Text Fwd: Contesting Militarization: Global Perspectives by Gwin Kirk

* Text informed by Gwin Kirk thru the No Bases on June 3, 2009

From Security Disarmed: Critical Perspectives on Gender, Race, and Militarization, edited by Barbara Sutton, Sandra Morgen, and Julie Novkov. Rutgers University Press.2008, pp.30-55

Chapter 2

Contesting Militarization: Global Perspectives

Gwyn Kirk

Currently, 80 percent of women working in bars and clubs near U.S. bases in South Korea are from the Philippines; Korean women have found other opportunities for making a living. In the Philippines, however, low wages, high unemployment, and no sustainable economic policy force roughly 10 percent of the country’s workers to seek employment abroad. In 2005, these workers sent home $10.7 billion (or 12 percent of GNP) in official remittances. President Gloria Mapacalang Arroyo has proudly called these overseas workers “the backbone of the new global workforce” and “our greatest export” (Paddock 2006, A1).

Following the division of the Korean peninsula after World War II, the United States maintained approximately a hundred military bases and facilities in South Korea. Although the U.S. military is restructuring and reducing the number of its bases there, South Korea is still considered a war zone and a “hardship” posting, as no formal peace treaty has been signed between North and South Korea to conclude the Korean War (1950–1953). Typically, most U.S. service members based there are young, their tours of duty are short, and the military prefers them to be unencumbered by family members. They are usually posted to Korea after basic training, often en route to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Korean and U.S. officials’ shared beliefs about the soldiers’ sexuality have led to policies that ensure the availability of women in bars and clubs near U.S. bases. Racist and sexist assumptions about Asian women—as exotic, accommodating, and sexually compliant—are an integral part of these arrangements. Moreover, Filipinas have a reputation for friendliness, and many speak some English. They come to Korea on 6-month entertainer visas to work as singers or dancers. They have varying expectations, but a major goal is to send money home. They arrive already indebted to club owners for their plane fare, passport costs, and agent’s fees. In addition, their pay is often much lower than they were promised by their recruiters, and they may be fined by owners for infractions of club rules. To pay off their debts they need to earn more, so they “go out” with U.S. soldiers. Thus, prostitution continues despite the U.S. military’s declared “zero tolerance” policy.¹ Servicemen have privilege, as men and as buyers, in these encounters, whether the liaisons are one-night stands or longer-term live-in relationships. The servicemen’s U.S. citizenship also privileges them and protects them from prosecution for many infringements of Korean law and customs. In class terms, many U.S. servicemen may be, like these women, part of a “poverty draft.” But this analogous situation does not necessarily translate into sympathy or respect. Often the opposite is true, with some U.S. soldiers, notably white men, committing serious crimes of violence against bar women.

Nowadays soldiers prefer live-in relationships, and women often choose to live with them rather than be exploited in the clubs. If they leave the clubs, however, they lose both their work permits and residence permits, which are tied to the job. If caught by immigration officials, the women are fined and deported. They may get jobs in small Korean factories that employ undocumented workers. They may engage in street prostitution, usually for low fees, or rely on their military boyfriends for support. U.S. soldiers with live-in girlfriends are not, strictly speaking, engaging in prostitution or trafficking. Thus U.S. military authorities can talk about “zero tolerance” while, at the same time, their troops have sexual servicing (Kim 2006; Kirk 2006).

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Approximately 2.5 million Salvadorans—out of a population of 6.5 million—live abroad, primarily in the United States, where they work in construction, landscape gardening, child care, domestic work, restaurant service, and other areas of the service sector. They send monthly remittances to relatives back home, estimated at $2.8 billion a year (Aizenman 2006). Some have temporary protected status, a category negotiated between the two governments after a devastating earthquake wiped out homes, farms, and jobs in El Salvador in 2001. El Salvador took the dollar as its currency in 2001 and joined the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) two years later. In August 2003, El Salvador reinforced its close ties to the United States by committing 360 soldiers to the war in Iraq (Garamone 2004).

As a colony of Spain for almost three hundred years, El Salvador developed an economy based on cash crops for export, especially sugar and coffee. A few families continue to control much of the nation’s wealth, and most people are very poor. A third of the rural population survives thanks to remittances from abroad. For decades, peasants and workers organized to change the gross inequalities that have characterized the country since colonization. These efforts met with severe governmental repression. From 1980 to 1992, U.S.-backed government troops fought insurgents of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), who were struggling for land redistribution, genuine democracy, and an end to inequality and oppression. An estimated 80,000 people were killed and 7,000 more “disappeared” in this war (Ready, Stephen, and Cosgrove 2001, 184–185). Over a million were displaced. In many areas it was too dangerous to plant or tend crops, and people fled for their lives, some to Honduras or the United States.

Women were profoundly affected by the war in that they were usually the ones responsible for generating household income, caring for children, and finding medical help, food, and shelter for their families. During the war up to 51 percent of households were headed by women (Ready, Stephen, and Cosgrove 2001, 184–185). Some had to leave their children in the care of others or send them abroad for safety because government forces made a practice of abducting infants and young children. Thousands of women were killed. Thousands more lost family members and suffered from war trauma, including rape, abuse, and torture by the military, government security forces, and death squads.

A military stalemate brought the two sides to negotiate a peace settlement, finalized in 1992, which included political changes, downsizing of the military, demobilization of left-wing forces, and the legalization of the FMLN as a political party. There has been little improvement in the nation’s persistent inequality, however. Economic policy has favored the financial sector and the maquiladoras surrounding San Salvador, rather than promoting land redistribution. The government is committed to “free market” principles, and hopes to stimulate the sluggish economy by opening new export markets and encouraging foreign investment. Remittances now make up 67 percent of El Salvador’s foreign exchange, compared to the maquila sector (16 percent) and agro-exports (6 percent) (Rosa 2004). Before the civil war, coffee exports were the backbone of the economy, but from 1999 to 2001 world coffee prices slumped dramatically to an all-time low. A key factor was oversupply, mainly the result of a massive increase in production in Vietnam, as part of economic rebuilding in the aftermath of the Vietnam War (Greenfield 2002).

A United Nations truth commission that investigated human rights abuses perpetrated during the war in El Salvador found that the government and government-sponsored death squads had committed 90 percent of the atrocities; it also condemned FMLN violence. The commission admonished the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) government to set up a legal process to deal with war crimes. Instead, the government pushed an amnesty law through parliament (Rubin 2004).

Reconstruction has been slow and uneven. Many elderly people, especially women whose husbands and children were killed, have no family support. During the war, adults and children witnessed—and committed—terrible atrocities. An “estimated 80 per cent of government troops and 20 per cent of FMLN recruits were under 18 years of age” (Hertvik 2006, n.p.). Unknown numbers suffer from injuries and war-related trauma. In many communities people report increasing gang-related violence—a manifestation of ongoing poverty, lack of opportunities, the disruptive effects of war, and culture of violence.

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The former Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia in the mountainous Balkan region of eastern Europe was created after World War II as a socialist state, with Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia as member republics. Vojvodina and Kosovo were autonomous provinces within Serbia. From 1991 to 2001, the member republics all experienced the devastation of war. Western media reports invariably emphasized aggressive nationalisms and age-old enmities among the many ethnic groups, suggesting that the Yugoslav federation was imploding from the inside. In addition to ethnic divisions and the political ambitions of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic to create a Greater Serbia, economic factors and the role of Western governments and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were also a major cause of bloodshed.

Yugoslavia declared autonomy from the Soviet Union in 1948. It developed a distinctive form of workers’ self-management, with economic ties to western Europe and the United States. By the 1980s, however, the economy was in trouble, with high levels of inflation and mounting national debt. The IMF, dominated by Western powers, agreed to make loans on condition that a series of harsh austerity measures were enacted. Taken together, these led to a wage freeze, widespread unemployment, shortage of basic commodities, increased external debt, and the gradual dismantling of the welfare state (Chossudovsky 1996). People protested. Leaders of the republics argued among themselves and with federal officials. Federal funding that should have gone to the republics was diverted to debt repayment, which fueled “secessionist tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions” (Chossudovsky 1996, 33).

In multiparty elections in 1990, separatist coalitions won in Croatia, Bosnia, and Slovenia. Croatia and Slovenia announced their secession from the federation in 1991 and were quickly recognized as independent states by the European Union. Serbian forces and the Yugoslav Army supported violent opposition to this move by the Serbian minority in Croatia. Bosnia, significant for its ethnic diversity and with considerable intermarriage among groups, held a referendum that called for independence in March 1992, and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was also recognized by European states. However, Bosnian Serb nationalists resisted secession. Bosnian Croats and Muslims fought together against Bosnian Serbs, but increasing polarization along ethnic lines, exacerbated by local media reporting, spiraled into a fury of violence and atrocity by armies and armed militias. Nationalist groups pursued “ethnic cleansing” by intimidation, forced expulsion or killing, and the destruction of cultural and historical buildings such as places of worship and cemeteries. Their practices included the systematic rape and forced impregnation of women by men from “other” groups.

War in Bosnia formally ended in 1995 with the Dayton Peace Accords, brokered by the United States. The new state of Bosnia and Herzegovina comprises two ethnic entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina with a Bosnian Muslim and Croat majority, and the Republic Srpska with a Bosnian Serb majority. During the 1990s, Serbia took steps to reduce the autonomy of Kosovo, and Serb forces fought a secessionist movement in Kosovo. In March 1999, the United States and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) intervened with seventy-nine days of devastating air strikes against Serbia. This step was justified as necessary to stop Serbian brutality against ethnic Albanians and Muslims, who made up 85 percent of the population of Kosovo. Press reports, however, noted that these air strikes actually “precipitated a sharp escalation of ethnic cleansing and other atrocities” (Chomsky 1999, 37).

These wars redrew the map of the Balkans along ethnic lines. They resulted in shattered communities, people’s acute distrust of “others,” high unemployment, and poverty. Governments of the new states pledged themselves to “free market” principles, including extensive privatization of formerly state-owned enterprises and outside investment from Western companies. Economic recovery has been slow, and the multilayered process of healing and rebuilding will take many years.

These examples illustrate intersections between militarization and the globalization of the economy. They show how war and militarism uproot people and make them available, indeed force them, to look for livelihood elsewhere. They detail interlocking systems of inequality based on gender, race/ethnicity, class, and nation. I separate economic, political, and ideological dimensions of militarism briefly in what follows, but they must be understood as intersecting, as shown in these examples.

Virtually all nations make huge economic, political, and ideological investments in militaries and militarism—a broad system of institutions, practices, values, and cultures that take their meaning and value from war. By contrast, for everyday security, people need clean air and water, meaningful sources of livelihood, respectful systems of health care, community ties, and nourishment for body, mind, and spirit. To contest militarization and develop alternative views of security teachers, researchers, and activists need nuanced understandings. Although much is being done in this regard there is scope—and need—for very much more.

This chapter deals in generalizations and broad strokes, with a focus on intersections among gender, race, and militarization. Given the power of the dollar, the dominance of U.S.-based corporations, the United States’ influence on World Bank and IMF policies, the worldwide reach of CNN and U.S. popular culture, and with more than seven hundred U.S. military bases spanning the globe, this account inevitably emphasizes U.S. militarism.

The Permanent War Economy

World military spending rose to a massive $1,118 billion in 2005 (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute 2006). Characterized as having a “permanent war economy” since World War II (Melman 1974, 2003), the United States spent 48 percent of this staggering total, almost as much as the rest of the word combined. In general, war is big business. A U.S. Department of Defense Web site describes the Pentagon as the “oldest,” “largest,” “busiest,” and “most successful” U.S. company, boasting a budget bigger than ExxonMobil, Ford, or General Motors, and with wider geographical scope (U.S. Department of Defense 2002). Indeed, U.S. military policies and budget priorities are driving militarization worldwide. On leaving office in 1960, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the power of the “military-industrial complex,” now more accurately described as the “military-industrial-congressional-academic-media complex,” to refer to institutional interconnections based on the overlapping goals, financial investments, and revolving-door job opportunities among top levels of government, the military, corporations, and academia.

Steven Staples, chair of the International Network on Disarmament and Globalization, argues that the large U.S. military budget “is for all practical purposes a corporate subsidy” siphoning public money into private hands and protected under article 21 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which allows “governments free rein for actions taken in the interest of national security” (Staples 2000, 19). He notes that

globalization and militarism are two sides of the same coin. On the one side, globalization promotes the conditions that lead to unrest, inequality, conflict, and, ultimately war. On the other side, globalization fuels the means to wage war by protecting and promoting the military industries needed to produce sophisticated weaponry. This weaponry, in turn, is used or is threatened to be used to protect the investments of transnational corporations and their shareholders. (18)

The U.S. military is both a state agency and a highly profitable sector that contracts with corporations like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Electric, and Boeing to produce weapons. Public funds underwrite the lengthy research and development process, and the government is the main customer for these weapons.

Nation-states, militaries, and corporations are intertwined through international trade in weapons, with the United States and Russia as the top weapons-exporting countries. The United States earned nearly $21 billion in overseas arms sales in fiscal year 2006 (Wayne 2006). Europe’s main arms-manufacturing nations—Britain, France, and Germany—maintain a significant market share, whereas Israel and China seek to increase arms sales. Major bombing and missile strikes like the 1999 bombardment of Kosovo and more recent attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq serve as advertising campaigns for arms manufacturers. War-tested planes and weapons systems command a price double or triple that of those without such testing (Merle 2003; Pae 2003). Moreover, weapons must be used to justify continued production.

Worldwide, most people are killed by small arms that are cheap and easily available rather than by sophisticated weapons systems. The international trade in small arms is a central part of the global economy as an earner of hard currency and as a way for indebted nations to repay foreign loans. More than 1,135 companies in a hundred countries manufacture small arms, and nearly 60 percent of them are in civilian hands (Soto 2004). A good deal of the cross-border trade in small arms is illegal, but it is highly profitable for manufacturers, dealers, brokers, shippers, and financiers (Lumpe 2000). This trade sustains many of the conflicts currently going on, for example, in Burundi, Congo, Sudan, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Peru, and Russia (Chechnya).

The outsourcing and privatization of U.S. military functions is a growing trend (Avant 2005; Ferguson and Turnbull 2004). Singer (2004) identifies provider firms (for example, Executive Outcomes) that offer direct, tactical military assistance; consulting firms (for example, Military Professional Resources Inc.) that provide strategic and administrative expertise; and support firms such as Halliburton’s Kellogg Brown and Root that provide logistic and maintenance services to armed forces. Private military companies are active in the war in Iraq, with their own weapons supplies (Leigh 2004). Blackwater Security Consulting has engaged in full-scale battle, using its own helicopters, to resupply its commandos (Mokhiber and Weissman 2004). In 2004, an estimated 20,000 private-enterprise soldiers worked for dozens of companies, mainly hired by the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority. Some were former Special Forces military personnel; others, for example, hired by Global Risk of London, were formerly unemployed men from the Pacific island of Fiji (Leigh 2004). Privatized soldiering is a cost-cutting measure using employees on short-term contracts, in contrast with regular troops who rely on the government to provide pensions and benefits, including medical insurance for their families. It shields military operations from congressional oversight and poaches troops who can earn much more from private companies. The practice also places employees in a legal grey area in which the military has no jurisdiction over them, as, for example, the private interrogators accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners, or the Dyncorp employees who were implicated in the trafficking of young women and other sex crimes in Bosnia (Singer 2004). If killed in war, such individuals do not appear on lists of official military deaths.

For centuries, colonial expansion and the quest for control of strategic locations and scarce resources have been motivating factors in military intervention. The economic reasons for contemporary wars are not always made clear in news reports, which often emphasize a conflict’s ethnic, cultural, or religious aspects said to be based on old enmities and histories of aggression. Recent wars in the Balkans, the oppression of the Palestinians by Israel, and the sixty-year conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir all have strong cultural and religious elements. But in addition, Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo have valuable mineral and oil deposits; Israel wants control of land and water supplies; and the watershed region of Kashmir provides control of rivers flowing to the Indus. In Sierra Leone, the lucrative diamond trade has fueled and financed decades of civil war. In Colombia, coca and processed cocaine play a similar role.

The economic imperative to get business running again in the aftermath of war means that peace agreements rarely address the root causes of conflict or make provisions for meaningful reconciliation or reparations but instead focus on reconstruction and economic normalization (Lipschutz 1998). The rebuilding of destroyed factories, oil pipelines, dams, and bridges is highly lucrative. In the case of the bombing of Kosovo, Western corporations were maneuvering for rebuilding contracts as soon as the bombing stopped; in the war against Iraq, this positioning began before the bombing started. Economic and military policies are not always a smooth fit, however. For example, John Feffer (2000) notes significant contradictions underlying U.S. policy in East Asia, where the United States seeks to open up new markets, especially in China with its more than one billion potential customers, but still pursues cold war foreign policy objectives in the region.

Some commentators argue that the nation-state is becoming weaker as a corollary of increased corporate power. Fifty-one of the world’s top hundred economies are corporations. WalMart is bigger than Indonesia, and General Motors is roughly the size of Ireland, New Zealand, and Hungary combined (CorpWatch 2001). Under a market economy, a major role for the nation-state is to create and maintain conditions for business profitability. States also finance their militaries, buy from military contractors, and generate ideological support for militarization by invoking patriotism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, and national security.

National Security

A “realist” paradigm in international relations has dominated political, military, and academic thinking about state security for decades. It assumes “a hostile international environment” in which “sovereign, self-interested states” seek their own security through a balance of political and military power among them (Tickner 2001, 38). National security is thus equated with military security, which places militarism at the center of public policy, justifies vast military expenditures, and naturalizes military activities.

Many nations were founded as a result of military conquest or postwar territorial changes. In general, state violence is considered legitimate violence. War veterans are often highly respected and their sacrifices honored in national commemorations and ceremonies. Military cemeteries are important national symbols (Ferguson and Turnbull 1999). Military service and connections facilitate running for political office or gaining appointment to high-ranking government positions. Departments of Defense are key government ministries. Militaries can also be a source of organized political opposition. They may limit the political potential of fragile democratic regimes and, on occasion, may take power through coups d’état. Armed struggle by popular forces, often characterized as rebels or insurgents, has been a key strategy in overthrowing colonial powers or achieving greater social and economic equality, and more democratic political institutions. Currently, more wars are being fought within nation-states than between states.

Serving in the military is considered a responsibility of citizenship. In the 1860s, African Americans wanted to fight in the American Civil War as part of their claim to equal citizenship. In the 1990s, gay men and lesbians in the United States also claimed this right. Nations where military service is compulsory for men include Austria, Chile, Egypt, Mexico, and South Korea, although with varying exemptions that include health and educational status. Peru, Libya, and Israel require military service from both men and women. In Britain, Germany, Greece, and the United States, women may volunteer for the military. Britain and the United States do not have conscription, but structural inequalities within these societies—based on race/ethnicity and class—constitute a “poverty draft.” In many nations, job opportunities depend on military service and contacts. Much is made of military service as a rite of passage into manhood. Feminist scholars point to the construction of militarized masculinity in recruits, as well as the role of masculinity in national foreign policy, and argue that the nation-state, which the military is said to protect, is a patriarchal, heterosexist institution (Allen 2000; Enloe 2000b; Peterson 2000; Plumwood 1993).

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States has pressed its allies especially throughout Europe and the Asia-Pacific region—by flattery, bribery, bullying, or coercion—to support its open-ended “war on terrorism.” In their adherence to U.S. foreign policy, allied governments trade national sovereignty for U.S. support and protection, real or imagined. They also jeopardize their own internal political processes in that their alignment with U.S. dominance is often at great cost to their citizens. Allied governments support this war despite their own people’s opposition to their nation’s involvement. In addition, taxpayers’ resources and some citizens themselves are expropriated for it.

Within the United States the commonplace distinction between foreign and domestic policy masks the continuities between them. The U.S. government is pursuing an integrated imperial policy that affects communities at home and abroad. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the United States has been the sole superpower. On May 30, 2000, over a year before the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States announced a policy of “full spectrum dominance” or “the ability of U.S. forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations” on land, at sea, in the air, and in space (Garamone 2000). The United States has bases on every continent and has begun the militarization of space. In December 2006, NASA announced its intention to establish a permanent base on the moon by 2024.

Embedded with the Military: Information, Ideologies, and Culture

The term embedded journalist, referring to a reporter attached to a military unit involved in armed conflict, first came into use during the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, when the U.S. military offered journalists the opportunity to undergo a period of boot camp-style training before allowing them into the combat zone. The much-repeated comment, “In war, truth is the first casualty,” is attributed to the Greek dramatist Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.). Contemporary forms of this include press censorship, restricted access to war zones, one-sided reporting, highly conjectural “reports,” and deliberate misinformation.

The mainstream U.S. media are owned and controlled by megacorporations like Disney/ABC and Time Warner/Turner, which Robert McChesney (2004) describes in terms of “hypercommercialism.” When militarization plays a central role in the global economy and in government policies, one of the mainstream media’s jobs is to enlist people’s support for such a role and to convince us that military priorities are legitimate (Chomsky 1997; Herman and Chomsky 2002). Mainstream news media typically endorse militarism as the only feasible approach to security. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, “experts” brought in by U.S. television networks to discuss military and foreign policies were invariably high-ranking, middle-aged military men who supported military action. Since then, however, the picture has become more complicated. Only 35 percent of those members of the U.S. military polled in 2006 said they approved of the way the president was handling the war in Iraq, and 41 percent said the United States should not have gone to war (Hodierne 2006). Senior military officers have also criticized the Bush administration’s political agenda as preventing them from making properly reasoned choices regarding U.S. withdrawal. Nevertheless, television viewers rarely learn of alternative approaches to resolving conflicts. Presidents can simply declare that diplomacy has “failed.” The development of nonmilitary forms of strength is assumed to be “unrealistic,” and such notions are scorned as soft, wimpy, even laughable.

Feminist philosopher Val Plumwood (1993) highlights dualistic thinking as the methodology that underpins hierarchal systems such as militarism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and environmental destruction in that various attributes are thought of in terms of oppositions—culture/nature, mind/body, male/female, self/other, and so on. These systems all rely on the creation of “otherness,” of enemies and inferiority, to justify superiority and domination. These dualisms are mutually reinforcing and should be viewed as an interlocking set. For members of dominant groups and nations, the construction of identity continually reinforces a belief in the group’s superiority. This belief, in turn, involves the dehumanization of “others” and encourages ignorance of how policies of the dominant group or nation affect people outside its borders, and how citizens and residents benefit from such policies, including those who are otherwise marginalized by racism or class inequality.

Media reports use language and images, subtly or crudely, in service of these ends. In Israel, this practice includes gross dehumanization of Palestinian people as well as governments and citizens of Arab nations. In the Balkans, local media sowed distrust and hatred among people who had lived alongside each other for generations. The independent Rwandan radio station, Radio Télévision Libre des Milles Collines, broadcast hate propaganda against Tutsis, moderate Hutus, Belgians, and the UN mission (UNAMIR), and greatly contributing to the racial hostilities that led to genocide. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. government policies and news reporting have relied on explicit ideologies of racism in the demonization of very diverse peoples, conveniently lumped together as Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and “people who look like Muslims.” In an analysis of New York Times articles from 2000 to 2004, Suad Joseph and Benjamin D’Harlingue revealed “a predominantly negative representation of Islam. In article after article, Islam is presented as reactionary, violent, oppressive, anti-American, and incomprehensible to the ‘Western mind.’ Muslim leaders are represented as dangerous fanatics rather than as respected spiritual leaders, and Muslim places of worship as sites of insurgencies rather than sites of the sacred” (2007, 464).

Drawing on such beliefs, U.S. president George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair argued that the bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq would liberate Afghan and Iraqi women from domination by Muslim men. Their wives, Laura Bush and Cherie Blair, made public statements to this effect that were widely published by mainstream media: that is, the first ladies deployed gender arguments while their own gender was also being deployed. Anthropologists Lila Abu-Lughod (2002) and Charles Hirschkind and Saba Mahmood (2002) have critiqued the assumptions underlying this savior discourse as reminiscent of colonial and missionary rhetoric. Gayatri Spivak (1988, 297) notes that colonial ideology often seeks to justify domination as being in the interests of women and that arguments for intervention often are cast in terms of “white men saving brown women from brown men.” By contrast, Afghan and Iraqi women argue that they desperately need military operations to stop. They need physical safety, resources to rebuild their homes and communities, genuine solidarity and support from feminists of other countries, and full involvement in peacemaking processes (Heyzer 2005; Kolhatkar 2004, 2005).

U.S. women were among the troops deployed ostensibly to “liberate” Muslim women. The differing experiences of three women who served in the U.S. Army 507th Maintenance Company unit ambushed after taking a “wrong turn in the desert” (Bragg 2003) are instructive in showing how news is created. Lori Piestewa, a single mother aged twenty-three, became the first Native American woman to die in combat as a U.S. soldier and the first female soldier killed in Iraq. Shoshanna Johnson, the first black female prisoner of war in the history of the United States, was shot in the legs and held prisoner for twenty-two days. Neither woman was given much attention, whereas Jessica Lynch, described as petite, pretty, blonde, and a plucky little fighter, made the front cover of Time magazine. Her story, which reverberated throughout the U.S. media, was cast in terms of a fairy-tale rescue narrative involving U.S. Marines flying Black Hawk helicopters. Lynch was alleged to have suffered multiple gunshot wounds. She was said to have fought to near death rather than be taken prisoner. These details turned out to be fiction—she survived partly due to the generosity and skills of Iraqi doctors—but they made a much better national story at a time when the war was going badly, and as a young white woman from Appalachia, Jessica Lynch made a better national hero than her colleagues of color.²

Whether or not women take part in combat, militaries need women’s support and participation in many ways: as mothers who believe in heroism and patriotic duty and who support sons and daughters who enlist; as nurses who heal the wounded and the traumatized; as wives and girlfriends who anxiously wait to welcome soldiers home and help them adjust to civilian life; and as workers who produce food supplies, uniforms, and weapons (Enloe 2000a). Their experiences provide material for a steady stream of human-interest stories that affirm women’s contribution to the war effort and the importance of the “home front.”

The militarization of the English language includes commonplace usage in which ads “target” consumers and leaders “spearhead” reforms. The power of language is further co-opted to distract us from the reality of war: rocket-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles are code-named “Peacekeepers”; smaller surface-to-air missiles are “Patriots.” A bloodless phrase such as “collateral damage” refers to the destruction of homes and hospitals, and to civilian casualties, an unfortunate side effect of bombing so-called military targets. The seemingly neutral term “national security” masks the fact that torture is an explicit part of U.S. national policy, even if its practice is defined as interrogation, for example.

The global “war on terrorism” is described as a “mission”—replete with religious overtones—by the Bush administration, part of its conflation of church and state. Forms of religious extremism and fundamentalism are one response to poverty and insecurity generated by the global economic system. U.S. responsibility for having promoted, supported, and armed Islamic fundamentalist groups to create a wedge against communism must be noted here. Religious fundamentalism—Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim—has increased intolerance and violence in many regions and reinforced “misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia and aggression, while narrowing secular space” (Global Fund for Women and Women of Color Resource Center n.d., 11). These developments have limited or closed down cultural and political spaces for critique and resistance, with significant impacts on antimilitary organizing.

Consequences of Militarized Security

Militarized national security undermines everyday human security and imposes vast personal, economic, political, cultural, and environmental costs. Indeed, the current international system of militarism, together with overconsumption in countries of the global North, is the main impediment to genuine security worldwide.

Killing, Trauma, Crisis, Destruction

Direct effects of wars include the killing of soldiers, mainly men, and of noncombatants—mainly women, children, and elders; the trauma of experiencing or witnessing destruction, torture, or rape; the chaos of everyday life, with hunger and loss of home, family, and livelihood; and the trauma of being forced to flee from home and live as refugees. Other effects are physical injuries and disabilities, post-traumatic stress disorders, loss of community, economic crisis, broken sewers, contaminated water, environmental devastation, and the prevalence of guns. War trauma greatly affects those in combat, particularly those who kill (Lifton 2005; MacNair 2002). Combatants experience brutalization as they learn to dehumanize others so as to be able to torture, rape, or kill. The proportion of civilians killed in war has leapt from 5 percent of war deaths (after World War I) to over 90 percent by the end of the twentieth century. Over eighty percent of casualties of small arms are women and children. There are approximately 50 million uprooted people around the world—refugees who have sought safety in another country and people displaced within their own nation. About 75–80 percent of these are women and children, many of them war orphans (Fritz 2000; International Rescue Committee n.d.). Economic collapse resulting from war causes lack of food, water, and basic supplies; exorbitant prices; destruction of farms and gardens, factories, and other workplaces; and endless queuing for necessities. This situation impacts women severely as they try to care for children and sustain their families and communities.

Cultures of Violence

Cynthia Enloe argues that “things start to become militarized when their legitimacy depends on their associations with military goals. When something becomes militarized, it appears to rise in value. Militarization is seductive. But it is really a process of loss” (2002, 15). The militarization of everyday culture, often unnoticed, is a critical tool of militarism. War toys, video games, movies, and television shows all teach children what it means to be a “real man.” War movies are a Hollywood staple and screened worldwide, with heroes and adventure shown in military terms. As part of the “war on terrorism,” the Bush administration called on the U.S. film industry to make more pro-war movies (Saunders 2001; Schneider and McDermott 2001). G.I. Jane Boot Camp exercise programs co-opt ideas of military strength and fitness. Toy manufacturer Ever Sparkle Inc. produced a bombed-out dollhouse in which grenades replaced salt and pepper shakers, ammunition boxes littered the kitchen, and G.I. Joe, armed with a bazooka, was on the balcony ready for action. Fashion designers promote the “military look” and camouflage chic. Backpacks, cell-phone covers, baby clothes, and condoms all come in “camo” (Ahn and Kirk 2005).

Dynamics of dehumanization link violence against women by male family members, acquaintances, or strangers to state violence perpetrated by police officers, prison guards, immigration officers, and military personnel. The stress of war leads to increased violence against women, whether they are wives or girlfriends, or women who sexually service soldiers, in that they absorb the aggression and fear of men returning from training or from battle. Crisis and disruption invariably generate additional responsibilities for women to support their families as cultivators, breadwinners, or decision makers. Possibilities for greater authority and independence may emerge during such times, but in the aftermath, patriarchal relations are usually reinstated and many women say they are even less secure after the fighting stops, especially when men are armed and weapons remain in circulation (Rehn and Sirleaf 2002, 118).

In the United States, “rates of domestic violence are 3 to 5 times higher in military couples than in comparable civilian ones” (Lutz 2004, 17; and this vol.). Women in the U.S. military have reported sexual assault by their colleagues in the service academies, in basic training, and in Iraq. Peacekeeping forces also subject women to forced prostitution, sexual abuse, and rape (Rehn and Sirleaf 2002, 64). As a weapon of war, rape involves a complex intertwining of gender and race/ethnicity, and is a strategic and systematic way of dishonoring and attacking enemy men. Examples include Korean and Chinese “comfort women” forced to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army in World War II (Hicks 1994; Kim-Gibson 1999; Sajor 1998). In the 1990s, armies conducted systematic rapes in the Balkans (Cockburn 1998; Kesic 2000; Walsh 2001) and in Rwanda (Newbury and Baldwin 2001; Rehn and Sirleaf 2002). More recently, pro-government militias have raped women and girls in the Darfur region of Sudan (Kristof 2005; Lacey 2004). Sexual abuse and torture committed by U.S. military personnel and contractors against Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison illustrate a grim new twist on militarized violence, where race and nation “trumped” gender. White U.S. women were among the perpetrators (appropriating the masculinist role); Iraqi men were violated (forced into the feminized role).

Diverting Resources Needed for Everyday Security

Resources committed to war and militarization could provide for everyday security. In 2002, the Stockholm Peace Research Institute estimated that approximately $200 billion, worldwide, would allow nations to provide decent housing, health care, and education for everyone, worldwide; this amount was one-quarter the sum then invested in militaries (as quoted in Rehn and Sirleaf 2002, 123). A change in budget priorities could also provide resources for developing renewable energy and cleaning up environmental contamination as well as stopping global warming, easing the debt burden, disarming nuclear weapons, and ridding the world of landmines.

People’s time, creativity, opportunities, and talents are valuable resources. In many countries it is much easier for young men to obtain and use guns than to hold a paying job or make a constructive contribution to their society. Militaries take capable young men and women from their home communities, in the process often depriving those communities of young people’s energy and potential leadership. In industrial nations, especially the United States, a significant number of scientists, technologists, and researchers spend their professional lives creating ever more sophisticated ways of killing, with an increasing reliance on robotics. Scientists in fields like meteorology, cosmology, astrophysics, and complex chemistry must compete with military researchers for time on government-funded supercomputers.

Environmental Destruction and Effects on Human Health

Militarism and wars have serious long-term effects on the environment and human health (Kirk 2008). Take, for example, catastrophic wartime events such as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, use of the defoliant Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, the burning of oil fields and use of depleted uranium in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and the bombing of Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Environmental destruction for military ends occurs throughout the entire nuclear weapons cycle: from uranium mining, processing, development, and testing to disposal of weapons-grade plutonium and recirculation of depleted uranium in “conventional” weapons. Land mines in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Colombia, and Kosovo, for example, make the use of large areas a long-term danger. Mine removal is slow, expensive, and painstaking work. Routine military training also damages crops and agricultural land. Fuels, oils, solvents, and heavy metals used in the maintenance and repair of armored vehicles, ships, and planes contaminate land, water, and the ocean. Land used for bombing training is pulverized to dust and rubble. Unexploded ammunition and debris litter bombing ranges and live-fire artillery ranges as well as parts of the seabed.

Undermining Participatory Governance Structures and Processes

Increasing militarization happens through the accumulation of thousands of daily decisions taken by elected officials, political advisers and aides, voters, administrators, news editors, scientists, investors, corporate employees and executives, as well as members of the military. As nations move toward becoming more militarized, their decision-making processes become more centralized or autocratic. This change may involve the increasing use of presidential edicts, surveillance, secrecy, arbitrary arrests, military courts, extra-judicial killings, the “disappearance” of “suspects,” or the shutdown of decision-making bodies. It may include outlawing opposition groups, closing down community newspapers, radio stations, and presses, banning books, or firing teachers. It invariably includes the demonization of enemy groups, as mentioned earlier. Governments may jettison citizens’ rights to organize, to assemble lawfully, or to speak freely, for example, which they justify as necessary for national security. Ferguson and Turnbull (1999) argue that compared with “war talk,” national security discourse is seen as rational and bureaucratic, and hence more difficult to challenge. However, Seager maintains that national security “is a vague and constantly shifting concept—it has no real or absolute meaning; it is whatever the military defines it to be (with the agreement of other men in the national security loop)” (1993, 38).

Socially and culturally, militarization requires and serves to enforce conformity, leading human rights law professor Zorica Mrsevic to comment: “The opposite of war is not peace—it is creativity” (2000, 41). Militarism operates through hierarchy and the sacrosanct nature of the “chain of command.” In civil wars, people with visions of an alternative society may be killed or forced to flee for their lives. The bloated budgets and distorted spending priorities required to sustain militarism take resources from many potential creative and generative projects.

Contesting Militarization

Contesting militarization means understanding and opposing this web of interconnected economic, political, and ideological factors and working for demilitarization along all these dimensions. It involves developing nonmilitary forms of strength to counteract military threats; expanding and disseminating knowledge and experiences of peaceful resolution to conflicts; and articulating visions of true security based on sustainable environmental and economic principles, participatory political systems, and sturdy connections among people that both acknowledge and go beyond narrow identities and territories.

The increasing integration of the world economy requires and has given rise to new political movements across national and regional boundaries. It is clear to many people that neither capitalism nor militarism can guarantee genuine security for the majority of the world’s population or for the planet itself. Activists draw on various overlapping and diverging theoretical and political frameworks: feminisms, nationalisms, anti-imperialism, internationalism, critiques of neoliberal globalization, indigenous peoples’ demands for sovereignty and reparations, and environmental justice. Given the centrality of militarization in the world economy, conventional thinking about international relations, and the imaginative hold of militarism in popular culture, creating genuine security is a huge undertaking involving four interconnected levels of analysis and action: the individual (micro), community (meso), institutional (macro), and transnational/global levels. It is both oppositional and reconstructive, and includes work to

• alleviate poverty;
• maintain a healthy environment;

• struggle against structural violence and discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, ability, or culture;

• establish a just economic and social order;
• change priorities in government spending away from military budgets and toward social needs;
• ensure universal access to resources;
• promote peace education and conflict mediation;
• enhance health and education policies and practices;
• analyze mechanisms that endanger peace at community, national, or international levels;
• promote gun control;
• protect women’s rights and human rights;
• document war crimes and violations of human rights; and

• care for survivors of armed conflicts, promote reconciliation and healing, and contribute to peaceful reconstruction and demilitarization of the society.

These criteria were generated by a feminist project originating in Switzerland and organized by an international coordinating group to recognize, honor, and make visible women’s ongoing efforts to create peace and genuine security. This project had two components: nominating a group of a thousand outstanding women from over 150 countries for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize and creating a permanent record of their work. Choosing a thousand was symbolic—a way of saying that one cannot make peace alone (PeaceWomen n.d.). These remarkable women did not win the Nobel Peace Prize, but the documentation of their work through video, photography, and writing continues to spread knowledge of their contributions to peacemaking. I refer to some of the organizations they participate in and the methods they use in the following examples.

At the Personal/Micro Level

Resistance to militarization at the microlevel includes thinking about how we are each affected by militarization and how we contribute to it, which varies greatly according to location and context. It may include individual decisions to turn in or destroy weapons, to not enlist in the military, to support or become a conscientious objector, or to undertake the personal work of healing from trauma after military service or experiencing military violence. Personal resistance to militarization may include joining antimilitary demonstrations, vigils, and organizations, supporting antimilitary candidates for political office, and urging them to promote sustainable development polices and projects. It may mean limiting our financial support for militarism through, for example, tax resistance, and demilitarizing our knowledge by being more critical of what the mainstream media feed us, and seeking alternative sources of information.

On the positive side, it means using our personal resources—skills, talents, time, money, and imagination—to create ways of living that support everyday security and sustainability. Examples include teaching conflict resolution skills to children, cultivating gardens, supporting farmers’ markets, making art, sharing in community events that affirm and celebrate nonviolence, and opening ourselves to connections and friendships across lines of race, class, religion, and culture.

At the Community/Meso Level

Women’s peace work is most visible at the community level, where women draw on their skills and creativity to analyze their situation, define needs, and provide services. This work may include organizing workshops or rallies where women can speak about violence related to war, as has happened in Guatemala, Colombia, and Sierra Leone. It includes establishing women’s centers to heal military violence (for example, Medica Women’s Therapy Center in Bosnia-Herzegovina), helping women deal with the daily impact of Israeli occupation as well as the sexism of their society (Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling in Palestine), supporting Philippine women who work in bars and clubs around U.S. bases (My Sister’s Place in South Korea), and providing health care and income-generating projects for women affected by war (Association of Widows of the Genocide of April 1994 in Rwanda). Organizations that support young men and women who oppose military service include the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (United States), Peace and Human Rights Solidarity (South Korea), and New Profile and Yesh Gvul (Israel).

Resisting militarization at the community level may include creating cultural spaces to explore the meaning of demilitarization and peace, such as the Center for Education for a Culture of Peace and Folk Art Museum (El Salvador), the Chicago Peace Museum (United States), Space Peace (South Korea), or the antimilitary fashion shows initiated by the Women of Color Resource Center (United States) to contest the militarization of everyday culture through camouflage “chic.” It involves demonstrations and vigils. Women in Black stood in silent witness outside government offices in Belgrade and denounced Milosevic, their president. Dialogue projects—among Israeli and Palestinian people, across ethnic lines in the Balkans, or between Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland—have created spaces for listening and the deepening of understanding (Cockburn 1998). Community media projects that use street theater, comic books, storytelling, video, radio shows, alternative newspapers, or the Internet all distribute information and perspectives missing from mainstream media. Community resistance also includes music, poetry, writing, painting, theater, dance, and other cultural events that are healing and inspirational.

At the Institutional/Macro Level

Resistance at the institutional level involves lobbying governments, pushing them to uphold treaties, and holding them accountable to commitments made in ratifying international agreements such as the UN Charter, the 1993 Vienna Declaration on Human Rights, and the Platform for Action adopted by the 1995 UN Conference on women in Beijing. South Africa’s postapartheid constitution is the first in the world to ban “speech that incites hatred of a person because of race, religions, gender, or sexual preference”—an example of demilitarizing the notion of free speech (Rehn and Sirleaf 2002, 107–108).

The demilitarization of education includes curriculum changes, as with the contentious debate over history textbooks used in Japanese classrooms and what students are taught about atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese Imperial Army before and during World War II, especially against China ,Korea, and Okinawa. It also includes peace education in schools and community discussions in which people can assert their peacemaking traditions. In communities in Albania, Cambodia, and Niger, such discussions generated agreements to destroy knives and guns (Hague Appeal for Peace n.d.). In the United States, it means learning deeply about people from diverse communities and many nations, as well as this nation’s profound historic investment in colonialism, genocide, militarization, and imperialism. It includes creating an alternative curriculum to replace the JROTC presence in schools and fostering resistance to military recruiters in schools. The military is the only employer that systematically targets inner-city African American and Latino youth with promises of a disciplined lifestyle, enhanced pride and self-esteem, professional training, and money for college. For every college counselor at Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles, for example, there are five military recruiters (Joiner 2003). Demilitarizing education includes refusing to undertake military-related research. It includes the actions of faculty, staff, students, and community members who opposed a proposed U.S. Navy University-Affiliated Research Center at the University of Hawai’i–Manoa. It means that feminist research and teaching must confront the centrality of militarism, a defining dimension of the nation-state and the articulation of state power.

In many nations, people are organizing to push for a larger share of public funds to be devoted to education rather than military operations. Closely related is the demilitarization of national budget priorities, which requires that people understand the relationship between military spending and socially useful government spending. Organizations in Britain, South Korea, and Sweden have started to do this. In the United States, the National Priorities Project, the War Resisters’ League, and Women’s Action for New Directions publish accessible materials on military spending.

Resistance to militarization at the institutional level means including women’s meaningful participation in peace processes and efforts to demilitarize societies in the aftermath of war. In October 2000, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security. This is the first time the Security Council has addressed the disproportionate impact of armed conflict on women; recognized the undervalued contributions that women make to conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and peace building; and stressed the importance of women’s equal and full participation as active agents in peace and security. Although not binding on governments, Resolution 1325 sets a new standard of inclusiveness and gender sensitivity in peace negotiations and provides leverage for women’s efforts to influence policy in postconflict reconstruction (Lynes and Torry 2005).

In June 2006, for example, women’s organizations in Southern Sudan relied on this resolution in calling for UN support for women in conflict areas (“Message from the Women from Southern Sudan” 2006). They argued that women’s rights violations, women’s low social status, and continued gender-based discrimination are a result of high levels of poverty, twenty-one years of war, and a confluence of culture, religions, and traditions. They requested the UN Security Council to press the government of Southern Sudan for urgent reforms in the areas of family law, legal aid, psycho-social counseling, and health services for women; for increased participation of women in decision-making at all levels of conflict resolution, peace building, and development; for increased recruitment of female police who better understand the plight of women; and for support for women’s organizations to undertake civic education, skills training, and consciousness raising on HIV/AIDS and gender issues. They also asked the UN Security Council to continue to support the parties to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Southern Sudan; to report on the protection of women and children from violence; and to continue to provide necessary resources to UN agencies such as UNIFEM and UNFPA to ensure women’s full participation in the implementation of the CPA.

At the Transnational/Global Level

Working across national borders builds on activities at other levels. This work needs guides and interpreters, opportunities to listen and learn, time, resources, organizational capacity, patience, perseverance, and the willingness to be uncomfortable at times. It includes networking at meetings and conferences, sharing information through journals and the Internet, and organizing coordinated activities.

The Pan-African Women’s Conference on a Culture of Peace (Zanzibar, Tanzania, 1999), the International Women’s Summit to Redefine Security (Okinawa, Japan, 2000), and international gatherings of Women in Black groups from North America, Europe, and the Middle East (Jerusalem, 2006) serve as examples of women organizing across borders. Such gatherings build on the work of networks like the the Federation of African Women’s Peace Networks. the Mano River Union Women’s Network for Peace, and the East Asia–U.S.–Puerto Rico Women’s Network against Militarism. Women’s groups in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and Kosovo have done remarkable work across ethnic lines in supporting Serb, Croat, and Muslim women during war and in the aftermath to build bridges within their communities and between states. Long-standing organizations such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (founded in 1915 and currently active in thirty-seven countries) can play an important role at this level, as can UN-sponsored gatherings, and other opportunities for dialogue and exchange such as the World Social Forum.

Transnational organizations that seek to prevent conflicts include Global Action to Prevent War and Armed Conflict, and Search for Common Ground, both of which work with partner organizations in various nations to find culturally appropriate ways for nations to strengthen their capacity to deal constructively with conflicts. These organizations use media production—radio, television, film, and print—mediation and facilitation, training, community organizing, sports, theater, and music to promote individual and institutional changes. The Nonviolent Peaceforce, with over ninety member organizations from around the world, works to build a trained, international civilian peace force able to intervene in conflicts. In December 2002, 130 delegates from forty-seven nations chose Sri Lanka as the site of the first pilot project. The goal is for field team members to contribute to protecting human rights, deterring violence, and creating space for local peacemakers to carry out their work. Peace Brigades International (PBI) has a similar mission, currently with volunteers in Colombia, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Mexico. Any kind of solidarity work needs clear understandings about whose needs, perspectives, and decisions are central to the task in order to avoid allowing individuals and groups with class or national privilege to define the direction in which projects should go, thereby reinforcing unequal relationships, even if this is not the intent. Many people working in transnational networks and solidarity organizations draw on what Chandra Talpade Mohanty (2003, 50) calls “a common context of struggle,” with a shared framework opposing militarization.

Transnational work includes support for UN initiatives such as UNESCO’s Culture of Peace, as well as the International Criminal Court (ICC), independent of the UN, which can try individuals accused of the most serious crimes of international concern: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The ICC, based on a treaty that entered into force in 2002, has been joined by 105 countries so far.

Militarism’s reach and power are vast. Increased intolerance and violence in many regions have reduced cultural and political spaces for critique and resistance, as mentioned earlier. Nevertheless, millions of people worldwide oppose and reject war, as shown on February 15, 2003, a day of unprecedented coordinated protest against the not-yet-begun U.S.- and British-led war on Iraq. Journalist Patrick Tyler (2003) wrote that “the huge anti-war demonstrations around the world this weekend are reminders that there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.” The “second superpower” has not yet stopped the war against Iraq, but it contests militarization in a myriad ways, including the examples mentioned in this chapter.

Betty Burkes, former president of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (U.S. section) and among the thousand women nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, comments: “We will succeed in building a strong base for transforming . . . power when together we weave a vision that in practice offers a way of life so vital it is impossible to resist.”³

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this essay was given at the Gender, Race, and Militarization Conference, October 28, 2005, at the University of Oregon. I thank the editors of this volume for their insights and support, and also Margo Okazawa-Rey, longtime friend and colleague, with whom I shared and developed many of these ideas. This chapter’s section “The Permanent War Economy” partly draws on ideas developed in Social Justice 27(4), a special issue on neoliberalism, militarism, and armed conflict, edited by Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey.

Notes

. In January 2004, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a memorandum restating its opposition to “prostitution and any related activities that may contribute to the phenomenon of trafficking in persons as inherently harmful and dehumanizing” (as quoted in Equality Now 2006, n.p.). On October 14, 2005, President Bush signed Executive Order 13387, which makes “patronizing a prostitute” a violation of article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

2. Margo Okazawa-Rey alerted me to the unequal treatment and visibility these women received.

3. Betty Burkes, pers. comm.; this is a version of her statement in 1000 Peace Women across the Globe (1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005, 718).

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