On July 17, 1998, The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) established jurisdiction to try crimes of sexual violence, including rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, and forced pregnancy as official war crimes when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian population.Footnote ¹ Although rape has been used as a war practice for centuries, and the 1949 Geneva Convention laid the foundation for rape as a crime against humanity long ago, this recognition of rape as a war crime presented a remarkable shift in international law.Footnote ² Moved by the collection of powerful testimony given at the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR) and Yugoslavia (ICTY), rape was defined in international law for the first time in 1996; two years later, systematic wartime rape could formally be charged as a war crime, a form of torture, and/or an act of genocide (MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2006).Footnote ³

The ICC defines the war crime of rape as containing four elements – a definition I will also employ in constituting rape as a war weapon. As defined in Article 8 (2) (b) (xxii) of Elements of Crimes (ICC 2002), the elements of rape as a war crime are the following:

1. 1. The perpetrator invaded the body of a person by conduct resulting in penetration, however slight, of any part of the body of the victim or of the perpetrator with a sexual organ, or of the anal or genital opening of the victim with any object or any other part of the body.

2. 2. The invasion was committed by force, or by threat of force or coercion, such as that caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power, against such person or another person, or by taking advantage of a coercive environment, or the invasion was committed against a person incapable of giving genuine consent.

3. 3. The conduct took place in the context of and was associated with an international armed conflict.

4. 4. The perpetrator was aware of factual circumstances that established the existence of an armed conflict.

Particularly noteworthy in this definition is the use of the term “invasion” in order to make rape a crime—and, in the context of my argument, also a weapon—that can be sex/gender-neutral. Furthermore, while the rape of war prisoners is not the focus of this article (such as the infamous case of sexual abuse committed by U.S. military personnel against detainees in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison), we must keep in mind that any use of rape that “took place in the context of and was associated with an international armed conflict” is evidence of rape's widespread deployment, against both soldiers and civilians, as a highly effective weapon of war.Footnote ⁴

Over the past decade, increased attention has been placed on the official documentation of rape as a violation of international law, findings that have persuaded international organizations of rape's significance as a powerfully destructive aspect of war. For example, in June 2008, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1820, which officially declared rape as a “war tactic” and stressed that, despite the UN's repeated condemnation and calls for the cessation of sexual violence in situations of armed conflict, “such acts continue to occur, and in some situations have become systematic and widespread, reaching appalling levels of brutality.” Yet even with formal legal recognition and increased international attention generated by media, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), systematic rape remains almost invisible in international relations (IR) scholarship. Possibly, the identification of rape as a war crime makes it vulnerable to categorization, and subsequent disciplinary marginalization, as a postconflict issue, whereas IR generally tends to focus less on war's aftermath and more on serious threats to state and international security. Identifying rape as a war weapon, however, places systematic rape at the center of conflict and security.Footnote ⁵

Acknowledging the breadth of IR scholarship, I argue that analyzing the widespread and systematic deployment of rape as a war weapon is a project best situated within security studies. As Stephen M. Walt explains, “security studies may be defined as the study of the threat, use, and control of military force…. It explores the conditions that make the use of force more likely, the ways that the use of force affects individuals, states, and societies, and the specific policies that states adopt in order to prepare for, prevent, or engage in war” (Reference Walt1991, 212; emphasis in original). Additionally, national security encompasses more than military power; rather, states face many diverse security threats. Therefore, “security studies also includes what is sometimes termed ‘statecraft’—arms control, diplomacy, crisis management, for example. These issues are clearly relevant to the main focus of the field, because they bear directly on the likelihood and character of war” (p. 213). Consequently, when rape is conceptualized not only as a war crime but also as a weapon of war, it becomes a subject of arms control and statecraft, assuming its rightful place as a topic of security studies, and thus of IR, analysis.

In this article, I therefore argue that both theoretically and in terms of policy, systematic wartime rape presents a relevant and necessary inclusion to security studies. I make this argument for two major reasons. First, the categorization of rape as a weapon of war follows logically from shared core theoretical definitions and assumptions at the disciplinary center. Second, as the following evidence demonstrates, rape is an immensely destructive, increasingly deployed, and ever more threatening weapon used in wars worldwide. Therefore, the exclusion of rape from security studies precludes comprehensive, accurate analysis within key areas of disciplinary concern. I suggest that positioning wartime rape as an increasingly relevant topic within international security will provide unique insights on how security studies analyze rape and, perhaps more significantly for the field, how IR scholars conceptualize war, weapons, and global security threats in the twenty-first century.

THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND WARTIME USES OF RAPE

The discipline of IR includes a diversity of theoretical perspectives, and the extent to which its work should reach beyond the academy and into the realm of policy is subject to interdisciplinary debate. Nonetheless, there exists an identifiable set of core assumptions fundamental to IR scholarship. The discipline's theoretical heart is comprised of both neorealist and neoliberal approaches, and is commonly referred to as the “neo-neo synthesis” (Nye Reference Nye1988; Powell Reference Powell1994; Smith Reference Smith2000; Waever Reference Waever, Smith, Booth and Zalewski1996). Furthermore, there is consensus among many IR scholars that mainstream scholarship is that which uses a positivist (or rationalist) approach to develop explanatory theory; meanwhile, those approaches deemed peripheral (critical theory, postmodernism, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, normative theory, peace studies, anthropological approaches, and historical sociology) are grouped together as reflectivist in their practice of “constitutive theory” (Smith Reference Smith2000, 380). In other words, while IR is a discipline diverse in epistemologies, methodologies, and methods, there is no mistaking what Ole Waever describes as “the recurrent relapse of American mainstream IR into neo-neo-neo- …positivism” (Reference Waever2009, 217).Footnote ⁶

Accordingly, I argue that in many ways, wartime rape fits into this “neo-neo positivist” worldview, and as a topic of security studies it should garner significant academic traction. Admittedly, systematic rape has not been completely overlooked in the discipline; however, this topic has so far been paid most attention by scholars positioned in IR's nondominant theoretical approaches.Footnote ⁷ In effect, scholarship reflecting theoretical assumptions about power and security in the “neo-neo synthesis” are typically accepted into the disciplinary core, while IR scholars challenging these assumptions tend to face disciplinary marginalization. In order for the traction of systematic rape as a topic of security studies analysis to be increased, it is therefore very important to identify how the characteristics and effects of rape as a weapon of war are consistent with much of IR's theoretical underpinning.

First, IR places a primacy on the security of the state. In other words, anything presenting a clear and credible threat to state security is considered to be of paramount importance. Second, power is central to IR scholarship. And despite challenges from critical and postmodern scholars, power remains entrenched in mainstream analyses of war as follows: a) defined as material, and thus able to be studied using a positivist approach, b) viewed as a force of domination and “power-over,” and c) operating in a zero-sum game of relative gains (Mearsheimer Reference Mearsheimer2001, Reference Mearsheimer2006; Waltz Reference Waltz1959, Reference Waltz1979). Finally, a core assumption of “rationality” underlies much disciplinary research, whereby actors are viewed as rational entities making decisions based on ranked preferences and cost–benefit assessments.

Taking each of these core suppositions in turn, I argue that rape as a weapon of war fits wholly within the framework of these assumptions and, as such, should be a subject relevant to security studies. Using the state as the unit of analysis, the use of rape as a weapon presents a clear and credible threat to state security; this weapon deteriorates state security in two ways.

First, in our anarchical system of self-help, the modern state must, above all else, preserve its sovereignty, which is both an internal and external ambition. Internally, state sovereignty relies on maintaining a monopoly over the legitimate use of force. This capacity has traditionally been institutionalized in the armed forces and police, over which the state monopolizes control and uses in order to enforce its legitimacy should law and order fail (Gill Reference Gill2003, 4–6; Weber Reference Weber, Gerth and Mills1965). Rape, however, greatly undermines the state's control over war weaponry inasmuch as rape is a) available to all persons, b) available at no monetary or labor cost, and c) available repetitively, as it does not rely on nonrenewable resources. Externally, systematic rape, like other weapons of war, affects the ways in which states behave with neighboring states.

Due to the embodied nature of the weapon itself, rape escapes any traditional type of weapons control or embargo; consequently, the practice and effect of rape are not contained within state borders. On the contrary, when rape enters warfare that may have begun as intrastate civil war, its weapon's reach easily carries the war across territorial lines. For example, the use of rape as a weapon of war in Rwanda has now transferred into the Eastern Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo) (Nowrojee Reference Nowrojee1996, 2). Also, a 2009 joint report by Physicians for Human Rights and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative reveals systematic rape as an interstate threat, as this weapon's destructive effects currently—and increasingly—flow from Darfur into neighboring Chad.Footnote ⁸ These two cases offer evidence of rape's ongoing capability to destabilize regional security and, in both cases, calls for international intervention and financial aid to continue unabated. Thus, in a variety of ways, rape as a weapon of war presents a clear and credible threat to security within and between those states it is deployed, as well as a drain on resources from states otherwise uninvolved.

Second, although many epistemologies are used in IR scholarship, as Steve Smith argues, “positivism dominates, especially in the United States, and dominates to such an extent that other epistemological positions remain peripheral” (2000, 375). I therefore make the argument that wartime rape fits the definition of positivism as put forth by Smith (p. 383), which includes

As the following discussion reveals, rape can be viewed as an empirically real, value-free weapon of war. Wartime rape is a visible reality occurring as part of both the natural and the social world; this weapon is material as the human body is, by definition, made of physical properties and not a metaphysical force or idea. Accordingly, this embodied weapon is “positivist-friendly” in that its existence is measurable both as a biological weapon itself and in reductionist terms as a social process with determinable causes and effects. Regardless of how easily a normative consensus may be reached on the topic of systematic rape, the point is that a positivist separation between facts and values is possible—and perhaps even necessary—when analyzing such a value-laden issue. Moreover, the “patterns and regularities” uncovered in the following data require no methods beyond a positivist counting of cases in which rape as a weapon of war has been employed, explaining the objective circumstances under which wartime rape may be more or less likely to occur, and/or engaging in a “value-free” analysis of the effects of wartime rape on global security.

In addition to fitting positivist criteria, rape as a weapon of war is consistent with the conception of power as one actor exercising “power over” another actor (Mearsheimer Reference Mearsheimer2001; Morgenthau Reference Morgenthau1948; Waltz Reference Waltz1959; Reference Waltz1979). Similar to the use of other weapons, rape is a clear exercise of domination and control of one body over another. As Card (Reference Card1996, 7) explains:

Power in the case of rape matches the “power-over” conceptualization, and almost by direct extension is measurable in a zero-sum game of one actor's relative gains over another. Like other weapons of mass destruction, those actors with the weapon of rape in their range of capabilities hold a position of power relatively higher than those who do not have the capacity to rape; in short: “War rape is perhaps the clearest example of an asymmetric strategy” (Diken and Laustsen Reference Diken and Laustsen2005, 111). Generally, though not entirely, access to this relative power position is determined on both sexed and gendered bases. In terms of sex, male bodies are more readily equipped to rape whereas female bodies are not. Recall, however, that according to the ICC definition, rape is a physical invasion not limited to bodily intercourse; therefore, while males will maintain the comparative advantage, females (as rational actors operating in a zero-sum game framework) could improve their power position in wartime by copying the tactics of sexual violation sometimes used by their male counterparts, using guns, knives, and bottles to rape others.Footnote ⁹ However, despite access to this war weapon as technically sex neutral, current statistical evidence reveals that systematic rape is perpetrated overwhelmingly by men and, in some cases, provides a form of male bonding that only further encourages this weapon's use among the male sex (Card Reference Card1996, 7; Jones Reference Jones2000).

Although the sexed distribution of power derived from this war weapon is rather straightforward, the gendered distribution of power requires a more complex discussion. As UN Security Council Resolution 1820 plainly states, women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence; consequently, this vulnerability of women creates a gendered layer of relative power distribution that is to the disadvantage of both women and men. On the one hand, raping some women sends a message to all women that they need protection. This places women in a situation of “double powerlessness.” Not only do they sit in a position of relatively less power in the victim–perpetrator model but—even if never suffering the direct effects of rape—they also require the protection of those (men) with relatively more power to protect. On the other hand, the broader power implications of this war weapon are to reinforce rapists' relative power position over not just the victim herself but over those men who failed to protect her.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for example, a doctor who has treated thousands of rape victims claims, “These rapes are a show of force…. The point is to show the husband, the family, the village, that they're all powerless. It's as if the rapists are saying: ‘We can do anything we want to you.’ Humiliate, terrorize, all the while stressing the victims' total absence of recourse, until the populace resigns itself to obeying these outside masters” (Lefort Reference Lefort2003). In Darfur, a recent study records similar tactics, revealing how members of the “Janjaweed often raped women in front of their children or families, likely to humiliate the men who were unable to protect their wives, sisters and daughters from the armed attackers” (Physicians for Human Rights et al. 2009, 52). And finally, a Human Rights Watch report on rape during the Rwandan genocide reinforces the weapon as capable of mass destruction. As Binaifer Nowrojee (Reference Nowrojee1996) writes in the introduction:

Clearly, empirical evidence from three different cases demonstrates the gendered dimension of victimizing women and men based on their gender-appropriate roles of “protected” and “protector.” Both women and men, locked in the gendered continuum of power, have their culturally determined femininity and masculinity destroyed.Footnote ¹⁰ On the whole, rape as a weapon of war intertwines both sex and gender in the doling out of relative power.

The final theoretical assumption embedded in IR analysis is the foundational “rational actor.” Both realism and liberalism build their models around this actor who carefully calculates costs and benefits to rank-order its preferences, and—on these terms—makes the best choice. In the structural theories of neorealism and neoliberalism, this actor is defined as the state. In the context of this model, any weapon that is easy and free to procure and carries highly destructive capacities will be widely exploited by rational actors in an anarchical, self-help world. As realist John Mearsheimer has plainly said: “I believe that states seek to maximize their power; they look hard for ways to dominate the international system. If they can do so by achieving nuclear superiority, they will” (2006, 239). And although rape is distinct from a nuclear weapon, Mearsheimer's logic extends to the case of rape; for as rational, power-seeking actors, all states will pursue and deploy any weapon of war that proves to be highly destructive. Furthermore, I argue that a narrow definition of the state as the only significant rational actor precludes meaningful analysis of the current play of war, weapons, and security—a point that finds empirical support in the hundreds of thousands of times individuals have employed systematic rape as a successful war tactic. Thus, the low-cost/high-benefit calculation of rape as a weapon of war is attractive both for individual rational actors trying to improve their personal power position in wartime, and also for those power-seeking rational states trying, at all times, to better their statecraft under conditions of twenty-first-century realpolitik.

While the easy and free procurement of rape is self-evident, understanding rape's effectiveness in the context of war is slowly growing, reflected especially in the rising interest of international organizations as they collect empirical data on its destructive capacity. Even at this early stage of data collection across cases, research gathered from one major Congolese hospital reveals the widespread use of rape over traditional weapons. The Panzi Hospital in Bukavu is vividly described as “occupied by women who undergo as many as six operations to repair the sexual injuries to their bodies, or be treated for mutilation and other wounds. In this hospital, the sexually assaulted victims are two or three times as numerous as civilians treated for gunshot wounds, and four or five times as numerous as wounded soldiers” (Lefort Reference Lefort2003).

Notably, the work of Elisabeth Jean Wood (Reference Wood2006) adds important layers of complexity to the rational deployment of rape as a weapon of war. Wood's research points out that the use of systematic rape in war actually varies over time and place, a variance not accounted for by a pure rational actor model, which, in line with the above analysis, would predict that rape (as a low-cost/high-benefit weapon) will be employed in all cases of war.Footnote ¹¹ Nonetheless, while acknowledgment of variance is important, the evidence put forth throughout this article shows that in a view consistent with rational approaches to warfare, the use of rape as a weapon of war is ever expanding, and its use will likely continue to be more prolific than restricted.

Perhaps, then, Wood's research agenda is best seen as complementary (rather than contradictory) to the argument herein, inasmuch as making the case for rape as a weapon of war in security studies only provides more prominence to systematic rape as a subject of analysis and, consequently, a larger pool of scholars potentially interested in investigating the six hypotheses with which she concludes her article.Footnote ¹² In fact, further investigation into those cases where rape is not employed as a war weapon could be crucial for generating causal “explanatory” theories pertaining to the conditions under which rape is more or less likely to be used, as well as for encouraging theoretical developments on the deterrence or containment of this destructive weapon. At this point, despite variance of use across cases, I argue that systematic rape presents such drastically low barriers to entry into civil and international warfare that both rational man and rational state will likely use this weapon with increasing frequency and brutality.Footnote ¹³

In concluding this section, I quote Anneka Van Woudenberg (Reference Van Woudenberg2008), a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, whose remarks on the DRC summarize rape's pervasiveness as a threat to state security, as using a conception of power as “power-over,” and as supporting the rational actor predictions made previously:

PREVALENCE OF WARTIME RAPE

The overarching argument presented in this section is separate, but closely related, to the previous discussion. Here, I make the claim that rape as weapon of war is so prevalent in current war practice that to exclude it from war and weapons analysis precludes a complete and meaningful study of global security. As the following discussion shows, it is impossible to explain and understand strategic and tactical decisions related to war (and thus security studies) without understanding the use of rape as a regular and systematic wartime weapon.

First, although it may be argued that based on scattered evidence from a few cases, rape does not qualify as a major international security concern, the geographical prevalence of rape as a weapon of war points to its extensive range and lack of containment. For instance, the ICC based its 1998 inclusion of rape as a war crime and crime against humanity on the revealing postwar Truth and Reconciliation Commissions of two “most different cases”: Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Distinct in terms of geographic location, race, ethnicity, religion, and political history, these two cases offer powerful evidence that rape as a weapon of war presents an international security threat. Moreover, since the 1990s, this weapon's deployment has been evidenced worldwide, extending from examples in Eastern Europe (Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina), throughout Africa (Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Uganda, South Africa, DRC, Sudan, and now Chad), and to Asia (Cambodia-Thai border).Footnote ¹⁴

Additionally, rape as a weapon of war may be dismissed from much IR analysis due to its categorization, and subsequent marginalization, as a “women's issue.” This point, I believe, is worth exploring in depth; for, if rape were to be a “women's issue” (a categorization that presumably means an issue affecting only females), then even still it would present a weapon of war that directly impacts at least 50% of the population in question. Significantly, the systematic use of rape as a weapon in war does affect women, but it also victimizes men and children. Arguably, any war weapon threatening to affect the majority of civilians in any given population is of mainstream importance. Further still, large-scale wartime rape presents serious long-term, often generational, effects. While the immediate destruction of this war weapon is embodied and personal (incurring both physical and psychological trauma), the effects of systematic rape work over time to undermine communities, states, and regions, and, by extension, threaten global security. Using empirical support for each of these points, I argue that the multifaceted short- and long-term effects of rape as a weapon of war offer costs that, if incurred by any other war weapon, would be taken incredibly seriously in security analysis.

RAPE AS A WEAPON AGAINST WOMEN

As feminist scholars and activists—and now also the UN—correctly state, “women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group” (United Nations 2008). To make the point, I present the following data that span both time and place, demonstrating the effectively destructive capacity of rape as a weapon, regardless of national or cultural context.

First, during the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, some estimates hold that 20,000 women were raped, most of them Muslims (Simons Reference Simons1998). Both the Sarajevo State Commission for Investigation of War Crimes and the United Nations, however, claim that between 20,000 and 50,000 females were victims of this weapon (Drakulic Reference Drakulic1993; Meznaric Reference Meznaric and Moghadam1994; United Nations 2006).

Second, as stated by Réne Degni-Segui, special rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights, during the 1994 Rwandan genocide—a 100-day period—between 250,000 and 500,000 women were raped (Degni-Segui Reference Degni-Segui1996; United Nations 2006). As Donatella Lorch writes in her May 15, 1995, New York Times article, “Wave of Rape Adds New Horror to Rwanda's Trail of Brutality,” “the scope of rape in Rwanda defies imagination.” This statement was later corroborated by the special rapporteur, whose report also made clear that “[r]ape was systemic and was used as a ‘weapon’ by the perpetrators of the massacres …[and a]ccording to consistent and reliable testimony, …rape was the rule and its absence was the exception” (quoted in Haffajee Reference Haffajee2006, 201).

Third, in the DRC between 1998 and 2004, more than 40,000 women were raped; in 2009, the number rose to hundreds of thousands and counting (BBC News 2004; Gettleman Reference Gettleman2009). And while the definition of rape used herein is gender/sex-neutral, “on-the-ground” human rights reports serve to remind us not only of the relative power of men over women in terms of exercising rape as a weapon of war but also—similar to other war weapons – of rape's indiscrimination of victimization based on age. Take, for example, Amnesty International's (2004) description of rape practice in the DRC—a case where the weapon of rape currently and consistently continues to be deployed:

Finally, two more present-day cases in which rape is being systematically used as a weapon are Darfur and Guinea. On the Darfur/Chad border sits a refugee camp—a supposed “safe haven” for Darfuri refugees fleeing the violence of their own devastating civil war.Footnote ¹⁵ And yet, while thousands of these refugee women have already been raped in their Darfuri home villages, they now suffer a constant threat of rape in the Chad-based camp. As the Physicians Without Borders and Harvard Humanitarian Initiative blatantly concludes (2009, 37): “What comes across most strongly in this study is that Darfuri women fled a war and yet have not found safety in Chad. They are compelled by the basic need of survival to obtain the fuel to cook food for their families, and in doing so, risk being raped and subsequently rejected and ostracized by their husbands and families.”

In addition to this cross-border example, a September 2009 outbreak of violence in Guinea revealed rape as the weapon of choice in a country that had not yet experienced its deployment so drastically. In the words of former Guinea Prime Minister Sidya Touré: “This time, a new stage has been reached…. Women as battlefield targets. We could never have imagined that…. Where could people get the idea to start raping women in broad daylight? …It's so contrary to our culture. To molest women using rifle barrels” (Adam Nossiter, “In a Guinea Seized by Violence, Women Are Prey,” New York Times, October 6, 2009).

As a subscript to this data, keep in mind the important caveat that “because of the sensitivity of the subject, violence against women is almost universally under-reported. Thus, these findings might be more accurately thought of as representing the minimum levels of violence that occur” (Watts and Zimmerman Reference Watts and Zimmerman2002, 1232). In addition to the subject's sensitivity, it must be noted that rape goes underreported in contexts of war due to a range of other factors, including an ineffective, nonexistent and/or sexist justice system that prevents a report from being filed. For example, in the Sudan, all individuals with government affiliation are granted immunity—including all military, police, and border guards, as well as members of the Janjaweed subsumed under the Popular Defense Forces (Fricke 2007, 10).

However, even if an individual's superior officer lifted immunity and subjected a soldier to trial, many judges require the rape to have been witnessed by four competent men. Or, in other cases, some judges accept the testimony of a man who swears on the Koran that he did not commit the rape for which he is being prosecuted, but at the same time will not accept the contrary testimony from a woman that she was, in fact, raped (Fricke 2007, ii). Furthermore, if a woman is unable to prove that she did not consent to intercourse, she then risks being charged with the crime of “zina” (sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who are not married to each other)—a crime for which unmarried women receive one hundred lashes upon conviction and married women are sentenced to death by stoning (Fricke 2007, ii, 6–7). While the specifics of the Sudanese case do not apply worldwide, I include the example at some length to stress how, in all cases where rape has become an integral war tactic, the existence of such (in)justice systems not only creates a tremendous barrier to accurate data collection on this weapon's deployment but also adds a systemic layer to women's victimization from this weapon of war.

Finally, in addition to the prohibitive systemic aspects that dissuade women from reporting rape, the use of this war weapon also goes underreported due to the extreme personal shame often experienced by victims, or there exists an outright impossibility of reporting the rape because of death. The most-often-cited reasons for death include being murdered by the rapist(s), a loss of blood due to vaginal damage, or a rape so violent that it causes an irreparable fistula (a tear in the lining of the colon or kidneys, which allows toxins to leak into the bloodstream). Also, in some cases, victims commit suicide directly after the incident to spare the pain, shame, and isolation that almost certainly lie ahead.Footnote ¹⁶

RAPE AS A WEAPON AGAINST MEN

Importantly, the ICTY not only accounted for the direct effects of systematic rape on women but also revealed the extent of men's direct victimization from this powerful weapon of war. One particularly telling paragraph in the Tadic decision offers a clear example of men's trauma in the former Yugoslavia. As quoted in Askin (Reference Askin1999, 102):

Since the recording of this testimony, it seems that men have increasingly found themselves suffering the direct effects of rape as a weapon of war. Consider, for example, an August 5, 2009, front page article in the New York Times entitled, “Symbol of Unhealed Congo: Male Rape Victims,” in which Jeffrey Gettleman reported the following: “According to Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, United Nations officials and several Congolese aid organizations, the number of men who have been raped has risen sharply in recent months, a consequence of joint Congo-Rwanda military operations against rebels that have uncapped an appalling level of violence against civilians.”

In light of this evidence, a point of clarification is necessary; while I previously argued that men's accessibility to this weapon places them in a relative (sexed and gendered) power position over women, it is also true that individual males are progressively turning this power against other men. As the case of the DRC exemplifies, looking only at raw statistics tells an important but incomplete story. While the hundreds of male rape victims represent a mere fraction of the hundreds of thousands of women who have so far been raped in the DRC, the male experience has garnered much less attention. Yet as this weapon of war is increasingly used on males, more information is being gathered on rape's distinct effects on men and masculinity, convincing some aid workers that it is harder for men to recover than it is for women. For instance, male victims often experience the act of rape as a loss of their masculinity, an identity that is, cross-culturally, closely tied to power and control (both of which a victim loses in the act of rape). In some cases, the shame and humiliation experienced by male victims is literally fatal in that men with very serious postrape physical injuries avoid seeking medical help, instead suffering a preventable death.Footnote ¹⁷

Although not all cases result in death, it must be recognized that men—as much as women—are harmfully constrained by culturally defined gender roles and sexual norms. As V. Spike Peterson (Reference Peterson2004) contends, gender hierarchy creates oppressive relations that are typically to the male advantage; however, in the case of systematic wartime rape, this hierarchy produces a weapon that can also be turned against males to harm them both physically and psychologically. “Because gender is hierarchical and interdependent,” explains Peterson, “the privilege and power attributed to masculine qualities depends on the devalorization of feminized qualities. Empirically, this applies to all embodied objects and persons who are denigrated by association with the feminine: not only ‘women’ but also … effeminate men, and colonized ‘others”’ (2004, 40). As a result, men face rape's destructive capacity not just physically but through the weapon's distinct ability to denigrate their masculinity, associate their bodies with the feminine, and thus destroy gendered identities that have kept social fabrics tied together for centuries. Moreover, in cultures where homosexuality is taboo, once men are raped, they are ridiculed, taunted and, similar to women, turned into social outcasts.

Using rape as a weapon of war against men, therefore, plays directly into the fact that “domination more generally is naturalized (depoliticized, legitimated) by denigration of the feminine, and it is the feminization of ‘others’ that links multiple oppressions” (V. S. Peterson Reference Peterson2004, 41). Representing this “feminization of the other” is found in the real experience of a Congolese male rape victim, whose story reinforces how domination and denigration are connected to men raping men. In this male victim's words: “The people in my village say: You're no longer a man. Those men in the bush made you their wife” (Gettleman Reference Gettleman2009). As a weapon wielding the threat of physical and psychological destruction, rape functions to strip males of fundamental aspects of their identity and forces them into the undesirable feminine position of powerless, humiliated victim. Overall, both as a direct consequence of themselves being raped, and from the indirect effects of family and communal breakdown, men are—ever more—victims of rape as a weapon of war.

RAPE AS A WEAPON OF WAR AGAINST CHILDREN

Closely related to the effects of systematic rape on women are the ways in which rape targets children. Most obviously, both female and male children are themselves direct victims of wartime rape. In addition to children being raped, there exists the ever-present “rape camps.” In an image tragically reminiscent of the Nazi-run camps of World War II, these rape camps commit the international war crime of forced impregnation. Rape camps have been part of recent war strategy in Bosnia (1992–95) and in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, and they are currently operating in both the DRC and Darfur. Using the weapon of rape in this way not only is destructive to the captured women themselves but also affects the product of this sexual torture, the so-called “rape babies,” who have become an increasingly large presence across time and place (Carpenter Reference Carpenter2007).

As an example of their prolific existence, take the fact that rape camps operated in 11 locations during the war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina alone. In the words of Bulent Diken and Carsten Bagge Laustsen (2005, 112): “Women in some camps were continuously raped until a doctor or a gynecologist established pregnancy and held in captivity until abortion was no longer possible. Carrying a child that is the product of rape can be seen as an extremely cruel form of torture or as an integral part of strategic ethnic cleansing.”Footnote ¹⁸ Also, evidence from Rwanda shows that between April 1994 and April 1995, more than 15,700 females, ages 13–65, were raped, according to Lorch's 1995 article. In this single genocidal year, Rwanda's Ministry of Family and Women's Affairs estimated more than 10,000 pregnancies; however, officials could not ascertain what had been done with those infants carried to term, as many of these “rape babies” were abandoned by their mothers to be found lying alone and naked in fields near orphanages. Of those abandoned babies found by orphanage workers, efforts have often been made to carefully protect their anonymity as they grow up so as not to fuel prejudice and further destabilize the half-Hutu/half-Tutsi children's already uncertain future.

Unfortunately, the brutalities of forced impregnation were not left behind at the turn of the century but are ongoing war practice. Currently in Darfur, women are often raped less with the intention of direct personal effects and more for the long-term, generational impact that rape can have when employed systematically. Several Darfuri women have reported stories about rapes in their home villages, recounting how “the Janjaweed yelled racial slurs, announcing their intention to exterminate the non-Arabs of Darfur as well as their intent to take their land and their intent to make the women give birth to Arab children” (Physicians et al. 2009, 52). This evidence is corroborated by a second investigation, carried out by Refugees International (Fricke 2007, 2), in which one woman describes how, before raping her, Janjaweed militiamen viciously told her, “I will give you a light-skinned baby to take this land from you.”

Offering a clear assessment of the power of rape as a tool for ethnic cleansing, Adrienne L. Fricke (2007, 2) explains:

Just like traditional weapons of war and the far less frequently used chemical and nuclear weapons, rape as a weapon of war carries its own long-term, yet indirect, devastating effects on community, state, regional, and international security. Yet unlike other weapons of war, systematic rape leaves a complicated “aftermath” of purposely disrupted genealogies, not only torturing women through enforced impregnation (with or without an official “rape camp”) but also creating a generation of children bearing identities foreign and displaced in their already disintegrating communal context. The widespread existence of rape camps and the practice of public rape are both part of a larger political project to undermine the ethnic and communal ties fundamental to state security. Whereas traditional weapons aim to destroy and kill, the practice of enforced pregnancy creates a new group of children whose purpose is “to carry the expression of the perpetrator's dominance into future generations” (Card Reference Card1996, 10). In so doing, argues Claudia Card, “forcible impregnation in martial rape can also be a tool of genetic imperialism… . If survivors become pregnant or are known to be rape survivors [then] cultural, political, and national unity may be thrown into chaos” (p. 8).

Through the practice of public rape, the disintegration of the family/village/community unit is an obvious consequence. Demonstrated through data already presented, the scale on which this sociocultural breakdown occurs is remarkable—and, unfortunately, shows no sign of slowing down. As the story of systematic rape in Darfur begins, “the incidence of rape in 2004–2006 in Darfur, when Sudanese and Janjaweed attacks on non-Arab Darfuri villages were most concentrated, was intentional and systematic. The assaults were part of the campaign of violence and a longer-term strategy to break down community bonds by instilling fear and shame” (Physicians et al. 2009, 10). Furthermore, in the case of Darfur (as elsewhere, such as the Rwandan genocidal “aftermath” crossing the border to rage now in the DRC), using rape as a weapon of war has helped perpetuate the literal disintegration of an entire state through forced movement and displacement of citizens.

Alongside the effects of a state's sociocultural fabric deteriorating through shame, humiliation, and the outcasting of both female and male rape victims, the negative impact on public health is another major long-term security concern. For example, in the DRC, “sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea and HIV/AIDS are also on the rise. Reports indicate that up to 30% of patients tested in the eastern part of the country are HIV positive—one of the highest infection rates in the world” (Amnesty International 2004). Unfortunately, there is no apparent or immediate relief from this regional health epidemic, which, if left uncontained, could pose a legitimate international human security threat. Disturbingly, in 2004, only one international NGO—with the limited capacity to treat only about 150 people—was providing antiretroviral treatment in the eastern DRC. In fact, the health threat is so pervasive that DRC's National Aids Program estimates that by 2014, HIV/AIDS will infect more than half the Congolese population—a population that also (as the empirical evidence herein suggests) shows no signs of slowing the use of, and victimization by, rape as a weapon of war.

RAPE AS A WEAPON OF WAR IN IR

This article began with citation of the 1998 change in international law, whereby The Rome Statute of the ICC allowed rape to be charged as an act of war, genocide, and/or crime against humanity. A decade later, the UN Security Council reiterated the political gravity of rape as a war crime, attaching real consequences for individuals pursuing their ends through the illegal use of rape in war. UN Security Council Resolution 1820 clearly affirms the severity of systematic rape, both in its call for the exclusion of sexual violence crimes from amnesty provisions and in a bold move to threaten sanctions as a consequence for states engaged in systematic wartime rape. In light of the current UN practice of sanctioning states that procure dangerous weapons of mass destruction, it seems that systematic rape should also be increasingly acknowledged, feared, and condemned as fitting the categorization of a dangerous weapon of war.Footnote ¹⁹

Critics may wonder what makes rape a weapon worthy of security studies analysis when other weapons, such as tanks or lightweight arms, get little, if any, disciplinary attention. While it is true that many weapons used in war find little traction in IR theory, large-scale international security threats offered from some weapons—namely, nuclear weapons—provided the roots for much disciplinary development. For instance, deterrence theories, balancing/bandwagoning, and many liberal theories of alliance and cooperation were generated from the desire to mitigate the nuclear threat (Blight and Welch Reference Blight and Welch1989; Walt Reference Walt1988; Waltz Reference Waltz1979). While nuclear weapons and rape are distinct in their separation between perpetrator and victim (i.e., a nuclear attack can be waged from across an ocean, whereas rape occurs with an embodied immediacy), these security threats are yet similar to one another (and different from, say, air strikes or naval strategies) in their systematic threat to the security of civilians. Undermining the soldier/civilian and protector/protected distinctions that lie at the heart of much IR theory and practice, rape as a wartime weapon is, therefore, of clear importance to security studies.

Of course, I do not suggest that nuclear bombs and systematic rape are entirely similar to one another as weapons of war nor in the consequent security threats they pose. What I am arguing is that IR has (with good reason) taken the nuclear threat seriously, and from this weapon many theoretical camps have generated important ideas about how to improve international prospects of security. Therefore, if scholars are convinced by the evidence and arguments presented here that systematic rape offers a pervasive security threat in twenty-first-century warfare, then our discipline has every reason to delve into its analysis with the theoretical tools we have on offer. Whereas feminist perspectives continue to offer much to the gendered (femininity/masculinity) and sexed (embodied) dynamics of rape as a weapon of war (Buss Reference Buss2009; Mullins Reference Mullins2009; Stiglmayer Reference Stiglmayer1994), I contend that feminist analysis is necessary but not sufficient to fully capture the largesse of systematic wartime rape as an international security threat and, by extension, to possibly diminish this threat.

So, while the following list is by no means exhaustive, I suggest some initial ideas for future research on rape as a weapon of war from within diverse theoretical perspectives in IR. First, as discussed throughout this article, realism could provide a useful theoretical lens in exploring the power-over dynamics of rape as a war weapon, and how power-seeking states making security decisions in a self-help international system are likely to use this weapon to their greatest offensive advantage (Mearsheimer Reference Mearsheimer2001) or devise strong defensive strategies of containment (Waltz Reference Waltz1979).

Second, liberal theories of cooperation and institutionalism (Keohane and Martin Reference Keohane and Martin1995; Keohane and Nye Reference Keohane and Nye1987) could include rape as a weapon of war in their analyses of deterrence and arms control. As already evidenced in the legal entrenchment of rape as a war crime, the importance of international law and international institutions would continue to be an important angle in the study of rape as a war weapon, as well as scholarship critiquing the limits of a legal approach as capable of restricting systematic wartime rape (Finnemore and Toope Reference Finnemore and Toope2001).

Furthermore, the conceptualization of rape as a weapon of war could shed new light on an incomplete just war theory (Elshtain Reference Elshtain1992; Sjoberg Reference Sjoberg2008; Waltzer Reference Waltzer1977, Reference Waltzer2004) and such theoretical additions would, arguably, raise new debates within normative IR scholarship; for instance, how IR theoretically approaches questions of justice, shame, responsibility and reconciliation in, and after, war (Lu Reference Lu2008).

Third, constructivism (Adler Reference Adler, Carlsnaes, Risse and Simmons2002; Fearon and Laitin Reference Fearon and Laitin2000) could provide interesting analysis in terms of the socially constructed, and then reconstructed, identities (gender, race, ethnic) occurring due to the generational effects of rape as a war weapon, as well as explore new manifestations of “security communities” that might form in response to this threat (Adler and Barnett Reference Adler and Barnett1998). Moreover, working with the idea of norm diffusion or norm cascades (Finnemore and Sikkink Reference Finnemore and Sikkink1998), IR could analyze how rape is becoming somewhat institutionalized as an international practice, with the potential to become reified as a new rule. Obviously, this analysis would also be relevant to how such “communities of practice” interact with state and international security.Footnote ²⁰

Fourth, as David A. Welch (Reference Welch2005) describes, new security threats introduced at certain moments in time can act as a serious catalyst for changes in the (otherwise rather consistent) foreign policy of powerful states. Thus, introducing systematic rape as both a form of (sexual) terrorism and a weapon of mass destruction could provide this line of IR analysis with interesting developments in foreign policymaking.

Fifth, as psychology continues to influence IR theory (Goldgeier and Tetlock Reference Goldgeiger and Tetlock2001), there is much to be learned about the psychological aspects of systematic rape. For example, a better understanding of how gang rape acts as a bonding tool among perpetrators could be useful knowledge for those studying arms control, war strategy, and statecraft; another interesting avenue of psychological research could look at how the threat of systematic rape disturbs the ontological security of both individuals and of states (Mitzen Reference Mitzen2006).

Sixth, rape as a weapon of war may increasingly figure into postmodern warfare, as neither employs the clear frontlines or the clear combatant/civilian lines characteristic of traditional war (Gray Reference Gray1997).

Seventh, critical security theorists (Booth Reference Booth2007; Der Derian Reference Der Derian2009; Linklater Reference Linklater2007) could bring various conceptions of power into a more comprehensive analysis of the people and the states deploying rape as a war weapon.

Eighth, those scholars particularly interested in human security (King and Murray Reference King and Murray2002; Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy Reference Tadjbakhsh2006) could explore the devastating public health aspects, such as the alarming spread of HIV/AIDS resulting from systematic wartime rape.Footnote ²¹

Lastly, scholars interested in the demobilization, disarmament, and rehabilitation aspects of peacekeeping and peacebuilding (Cockell Reference Cockell and Pugh2000; Humphreys and Weinstein Reference Humphreys and Weinstein2007; Theidon Reference Theidon2009) may include, as important twenty-first century strategies and programs, the termination of systematic rape as a necessary condition for stable peace.

Clearly, these are nothing more than preliminary research ideas, but even still, they can hopefully spark extensive and long-term disciplinary engagement with rape as a weapon of war. As a final theoretical insight, let me finish by reminding scholars of Aristotle's comments on the brutality of rape endured by both bodies and souls—rape's capacity to destroy even the polis was, centuries ago, forewarned.Footnote ²² These passages thus predicted what Hobbes would later write in regard to the state of nature, which suggests a place for rape in the bedrock of IR theory rather than as a recent political problem or a so-called transient “hot topic.”

In conclusion, my argument is twofold. First, systematic rape is not only a war crime but also a war weapon. Second, conceptualizing rape as a weapon of war places a demand on the academic discipline charged with international security analysis to consider this increasingly destructive weapon as a relevant topic. As the theoretical and empirical evidence presented in this article suggests, rape as a weapon of war fits within many of IR's core theoretical assumptions and definitions and thus deserves a place in security studies. Furthermore, rape affects – with increasing pervasiveness – a large majority of the population onto which it is systematically employed. I therefore contend that if IR is to remain comprehensive in its analysis of twenty-first century statecraft and security threats, then systematic rape should be considered as a weapon of war.