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National Security: Women Must Define the Priorities Debate

By Lorelei Kelly  Posted by Rady Ananda (about the submitter)       (Page 1 of 1 pages)   No comments
Message Rady Ananda
Originally posted at The Women's Media Center; reposted with permission.

The ‘guns versus butter’ debate is on the way out. Even the U.S. military has realized the importance of providing the latter. For this election and beyond, women leaders are learning how to recast the conversation and set new priorities to measure the nation’s security.


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Throughout 2008, I’ve traveled the country helping women leaders understand and communicate today’s greatest national security challenges.  The world has changed significantly, and America must make different choices about how to secure our future. For example, in today’s world, the safety of people across borders is as important as the safety of people within them. Threats like global warming, genocide, pandemic disease and economic calamity cannot be prevented by one country acting alone. 

Given that we need all the nation’s leadership talent to move on these urgent topics, the most consistent gasp line in my training is when the audience learns that the United States ranks 69th in the world in Congressional female representation. That’s below both Afghanistan and Iraq—countries where the United States exerted influence to make sure that quotas exist for female leadership.  Number one in the world is Rwanda, where women filled positions after hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens were murdered in 1994.  Preliminary research on Rwanda has demonstrated that this critical mass of women in power promotes fundamental democratic values—like public consultation and participation, and that corruption has diminished. 

What were once considered women’s issues are now squarely in the middle of domestic and international debates on security.  The old ‘guns versus butter’ line is obsolete. In fact, our own military finds itself providing both. The U.S. Army considers girls’ education a vital link to achieving long-term stability.  Military officers testifying in front of Congress have, for years, been pointing out the need for strong democratic institutions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Theirs is a broad concept of security. It includes courts, police, banks, hospitals, schools and other providers of positive social stability.  Yet we fund the military at a level at least 30 times higher than our diplomatic, economic and other ‘civilian’ programs.  Correcting this mismatch will be the most important silver-lining lesson of the Iraq war.  Our top warfighters understand better than anyone that most security problems they have faced have no military solution.

A global legacy of women's priorities already informs policy debates about a new strategy for U.S. security. For decades, women the world over have championed the safety of people through positive social change. Women rally support for such community needs as health care, clean water, economic justice, safe streets and education.  Yet in these tough economic times, our leaders running for office and those who are elected in November need to hear an ongoing public conversation to know that the American people have high expectations for change. Without it, there will be little incentive to make the difficult budgetary tradeoffs and to reformulate a long-term strategy. Because elected leaders have not realigned priorities, we’re still spending billions of dollars for weapons programs built during the Cold War era to contain the Soviet Union—an enemy that disappeared 17 years ago. The recently released Unified Security Budget, developed by a nonpartisan task force, enumerates this problem.

When I ask my audience of women leaders to name an issue close to home that relates to national security, the most common answer is Hurricane Katrina. Yet in 2008, the defense budget consumed 54 percent of discretionary taxpayer dollars. Our government’s inability to either prevent or respond to the humanitarian needs of that natural disaster shocked many into realizing the depth of the leadership failure on keeping Americans safe.

Because voters have been receptive to a message of change during this election, it’s an opportune moment to reframe the issue about national priorities.  Always start this conversation by saying that we need national security reform across the board and that this will require a revised grand strategy. This is policy-speak for saying that our nation needs a new mission statement. While putting forth new ideas, however, it remains important to acknowledge peoples’ legitimate fears. The military will remain important. There are real threats. The problem is that we’re not addressing them effectively. It’s useful to avoid such obsolete binary language as ‘hawks versus doves’ or ‘guns versus butter.’

National security is a much broader concept than it was even two decades ago. During the Cold War, it was easy to focus the discussion on arms control treaties and national borders. Today's threats are widely distributed, from criminal networks with nukes to lack of public education. Here at home, threats may come from diseases spread by temperature changes or from the collapse of an infirm bridge on your evening commute.

When women fully enter this debate, such issues as community infrastructure and public health—including bioterrorism defense—are much more likely to rise up and become priorities. Whether the field of action is within our borders or abroad, national security today demands a broad understanding of what constitutes making and defending the peace.

 

For more on effective debate about national security, see  “A Woman’s Guide to Talking About War and Peace,” which the author wrote with Dana Eyre, USAR.


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Lorelei Kelly is a national security specialist based in Washington, D.C. working to educate elected leaders and the American public about security challenges revealed by 9/11. She is the policy director of the Real Security Initiative of the White House Project, a non-partisan organization whose mission is to increase the influence of women in media, culture and politics. Kelly’s professional background includes teaching at Stanford University's Center on Conflict and Negotiation and working as senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a D.C. think tank.

She founded “Security for a New Century,” a study group that supports cutting-edge knowledge on foreign policy and defense issues for Congressional members and staff. Kelly attended the Air Command and Staff College program of the U.S. Air Force as well as programs at the National Defense University and Army War College. She co-authored, with Dr. Elizabeth Turpen, a handbook for citizens entitled "Policy Matters: Educating Congress on Peace and Security" and produced a civil-military dialogue guide entitled “A Woman’s Guide to Talking About War and Peace” with Dana Eyre, USAR. 

She blogs regularly at http://www.democracyarsenal.org/ and www.huffingtonpost.com and participates in the WMC’s Progressive Women’s Voices project.

Noted national security expert, advisor to Congress and author of "A Woman's Guide to Talking About War and Peace," Lorelei Kelly is available for interview. For more information, please contact Tristin Aaron, Women's Media Center, 212 563 0680, tristin AT womensmediacenter.com

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In 2004, Rady Ananda joined the growing community of citizen journalists. Initially focused on elections, she investigated the 2004 Ohio election, organizing, training and leading several forays into counties to photograph the 2004 ballots. She officially served at three recounts, including the 2004 recount. She also organized and led the team that audited Franklin County Ohio's 2006 election, proving the number of voter signatures did not match official results. Her work appears in three books.

Her blogs also address religious, gender, sexual and racial equality, as well as environmental issues; and are sprinkled with book and film reviews on various topics. She spent most of her working life as a researcher or investigator for private lawyers, and five years as an editor.

She graduated from The Ohio State University's School of Agriculture in December 2003 with a B.S. in Natural Resources.

All material offered here is the property of Rady Ananda, copyright 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009. Permission is granted to repost, with proper attribution including the original link.

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Tell the truth anyway.

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