Muscular Interventionism

Abstract

This article highlights the centrality of gender to the liberal peacebuilding agenda in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It examines the discourses and practices of liberal interventionism, focusing on the Office of the High Representative (OHR) as a crucial site for the constitution of gendered subjects and agents in this post-conflict zone. Drawing on poststructural theories and representations of Balkan identity, it explores the gendered articulations of Paddy Ashdown, first during his wartime visits to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and second, during his tenure as High Representative. A discourse-theoretical analysis highlights how Ashdown rationalized his involvement in wartime Bosnia-Herzegovina through a powerful self-identification with an ‘interventionist model of masculinity’ which equates manliness with a responsibility to protect a vulnerable/backward/feminized Balkan ‘other’ from violence and harm. Moreover, gendered discourses helped to conceptualize and legitimate the peace implementation role of the OHR, allowing the organization to position coercive strategies and policies as appropriate and necessary for creating sustainable peace. Overall, this article highlights how gender is mobilized to promote and impose liberal policies and norms, with significant implications for the quality of peace being (re)constructed.

Keywords:

• Balkanism
• Bosnia
• discourse
• gender
• identity
• liberal peace
• masculinities
• peacebuilding
• statebuilding

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/G013993/1). I am grateful for the constructive and encouraging feedback from the two anonymous reviewers and editors of this special issue which helped to improve this article.

Notes

Liberal peacebuilding entails (re)constructing liberal states to (re)build sustainable peace, thus the terms ‘statebuilding’ and ‘peacebuilding’ will be used interchangeably.

For analysis of post-conflict reconstruction in Bosnia see special issue of International Peacekeeping Vol. 12, No. 3 (2005); for an overview of debates on liberal peacebuilding see Global Society Vol. 21, No. 4 (2007).

On how this strategy works in relation to the production of neo-liberal development in Columbia, see Coleman (2007).

http://www.ohr.int/decisions/archive.asp (accessed 3 February 2012).

According to Lloyd (2008), Ashdown was later nominated for the role of ‘super-envoy’ in Afghanistan, but the move was blocked by President Karzai.

The roots of the conflict remain hotly disputed but lie in the ethnonationalist break-up of Yugoslavia. The 1992–5 war was fought along ethnic lines by forces representing Bosniaks (44 per cent of Bosnia's population), Bosnian Croats (17 per cent) and Bosnian Serbs (31 per cent), and drew in Serbia and Croatia.

By ‘international community’ I refer to key peacebuilding agents in Bosnia-Herzegovina – namely the EU, OSCE, NATO, UN agencies, World Bank and IMF.

On the value of examining autobiographical accounts of war for discourses of gender see Duncanson (2009).

Peters is referring to western representations of Afghan women post-9/11. Ashdown's depictions of Bosnian women can be viewed in a similar light.

I thank the anonymous reviewer for drawing this to my attention.

As Shepherd (2006) notes, a similar strategy was used by the Bush Administration to legitimize US attacks on Afghanistan.