Joint Force Quarterly Enters Wokeland

By Francis Sempa  |  American Spectator

Joint Force Quarterly, the premier journal of National Defense University (NDU) Press, has entered wokeland.

The latest issue of the Quarterly features an article by Magdalena Bogacz, assistant professor at the Global College of PME at Air University, that argues that U.S. national security would be enhanced by increasing female faculty in professional military education.

And one by Barbara Salera, assistant professor at Defense Security Cooperation University, that promotes “gender balancing” and “gender mainstreaming” in security cooperation programs that promote “peace and security efforts” with partner nations.

Bogacz’s article laments the under-representation of women in faculty positions at military education institutions in all branches of the armed forces, including the senior service academies and the war colleges.

This “gender imbalance” and lack of “diversity” and “gender parity,” she argues, is harmful to the nation’s national security.

Women educators, she writes, would make it easier to understand U.S. allies that have a “feminist foreign policy.”

And, she continues, female academics better understand “peace negotiations” and “peace agreements.”

And wrap your brain around this Clausewitzian analysis:

“An understanding of the asymmetry of powers in patriarchal societies, gender prejudice and discrimination, feminist foreign policies, women in war, and women in the military is significantly diminished without the participation of female academics.”

Uneven “gender distribution” among military education faculties, Dr. Bogacz claims, hurts our nation’s ability to prepare for “emerging ways of war.”

She concludes that “the status of our nation’s security depends largely on the status of women in” military educational institutions. War, apparently, is the continuation of gender politics.

Salera calls on military planners to integrate the “Women, Peace and Security” framework into their activities.

This can be done by a “gender advisor” in combatant commands.

Salera’s contribution to Clausewitz is the following: “[I]ntegrating women into security and overall gender equality has been linked to durable postconflict peacebuilding, societal stability, peaceful conflict resolution, and higher overall socioeconomic development.” This would give the United States, she writes, a “soft power advantage” in security cooperation. There is a need to develop “gender-based milestones” to be used with “gender mainstreaming” to impact “male-dominated societies.” Combat positions in the U.S. armed forces should be “recoded” as “gender-neutral.”

The far Left has infiltrated and taken control of our country’s major institutions, including the U.S. military.

As Thomas Spoehr has pointed out, “Wokeness in the military has become ingrained … [and] senior military leaders have little alternative but to comply.”

Spoehr states:

Woke ideology undermines military readiness in various ways.

It undermines cohesiveness by emphasizing differences based on race, ethnicity, and sex.

It undermines leadership authority by introducing questions about whether promotion is based on merit or quota requirements.

It leads to military personnel serving in specialties and areas for which they are not qualified or ready.

And it takes time and resources away from training activities and weapons development that contribute to readiness.

Bodi Williams, a former Navy surface warfare officer, laments that “the world’s greatest fighting force is now embracing an ideology counter to the warrior mindset.” (READ MORE:  The Army War College Goes Woke)

Bogacz and Salera are not concerned with the “warrior mindset.” They are concerned with achieving “gender balance,” “gender mainstreaming,” and “gender based milestones.”

But it is the warrior mindset — that of George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, Curtis LeMay, Chester Nimitz — not DEI, that wins wars.

Joint Force Quarterly and the National Defense University, like our military academies, have fallen prey to DEI.

And it couldn’t have happened at a worse time as tensions rise in the South China Sea.

First published on The American Spectator

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The Military Academies Have Turned Into Woke Wastelands