The current militarisation and great-power politics systematically privilege state security over human security, eroding feminist peacebuilding and the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. By leaning on coercive force, sanctions, and illiberal stabilisation, states prioritise regime survival while sidelining diplomacy and everyday safety. This piece argues that such a security logic undermines sustainable, inclusive peace, and forces out feminist approaches that challenge militarism. To build lasting security, resources must shift from military to human security, and everyday feminist peacebuilding must be supported as a core element of security policy.
The current international community experiences an increased use of military and economic force by states to pursue their national interests in a shifting, multipolar order. Major powers follow expansionist agendas and erode the liberal global order, while economic fragmentation through sanctions, export controls, subsidy races, and tariffs becomes a weapon in geopolitical competition. State security incentives, focused on regime survival and territorial control, systematically override concerns for human, peace, and security. A prominent example represents the United States, who uses a coercive security logic to pursue national interests, as seen lately in the concrete use of force against Venezuela and Iran. The use of violence over negotiation has become a primary source. In 2024, the world saw the highest number of violent conflicts since World War II, while 94 countries suffered a decline in at least one factor of democratic performance.
Militarised Security: From Peacebuilding to State Survival
The rise of violence and the use of force is closely interconnected with militarism. Between 2020 and 2024, four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, namely the US, France, Russia, and China, were among the five largest arms exporters. The 2.7 trillion $ spent on militaries in 2024 was driven by escalating geopolitical tensions, conflicts, and perceived security threats. But, against common assumptions, this spending does not guarantee security. Instead, it fuels arms races, deepens mistrust, and destabilises the international landscape. The system of war and authoritarianism is mutually sustaining. Militarism strengthens authoritarian governance, and authoritarian regimes rely on militarized security to maintain power. Furthermore, this shift diverts resources away from climate solutions and human security.
Institutions designed to maintain peace and security on an international level appear paralysed. The UN and the OSCE are unable to operate effectively when member and participating states misuse their veto powers to protect their national interests. Liberal peacebuilding models promoted by the UN cannot sustainably achieve peace. They fail partly because the liberal approach oversimplifies complex conditions, and increasingly adopt illiberal strategies by using military force instead of negotiations, and collaborate with autocratic regimes at the expense of social inclusion and addressing root causes of conflict. Preserving the state order is prioritised over everyday safety of civilians.
Shrinking Space for WPS and Everyday Feminist Peace
The alternative, which supports human and everyday security, is being systematically pushed into the background. Feminist peacebuilding is marginalised because it challenges power structures through human security, and is therefore politically inconvenient. The political climate becomes increasingly hostile to evidence-based policymaking. The global trend of undermining development cooperation and humanitarian assistance in favour of military expenditure shows: The closer feminist peacebuilding gets to genuine power redistribution, the fiercer the pushback becomes. Within this context, formal spaces for the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda and its advocacy are shrinking under authoritarianism. The framework has been partly co-opted to ‘make war safe for women’ by integrating them into militaries and peacekeeping operations, rather than challenging the violent nature of these institutions. Debates on disarmament and demilitarisation are largely absent in WPS implementation, and the gendered, social, political, and economic implications of this silence remain underexplored. This reinforces a narrow, militarised definition of peace and security, where diplomacy is sidelined. Feminist foreign policy, initially thought of as a progressive response to power politics, has been rolled back in countries like Sweden, Argentina, and Germany following elections that empowered centre-right or far-right governments.
Recent analyses reveal a stark decline in gender provisions within peace agreements. This is a crucial mechanism through which WPS norms translate into concrete outcomes. Since 2020, only around 20–30 per cent of peace agreements have contained provisions related to women, girls, or gender. This decline occurs despite clear research evidence demonstrating that the meaningful influence of women over both content and implementation of peace agreements significantly enhances their sustainability. Women actors consistently advocate for human security concerns, like structural violence, and a broader definition of safety. This pattern of decline is not accidental, but a direct result of militarisation. An increase of even one per cent in military expenditure as a share of GDP reduces the likelihood that gender provisions will be included in peace agreements. Military spending squeezes budgets for social and economic sectors that are vital for women, such as healthcare, education, and services addressing gender-based violence. This illustrates the prioritisation of state security, which undermines efforts to institutionalise human security.
These trends raise the question: how can feminist peacebuilding and its non-violent approaches regain traction in an increasingly militarised world? The masculine military is placed at the centre of responses to crises, and pushes non-military agendas, often led by women, to the margins. The WPS agenda struggles to counter this, or is absorbed into it. This is particularly striking, given that state security institutions are among the main implementers of WPS National Action Plans, yet the way the agenda is constructed and operationalised often prioritises armed conflict over structural violence and reinforces binary gender stereotypes. In this form, WPS risks turning feminist demands into a diversity upgrade for existing violent structures, rather than challenging those structures.
The feminist, anti-militarist perspective offers an alternative lens. It starts from the understanding that peace does not begin at the negotiation table, according to a liberal peacebuilding timeline, but is made continuously at the grassroots level. Everyday practices, like local mediation, community care, mutual support across conflict lines, are crucial for any form of peace and for the legitimacy of political settlements. When military force is framed as the only realistic option for stabilisation, the meaning of security becomes narrowed and reduced to state security. Human security, by contrast, shifts attention to people’s physical safety, access to basic services, social and economic rights, and freedom from structural violence. Feminist peacebuilding furthers peacebuilding through grassroots practices that militarized state security cannot replicate. Women sustain local mediations, care economies, and address structural violence that still happens outside of armed conflict. These micro-acts build legitimacy from below and prove an endurance of human security despite top-down failures.
Conclusion
To counter militarism’s dominance, we must support these daily efforts: protect civic spaces, redirect military funds to social services, embed demilitarization in the WPS framework, and amplify women’s coalitions to regain a focus on the alternatives of the hegemonic security concept. Prioritising everyday feminist peacebuilding challenges the masculinist protection logic perpetuating violence, forging sustainable human security over illusory state ’strength.‘
About the Author
Kathrin Maderbacher is a Master’s student in Global Studies at the University of Graz with a focus on International Peacebuilding and Conflict Transition. Her master’s thesis examines the impact of gender provisions in intrastate peace agreements on sustainable peace.