Building Blocks of Feminist Foreign Policy: Accountability
Original art by Annemarie Barrett
Realism, a cornerstone in the foundation of contemporary international relations, argues that global politics is an enduring competition among self-interested states that are competing for power and positioning within the larger, anarchic global system which operates without a centralized authority. Through the strategic use of military force and creation of military alliances, a balance of power is maintained.
From Thucydides in 5th Century BCE to Hobbes in the 17th Century, the notion of deterrence has endured. To Thucydides, the emergence of a new power posed a threat to an existing power, with a high likelihood of war. To Hobbes, life in nature is “nasty, brutish, and short,” and that there is a constant fear of “a war of all against all,” requiring people to turn to the state to address this fear. Deterrence has manifested in multiple forms – from the arms race to the AI arms race, from the creation of the prison-military-industry complex to the consistent perpetration of colonialism. Built on these foundations, international relations and foreign policy remain institutions that endorse deterrence, rather than respond to fear and the causes underlying it.
As Neta Crawford argues, this notion of deterrence is the institutionalization of fear – where our institutions don’t respond to fear as much as keep them alive to build superiority over the other. History has shown us that some respond to the fear and back down, while some simply don’t.
The origins and history of the modern state – which endures as the sole referent and agentic object in international relations – are inherently violent. Arriving on the backs of two massive war, the Westphalian template for statecraft was neither interrogated nor re-evaluated at the end of the Second World War, where former colonies began to emerge as independent states in the same template as their colonial rulers. No attempt was made whatsoever for accountability – colonial rule ended in one form but continued untrammelled. Former colonies emerged newly independent, with the expectation that they would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their former colonizers who had left them impoverished, wounded, and depleted. This lack of accountability is baked into the system, with examples including the arms race, DARVO responses (defence or denial, attack, reverse victim offender) in diplomacy and state-civilian engagements, economic and military sanctions, and the structure of the UN Security Council.
Prioritizing Accountability
Adopting a feminist approach to foreign policy, or a “Feminist Foreign Policy” would make it essential to interrogate a deterrence first approach. It would avoid the institutionalization of fear, and instead, strive to respond to the fear by exploring its roots. It would steer clear of normalizing fear-driven politics, hate, and violence, and prioritize accountability.
In the words of Ann Russo, accountability is “an internal resource for recognising and redressing harms we have caused to ourselves and others.” It centres care and connection, protects relationships, and prioritizes justice, rather than to allow differences to fester.
Accountability is a mechanism to keep in check the use of institutional control over global forces. The Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank and IMF) control global economic growth. The United Nations' Security Council has five permanent members whose veto powers and military force dictate the politics of the world. These institutions keep colonialism alive, by centring access for the Global North to the Global South, maintaining and even fomenting the divide between the two.
At its heart, accountability is a framework to interrogate power. Foreign policy spaces are built with a template of unequal power relations, with very little commitment to exploring the impacts of how power is held, used, presented, and practiced to the detriment of others in the world. These patterns operate from the personal to the political – manifesting across a spectrum of examples ranging from interpersonal relations underpinned by racism and casteism to the institution of foreign aid meaning that some hold the purse strings and decide where money will be apportioned to what end. A feminist approach to international relations must start from a power analysis and culminate in a meaningful practice of accountability.
As Leila Billing puts it: "A feminist approach to accountability, influenced by the principles of transformative justice, offers us a radically different way forward, if we are brave enough to try it and intentional in our practice. It is one that seeks accountability in a way that avoids perpetrating further harm."
