Book review: NATO’s Post-Cold War Politics – the Changing Provision of Security
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836715612508 |
| Author | Bjorn Fägersten |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
558 Cooperation and Conflict 51(4)
Reading the book, some principally important questions came to mind. The first per-
tains to the role of theoretically informed analysis and academic context when doing
action-research. Nag Lao Liang Won et al. presents an intriguing case of how the collec-
tion of women’s testimonies of sexual violence in Burma attracts unwanted forms of
attention from UN agencies, Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the
media. This case hints at several interesting interpretations, but in order to detail them
out the authors would have benefitted from using previous research and feminist theory.
Even when engaging with local activists, it is important to use the full scholarly toolbox
in order to improve understanding and promote change.
The cruel eye-witness stories presented by Dolores Chew in the chapter on the massacre
in Gujarat, India, actualize a second question: how should we represent women’s vulnera-
bilities in order to serve the purpose of making women’s lives more secure? As noted in the
chapter by Won, attention to horror-stories may indeed be problematic to handle regarding
the integrity of the victims, but also in relation to how they can be used politically. Ethel
Brooks (2002) points out that focusing on horror-stories tends to hide structural contexts
and postcolonial relations. Thus, such accounts risk directing resources and measures
towards single cases, rather than to address underlying structural problems.
My third question regards the conceptualization of gender. The comparative study of
the implementation of 1325 action plans in Canada, the UK and the Netherlands, pre-
sented in the chapter by Gunilla de Vries Lindestam, criticizes the implementation process
for understanding gender as equaling women. However, in the end she finds herself using
the same understanding of gender. Moreover, in her recommendations gender (or women)
is treated as primarily an administrative challenge. Since the idea of human security is
strongly linked to liberal notions of the individual, it is important to discuss how a femi-
nist understanding of gender as a power-laden relation can be conceptualized in this field.
A theoretical discussion providing a point of reference would have been beneficial for all
contributions. It would have tied the chapters together better and it would have put gender
on an equal theoretical standing with human security.
All in all, the book provides interesting insights into gendered aspects of human secu-
rity, and is a worthwhile read to academics, activists and practitioners.
References
Brooks E (2002) The ideal sweatshop? Gender and transnational protest. International Labor and
Working-Class History 61: 91–111.
Maria Jansson
Department of Political Science, Stockholm University
NATO’s Post-Cold War Politics – the Changing Provision of Security, Sebastian Mayer. 2014.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN: 9781137330291.
When members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started to wind down
their decade-long operation in Afghanistan, the ‘what now’ question loomed high. How
would a military alliance endure when, for the first time in 20 years, it lacked an
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