At a February town hall, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared: “Our strength is our shared purpose … ” and he has begun correcting misguided policies of the past four years.
On the top of the list is expunging DEI. Likewise, the Naval War College’s Women, Peace, and Security program, or WPS, merits special attention as it has been usurped by activists and has diverged from its original purpose.
In defense of WPS, a harsh reality of warfare is that women and children are unwitting pawns and too often victims. They’ve been strategically targeted or have been used as human shields to inspire uprisings. However, the atrocities of the early post-Cold War era (1990-2000) witnessed an emerging embrace of women as essential in conflict resolution and “peace-building.” But this commonsense realization has also attracted efforts that distort or distract from what women can bring to the negotiating table and battlefield.
The Rwandan genocide proved pivotal in the creation of what would become the Women, Peace, and Security initiative.
During that genocide, nearly 100,000 to 250,000 women were systematically raped during a three-month pogrom. This triggered the creation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000. This resolution acknowledged that “women and children account for the vast majority of those adversely affected by armed conflict,” and for this reason encouraged nations to include women in the peace process.
Said more directly, it was believed then that women could help build enduring conflict resolution. After a coalition of countries launched the Global War on Terror following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, another important aspect of women on the battlefield emerged.
One story made famous in the 2017 movie “WTF!” involved destruction of a well in a village believed to be caused by the Taliban and how the truth was uncovered without bloodshed.
The true story involves the conscious decision of sending female soldiers and marines to engage with Afghan women—who were, for cultural reasons, inaccessible to male soldiers. They did this to gather vital intelligence. What was found is that the Afghan women destroyed the well so they could socialize during the long walk to it.
This serves as a lesson in cultural awareness and the tactical value of women soldiers on the battlefield. This event was one of those that informed reforms to U.S. intelligence operations in Afghanistan in the report “Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan.”
Originally, WPS aimed to more effectively prevent war crimes and improve conflict resolution.
The assumption was that policymakers and planners made better plans when they had a fuller perspective of the country, region, battlespace, society, etc. Hence, including women gave peace deals a better chance of success.
The theoretical basis for this thinking comes in part from feminist international relations theory. In a nutshell, it posits that the unique experiences of women, which have often been excluded, can be instrumental in international affairs and conflict resolution. This was twisted by feminist ideology to instead promote “gender analysis” whereby all policies, programs, and plans must take a “gender perspective” to achieve global “gender equity and inclusion.”
As such, WPS was soon infused with critical race theory and gender ideology.
The result, WPS as an effective complement to conflict resolution and intelligence gathering is in peril. Diversity, equity, and inclusion and fourth-wave feminism have shifted the focus to include abortion, sexual violence, and “equal pay,” as opposed to its original mission.
This is evident in the “2024 Department of Defense Women, Peace and Security Implementation Plan” signed into force on Dec. 30 by former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
One troubling feature in this memo was the establishment of a “Gender Advisory Workforce” supported by dedicated staff.
According to the Biden administration’s October 2023 WPS Action Plan, “gender advisers” have been hired and directed to analyze gender ideology and apply it to military operations.
Since 2019, this cadre of gender advisers has trained over 1,100 personnel serving at combatant commands, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, and service departments. These advisers have also been responsible for hosting symposia like those at the U.S. Naval War College.
The Naval War College’s mission, according to its website, is: “to educate tomorrow’s leaders, inform today’s decision-makers, and engage with allies and partners on all matters of naval power in order to preserve the peace, respond in crisis, and win decisively in war.”
WPS can contribute to this mission. But given the focus in such seminars and hiring practices, many questions are rightly raised. Especially under the Biden administration, when antisemitic and Marxist influences infiltrated defense institutions.
For example, the Naval War College’s WPS annual “symposiums”—which in 2024 host two “annual” conferences, have been problematic. On May 1 to 3, a two-day Women, Peace, Security Symposium was held, titled “Advancing Gendered Security in a Complex World: Hard Power, Smart Power, Soft Power.”
While there was a panel on “Framing WPS through a National Security Perspective,” the submitted papers and speakers focused also on building diverse teams and gender roles in military performance. See the agenda here.
As questions swirled last year, the college closed itself off from scrutiny. In May, the Naval War College rebuffed efforts by The Washington Free Beacon to gain comment on the school’s WPS conference topics. Queries on Feb. 26 by this author have also gone unanswered.
Most egregious was the college’s treatment of WPS following the barbaric attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, when the terrorist group killed and raped many innocent women and girls. No mention of this atrocity and how to address it was raised at ensuing WPS symposiums; nor was there any mention of “violence against women, specifically, rape.”
While this topic was included in a “call for papers,” no reason has been given as to why the college excluded it from the symposium. As such, the tragedy of Hamas’ rape and murder of Israelis was forgotten, while Hamas’ barbarous actions were blamed on Israel.
Public access to agenda and papers for these Naval War College unclassified programs has been challenging, relying instead on public accounts of attendees. See “NWC’s Accidental Oversight, or Something Else?”
So, who is making the decisions at the Naval War College enabling the hijacking of WPS by DEI? The chair for WPS is Saira Yamin, who has done what appears to be commendable work at ActionAid Pakistan and the Aurat Foundation.
However, Yamin’s human rights experience and democracy advocacy in Pakistan seems a strange fit for an institution focused on naval warfare and is only tangentially related to WPS. More problematic is Hayat Alvi, a Naval War College professor who supports Yamin. Her public statements include: “Both the Taliban and the Southern Baptists employ the ‘lessons’ of biology and scripture to ‘prove’ women’s inferiority.” And, “All these misogynistic ideologies and attitudes stem from a principal psychological factor in religiously orthodox male-dominated societies: the actual fear of females.”
One Oct. 23, 2023 lecture got the attention of popular national security blogger CDR Salamander, in which faculty attempt to equate Israel’s acts to genocide in the Gaza. Relatedly, the Naval War College’s Teaching Excellence Center has also invited professor Misbah Hyder, a pro-Hamas supporter of antisemitic protests at Columbia University, to lecture on “inclusive teaching.”
At the top was Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, who oversaw much of this during the height of DEI’s influence on the military. Chatfield was the first female president of the college (August 2019 to June 2023) and anointed herself as the “chief inclusion and diversity officer.” She advanced DEI efforts at the institution and oversaw a shift of WPS away from its intended focus.
Due to the actions of the Naval War College, WPS has lost much creditability. Can it be salvaged at the Department of Defense?
The October 2023 Action Plan and the 11th-hour approval of the WPS Implementation Plan gives reason to think it can’t be redeemed.
For example, the “U.S. Strategy and National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security” includes callouts about “LGBTQI+ sensitivity training” with “two DHS subject-matter experts from the DHS Pride Organization” who delivered education on “Sexual and Gender-Based Violence.” Such efforts deemed politically important during the Biden administration should realistically have been kept in a separate DEI Implementation Plan and not infused in WPS efforts.
Fortunately, in recent weeks, the Department of Defense appears to be making a course correction, but the details are still limited as to how WPS is being refocused.
Unfortunately, too many so-called WPS practitioners have disregarded the 2017 WPS Act and diverged from the intent of the 2019 WPS Strategy.
Hopefully, WPS will be reoriented back to its conflict resolution and national security mission.
