is geared
above all to expanding its imperial power to whatever extent possible and subordinating the rest of the capitalist
world to its interests. The Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea Basin represent not only the bulk of world petroleum
reserves, but also a rapidly increasing proportion of total reserves, as high production rates diminish reserves
elsewhere. This has provided much of the stimulus for the United States to gain greater control of these resources--at
the expense of its present and potential rivals. But U.S. imperial ambitions do not end there, since they are driven by
economic ambitions that know no bounds. As Harry Magdoff noted in the closing pages of The Age of Imperialism
in 1969, "it is the professed goal" of U.S. multinational corporations "to control as large a share of the world market
as they do of the United States market," and this hunger for foreign markets persists today. Flo rida-based
Wackenhut Corrections Corporation has won prison privatization contracts in Australia, the United Kingdom, South
Africa, Canada, New Zealand, and the Netherlands Antilles ("Prison Industry Goes Global," www.futurenet.org, fall
2000). Promotion of U.S. corporate interests abroad is one of the primary responsibilities of the U.S. state. Consider
the cases of Monsanto and genetically modified food, Microsoft and intellectual property, Bechtel and the war on
Iraq. It would be impossible to exaggerate how dangerous this dual expansionism of U.S. corporations and the
U.S. state is to the world at large. As Istvan Meszaros observed in 2001 in Socialism or Barbarism, the U.S. attempt
to seize global control, which is inherent in the workings of capitalism and imperialism, is now threatening humanity
with the "extreme violent rule of the whole world by one hegemonic imperialist country on a permanent basis...an
absurd and unsustainable way of running the world order."* This new age of U.S. imperialism will generate its
own contradictions, amongst them attempts by other major powers to assert their influence, resorting to similar
belligerent means, and all sorts of strategies by weaker states and non-state actors to engage in "asymmetric" forms
of warfare. Given the unprecedented destructiveness of contemporary weapons, which are diffused ever more
widely, the consequences for the population of the world could well be devastating beyond anything ever before
witnessed. Rather than generating a new "Pax Americana" the United States may be paving the way to new global
holocausts. The greatest hope in these dire circumstances lies in a rising tide of revolt from below, both in the
United States and globally. The growth of the antiglobalization movement, which dominated the world stage for
nearly two years following the events in Seattle in November 1999, was succeeded in February 2003 by the largest
global wave of antiwar protests in human history. Never before has the world's population risen up so quickly and in
such massive numbers in the attempt to stop an imperialist war. The new age of imperialism is also a new age of
revolt. The Vietnam Syndrome, which has so worried the strategic planners of the imperial order for decades, now
seems not only to have left a deep legacy within the United States but also to have been coupled this time around
with an Empire Syndrome on a much more global scale--something that no one really expected. This more than
anything else makes it clear that the strategy of the American ruling class to expand the American Empire cannot
possibly succeed in the long run, and will prove to be its own--we hope not the world's--undoing.
WNDI 2006 21
The belief that the US should maintain it hegemony entrenches the norm of hegemonic
masculinity.
Contemporary links between institutional practices in international relations and the construction and ranking of
masculinities are often more subtle. Nonetheless, the legacy of colonialism, combined with the dominance of the
United States, is such that the education and socialization of senior politicians, diplomats, generals, international
civil servants, and other players on the international stage is still heavily influenced by European, if not Anglo-
Saxon, values of hegemonic masculinity, regardless of the cultural origins of the predominantly male players
themselves. The role of elite educational establishments in the West in producing hegemonic masculinities over the
last hundred years is well documented and theorized (e.g., Connell 1987; Mangan and Walvin 1987) and such
institutions still tend to churn out a high proportion of international elites. Even those postcolonial political leaders
most vociferously against the hegemony of Western values in international society have rarely escaped the influence
of those values.5 The production of masculinities and disciplining of male bodies through competitive team games is
another legacy of the Victorian colonial era with strong contemporary relevance in terms of embodiment and
institutional practices as well as symbolism
WNDI 2006 22
AT: Realism Good
Realism the ideology that dictates international relations attempts to depersonalize and
operate as an objective science. This analysis attempts to create a sense of “rationality” in
nuclear war fighting
1992
Since many of the early writers in the classical realist tradition were European men whose lives had been
disrupted by the ideologies of totalitarian regimes of the 1930s, realism strove for an objectivist methodology
that, by discovering generalizable laws, could offer universalistic explanations for the behavior of states
across time and space. Claiming that ideology was a cloak for the operation of Realpolitik, the goal was to be
able to exercise more control over an unpredictable international environment. For realists, morality is
problematic in the tough world of international politics; in fact the exercise of moral restraint, epitomized by
the policies of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain in the interwar period, can be a prescription for
disaster. In the United States in the 1960s, however, classical realism came under attack, not so much for its
basic assumptions and goals but for its methodology, which critics faulted for failing to live up to the
standards of a positivist science. These early critics of realism noted its imprecision and lack of scientific
rigor. In an attempt to make the methodology of international relations more rigorous and inject a greater
precision into the field, critics of classical realism advocated the collection and analysis of data relating to
wars and other international transactions. 16 Answering these critics, neorealists have attempted to develop a
positivist methodology with which to build a truly objective "science" of international relations. Neorealists
have used models from economics, biology, and physics, which they claim can offer universal explanations
for the behavior of states in the international system. 17 The depersonalization of the discipline, which results
when methodologies are borrowed from the natural sciences and statistics, has been carried to its extreme in
national security studies, a subfield that has sought, through the use of operations research and game
theoretic models, to analyze strategies for nuclear deterrence and nuclear war-fighting "rationally." 18
WNDI 2006 23
The alternative enriches and sustains realism—recognizing the social and psychological
basis of enemy discourse is crucial to overcome security dilemmas and ameliorate realism’s
blindspots—ensures a more authentic engagement with realism
Dmitri Niarguinen , Rubikon, E-journal. ISSN 1505-1161. December
2001. http://venus.ci.uw.edu.pl/~rubikon/forum/dmitri.htm
Morgenthau’s state-centric theory is clearly set, but it is not to say he envisages it as being pre-destined and
unchangeable. The political, cultural and strategic environment will largely determine the forms of power a state
chooses to exercise, just as the types of power which feature in human relationships change over time. In addition,
Realists should not be wedded to a perennial connection between interest and the nation-state which is 'a product of
history, and therefore bound to disappear'[19]. Later (in 1970) Morgenthau anticipated that the forces of
globalization would render the nation-state no longer valid: “the sovereign nation-state is in the process of becoming
obsolete”[20]. He stresses that a final task that a theory of international relations can and must perform is to prepare
the ground for a new international order radically different from that which preceded it[21]. Kenneth Waltz's neo-
realism is both a critique of traditional realism and a substantial intellectual extension of a theoretical tradition which
was in danger of being outflanked by rapid changes in the contours of global politics[22]. The international system
(anarchy) is treated as a separate domain which conditions the behavior of all states within it. Paradoxically, with the
advent of neo-realism, the scope and flexibility of Realism have significantly diminished. The theory has become
deterministic, linear, and culturally poor. For neo-realists, culture and identity are (at best) derivative of the
distribution of capabilities and have no independent explanatory power. Actors deploy culture and identity
strategically, to further their own self-interests[23]. Nevertheless, it is wrong to assert that neo-realist perspectives
do not acknowledge the importance of social facts. Gilpin has developed a compelling argument about war and
change[24]. While his book is built on (micro)economic premises, he does not neglect sociological insights as
necessary for understanding the context of rational behavior. "Specific interests or objectives that individuals pursue
and the appropriateness of the means they employ are dependent on prevailing social norms and material
environment…In short, the economic and sociological approaches must be integrated to explain political
change"[25]. Waltz was implicitly talking about identity when he argued that anarchic structures tend to produce
“like units”[26]. He allows for what he calls ‘socialization’ and ‘imitation’ processes. Stephen Krasner suggested
that regimes could change state interests[27]. Regimes are an area where knowledge should be taken seriously. If
regimes matter, then cognitive understanding can matter as well[28]. Realism is not necessarily about conflict;
material forces may as well lead to cooperation. However, the minimalist treatment of culture and social phenomena
increasingly proved neo-realism as losing ground empirically and theoretically. It was the suspicion that the
international system is transforming itself culturally faster than would have been predictable from changes in
military and economic capabilities that triggered the interest in problems of identity[29]. Reconstruction of the
theory was vital in order to save Realism from becoming obsolete. The realization of this fact has triggered a shift in
Realist thinking and gave way to the emergence of a 'constructivist' re-incarnation of Realism. Friedrich Kratochwil
has once observed that no theory of culture can substitute for a theory of politics[30]. At least, nobody has ventured
to accomplish such an enterprise so far. To disregard culture in politics, it seems obvious today, is inappropriate, not
to say foolish. There remain opportunity costs incurred by Realism in its asymmetric engagement with cultural
phenomena. Thus, Realism, notwithstanding its concern with parsimony, should make a serious commitment to
building analytical bridges which link identity- and culture-related phenomena to its explanatory apparatus (like
anarchy, sovereignty, the security dilemma, self-help, and balancing)[31]. Alexander Wendt in his seminal article
“Anarchy Is What States Make of It” has masterfully shown how power politics is socially constructed[32]. Salus
populi supreme lex. This classical metalegal doctrine of necessity is associated with raison d’etat, the right of
preservation, and self-help. Wendt is convinced that the self-help corollary to anarchy does enormous work in
Realism, generating the inherently competitive dynamics of the security dilemma and collective action problem[33].
What misses the point, however, is that self-help and power politics follow either logically or causally from anarchy.
They do not; rather, they are just among other institutions (albeit significant ones) possible under anarchy.
Consequently, provided there is relatively stable practice, international institutions can transform state identities and
interests. Let me focus on two concrete security issues - the security dilemma and nuclear deterrence - to illustrate
the point. A central tenet of Realism, the security dilemma[34], arises for the situation when “one actor’s quest for
security through power accumulation ... exacerbates the feelings of insecurity of another actor, who in turn will
respond by accumulating power”[35]. As a result of this behavior, a vicious circle or spiral of security develops,
with fear and misperception exacerbating the situation[36]. Nevertheless, security dilemmas, as Wendt stresses, are
not given by anarchy or nature[37]. Security dilemmas are constructed because identities and interests are
WNDI 2006 24
constituted by collective meanings which are always in process. This is why concepts of security may differ in the
extent to which and the manner in which the self is identified cognitively with the other. Because deterrence is
based on ideas about threat systems and conditional commitments to carry out punishment, it has proved particularly
congenial to the strategic studies scholarship within the Realist tradition[38]. Deterrence is a conditional
commitment to retaliate, or to exact retribution if another party fails to behave in a desired, compliant manner. Thus
defined, deterrence has been invoked as the primary explanation for the non-use of nuclear weapons. The nuclear
case, in contrast to chemical weapons, for example, is definitely problematic for challenging traditional deterrence
theory because it is widely felt that the tremendous destructive power of thermonuclear weapons does render them
qualitatively different from other weapons. Yet, the patterns of the non-use of nuclear weapons cannot be fully
understood without taking into account the development of norms that shaped these weapons as unacceptable. By
applying social constructivist approach, it is possible to emphasize the relationship between norms, identities, and
interests and try to provide a causal explanation of how the norms affect outcomes[39]. Norms shape
conceptualizations of interests through the social construction of identities. In other words, a constructivist account
is necessary to get at 'what deters,' and how and why deterrence 'works' [40]. International relations theory cannot
afford to ignore norms. Demonstrating the impact of norms on the interests, beliefs, and behavior of actors in
international politics does not and must not invalidate Realism. Rather, it points to analytical blind spots and gaps
in traditional accounts. In so doing, it not only casts light into the shadows of existing theory but raises new
questions as well.[41] However, with all the 'constructivist' adjustments made (which are absolutely credible), it is
important to keep in mind 'pure rationalist' tools as well. Krasner points out that whenever the cost-benefit ratio
indicates that breaking its rules will bring a net benefit that is what states will do[42]. Wendt introduces a correction
that instrumentalism may be the attitude when states first settle on norms, and "continue(s) to be for poorly
organized states down the road"[43]. States obey the law initially because they are forced to or calculate that it is in
their self-interest. Some states never get beyond this point. Some do, and then obey the law because they accept its
claims on them as legitimate[44]. This is truly an excellent observation. The problem here, however, could be that
even when states remove the option of breaking the law from their agenda, this already implies that benefits
overweight costs. And even if this is not the case, how can we know where exactly this point is, beyond which states
respect law for law’s sake? Furthermore, states that supposedly have stepped over this point might break the law,
when it has become least expected, if they consider this of their prime interest. Powerful illustration of this is
France, which resumed its nuclear testing to the great surprise of the world[45]. Another interesting example is the
case of NATO. Traditional alliance theories based on Realist thinking provide insufficient explanations of the
origins, the interaction patterns, and the persistence of NATO. The 'brand new' interpretation is that the Alliance
represents an institutionalized pluralistic community of liberal democracies. Democracies not only do not fight each
other, they are likely to develop a collective identity facilitating the emergence of cooperative institutions for
specific purposes[46]. Thus presented, old questions get revitalized. Why is NATO the strongest among the other
post-Cold War security institutions – as compared to, the WEU, not even to mention the EU’s Common Foreign and
Security Policy? Why is not the OSCE given a chance to turn into a truly pluralistic European 'Security
Architecture'? Why was NATO so eager to bomb Kosovo, which was a clear breach of international law? Because it
is ‘an institutionalized pluralistic community of liberal democracies’? Or yet because it is a predominantly military
organization? Why do public opinion polls in Russia[47] repeatedly show that NATO is an aggressive organization
(and which can also be observed in official rhetoric, as in the national security conception and the military
doctrine[48])? All these questions suggest that to claim that Realist explanation of NATO existence can be thrown
into a dustbin is at minimum inappropriate. Social sciences do not evolve via scientific revolutions, as Thomas
Kuhn argues is the case for the natural sciences. Not paradigm shifts but rather style and fashion changes are
what characterize social science[49]. Thus posed, paradigm development promises Realism a bright future. In this
respect, recent success of constructivism has, metaphorically speaking, breathed in a new life into Realism.
Realism is in much debt to constructivism for being revitalized. Yet, paying full credit to the contribution of
constructivism, it should be noted that to a large extent constructivists take off from the Realist positions.
WNDI 2006 25
Realism is only as inevitable as they make it—their overly reductive and inflexible use of
realism shuts off critical reflection
Dmitri Niarguinen , Rubikon, E-journal. ISSN 1505-1161. December
2001. http://venus.ci.uw.edu.pl/~rubikon/forum/dmitri.htm
Thus, it can be argued that what we observe is the continuity of the process rather than a radical change. Put bluntly,
if Realism is constructed and then is being analyzed in sociological and psychological terms, it does not cease being
Realism. Constructivists have just built another layer (of culture and ideas) onto the material base of Realism. This
is why constructivism has enriched rather than overthrown Realist theory. For the genuine link between
constructivism and Realism to be taken seriously, certain elaborations are in order. It is tempting, and, indeed, has
been common practice to polarize and dichotomize two grand standpoints: positivism and reflectivism. While
positivism has been a dominant notion for at least two centuries now, reflectivism seems to be increasingly gaining
momentum and may, over time, switch the pendulum to the other extreme. The tendency is out there: under the
banner of reflectivism, scholars receive an opportunity to criticize everything which has a grain of rationality. This
might lead to either ‘Sokal-hoax’ type incidents[50] or to a new dogma. In the light of strict positivist/reflectivist
dichotomy, hard-core rigid Realism is rightly accused of being blind and stumble. To the same degree may hyper-
reflectivism be accused of being chaotic, utopian and irrelevant[51]. Instead of this black-and-white division, we are
much more flexible to view things in the shades of gray. To operate on the rationalist/reflectivist continuum then
would rather be a virtue than a vice. It is thus important to move from instrumental rationality (Zweckrationalitaet)
to value-rationality (Wertrationalitaet).[52] Equally is it important to stay away from pure ideas of reflectivism,
which like Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey are luring scholars onto the rocks. As Alexander Wendt has indicated, ideas,
after all, are not all the way down. To counter an argument that reflectivism and positivism are epistemologically
incompatible, it is plausible to say that much cooperation is possible on the ontological basis alone. Indeed, neither
positivism, nor reflectivism tells us about the structure and dynamics of international life. The state of the social
sciences of international relations is such that epistemological prescriptions and conclusions are at best
premature[53]. With all my attachment to Realism, there are certain pitfalls to be aware of and to avoid. What I do
not argue about is Realism being an all-encompassing thought trespassing all possible borders and conquering both
terra incognita and terra cognita. In a world full of anomalies, Realism is neither sufficiently established nor
sufficiently precise to be treated as a sacrosanct paradigm to which other lines of argumentation must defer[54].
Moreover, it is a matter of attitude. Neoliberalists could claim with the same success that constructivism, for
example, is doing a great job on their behalf[55]. Also, there is scholarship working on the extreme polar of
reflectivism. Being appealing and powerful, it is unbridgeable epistemologically with Realism not only at the
extreme positivist polar but even on the ‘gray territory’. To disregard or downplay this school would be, to say the
least, inadequate. Having acknowledged this, however, it is tempting to illustrate on the example of the English
School of Realism how indeed far Realism can stretch[56]. For the English School, international system is a
‘society’ in which states, as a condition of their participation in the system, adhere to shared norms and rules in a
variety of issue areas. Material power matters, but within a framework of normative expectations embedded in
conventional and customary international law. Sociological imaginary is strong in the English School: it is not a
great leap from arguing that adherence to norms is a condition of participation in a society to arguing that states are
constructed, partly or substantially, by these norms[57]. The English School thinkers encourage us to think about
international relations as a social arena whose members – sovereign states – relate to each other not only as
competitors for power and wealth, but also as holders of particular rights, entitlements, and obligations. In terms of
method, they emphasize the importance of a historical approach. Michael Walzer and John Vincent are particularly
concerned with the relationship between human rights and the rights of sovereign states[58]. They seek ways in
which to reconcile the society of states with cosmopolitan values. Terry Nardin, building his theory on the ideas of
political philosopher Michael Oakenshott, argues that international society is best seen as a practical association
made up of states each devoted to its own ends and its own conception of the good. The common good of this
inclusive community resides not in the ends that some, or at times most, of its members may wish collectively to
pursue but in the values of justice, peace, security, and co-existence, which can only be enjoyed through
participation in a common body of authoritative practices.[59] Martin Wight’s triptych of international thought is
extremely eclectic, not simply because of his refusal to delineate these ‘traditions’ with any philosophical or analytic
precision, but also because of his personal reluctance either to transcend them or to locate his own views
consistently with the parameters of any single one[60]. Wight has written widely about the cultural and moral
dimensions of international relations, and his work is a constant reminder that what may appear to be new disputes
in the field about contemporary issues are in fact extensions and manifestations of very old arguments, although
couched in a different idiom. It is now acknowledged that the English School is an underutilized research resource
WNDI 2006 26
and deserves a prominent role in international relations because of its distinctive elements: methodological
pluralism, historicism, and its inter-linkage of three key concepts: international system, international society, and
world community.[61] International system, thus, is associated with recurrent patterns of behavior that can be
identified using positivist tools of analysis. By contrast, international society needs to be explored using hermeneutic
methods that focus on the language that lies behind the rules, institutions, interests, and values that constitute any
society. Finally, world community can only meaningfully be discussed by drawing on critical theory. To refigure the
value of Realism in a period of rapid systemic change means to interpret it as an ongoing discursive struggle that
cuts across the traditional theory-practice, and other synchronic and scholastic antinomies of world politics. It gives
notice of how Realism in its universalistic philosophical form and particularistic state application has figuratively
and literally helped to constitute the discordant world it purports to describe[62]. This is an attempt to open up the
hermeneutic circle, to enlarge the interpretive community, “to break out of the prison-house of a reductive
vocabulary that has so attenuated the ethico-political dimension of realism”[63]. Thus, it is important to consider the
paradox that the power of Realism lies not in its immanence but in its distance from reality, from realities of
contingency, ambiguity, and indeterminacy that Realism tries to keep at bay. *** It is often argued that
globalization - the growth of transnational economic forces, combined with a growing irrelevance of territorial
control to economic growth and the international division of labor - rendered Realism obsolete, with the end of the
Cold war as a fatal blow for the theory. Has, indeed, Realism become anachronistic? If it were a monolithic rigid
theory, the answer would probably be 'yes.' I have argued, however, that Realism is not homogeneous; rather, it has
an irreducible core which is able to create flexible incarnations. At minimum, Realism offers an orienting
framework of analysis that gives the field of security studies much of its intellectual coherence and commonality of
outlook[64]. This is true even if Realism stays on the extreme polar of positivism. However, positivism/rationalism
in a pure form is of little value. In the words of the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, “the approach of ‘rational
behavior,’ as it is typically interpreted, leads to a remarkably mute theory…”[65]. Realism needs not be predestined
to remain stagnant[66]. At maximum, thus, when Realism operates in the shades of gray between positivism and
reflectivism, its strength is paramount. Consequently, there are good reasons for thinking that the twenty-first
century will be a Realist century[67]. Once again I want to stress that Realism should not be perceived as dogmatic.
And this is why we do need reflectivist approaches to problematize what is self-evident, and thus to counterbalance
naive Realism[68]. In doing so, however, we are more flexible in keeping the 'middle ground' and not in sliding to
the other extreme. As Wendt believes, in the medium run, sovereign states will remain the dominant political actors
in the international system[69]. While this contention is arguable, it is hardly possible to challenge his psychological
observation, …Realist theory of state interests in fact naturalizes or reifies a particular culture and in so doing helps
reproduce it. Since the social practices is how we get structure – structure is carried in the heads of agents and is
instantiated in their practices – the more that states think like “Realist” the more that egoism, and its systemic
corollary of self-help, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy[70]. Even strong constructivists admit that we cannot do
away with Realism simply because it is “a still necessary hermeneutical bridge to the understanding of world
politics”[71]. Ergo, ita est.
WNDI 2006 27
Realist discourse creates reifies boundaries—the US is civilized the international realm is
anarchic this contributes to the myth that a heroic objective man should tame the wild
outside. It is also responsible for domination of nature which women are closely associated
to.
The relationship between masculinity and international relations has not yet been fully articulated. More
might be said about how masculinity or masculinities shape both the theory and practice of international
relations. But one could also ask, what place does international relations (both theory and practice) have in
the shaping, defining, and legitimating of masculinity or masculinities? Might causality, or at least the
interplay of complex influences, run in both directions, in mutually reinforcing patterns? Might international
relations discipline men as much as men shape international relations?3 My starting point for thinking about
the relationship between masculinity and international relations was Ann Tickner’s (1992) book Gender in
International Relations. First, Tickner traced the masculinism and misogyny of realism, where the ideal of the
glorified male warrior has been projected onto the behavior of states. In realist discourse, security is seen to
rest on a false division between a civil(ized) domestic political order and the “natural” violence of
international anarchy. This division is traced back to Hobbes’s view of the state of nature as a state of war—a
dangerous and wild place where men had to rely on their own resources to survive. The international realm,
outside the jurisdiction of a single government, was deemed to be anarchic and, as such, like a state of nature.
As Tickner argued, women were largely absent in Hobbes’s picture. She went on to discuss Machiavelli,
who, although in the context of a very different tradition, characterized the disordered and “natural” realm of
anarchy itself as feminine. If Hobbes’s men were in a state of nature, then Machiavelli’s men wished to have
dominion over it. Given that Hobbes and Machiavelli are often (in spite of their differences) quoted in the
same breath, these “founding fathers” of the discipline have between them contributed to a vision of
international relations in which women are virtually absent and where heroic men struggle to tame a wild,
dangerous, and essentially feminine anarchy. Second, after examining the realist approach to security,
Tickner looked at the masculine assumptions underpinning the models used in international political
economy under the heading “Three Models of Man” (67). These were the abstract rational-actor model
favored by liberal economists; game-theoretic models applied by economic nationalists; and the capitalist
production model used by Marxists. As Tickner pointed out, all three models have been criticized by feminist
theorists for offering only a partial, and masculinized, account of human agency and production. Third, she
explored the role of nature in international politics and argued that the control and domination of nature has
played a crucial part in the development of modern international relations, which cannot be divorced from
men’s control and domination of women, who are generally more closely associated with nature than men,
through their reproductive role. In the final chapter, Tickner considered feminist alternatives to masculinist
theorizing and mentioned alternative conceptions of masculinity, as well as possibilities for there being a
nongendered model of human action. Tickner’s analysis suggests that masculinist perspectives in IR do not
apply a uniform understanding of masculinity, but rather make use of a number of different “models of man”
(Tickner 1992, 67).
WNDI 2006 28
Realism empirically pushes disempowered individuals to the margins of international
relations
1992
Faced with a world turned upside down, the conventional discipline of international relations has recently
been undergoing a more fundamental challenge to its theoretical underpinnings. Certain scholars are now
engaged in a "third debate" that questions the empirical and positivist foundations of the field. 31
Postpositivist approaches question what they claim are realism's ahistorical attempts to posit universal truths
about the international system and the behavior of its member states. Like many contemporary feminists,
these scholars argue that all knowledge is socially constructed and is grounded in the time, place, and social
context of the investigator. Focusing on the use of language, many of these writers claim that our knowledge
about the international system comes to us from accounts written by those in a position of power who use
their knowledge for purposes of control and furthering their own interests. 32 These scholars assert that,
while realism presents itself as an objective account of reality that claims to explain the workings of the
prevailing international order, it is also an ideology that has served to legitimize and sustain that order. 33
While many of the previous challengers of realism, discussed above, still spoke in terms of large
depersonalized structures-- such as the international system of states or the capitalist world economy-- many
of these poststructuralist writers attempt to speak for disempowered individuals on the margins of the
international system. Besides questioning the ability of the state or global capitalism to solve contemporary
problems, they pose more fundamental questions about the construction of the state as a political space and a
source of identity.
Realism only offers a partial view of reality. Realism’s “objective” theories characterize
behavior in the international arena in profoundly gendered terms.
1992
For realists, security is tied to the military security of the state. Given their pessimistic assumptions about the
likely behavior of states in an "anarchic" international environment, most realists are skeptical about the
possibility of states ever achieving perfect security. In an imperfect world, where many states have national
security interests that go beyond self-preservation and where there is no international government to curb
their ambitions, realists tell us that war could break out at any time because nothing can prevent it.
Consequently, they advise, states must rely on their own power capabilities to achieve security. The best
contribution the discipline of international relations can make to national security is to investigate the causes
of war and thereby help to design "realistic" policies that can prolong intervals of peace. Realists counsel that
morality is usually ineffective in a dangerous world: a "realistic" understanding of amoral and instrumental
behavior, characteristic of international politics, is necessary if states are not to fall prey to others' ambitions.
In looking for explanations for the causes of war, realists, as well as scholars in other approaches to
international relations, have distinguished among three levels of analysis: the individual, the state, and the
international system. While realists claim that their theories are "objective" and of universal validity, the
assumptions they use when analyzing states and explaining their behavior in the international system are
heavily dependent on characteristics that we, in the West, have come to associate with masculinity. The way
in which realists describe the individual, the state, and the international system are profoundly gendered; each
is constructed in terms of the idealized or hegemonic masculinity described in chapter 1. In the name of
universality, realists have constructed a world view based on the experiences of certain men: it is therefore a
world view that offers us only a partial view of reality.
WNDI 2006 29
AT: Try/Die-Security o/w

Our alternative expands the notion of security to include positive elements like concern for
structural violence. This re-framing of security is essential to human survival
Jon Barnett postgraduate student at the Centre for Resource & Environmental Studies, Australian National
University(now has a PhD and teaches at the Univ. of Melbourne) Peace Review Sep 1997.Vol.9, Iss. 3; pg. 405-
411
Dalby understands "dissident security discourses" as having different geographical frameworks that look,
with equal measure, both within and beyond the state. These critical approaches erode state-centered
parochialism. Once overcome, people and cultures-united by common concern-can take priority over states
and borders. To this we can add a more sociological perspective. Kevin Clements, for example, claims that:
"Linking security explicitly to community building and the enlargement of safe spaces provides individuals,
social movements, and political leaders with important criteria for determining whether or not behavior is
likely to enhance or diminish net security." Addressing the problem of inequity, Clements asks if there can be
"any real security for anyone in a world that is so radically divided into rich and poor?" Likewise, Ken Booth
claims that "the trouble with privileging power and order is that they are at somebody else's expense (and are
therefore potentially unstable)." According to Booth, "emancipation, not power or order, produces true
security. Emancipation, theoretically, is security." This emancipatory vision introduces security theorizing to
a new philosophical domain that poses questions of ethics, reciprocal rights, individual responsibility, and
universal ideals. New security interpretations change the "what" question. Rather than limiting security to
orthodox questions of armed conflict, it instead expands to include social, economic, environmental,
political, and even health issues. Likewise, new interpretations alter the "who" question. The state no longer
dominates; it becomes only one of several referents for security. These changes also help us shift from
negative (reactive) approaches to positive (proactive) approaches for real security.
Security has moved towards a more universal understanding. Expanding the security agenda makes human
collectives more interdependent around a host of indivisible issues that threaten well being. Decoupling
security from the state helps legitimize alternative social groupings. Identifiable common interests emerge
when we reclaim security from militarism and attach it instead to basic needs and survival.
Increasing interdependence has now become the fundamental organizing principle of the increasingly
"dense" international system, eroding sovereignty and state authority in both domestic and international
affairs. Thus, reclaiming security creates a normative framework for connecting people on issues common to
human well being. It endorses an ecologically sustainable approach to meeting the basic needs of all people.
(Continued)The process of reclaiming security undermines the dominant discourse. But expanding security's
meaning holds value only if it actually alters practice. We should beware of the danger that new concepts of
security might be coopted by the dominant paradigm, and thus do more to legitimize than to challenge the
status quo. This has already happened to notions of economic security; environmental security could well be
next. Thus, we need practical strategies to make the reclamation of security into a concrete reality.
WNDI 2006 30
Foreign policy objectives include positing other nations with gendered identities to make to
legitimize violence against the “undesirables”
David Campbell (1992) argues that in the case of the United States, an explicit goal of foreign policy was the
construction and maintenance of a U.S. identity. A “society of security” (Campbell 1992, 166) was created in
which a vigorous loyalty/security program sought to define Americans in terms of excluding the Communist
Other, both externally and internally. Campbell notes the gendered nature of such exclusionary practices, so
that, for example, Communists and other “undesirables” were linked through feminization, as indicated by
the abusive term pinko.6 Although he does not emphasize the point, this U.S. identity that was constructed
through Communist witchhunts and the associated tests of “loyalty” was essentially a masculine identity.
Indeed, it was the very same form of masculinity that was also shaped by fear of “latent homosexuality” as
discussed by Ehrenreich (see chapter 2). Integrating Campbell’s and Ehrenreich’s (1983) work, it becomes
clear that vigilance against the possibility that unsuspecting liberals might unwittingly help the Communist
cause, paralleled and intersected with the vigilance needed to ward off the threat of “latent homosexuality.”
WNDI 2006 31
AT: Women in International Arena
While a handful of women may practice foreign policy they are forced to deny their
femininity. Only by when we have a new vision of international relations will gender
hierarchies be displaced.
1992
In most of the contemporary world men do not need to give up their gender identity in order to practice
foreign policy; however, the same cannot be said for women. Until we reach a point where values associated
with femininity are more universally valued in public life, women will continue to try to give up being
feminine when they enter the world of international politics, for those who are the most successful are those
who can best deny their femininity.
Given the generally masculine nature of international politics, how could such a change in values be
effected? Underscoring the masculinist orientation in the discipline of international relations does nothing to
change the masculinist underpinnings of states' behavior in the international system. In the world of
statecraft, no fundamental change in the hierarchy of the sexes is likely to take place until women occupy
half, or nearly half, the positions at all levels of foreign and military policy-making. No change in the
hierarchy of gender will occur until mediators and care givers are as valued as presidents as citizen-warriors
currently are. This will not come about until we have a new vision of international relations and until we live
in a world in which gender hierarchies no longer contribute to women's oppression. To the very limited
extent they have been visible in the world of international politics, women have generally been perceived as
victims or problems; only when women's problems or victimization are seen as being the result of unequal,
unjust, or exploitative gender relations can women participate equally with men as agents in the provision of
global security. When women have been politically effective, it has generally been at the local level.
Increasingly, women around the world are taking leadership roles in small-scale development projects such
as cooperative production and projects designed to save the natural environment. Women are also playing
important roles in social movements associated with peace and the environment. While these decentralized
democratic projects are vital for women to achieve a sense of empowerment and are important building
blocks for a more secure future, they will remain marginal as long as they are seen as women's projects and
occur far from centers of power. Hence it is vitally important that women be equally represented, not just in
social movements and in local politics but at all levels of policy-making. If foreign policy-making within
states has been a difficult area for women to enter, leadership positions in international organizations have
been equally inaccessible. While women must have access to what have traditionally been seen as centers of
power where men predominate, it is equally important for women and men to work together at the local
level. Victories in local struggles are important for -the achievement of the kind of multidimensional,
multilevel security I have proposed. The feminist perspectives presented in this book suggest that issues of
global security are interconnected with, and partly constituted by, local issues; therefore the achievement of
comprehensive security depends on action by women and men at all levels of society. -Such action is only
possible when rigid gender hierarchies are challenged. To begin to construct this more secure world requires
fundamental changes in the discipline that describes and analyzes world politics. The focus of this book has
been on how the discipline of international relations would be changed by the introduction of gender as a
category of analysis. To begin to think about how gender might be introduced into the discipline and to
recapitulate and extend the arguments made in this book, I shall conclude by drawing on the work of feminist
scholar Peggy McIntosh, who outlines five phases of curriculum change necessary for introducing gender
into 0scholarly disciplines. While she uses history as an example, her analysis could equally well apply to the
discipline of international relations. 9
WNDI 2006 32
AT: We incorporate women
Any attempt to redefine international relations must begin with a discussion of masculinity
1992.
While the purpose of this book is to introduce gender as a category of analysis into the discipline of
international relations, the marginalization of women in the arena of foreign policy-making through the kind
of gender stereotyping that I have described suggests that international politics has always been a gendered
activity in the modern state system. Since foreign and military policy-making has been largely conducted by
men, the discipline that analyzes these activities is bound to be primarily about men and masculinity. We
seldom realize we think in these terms, however; in most fields of knowledge we have become accustomed to
equating what is human with what is masculine. Nowhere is this more true than in international relations, a
discipline that, while it has for the most part resisted the introduction of gender into its discourse, bases its
assumptions and explanations almost entirely on the activities and experiences of men. Any attempt to
introduce a more explicitly gendered analysis into the field must therefore begin with a discussion of
masculinity.
Adding women will not solve for current international insecurities. Only by incorporating
the feminist perspective and bringing to light gender hierarchies imbedded in world politics
can the artificial binaries of international relations be eradicated.
1992
However, feminist theories must go beyond injecting women's experiences into different disciplines and
attempt to challenge the core concepts of the disciplines themselves. Concepts central to international
relations theory and practice, such as power, sovereignty, and security, have been framed in terms that we
associate with masculinity. Drawing on feminist theories to examine and critique the meaning of these and
other concepts fundamental to international politics could help us to reformulate these concepts in ways that
might allow us to see new possibilities for solving our current insecurities. Suggesting that the personal is
political, feminist scholars have brought to our attention distinctions between public and private in the
domestic polity: examining these artificial boundary distinctions in the domestic polity could shed new light
on international boundaries, such as those between anarchy and order, which are so fundamental to the
conceptual framework of realist discourse. Most contemporary feminist perspectives take the gender
inequalities that I have described above as a basic assumption. Feminists in various disciplines claim that
feminist theories, by revealing and challenging these gender hierarchies, have the potential to transform
disciplinary paradigms. By introducing gender into the discipline of international relations, I hope to
challenge the way in which the field has traditionally been constructed and to examine the extent to which
the practices of international politics are related to these gender inequalities. The construction of hierarchical
binary oppositions has been central to theorizing about international relations. 29 Distinctions between
domestic and foreign, inside and outside, order and anarchy, and center and periphery have served as
important assumptions in theory construction and as organizing principles for the way we view the world.
Just as realists center their explanations on the hierarchical relations between states and Marxists on unequal
class relations, feminists can bring to light gender hierarchies embedded in the theories and practices of
world politics and allow us to see the extent to which all these systems of domination are interrelated.
WNDI 2006 33
AT: Ivory Tower

Our integration of the feminist perspective in international relations recognizes the need to
incorporate multiple voices of women in a variety of circumstances.
1992
This notion of standpoint has been seriously criticized by postmodern feminists who argue that a unified
representation of women across class, racial, and cultural lines is an impossibility. Just as feminists more
generally have criticized existing knowledge that is grounded in the experiences of white Western males,
postmodernists claim that feminists themselves are in danger of essentializing the meaning of woman when
they draw exclusively on the experiences of white Western women: such an approach runs the additional risk
of reproducing the same dualizing distinctions that feminists object to in patriarchal discourse. 27
Postmodernists believe that a multiplicity of women's voices must be heard lest feminism itself become one
more hierarchical system of knowledge construction. Any attempt to construct feminist perspectives on
international relations must take this concern of postmodernists seriously; as described above, dominant
approaches to international relations have been Western-centered and have focused their theoretical
investigations on the activities of the great powers. An important goal for many feminists has been to attempt
to speak for the marginalized and oppressed: much of contemporary feminism has also recognized the need
to be sensitive to the multiple voices of women and the variety of circumstances out of which they speak.
Developing perspectives that can shed light on gender hierarchies as they contribute to women's oppression
worldwide must therefore be sensitive to the dangers of constructing a Western-centered approach. Many
Western feminists are understandably apprehensive about replicating men's knowledge by generalizing from
the experiences of white Western women. Yet to be unable to speak for women only further reinforces the
voices of those who have constructed approaches to international relations out of the experiences of men.
"[Feminists] need a home in which everyone has a room of her own, but one in which the walls are thin
enough to permit a conversation." 28 Nowhere is this more true than in these early attempts to bring feminist
perspectives to bear on international politics, a realm that has been divisive in both its theory and its practice.
Having presented multiparadigmatic, multiperspective descriptions of both disciplines, I shall be drawing on
and synthesizing a variety of feminist perspectives as I seek to develop a gendered analysis of some of the
major approaches to international relations.
If we are not allowed to speak for the other than it will reinforce the legitimacy of men’s
knowledge as universal
As Tickner (2001: 136) warns, ‘if feminism becomes paralyzed by women not being able to speak for others, then it
will only reinforce the legitimacy of men’s knowledge as universal knowledge’. Thus, by not absolutizing
difference, but rather treating it as part of an emancipatory process, it becomes possible to expose ‘the norm against
which some people seem different and to see the ways in which institutions construct and utilize difference to justify
and enforce exclusions’ (Cock & Bernstein, 1998: 23).
WNDI 2006 34
There no risk that the feminist perspective we advocate fails to address the oppression the
developing world suffers the nature of MASCULINE OPPRESSION is responsible for all
forms of oppression women of the developing world want a move toward human security.
First, basic human security needs are common to all people. A human security discourse that propagates
interdimensional and multilevel linkages cannot technically be reserved for one group alone. What binds women
from developed and developing world perspectives together is their common victimhood. The entrenchment of male
domination, it is argued, is hardly unique to any one culture. Second, there is a danger that if the human security
discourse focuses too much on variety across time, place and culture, it could produce multiple grand narratives, that
is, new orthodoxies or universalisms condoning oppressive practices
Our postmodern investigation of security discourse and international relations recognizes

and examines the westernatization of the world guised as liberal democracy.
Tickner [Ann, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the College of the Holy Cross, where she teaches
Reliance Versus Power Politics: American and Indian Experiences in Building Nation-States] Gendering World
Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post–Cold War Era, Columbia University Press 2001.
Additionally, postcolonial feminists are drawing attention to the ways in which Western feminism may itself be
complicit in imposing a Western view of democracy and rights that ignores issues of race and cultural differences.
Conversely, it is important to recognize that cultural reassertions against Westernization are often framed in terms
that result in the regulation and control of women. Feminists also claim that, while democratization is being
celebrated by Western liberals, new democracies are not always friendly toward women. Feminists have traditionally
been suspicious of what they see as the legacy of theWestern liberal-democratic tradition that they claim is
patriarchal and that, historically, has favored men’s over women’s interests. Additionally, since women have
traditionally had less access to formal political institutions, the focus on state institutions by scholars of
democratization may miss ways in which women are participating in politics—outside formal political channels at
the grassroots level
WNDI 2006 35
Alternative Solves
The feminist perspective is necessary to understand the connections between all forms of
violence and to eliminative militarism.
Tickner [Ann, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the College of the Holy Cross, where she teaches
Reliance Versus Power Politics: American and Indian Experiences in Building Nation-States] Gendering World
Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post–Cold War Era, Columbia University Press 2001.
Feminist analysis of wartime rape has shown how militaries can be a threat even to their own populations;16 again,
feminist scholarship cuts across the conventional focus on interstate politics or the domestic determinants of foreign
policy. Feminists have claimed that the likelihood of conflict will not diminish until unequal gender hierarchies are
reduced or eliminated; the privileging of characteristics associated with a stereotypical masculinity in states’ foreign
policies contributes to the legitimization not only of war but of militarization more generally.
WNDI 2006 36
Framework
We must consider the potential violent impacts of exclusion
Vrinda Dalmiya teaches philosophy at the University of Hawai'i. Peace Review. Palo Alto: Dec 1998.Vol.10, Iss.
4; pg. 523, 6 pgs
Moral culpability attaches both to our actions and to our failures to act. I may not have thrown the baby into the
river to drown and yet I can be blamed for not jumping in to save her for fear of getting my clothes wet. In such
instances, "not doings" can be as violent as some doings. It is important, therefore, to take seriously the ontological
status of absences, failures or omissions and to consider (for instance) "not attempting to save the drowning child" as
having a distinct moral status. While not leaping to the rescue of the drowning child in our example, I may look the
other way or walk away fast; and surely the acts of "looking away or walking fast" cannot be construed as violent.
But even though the primary locus of moral evaluation may be the "negative action," the positive acts (of looking
away, of walking fast) become alibis by covering up for the omission. We have here not just "turning my head the
other way" but of doing it "instead of ' attempting a rescue-a quite different matter. In a similar fashion, "not
sayings" that lurk behind what is said or expressed can be violent. In such contexts, what is said instead, even
though independently innocuous (or even praiseworthy), becomes party to that violence. To understand this claim
we need not restrict ourselves to traditional spoken or written languages, for this general thesis can encompass all
kinds of sign systems and gestures ("body language").

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WNDI 2006 1

Feminism IR Addendum Negative

Realists’ version of states’ security depends on a partial representation of human nature. A

Link-“women are peaceful”

Scenarios that describe proliferation as a threat perpetuate realism’s gendering of non

The international arena excludes ecological concerns in response to the dichotomization of

The masculine approach to international relations promotes the view of nature as a

US hegemonic imperialism will cause devastation on an unprecedented scale, causing

AT: Realism Good

AT: Try/Die-Security o/w

AT: Women in International Arena

AT: We incorporate women

AT: Ivory Tower

Our postmodern investigation of security discourse and international relations recognizes

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