Abstract
The era of the “war on terror” has seen a sharp increase in the use of the rhetoric of good and evil in global politics.2 In the post-9/11 era, leaders in international relations and those who study their actions have channeled new attention toward the words and standards of the age-old tradition of just war.3 These standards, outlined in the first chapter of this volume, hold a high profile in international political discourse.4 Still, while some see the increasing use of just war words as a sign of the increasing salience of questions of ethics and war,5 others see it as a result of the vagueness and susceptibility to political manipulation.6 Indeed, if just war theories are the pulse of our understandings of the ethics of war, they are often a pulse that is difficult to keep track of and measure effectively.
1. I am appreciative to the editors of this volume for their careful and considered reading of my contribution. I also owe a debt to Amy Eckert, whose work has challenged me to think about non-state actors in just war theory through gendered lenses. Any mistakes remain my own.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Robert L. Ivie, “Rhetorical Deliberation and Democratic Politics in the Here and Now,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 5 (2) (2002): 277–285.
William J. Bennett, Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism (New York: Regnery Publishing, 2003).
See Michael Walzer, “Words of War: Challenges to the Just War Theory,” Harvard International Review 26 (11) (2004): 36–38;
Michael Walzer, Arguing about War (New York: Carnegie Council for International Affairs, 2004);
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust War (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
Lewis R. Aiken, Morality and Ethics in Theory and Practice (Springfield, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004).
Laura Sjoberg, “The Gendered Realities of the Immunity Principle: Why Gender Analysis Needs Feminism,” International Studies Quarterly 50 (4) (2006): 889–910;
Inis L. Claude, “Just War: Doctrines and Institutions,” Political Science Quarterly 95 (1) (1980): 83–96.
Laura Sjoberg, Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006);
Neta C. Crawford, “Just War Theory and the U.S. Counterterror War,” Perspectives on Politics 1 (1) (2003): 5–25.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, ed., Just War Theory (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 268; Crawford, “Just War Theory and the U.S. Counterterror War.”
Sjoberg, Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq; Sjoberg, “The Gendered Realities of the Immunity Principle”; Laura Sjoberg, “Why Just War Needs Feminism Now More than Ever,” International Politics 45 (1) (2008):1–18;
Helen Kinsella, “Discourses of Difference: Civilians, Combatants, and Compliance with the Laws of War,” Review of International Studies 31 (2005): 163–185;
Helen Kinsella, “Gendering Grotius: Sex and Sex Difference in the Laws of War,” Political Theory 34 (2) (2006): 161–191;
Helen Kinsella, “Understanding a War that is Not a War,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33 (1) (2007): 209–231;
Lucinda Peach, “An Alternative to Pacifism? Feminism and Just War Theory,” Hypatia 9 (2) (1994): 151–72. Though I did not know her well, this article of Lucinda Peach was the inspiration for much of my work trying to create an explicitly feminist take on just war theory, and was on my mind as I wrote this chapter. I was able to tell her that shortly before she passed away, and will always hope that my work in this area honors her memory.
Chris J. Cuomo, “War Is Not Just an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence,” Hypatia 11 (4) (1996): 30–45; Elshtain, Just War Theory.
Sjoberg, “The Gendered Realities of the Immunity Principle.”; Fritz Kalshoven, The Law of Warfare: A Summary of Its Recent History and Trends in Development (Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1973);
George Weigel, “From Last Resort to Endgame: Morality, the Gulf War, and the Peace Process,” in David E. Decrosse, ed., But Was It Just? Reflections on the Morality of the Persian Gulf War (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 20–43.
See, for early accounts, Elshtain, Just War Theory; Judith Stiehm, ed. Women’s and Men’s War (London: Pergamon, 1982);
Ruth Roach Pierson, “Beautiful Soul or Just Warrior: Gender and War,” Gender and History 1 (1) (1989): 77–86.
There has been some controversy, of late, as to whether Jean Elshtain is, or ever was, a feminist critic of just war theorizing, largely resulting from the publication of her book, Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (New York: Basic Books, 2003), which argues for United States interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq using what many would characterize as antifeminist justifications. I have written on this question more extensively in Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq, but note two points for the purposes of this chapter. First, I believe that seeing Just War against Terror as a radical shift for Elshtain relies on reading a normative agenda into her earlier work that I am just not certain was there. Second, regardless of Elshtain’s position on the just warrior/beautiful soul dichotomies and the resulting reading of just war theory as gendered, her observations of those phenomena inspired much feminist investigation of just war theorizing (including my own). As such, citation to this work is not only appropriate, but essential, regardless of the politics that either originally influenced her work or have come to influence it now.
V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan, Global Gender Issues (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 116–117.
Laura Sjoberg and Caron Gentry, Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics (London: Zed Books, 2007);
Carolyn Moser and Fiona Clark, eds, Victims, Perpetrators, or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict, and Political Violence (New York: Zed Books, 2001).
Elshtain, Just War Theory; Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: New York University Press, 1987). Elshtain understands that cultural images of male and female are rooted (at least in part) in just war discourse.
Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (New York: Houghton-Miffin, 1989);
Carol Cohn and Sara Ruddick, “A Feminist Ethical Perspective on Weapons of Mass Destruction,” in S. Lee and S. Hashmi, eds, Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 405–435.
Nancy Huston, “Tales of War and Tears of Women,” Women’s Studies International Forum 5 (3/4) (1982): 271–282;
and J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
The conceptual conflation here is intentional, representing the same in the policy and academic worlds. As Cynthia Enloe observes, many belligerents do not make a distinction between “womenandchildren” as civilians. See Cynthia Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993).
Jill Steans, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 81.
There are those who have an alternative understanding of this relationship. See R. Charli Carpenter, Innocent Women and Children: Gender, Norms, and the Protection of Civilians (London: Ashgate, 2006);
and R. Charli Carpenter, “Women, Children, and Other Vulnerable Groups: Gender, Strategic Frames, and the Protection of Civilians as a Transnational Issue,” International Studies Quarterly 49 (2) (2005): 295–335. While, in previous work, I have addressed these differences in depth (Sjoberg, “The Gendered Realities of the Immunity Principle”), it is important to note two key points here: first, that work that considers gender subordination rather than just gender as a variable has not only different epistemological and methodological approaches but also different (and I argue richer and more accurate) empirical results; and that violence against women and men must be understood in a larger context of gender symbolism in global politics.
Tickner, Gender in International Relations; J. Ann Tickner, Gendering World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001);
Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
V. Spike Peterson, “Transgressing Boundaries: Theories of Knowledge, Gender, and International Relations,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 21 (2) (1992): 197.
Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), 145; Peach, “An Alternative to Pacifism.”
Sjoberg, Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq, citing V. Spike Peterson, “Sexing Political Identities/Nationalism as Heterosexism,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 1 (1) (1999): 34–65.
Lucian Ashworth and Larry Swatuck, “Masculinity and the Fear of Emasculation in International Relations Theory,” in Marysia Zalewski and Jane Parpart, eds, The “Man” Question in International Relations, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 86; Elshtain, Just War Theory, 263.
Tickner, Gender in International Relations; Tickner, Gendering World Politics; Sarah Brown, “Feminism, International Theory, and International Relations of Gender Inequality,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 17 (3) (1988): 461–475.
Christine Sylvester, “Feminists and Realists on Autonomy and Obligation in International Relations,” in V. Spike Peterson, ed., Gendered States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Press, 1992).
Mary E. Hawkesworth, “Knowers, Knowing, Known: Feminist Theory and Claims of Truth,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14 (3) (1989): 533–557. Many feminists see the patriarchal state, the war system, the rational man, and international anarchy as constructs of imperial hermeneutics which police meaning in global politics; meaning, in turn, controls the content of international relations stories; which, in turn, limits policy choices.
Nancy Hirschmann, “Freedom, Recognition, and Obligation: A Feminist Approach to Political Theory,” American Political Science Review 83 (4) (1989): 1227–1244. For example, women who become pregnant as a result of rape have assumed responsibility involuntarily. Even though they have not “volunteered,” they now have a responsibility to decide whether to continue the pregnancy, and the attendant responsibilities either to do the work associated with the pregnancy or to terminate it. Each requires action on the part of a woman; the example demonstrates that the supposed voluntariness of social contract — born responsibility is gendered.
Karen Jones, “Gender and Rationality,” in Alfred R. Mele and Piers Rawling, eds, Oxford Handbook on Rationality (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004), 301–321.
Margaret Atherton, “Cartesian Reason and Gendered Reason,” in Louise M. Antony and Charlotte Witt, eds, A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 19;
Sara Ruddick, “Pacifying the Forces: Drafting Women in the Interest of Peace,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 8 (3) (1983): 474.
Genevieve Lloyd, “Maleness, Metaphor, and the ‘Crisis’ of Reason,” in Louise M. Antony and Charlotte Witt, eds, A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 77.
Sally Haslanger, “On Being Objective and Objectified,” Antony and Witt, eds, A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 85.
W.B. Slocombe, “Force, Pre-emption, and Legitimacy,” Survival 45 (1) (2003): 117–130.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, “The Problem with Peace,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 17 (3) (1988): 441–49.
Hilary Charlesworth, Christine Chinkin, and Shelley Wright, “Feminist Approaches to International Law,” American Journal of International Law 85 (4) (1991): 626.
Laura Sjoberg, “Security Studies: Feminist Contributions,” Security Studies 18 (2) (2009): 183–213.
Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
Charlotte Hooper, Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 31.
Christine Sylvester, Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Christine Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Post-modern Era (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 96;
Jill M. Bystudzienski, ed., Women Transforming Politics: Worldwide Strategies for Empowerment (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992);
Sandra Harding, Is Science Multicultural.? (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998).
Vivienne Jabri, “Explorations of Difference in Normative International Relations,” in Vivienne Jabri and Eleanor O’Gorman, eds., Women, Culture, and International Relations, (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), 39–60.
June Lennie, “Deconstructing Gendered Power Relations in Participatory Planning: Towards an Empowering Feminist Framework of Participation and Action,” Women’s Studies International Forum 22 no. 1 (1999): 107.
Fiona Robinson, Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory, and International Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 47.
See for example Crawford, “Just War Theory and the U.S. Counterterror War”; Robert Imre, T. Brian Mooney, and Benjamin Clarke, Responding to Terrorism: Philosophical and Legal Perspectives (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007);
Jean Elshtain, Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (New York: Basic Books, 2004).
J. Ann Tickner, “Hans Morgenthau’s Principles of Political Realism: A Feminist Reformulation,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 17 no. 3 (1988): 429–440;
and Susan B. Boyd, ed., Challenging the Public — Private Divide (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
Edward S. Hermann and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988).
See Department of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms, 2008, available at http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/data/t/05488.html (accessed 1 July 2008); Stanley D. Brunn, 11 September and Its Aftermath: The Geopolitics of Terror (London: Routledge, 2004).
Iris Marion Young, “The Logic of Masculinist Protection and Reflections on the Current Security State,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29 no. 1 (2003): 1–24.
Mira Sucharov, “Anthologizing the Peace Process,” in Laura Eisenberg, Neil Caplan, Naomi Sokoloff, and Mohammed Abu-Namir, eds., Traditions and Transitions in Israel Studies: Books on Israel, Volume 6 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), 2.
Amy Allen, “Rethinking Power,” Hypatia 13 no. 1 (1998): 21–40.
Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harvest Books, 1970); Sjoberg, Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq, 69; Lennie, “Deconstructing Gendered Power Relations in Participatory Planning,” 104.
Robin May Schott, “Gender and ‘Postmodern War’,” Hypatia 11 no. 4 (1996): 19–29.
Hooper, Manly States, 31; R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995).
See Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).
Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg, eds, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271–313.
James Turner Johnson, Can Modern War Be Just? (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 28–29.
Sigal Ben-Porath, “Care Ethics and Dependence-Rethinking Jus Post Bellum,” Hypatia 23 (2) (2008): 61–71.
George W. Bush, “The State of the Union Address,” Los Angeles Times, 29 January 2003.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2009 Eric A. Heinze and Brent J. Steele
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sjoberg, L. (2009). Gender, Just War, and Non-state Actors. In: Heinze, E.A., Steele, B.J. (eds) Ethics, Authority, and War. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101791_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101791_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-38014-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10179-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)