On November 30th last year, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain unveiled this crude image as part of his “vision for foreign policy and national security” on hermancain.com. Coming from a businessman who boasts his disregard for the “president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan,” this graphic based on a map of worldwide Facebook connections might not be a surprise. But my first inclination upon seeing this map was toward realism and interstate conflict in international relations. Cain states in his platform a desire to “re-examine [the US’s] role within the UN,” and takes a decidedly state-centric view of the world—labeling certain countries as “dangers” and others as “friends.” Cain is a silly man, but these views hint at grander ignorance of international relations theory in the most powerful nation in the world; and by extension, a possibly graver ideological situation in developing regions and extremist-prone states. It's dangerous that discussions of which country to attack or befriend are often ideologically-driven.
How did we get in such a bad place? The study of IR has existed as a formal academic discipline since 1918, and isn't as well-formed as other social sciences like economics or psychology. But most interestingly and possibly importantly, it's been evident for a while that gender is deeply embedded in international politics. States are mostly made in the image of Man, and not necessarily Woman. They seek power and growth, are aggressive, and strive for independence beyond rational means. And once you start digging, it goes all the way down.
For a fitting parable on the power of gender in global institutions, one must look no further than Iceland’s collapse four years ago in 2008. Starting in 2003, the previously miniscule fishing nation underwent “the most rapid expansion of a banking system in the history of mankind,” and catapulted to No. 1 in the United Nations’ 2008 Human Development Index before culminating in the now-infamous unprecedented spectacular bankruptcy of the tiny island state. What led a well-adjusted, well-educated, and historically rational populace with no previous experience in finance to create a debt crisis at 850 percent of G.D.P. and start blowing up their Range Rovers for the insurance money? The answer can be found in the predominantly young business-schooled males who moved from studying fishing economics to the Black-Scholes option-pricing model, and whose eyes became bigger than their stomachs from examples of Wall Street excess. After Icelandic nationals placed two women in charge of the largest nationalized banks, a government minister was quoted as saying: “Now the women are taking over. It’s typical, the men make the mess and the women come in to clean it up.”
We only measure a society's progress by resources and production. Materialism is the exclusive emphasis in politics and economics, and men in society generally control production, work, exchange, and distribution. History, and therefore international relations study, is centered around these same metrics -- as Foucault argued, history simply exposes "the endlessly repeated play of dominations."
But sometimes, we can learn a lot more by focusing around social issues rather than material growth. Instead of focusing on war itself, Katharine Moon interviewed Korean prostitutes serving American soldiers during the Korean War. As the South Korean government undertook a policy of policing sexual health and work conduct of prostitutes, military prostitution interacted with “US-Korean security policy at the highest level.” What will be learned by "finding the woman" always will be significant.
It's not something I ever thought about before. But now, when I read something about history or current world politics events, I can't help but try to follow the motivations. If you look at assumptions held in articles about conflict, religious extremism, and war -- they're all centered around the male perspective. By pure definition, half of us humans are women. If you don't consider how the women of the world are faring in any particular foreign policy decision, you're making a huge myopic mistake. And once you peel back the layers, it becomes obvious how many of our thoughts on international politics are based in purely male-centric bounds.