In her book, Sara Meger argues that sexual violence in armed conflict serves a variety of functions and takes an array of forms contrary to the dominant discourse of “rape as a weapon of war.” Meger claims that the consequences of this discourse have served to decontextualize and therefore fetishize sexual violence in armed conflict, leading to the perverse effect of making violence against women that occurs outside of armed conflict “invisible,” thus marginalizing other forms of sexual violence (i.e., that which is experienced by men and boys and that perpetrated by United Nations peacekeeping troops toward the local population), and reinforcing gender stereotypes of women as passive victims and men as both perpetrators and protectors (p. 32).

As an alternative to the extant discourse, Meger proposes a “feminist political economy” approach that includes consideration of local gender norms, globalization, and the “global political economy of armed conflict” (p. 2) as the three components intricately linked to the phenomenon of sexual violence in armed conflict. Her approach thus broadens the way in which sexual violence in warfare is typically perceived, where the dominant discourse on rape as a weapon of war treats sexual violence in armed conflict as a separate phenomenon from that of similar violence that occurs in the private and public spheres not directly related to the conduct of war.

Rape Loot Pillage elaborates a model that builds on the concept of securitization—understood as a process whereby particular issues are deemed to pose an existential threat that results in their becoming depoliticized and consequently responded to outside of the bounds of liberal-democratic procedures. Meger introduces the concept of “fetishization,” from Marxist theory to securitization theory, advancing a three-stage model for the process of the fetishization of sexual violence. Her process of fetishization includes decontextualization/homogenization, objectification, and blowback. This model yields a number of insights, many of which raise pertinent points of debate.

To respond to the “decontextualization” and “homogenization” of sexual violence in armed conflict, Meger disaggregates sexual violence in war to note that the type of warfare is correlated with the identity of the perpetrators, their motives, and the forms of sexual violence featured. On the one hand, the perpetrators in an interstate war are likely to be “invading armed forces” who perpetrate sexual violence for “opportunistic” motives, and the resultant sexual violence can appear as various forms of opportunistic rape, such as “transactional sex, individual pleasure, rewarding troops, and as rape/loot/pillage.” On the other hand, an “ideological civil war” is likely to feature “state security forces” and “paramilitary” as perpetrators who may engage in sexual violence in the interests of “national security,” in which circumstances sexual violence may appear as terror or as torture (Figure 3.1, p. 60). It is useful to disaggregate sexual violence in this way in order to allow for a broader and more comprehensive strategy in combating sexual violence, as well as allowing for a more nuanced and complete picture in understanding it.

Meger’s third stage of fetishization, blowback, offers an alternate way of understanding what a constructivist framework would term “norm internalization”—where a norm has achieved a “taken-for-granted” quality so that it is no longer debated (Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52 [no. 4, 1998]). The attention that the prohibition of sexual violence has received has meant that donors and rebel leaders alike are aware of its salience, which has resulted in unintended consequences. For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where much international aid has been earmarked for rape victims, local women often self-identify as such in order to access resources (p. 29). As well, Meger details a particularly disturbing incident of a paramilitary commander who ordered his troops to rape civilians, as he believed it would raise his profile as a protagonist of the conflict and earn him a place at future peace negotiations (p. 30). Meger’s “blowback” offers an additional dimension to the parallel process of norm internalization where the “norm entrepreneurs” who have constructed the prohibition framework of rape as a weapon of war have lost control of the norm, and where its salience in local and global politics has generated perverse incentives to increase the use of strategic sexual violence in some circumstances. This marks a potentially fruitful theoretical juncture between literature that has employed soft constructivist approaches to examine the work of transnational actors in shaping global security policies and those, like Meger, using more critical approaches.

Rape Loot Pillage ties sexual violence to the global political economy and its reliance on violence and inequality, arguing that sexual violence is a tool that facilitates resource extraction during armed conflict (p. 111). The author notes that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the beneficiaries of illegal resource extraction are “an international network of individuals and corporations who facilitate the movement of goods from the conflict zone to the international market, including customs agents, pilots, trading firms, banks, and large multinational corporations” (p. 165). While it is evident that sexual violence “represents one of the coercive means” (p. 111) that facilitates resource acquisition, more empirical data are required to further develop Meger’s findings. In particular, it may be the case that a stable state would be much better at securing the unfettered flow of natural resources to the global economy. Also, it would be useful to specify the share of the global economy that resources extracted from conflict zones comprise. The information presented in the book leaves the magnitude unknown. Finally, it would be fruitful to consider various initiatives to prevent conflict minerals from reaching global markets, such as the Kimberley Process that seeks to make the extraction of “blood diamonds” unprofitable.

It is indisputable that sexual violence constitutes a threat to women worldwide, and therefore recognizing and criminalizing it as a “weapon of war” marks a significant advance for women’s rights. As Meger indicates, sexual violence in conflict has gone from being seen as part of the “natural ‘spoils of war,’” where it was for most of recorded history, to “a war crime that demands international security and protection” (p. 31). This is a massive shift in the seriousness of women’s security that has occurred at various levels throughout the international system. Prior to the UN’s focus on rape as a weapon of war, armed conflict was largely an exclusionary zone where sexual violence was accepted as a natural consequence of warfare. The establishment of the norm prohibiting sexual violence in war can be seen as one of the long list of successes of norm entrepreneurs, and in particular women’s rights advocates, in changing the practices of warfare. This list also includes the banning of particular types of munitions, such as chemical weapons and landmines, for example.

Meger claims that the primary focus on sexual violence as a weapon of war “hinders our ability to actually break the silence on sexual violence during conflict and see and predict violence against women in conflict areas because it reinforces the boundaries between private and public, home front and warfront, war and peace, and even victim and perpetrator” (p. 32). She goes on to note that “what is needed is an agenda for addressing sexual violence that occurs during conflict that does not privilege the distinction between peace and wartime” (p. 32). Although prohibiting and eliminating all forms of sexual violence in all contexts is clearly desirable, categorizing different forms for creating various programs is not contrary to this objective. The UN, numerous international organizations, and various nongovernmental transnational organizations and national governments have many programs that seek to reduce gender inequality and eliminate sexual violence. Those aimed at combating sexual violence in warfare constitute only a few of them. While the more holistic approach that Meger suggests helps us to remain cognizant that gender inequality underpins and generates sexual violence, categorizing and combating sexual violence as a weapon of war is not inconsistent with that orientation, as the book claims.

In sum, the primary strengths of Rape Loot Pillage are twofold. It situates sexual violence in warfare within a broader context that connects it to local gender norms, globalization, and the “global political economy of armed conflict.” Second, it offers a new typology for sexual violence in conflict. These contributions, however, are somewhat preliminary. For the sexual violence typology advanced (which depends upon a causal relationship between the type of war and the resulting forms of sexual violence) to be convincing, it needs to be tested on a set of cases. In addition, the central claim of the book—that sexual violence in conflict must be understood as an intricate component of global capitalism—requires refinement where the scope of this relationship is developed. Meger has drawn on various critical theories to build a theoretical framework while making a number of empirical claims that rely implicitly on causal chains and mechanisms. This book sits somewhat uneasily between critical and positivist approaches: It requires either an explicit attempt to bridge them or a clear decision to land on one side of the divide or the other.