Masculinity and New War

The gendered dynamics of contemporary armed conflict

David Duriesmith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138674103
• eBook ISBN: 9781317201519
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book advances the claims of feminist international relations scholars that the social construction of masculinities is key to resolving the scourges of militarism, sexual violence and international insecurity. More than two decades of feminist research has charted the dynamic relationship between warfare and masculinity, but there has yet to be a detailed account of the role of masculinity in structuring the range of volatile civil conflicts which emerged in the Global South after the end of the Cold War.

By bridging feminist scholarship on international relations with the scholarship of masculinities, Duriesmith advances both bodies of scholarship through detailed case study analysis. By challenging the concept of 'new war', he suggests that a new model for understanding the gendered dynamics of civil conflict is needed, and proposes that the power dynamics between groups of men based on age difference, ethnicity, location and class form an important and often overlooked causal component to these civil conflicts.

Exploring the role of masculinities through two case studies, the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991–2002) and the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005), this book will be of great interest to postgraduate students, practitioners and academics working in the fields of gender and security studies.

1 Introduction

The new war puzzle

On the 7th of February 2014 a group of armed men attacked cattle herders in Unity state, South Sudan, making off with more than 200 head of cattle and leaving ten civilians dead in their wake, including three women and two children (Hatcher, 2014). Cattle raids are common across South Sudan and often result in the killing or sexual abuse of civilians, particularly when the assailants target those from an opposed ethnic group. In many instances attacks are reciprocal, with family groups responding to violence in kind. In others they are part of organised military campaigns to destabilise civilian populations or loot resources. Over the past 20 years cattle raids have become increasingly militarised and violent, with young men drawing on military equipment and training as a mechanism to pay the bride price required to marry (Sommers & Schwartz, 2011). Similarly, South Sudanese military groups have become progressively privatised, with traditional adversarial forms of conflict giving way to low-intensity violence focused on plundering resources and destabilising the base of opposing groups. Occurring less than three months after war broke out in the world’s newest state, it is impossible to discern if this attack in early 2014 was an act of war targeting an opposing ethnic group, or an act of banditry. The assailants in this case, ethnically Dinka men dressed in military fatigues and equipped with assault rifles, may well have been members of the government forces (or the many militias that have been affiliated with it) or simply young men performing the well-established pattern of inter-ethnic cattle raiding against Nuer ethnicity herders.

Cattle raids in South Sudan follow a very different logic of war from that which has occupied the attention of security studies during the twentieth century. They don’t contribute substantially to achieving military victory and in many instances appear to alienate civilian populations from which military groups draw the bulk of their support. Rather they are indicative of the ‘new’ forms of low-intensity conflict that have come to prominence in recent decades. Over the past 25 years international commentators have drawn attention to a diverse array of conflicts across the Global South which been characterised by their perceived brutality, longevity and irrationality. As the combatants of Boko Haram wage an effective campaign of pillage in West Africa and Daesh’s ‘medieval’ tactics have surged into public discourse (Terry, 2015), it might seem that the established logics of military behaviour no longer apply. Concurrent with the emergence of these ‘uncivil wars’ the international community reeled at the gendered violence of contemporary conflict; the rules of war which appeared to prohibit sexual violence in conflict, it would seem to many contemporary commentators, had fallen away with the Berlin Wall. For generations raised on the mythologies of grand-scale total war, the current international warscape seems foreign and unintelligible. The brutality and apparent opportunism which characterise contemporary warfare, seen in South Sudanese cattle raiding, can seem distant and disconnected from previous forms of organised violence.

Although a shift would appear to have taken place in the practice of war, this book argues that the transformation is, to a large extent, not a stark break from the previous forms of violence. Rather the developments of low-intensity and high-brutality tactics that plague contemporary battlefields are a product of masculine logics which exist within patriarchal constructions of masculinity. Far from the chaotic actions of unintelligible monsters, this book suggests that the current cruelty, longevity and excess of contemporary warfare are a reflection and exaggeration of pre-existing patriarchal logics. The future of war, it is argued, can be found in the unstable gender hierarchies that create the preconditions for war and structure its practice once violence emerges.

The transformation of war

At its core this book is concerned with the suggestion that war is undergoing a fundamental transformation since the end of the Cold War. During the early 1990s debates over the future of war had been dominated by the voices of mainstream theorists preoccupied by grand visions of nuclear devastation, democratic peace or a ‘clean’ high-tech war (Hoffman & Weiss, 2006, p. 77). These debates often marginalised an array of protracted small-scale civil conflicts in the Global South that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union and tended to prioritise state interest despite an increasingly diverse security landscape. After the 9/11 attacks militaries in the Global North followed this trend by emphasising the importance of counterterrorism and building up high technology weaponry for potential future wars. Within this embattled conceptual landscape Mary Kaldor’s (2012) innovative work New and Old Wars presented a contrasting approach to warfare.

The main premise of Kaldor’s argument is that the future of war is not in high technology military posturing, the use of weapons of mass destruction or a perpetual state of peace. Rather Kaldor (2012, pp. 2–3) suggests that the wars of the twenty-first century will be characterised by militias and paramilitaries, will use cheap, conventional small arms, and will target civilian populations. Kaldor did not predict that this development would be a result of shifting geopolitical arrangements that define international relations, or a significant progression of weapons technology. Instead, she forecasts a change in the social relations of war. The change in war practices was so stark that she concludes a new form of war can be distinguished from that which was dominant in during most of the twentieth century (Kaldor, 2012, pp. 15–17). Kaldor’s notion of ‘new war’ provides an interesting account of conflict for feminist security studies research, as it refuses the state- and military-centric approach that has been dominant in the academic study of war (Buzan & Hansen, 2009, pp. 10–11). The new war approach challenges leading understandings of war by emphasising the importance of social structures, culture and identity politics.¹

Since Kaldor originally articulated her thesis in 1999 the trend towards protracted civil conflict has continued. Although yearly conflict-related deaths have fluctuated significantly since the early 1990s, the trend towards new war has not abated (Kaldor, 2012, pp. 208–213). As predicted by Kaldor and other new war scholars, ‘old’ interstate warfare has remained in the background of international affairs, while small-scale new wars have continued across the Global South (Goldstein, 2011, pp. 1–6). The new war thesis has continued to offer a valuable conceptual framework for exploring the current state of warfare, as well as explanation for shifts in the form of war, resulting in a robust body of scholarship (Mello, 2010). This has particular value for feminist scholars by providing an articulation of contemporary conflict that avoids assumptions about war being defined by relationship with the state, as is the case with competing terminologies, such as civil war or asymmetric war.

Despite the potential merits of the new war approach for feminist scholarship it has yet to receive significant analysis from a gendered perspective. This lack of feminist engagement, combined with its shallow treatment of identity and culture, has limited the usefulness of new war theory as a framework for feminist analysis. To address this limitation, this book asks the question, ‘What role does gender hierarchy play in the construction of new war?’

Existing accounts of new war have often relied on shallow or incomplete explanations for the shifting patterns of post–Cold War armed conflict. Although many studies have tried to explain new war with reference to identity politics or economic motivations, these accounts have failed to take note of the most significant commonality across new wars: that new warrior groups are dominated by male combatants. At face value the failure to recognise gender as a significant dimension of new war may not appear to be deeply problematic. After all, a great deal of international relations literature fails to address the role of gender, and the study of war has been particularly prone to gender blindness (Peterson, 1992; Tickner, 1992; Pettman, 1996; Goldstein, 2001; Sjoberg, 2013). However, the blind spot for gender in studies of new war is particularly problematic because the core hypothesis of new war theory is that social relations of warfare have changed. Kaldor’s (2012, p. 12) thesis emphasised the nexus of ethnic and religious identity politics as the root cause of new war. Despite the importance of social relations in Kaldor’s original book, there have been relatively few studies providing detailed analysis of the social and cultural (rather than the political and economic) dimensions of new war and even fewer that have provided a gendered account (Malešević, 2008; Parpart, 2010a; Meger, 2011; Duriesmith, 2014; Malešević, 2014).

The lack of social analysis in most studies on new war has resulted in imprecise and simplified discussions of violence. Many accounts have emphasised the development of brutal violence against civilian populations as an essential facet of the new war paradigm (Jackson, 2007, p. 270). Although there has been some exploration of this kind of violence, including some critical debate about its prevalence and significance, the discussion has often not been informed by a considered analysis of how brutal violence develops and becomes normalised within new warrior groups (Melander et al., 2009). This has led to a simplistic explanation of how particular grievances led new warriors to use vicious violence against civilian populations. This book looks to go beyond reductionist explorations of violence in new war scholarship by charting the role of masculinity in constructing combatants’ behaviour within new warzones.

Aims and scope

This book argues that gender relations are essential in the transforming of conventional civil conflicts into the kind of messy, protracted new wars that have emerged across the Global South. By drawing on critical studies on men and masculinities and feminist security studies scholarship, it is suggested that the practices and processes Kaldor has identified as defining new war are a product of patriarchal gender relations which exist prior to war developing. This research challenges existing understandings of how new wars emerge, the ways that new warrior organisations train their combatants, and why certain tactics manifest within the context of new war. To explore the emergence of new war a comparative analysis of two case studies has been employed: armed conflict in Sierra Leone and South Sudan. On the basis of these case studies, Kaldor’s new war thesis is challenged and revised by focusing on new war as a gendered practice performing particular masculine logics of protest and opposition.

This book aims to dissect the tactics employed by new warriors to lay bare their gendered construction. Existing studies have suggested that the tactics employed in new war are selected due to the economic benefits that they can provide to combatants or because they serve as a mechanism for gaining control over the populations of opposing identity groups (Hoffman & Weiss, 2006, pp. 63–66). Although these factors are relevant, this book suggests that the use of brutal violence against civilian populations was defined by the pre-war arrangement of gender. Instead of focusing on the purely strategic benefits or economic gains that using ruthless tactics against civilians can provide, this book explores the social dimension of new war violence. It sets violence in its social context, evaluating the gendered logics behind the use of extreme forms of violence, such as rape and torture, arguing that they emerge out of distinct masculine logics of violence and domination that were salient within those social contexts prior to armed conflict emerging.

Further, this book aims to ascertain the role of existing local constructions of masculinity in socialising combatants within new warrior groups. One of the least satisfactory aspects of New and Old Wars is its account of why some armed groups develop into new warrior organisations while others do not. Kaldor (2012, pp. 7–8) suggests that armed groups transform into new warrior organisations due to the divisive impact of identity politics. This account is challenged here; instead, it is argued that the particular dynamics of masculinity in both case studies were essential to the development of new war. The exploration of masculinities provides a more robust and intellectually satisfying account of the transformation of armed groups into new warrior organisations.

Finally, this book aims to explore the conditions that contributed to the development of new war during the 1990s and 2000s. Scholars (Creveld, 1991; Munkler, 2005) have focused on some of the key structural shifts that led to the development of new war during this period. This literature has emphasised the end of the Cold War, globalisation, the breakdown of borders, economic shifts in the Global South and the emergence of a development/security nexus as significant structural shifts that have contributed to the development of new war. The usefulness of each of these factors as complete explanations for new war is challenged throughout this book. While it is true that each of these factors has some utility for understanding the development of new war, without the inclusion of a gendered perspective they remain incomplete and lack a unifying structural account of conflict transformation.

By providing an analysis of shifts within gendered hierarchies this book enriches existing scholarship, taking account of aspects of new war that have not been adequately explained thus far. This level of analysis indicates that the breakdown of ‘patriarchal bargains’ is a key cause of grievance that initially fuelled new war and a structural factor that shaped economic motivations. The concept of ‘patriarchal bargains’ was developed by Deniz Kandiyoti (1988) as an explanation for why some women cooperate with patriarchy in exchange for individual gains. Kandiyoti’s account originally referred to the difficult compromises made by women within severely constraining gender arrangements, such as helping to police the behaviour of other women in exchange for recognition and social status. Although this formulation specifically referred to the bargains made by women to navigate a patriarchal social system (Kandiyoti, 1988, p. 275), it can also be used to understand the actions of subordinate groups of men. This book utilises the concept of patriarchal bargains to explore the tensions that exist between groups of dominant and subordinate men, and how these tensions serve to construct new wars at a structural level. The exploration of new war at local, organisational and structural levels directly responds to claims made in Kaldor’s original account (2012, pp. 7–10) of new war. Kaldor’s thesis emphasises the definitive facets of new war: the motivations for fighting war; the techniques used to fight; and the actors who fight. The framing of these three elements has been slightly altered by focusing on the structural causes of new war rather than the individual motivations of combatants, allowing for a complex and multilayered analysis.

Although this book aims to be a wide-reaching analysis of gender and new war, it does not intend to be all-encompassing or exhaustive. Rather than attempting an unfeasibly broad study of the plethora of contemporary armed conflicts, this contribution has chosen to focus on two examples. Because of this, it does not begin with a detailed hypothesis of how new wars are constructed by gender. Similarly this book does not provide an all-inclusive study of war in Sierra Leone or South Sudan. In both cases this research focuses on one armed group (the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in South Sudan) and investigates each only within a restricted time frame. These cases are used as contexts for exploring the construction of gender and new war. This means that the study of each conflict explores only the most relevant functions of conflict. This restricted scope has been designed to provide specificity and focus. Maintaining a rigorous concentration allows this book to throw new light on the puzzle of gender and new war without being sidetracked by issues peripheral to the central concern, which is the role of gender in constructing new war.

In addition to exploring the transformation of war, this book looks to contribute to feminist security studies by developing an approach to war which can address the diversity of masculinities in armed conflict and the hegemony of patriarchal power from which this diversity springs. Feminist international relations theory has often recognised masculinities as important for understanding world affairs. However, as with the scholarship on masculinities more broadly, it has struggled to come to terms with the diversity of men’s experiences without losing sight of the resilience of patriarchal power (Hearn, 2004; Henry & Kirby, 2012). Particularly in the study of war there has been a tendency to present a monolithic picture of violent masculinity or to fixate on the complexity of fluid gender constructions. There are many deft explorations of local gender constructions in conflict (Denov, 2010; MacKenzie, 2012; Stern & Baaz, 2013), and key texts exploring the relationship between gender and war in broad terms (Elshtain, 1987; Enloe, 2000a; Goldstein, 2001; Sjoberg, 2013). Despite this, there has been little scholarship that has taken a comparative focus on the construction of militarised masculinity and used this to analyse broad trends in international conflict.

For this reason, this book looks to contribute to the growing scholarship on masculinity as a causal factor in war by unravelling both the role of local masculinities in transforming conflict and the commonalities of gender relations in eliciting organised violence. In exploring both case studies it is argued that the core structure for these armed conflicts was laid out in the form of patriarchal masculinities, existing prior to conflict developing. Conflict itself was sparked by the destabilising of the existing gender hierarchy, which, after promising men power and privilege, failed to deliver on its promises. The practices of war that emerged in each case both reflected and exaggerated the existing forms of patriarchal violence and privilege that defined the pre-war gender hierarchy. The multiplicity of masculinities that emerged during conflict reflected structural differences in the pre-war gender hierarchies and the different positions groups occupied. This account of war has implications not only for the cases studied and but also for intra-state warfare broadly.

Book outline

The first step to unpacking the puzzle of gender and new war is unpacking the history and meaning of the concept of new war. A large body of literature on the transformation of war has developed since the early 1990s. The following chapter, Chapter 2, therefore explores the way changes in war have been studied and understood, challenging the existing literature as being largely gender-blind and failing to adequately take into consideration the relationship between local and global forces. Chapter 2 outlines the case study approach undertaken in this book and argues the value of exploring local constructions of gender in detail to develop a greater understanding of the international trend towards new war.

Chapter 3 explores the configurations of gender which make old war possible. Starting with the links between wartime violence and interpersonal violence, the chapter argues that core factors present within patriarchal masculinity make war possible. Building on existing scholarship on masculinities in the Global North, the chapter argues that seven core factors can be identified as central to the performance of war: violence, militarism, group membership, emotional detachment, aggression and bravado, risk-taking and aggressive heterosexuality. These factors are developed as the basis for investigating masculinities in new war and provide a comparison point for the practice of old war in the Global North.

Chapter 4 explores the socialisation of combatants and the use of violence within this war by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). The first case study focuses on the war in Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002. Sierra Leone...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1 Introduction: the new war puzzle
• 2 ‘New’ wars and gender
• 3 Making men, making war
• 4 Gender and new war in Sierra Leone
• 5 New war in South Sudan
• 6 Protest and opposition: challenging the patriarchal bargains in war
• 7 Conclusion: unmaking new war
• Bibliography
• Index