Description
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has engaged late with the global push towards feminist foreign policy (FFP). Recent calls for NATO to adopt a FFP emerge against a backdrop of an increasing number of member and partner states adopting their own FFPs (Canada, France, Spain, Sweden), while others role back their commitment to women’s rights (Hungary and Turkey). Yet, NATO is a political-military alliance whose very purpose runs counter to critical feminist praxis. Drawing on a critical feminist security studies framework we contextualise calls for FFP against recent NATO policy turns, drawing out inconsistencies to deconstruct contemporary developments in NATO militarism. We also make a distinction between NATO’s established work on Women, Peace and Security and the FFP framework, arguing that the former provides better potential for challenging the white supremacist heteropatriarchal logic underpinning NATO as an institution. In so doing we consider what purpose this push for a NATO FFP serves, and for whom, the contradictions underpinning it and the potential (un)intended repercussions.
