THE PREMISE THAT we are all harmed when women are precluded from making the world safer is a fundamental and profound idea. At first glance, the foreign policy link may not be obvious, even though we are reminded at every turn that public policy decisions affect our economic and physical security in ways both apparent and invisible. We buy T-shirts from Thailand and sell U.S. semiconductors in South Korea. We worry about wounded veterans of lengthy wars, desperate Central Americans who choose to send their children north alone, and extremists detonating bombs in Boston.
But in this remarkably readable book, Valerie Hudson and Patricia Leidl push us—all of us—to think through the fundamental template for making decisions. In foreign policy parlance, if our leaders focus on so-called hard security issues (such as threats from nuclear pariah states or rogue fanatics) rather than on broader human security concerns, are we left less safe and prosperous than we could be?
Or, to put these questions another way, the authors ask trenchantly whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was serious—and, if so, was she right—in setting out her doctrine that the subjugation of women around the world is a threat to the security of the United States. Critics see this idea merely as a rhetorical or cynical stance on the part of U.S. policy makers, including Clinton herself—a posture that can be ignored in a particular case if it would undermine “real” American national interests. Further, some suggest that it isn’t our business how other countries treat half their populations. Altruism aside, from the narrow perspective of our national interests, should Americans care?
The answer, based on a wealth of evidence and the careful analysis of these scholars, is simple: yes, if we are determined not to repeat twentieth-century wars and cataclysms.
As things stand, we haven’t begun the new century very capably, despite enormous efforts. After more than a decade of fighting in Afghanistan, the United States is trying to disengage from the longest war in our history. Obviously, the casus belli was the 2001 terrorist attack launched on our homeland—although shortly after the invasion, policy makers and pundits began pointing out virtuously that a corollary benefit was the liberation of women from unimaginable oppression under Taliban rule. But Hudson and Leidl examine the idea that our engagement vis-à-vis Afghanistan would have been altered if we had hewed to a different method of evaluating national threats prior to 9/11.
No one claims that faithful action spurred by the Hillary Doctrine would resolve all conflicts. Clinton herself, often termed a hawk for the foreign policy decisions she has espoused, has never held out for some kind of peaceable kingdom. Instead, taking to its logical conclusion Clinton’s proposal to make the treatment of women a yardstick in decision making, the authors suggest that the United States and the international community would have moved against the Taliban sooner. Stopping the egregious abuses of women would not have been an afterthought, nor an excuse for an invasion already planned.
What difference would that have made to Americans? Impossible to know, but—without minimizing the impact from military engagement anytime or anywhere—we can ponder whether that modified approach might have prevented the watershed tragedy of 9/11, which brought ensuing shocks within the global community and an incalculable cost to our population’s well-being.
More fundamentally, and drawing on research from a variety of disciplines, the authors explore the idea that subjugating women deprives them not simply of their safety, but of
agency—their ability to contribute to security. A country needs the option of using
soft power (the traditionally feminine strengths of persuading and attracting) in addition to military force to exert its influence effectively. Hudson and Leidl make clear the direct link to enhanced stability in countries where women actively participate in public life. The landscapes surveyed are startlingly broad, ranging from discussions of developments in China, India, and Rwanda, among others, to the in-depth case studies of Afghanistan, Guatemala, and Saudi Arabia. (Here the term
case study definitely isn’t code for boring analysis; the stories of real people on those pages bring tears.)
For the policy maker, the academic or student, and also for the broader public searching for the “right” thing to do in Syria or another crisis area, a huge dilemma involves weighing the risks of action against those of inaction. Especially in the wake of the discredited intervention in Iraq—but balancing that against the world’s historically recent failures to prevent massacres in Rwanda or Bosnia—we’re conscious of the need for a moral frame of reference. This question has haunted me for more than twenty years because, as the American ambassador to neighboring Austria, I was implicated by impotence as the United States stood by and watched Serb military forces (and far less often, their opponents’ forces) slaughtering civilians in Croatia and Bosnia.
The Dayton Agreement, heralded as a great success, but lacking even one woman among the negotiating teams, has been a political disaster. Scores of women I’ve interviewed have told me not only “this was not our war,” but also that if women had been at Dayton, they would have insisted on essential on-the-ground changes, such as the guaranteed detention of local indicted war criminals, whose dangerous presence prevented refugees from returning home and kept the country divided.
And so I commend Professor Hudson and Ms. Leidl for offering evidence on why “not a single Arab Uprising country has become a better place for women,” despite the courage of women who risked everything to champion democratic transitions. Tragically, I have observed that conflict creates a power vacuum into which men rush while women are carefully deliberating their roles, but this is complicated further by male bonding over the subjugation of women, which the authors show is a typical occurrence both during and after violent conflicts.
We need the most influential players in the world to effect a broad-scale shift of the security paradigm. Full disclosure: Hillary Clinton has been my friend for more than twenty years; thus, the work of these authors holds special interest for me. Incidental to its purpose, the book offers illuminating insight into the thinking of an individual who—considering only her previous professional positions and the clout of the world’s sole remaining superpower—can be acknowledged by detractors and supporters alike as one of the most influential females who has ever lived.
But this volume is important for anyone who wants to think seriously about the shape and purpose of foreign policy. At the end of a war that began just over one hundred years ago, President Woodrow Wilson unleashed consternation by proposing fourteen principles for sustainable peace, insisting they would further U.S. interests. Scholars have continued to debate the implications, initially calling him utopian but more recently acknowledging his realism. Without stretching the analogy, it is fair to say that Secretary Clinton’s declaration that women’s subjugation threatens our national interests has similarly been dismissed by many as mere idealism—yet it stems from a pragmatic approach and deep experience. Understanding what Hudson and Leidl reveal about the varying applications of the Hillary Doctrine strikes me as the start of wisdom.
Chair, The Institute for Inclusive Security
