Shaheen Grills Armed Services Nominees on Effectiveness of Women, Peace and Security Law Hegseth is Attempting to Scrap; Nominees Affirm Program’s Importance
**In Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing, Shaheen highlighted how senior military officials have underscored the strategic advantage WPS provides**
(Washington, DC) – As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempts to “end” implementation of the bipartisan Women, Peace and Security (WPS) law at the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), a top member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), spoke in a SASC nomination hearing this morning about the operational value WPS provides in countering China and Russia, preventing radicalization by violent extremist organizations and disrupting the smuggling of narcotics, weapons and humans into the United States. Shaheen pressed the nominees on the effectiveness of the program – all of whom reaffirmed its importance. You can watch Senator Shaheen’s remarks and questions here.
Key quotes from Senator Shaheen:
- “Since that time, WPS has been used by the warfighters to identify victims of human trafficking, in joint exercises on noncombatant evacuations, to provide human intelligence on violent extremist groups like ISIS and Al-Shabaab and to understand the human terrain to improve kinetic and non-kinetic targeting. I’m very concerned that taking away these tools does not make us a stronger or more lethal fighting force, and in fact it takes away some of the options we have to be successful.”
- “Secretary Hegseth also claimed that warfighters hate it, and yet the newly-confirmed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs not only told this committee about WPS’s operational value, but he was very clear that this is not DEI.”
- “This is information that’s not new to this committee. Every 4-star combatant commander has told us about the strategic advantage that WPS provides to our forward deployed forces.”
During the hearing, Shaheen raised a memo made public in an article last night from the Joint Staff providing their best military advice to Secretary Hegseth. The memo acknowledged that China and Russia have no equivalent of WPS, and that the combatant commands’ engagements with partners over the next two years under the program “counter China by gaining access to a population China largely ignores.”
In 2017, Shaheen led the bipartisan Women, Peace and Security law through Congress to prioritize the promotion of women’s participation in foreign policy and national security efforts, such as conflict prevention, peace negotiations and democratic institutions. Women’s participation in peace negotiations increases the probability by 35 percent of agreements lasting at least 15 years.
After Shaheen’s bill passed the Republican-led Senate by unanimous consent and was approved by the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives, President Trump signed the bipartisan legislation into law in October 2017. Members of President Trump’s current cabinet were integral to its passage through Congress – Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was the sponsor of the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was an original cosponsor in the Senate and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz chaired the House WPS caucus for many years.
In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing earlier this month on Lieutenant General John D. Caine’s nomination to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Caine told Shaheen about how WPS is a program that provides operational advantage for the U.S. military – not DEI.
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