Attempts to Recruit Women for Aggression and War
The Halifax International Security Forum (HISF) is
promoting a role for women in upholding peace and security that is
informed by U.S. imperialism and the aggressive NATO alliance.
This so-called security is based on the destruction of countries that
will not submit to U.S. imperialist dictate. In the ensuing chaos and
violence of NATO interventions and occupations, it is women and
children who are the first victims.
In October, for the first time since 2009, two women
were appointed to the HISF board of directors: Tammy Harris, former
Deputy Commander, Royal Canadian Air Force; and Cindy McCain, head of
the Washington, D.C.-based McCain Institute. The late U.S. Senator John
McCain, the warmonger and advocate of American exceptionalism after
whom the institute is named, had longstanding ties with the HISF.
The institute is funded by many arms and energy monopolies as well as
the government of the feudal kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
In September 2018, the HISF launched a Peace With Women
Fellowship Program. It is a program of indoctrination, not academic
study. Each year, selected women military officers from the NATO bloc
are taken on an "executive tour" of the U.S. and Canada en route to the
Halifax war conference.
The press release announcing the program states:
"Participants will visit Washington, DC, Silicon Valley,
Toronto and Waterloo, and Ottawa before concluding the program in
Halifax, Nova Scotia.
"Fellows will meet with government, military, and
thought leaders as they travel through the political and technological
capitals of the United States and Canada to deepen their understanding
of American and Canadian strategic challenges, as well as the
cutting-edge technologies transforming the realities of national
security."
Presumably this is what is meant by "raising the profile
of women at all levels within the Alliance."
The genesis of this push to recruit women occurred at
the 2017 HISF, when NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced
that Canadian Clare Hutchinson would become NATO's new Special
Representative for Women, Peace and Security.
Hutchinson was previously a Gender Adviser at the United
Nations in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. She was deployed
with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon from July 2012 to December 2013
and the UN Interim Administration in Kosovo from October 2004 to
December 2007.
Both Hutchinson and Stoltenberg present the issue of
women in the military as upholding a decontextualized abstract ideal of
empowerment, gender equality and opportunity for women. The content of
a given military mission, whose aims it serves and whether it is just
and upholds peace, national sovereignty and rule of international law,
or whether it is committing war crimes are not to be discussed.
For example, at a February 2016 ceremony for 125 Indian
women police officers stationed with the United Nations Mission in
Liberia, Hutchinson said:
"What we're doing with the military and the police is
breaking down the perception that this is a male domain and that women
can't be involved. We know that the obstacles aren't that it's too
dangerous or that they don't want to travel or leave their children.
Those aren't the most prevailing obstacles; it's mainly that they're
not aware of opportunities."
Stoltenberg said of Hutchinson's appointment,
"[E]mpowering women is not just the right thing to do, it's the smart
thing to do: it makes countries safer and more stable. NATO is
determined to make a difference, including through our training and
operations -- for example, by deploying gender advisers to local
communities in Afghanistan. We also aim to raise the profile of women
at all levels within the Alliance.
"We still need to do more, but for NATO, peace and
security are not just a man's world.
"I thank Canada for its strong commitment to women,
peace and security, and I look forward to welcoming Ms Hutchinson to
NATO Headquarters soon."
 Around
the same time that the HISF began pushing the recruitment of women, the
Trudeau government launched its "Elsie Initiative for Women in Peace
Operations" with which it has given itself the dishonourable task to
convince women -- who are in the front ranks of the opposition to
aggression and war -- to consider the "equal opportunity" offered to be
recruited as soldiers or police officers for the new more aggressive
"peacekeeping" that takes place under UN auspices today.
Hutchinson's appointment can be seen as an attempt by
NATO to give Canada credit for its nefarious activities and bolster its
attempts to make war and aggression "progressive."
Canada has blood on its hands — whether in Korea,
Yugoslavia, Libya, Ukraine, Haiti and Afghanistan and now it is
deploying into Eastern Europe to threaten Russia and suppress
opposition to NATO's aggressive role in Latvia, Ukraine and other
European countries.
That it is seeking to absolve itself of its crimes by
presenting itself as the biggest defender of women and peace fools no
one. Women's security and empowerment lies in fighting for their own
rights and the rights of all. Women, especially working class women,
are in the front ranks of all the fights for rights and against
military intervention and war.
Trying to hide this by promoting women who act as
instruments of imperialism -- whether openly or under cover of one or
another version of its phony "human rights" agenda -- shows that the
HISF and the Trudeau government's notion of empowerment is bound up
with aggression and war and on this basis is fraudulent to the extreme.
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