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Privatizing Military Tasks

For the first time since the emergence of the nation-state, more military weapons are in the hands of private citizens than in the hands of national governments. The steady concentration of power in the hands of states, which began in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, is over, at least for a while, in part due to ability of private military units to wage war. A shocking statistic is that while national armies have shrunk by about 20 percent, private groups providing security have expanded to a degree that they outnumber most national armies. The United States has an expenditure on private security reported in 1999 - $50 billion - that is larger than the defense budget of every other NATO nation.

Private security and policing companies outspend public police by 73 percent and employ more than two-and-a-half times as many personnel; and has almost half of the roughly 5 billion military weapons available anywhere to private citizens. While national governments still maintain the advantage in actual firepower, since they possess the majority of the large weapons systems, they have the minority of the kinds of small arms used in the low-intensity conflicts that have actually broken out since the end of the Cold War.

Much of the problem here is interrelated with the dramatic growth in the clandestine transfer of this light weaponry across national boundaries: the robust international weapons infrastructure stimulated by the 1980s boom has refused to wither in the 1990s, with excess supply of arms and excess capacity in arms production combined with greater visibility of subnational turmoil fostering intensified competition by arms producers to enter foreign markets. This spread of arms within nations has caused many advanced industrial societies to join with Third World states in becoming more concerned about largely internal rather than external security threats.

There is also little doubt that "the supply, proliferation and use of arms are inextricably linked to the activities of private security groups," and that these organizations often broker arms-transfer deals and arrange accompa nying transport and financing. Some argue that the spread of privatized security can legitimize the use of coercion and feed "a cycle of violence in many societies that in turn causes even greater demand for guns." This causal relationship is, however, unclear: Is it that these outfits bring weapons with them - and stimulate a desire for weaponry among those around them - when they enter a situation? Or, alternatively, is it that the presence of arms in an area stimulates the kind of violence and disorder that triggers the perceived need for the entrance of private security providers? Or are both to some degree true? To draw definitively one conclusion or the other at this point seems grossly premature given the available evidence. Indeed, given the centrality of subjective fear, this "chicken-and-egg" question would seem quite difficult to unravel empirically.

At the same time this rather uncontrolled proliferation of conventional arms is occurring, there is an explosion in the growth of private military companies, vigilante squads, militias, transnational criminal organizations, self-defense forces, and survivalist enclaves. These groups have differing agendas, but they are united in their belief that they need to provide their own security - and security for those around them - in a highly threatening environment because the government is unable or unwilling to do so. This conviction emerges from a sense of increasingly unpredictable and uncontrollable dangers.

Privatized Security Foreign Assistance vs. Domestic Substitution Foreign Security Assistance Nongovernrnental sources in one state provide privatized security services to either governmental or nongovernmental parties in another state. Domestic Security Substitution Privatized security services provided by unofficial individuals or groups indigenous to a given society replace national government police services responsible to maintain internal order. Top-Down vs. Bottom-up Top-Down Security Services Governments outsource their internal or external security functions to private foreign or domestic providers. Bottom-Up Security Services Individuals or loosely organized societal groups (such as militias, vigilantes, neighborhood watches, self-defense forces, gangs, and survivalists) initiate provision of security services to themselves or to others. Direct Combat Support vs. Military Advice Direct Combat Support Private providers supply either the fighting forces themselves (usually mercenaries or private armies) or the tools of violence (usually small and large conventional weapons systems). Military Advice Private providers supply classroom education on fighting strategy and tactics or on-site battle training (in neither case are the providers involved in actual combat situations). Status Quo vs. Non-Status Quo Status Quo Security Services Recipients obtain private security services so as to keep order, guard against threat, and maintain the existing distribution of power. Non-Status Quo Security Services Recipients obtain private security services so as to overthrow established sources of authority and power.

While mercenaries of all sorts have existed since ancient times, hired by individuals, groups, or even ruling regimes who felt themselves unable to gain desired territory or prevail in battle, the private security groups we see proliferating today are much more sophisticated, better organized, and often are officially registered and sanctioned by national governments. They operate in such as way as to minimize differences from other types of companies, wondering at times why they are subject to so much notice and alarm. Some onlookers feel as a result that "the day of Mercenary Incorporated as a legitimate, even respectable, service organisation may be dawning." It is even possible to classify this new breed of private military companies as "good mercenaries" who choose to fight only in wars where legitimate nation-state interests are at stake.

Private security today is different in many specific ways from the ad hoc organizations of the past. Their appearance and manner is completely corporate. Seeing themselves as a "tool that is not only trained to kill, fight, and destroy but a precision instrument that can save lives, protect properties and investments, and advise clients in how to safely go about their affairs," nothing could be farther from the self-identification of mercenaries from previous centuries.

Moreover, these modern private security providers pay considerable attention to positive external image concerns. Rather than sharpening their fighting skills to kill an enemy, these private security providers end up sharpening their public relations skills to appeal to potential clients.

In terms of remuneration to employees, the modern private security provider can easily stack up with the benefits that national governments can offer. While there obviously is more long-term employment predictability in working for a government rather than a private firm, that may be one of the few enduring economic advantages left. Indeed, partially due to competition from private security providers, in many Western governments "the traditional ethos of the military as `more than just a job' has been partially replaced by a corporate outlook, forcing the military in countries such as the United States to market the extent to which military service was ideal training for later corporate employment."

Much of the focus in the media and scholarly literature has been on international mercenaries or private military companies intervening in crises foreign to their country of origin. These groups in particular have experienced an explosion of interest, as over the past ten years private companies have assumed a central role in exporting security, strategy, and training for foreign military units. Worldwide revenues for the private security industry were estimated at $55.6 billion in 1990, have an estimated annual growth rate of 8 percent, and are projected to hit $202 billion in 2010. Each company is relatively small (with an average annual turnover of $5 million), highly specialized, undercapitalized, and operating in limited geographical regions; since barriers to entrance are low, the pattern is rapid entry and rapid demise in a highly lucrative market. These firms have undertaken military training missions in at least forty-two countries, and many have helped directly with combat readiness; the British government, for instance, recently unveiled a plan to have its military forces hire private-sector mercenaries for use on the front line of foreign war zones.

In the United States alone, there are at least twenty legitimate private military companies, with the largest grossing $25 million a year in overseas business. Interestingly, the U.S. companies-which frequently employ former four-star generals - may have better reputations for being restrained and coordinating their activity with home-state government defense officials than firms from other countries such as South Africa and Britain. Such high-ranking private military personnel may be fiercely protective of their vital role in ensuring national security.

In addition to internationally active private security companies in many countries, numerous indigenous legitimate security firms and civil defense forces, as well as less legitimate vigilantes and paramilitary and militia groups, attempt to provide security within the borders of their own countries. Rather than waiting (often in vain) for outsiders to notice a power vacuum or nonfunctioning national-governmental security apparatus, these local security groups often take matters into their own hands simply to keep themselves and those immediately around them from becoming victims of uncontrolled violence. It is interesting to note that, just as with foreign private security groups, these homegrown outfits operate with quite varying levels of domestic and international acceptance.

Some of these groups emerge due to a desire to preserve the status quo, such as protective private security services. A few quaintly describe their activity simply as "selling the business of surviving." In some African countries, presidential guards are virtually private militias, enjoying better pay and conditions than the rest of the military establishment. The logic behind the growth of this kind of privatized domestic protection is quite similar to that behind the growth of internationally active security providers.

When a nation cannot provide, for whatever reason, enough government security to meet the needs of the nation, private contractors will fill the void. In such cases, the populace often accepts whatever security provider - public or private - can more effectively secure their safety. Indeed, U.S. security analysts have argued that "the privatization of defense on the international scene is not that different from a similar trend at home," as in the United States "you already see more and more people hiring private security firms to keep the Third World away from suburban America." Many countries have augmented government police forces with private security providers - including "rent- a-cops" - to help to cut costs and maintain flexibility while keeping order, and in others - such as in Latin America and the Balkans - governments have outsourced police functions to sometimes unscrupulous and marauding indigenous paramilitary groups.

Other private armed groups, such as angry insurgent factions, develop due to a desire to overthrow the status quo. On the international level, these may be elements of transnational ideological or religious groups, such as extreme violent factions of Islamic fundamentalists who want to establish a new protective order completely opposed to the Western democratic-capitalist, Judeo-Christian, dominant global value system. On the domestic level, these groups are often identified as being located primarily in inner cities, but in reality they have become ubiquitous, found in rural as well as urban areas and rich as well as poor parts of countries: from extreme anarchist elements believing that government is intrinsically unnecessary and dangerous to fearful citizens' groups located in congested battle zones where effective government-enforced law and order is rare, these people band together to form private security organizations with the hope of achieving significant change while protecting their own interests.

In many parts of the world, antigovernment forces of rebels and warlords often resemble private armies and are quite difficult to distinguish from state-sanctioned troops. Sometimes groups possessing coercive capabilities even flip-flop in terms of who they end up supporting and opposing. These private forces in many cases dwarf not only standing government armies but also public police forces. With societies now full of armed factions supporting a variety of different groups and a wide range of stabilizing and destabilizing causes, outside onlookers have difficulty knowing who to support and who to oppose.

Within the post-Cold War environment, those experiencing a variety of different forms of disruptive turmoil have begun to turn more to private security providers as a crucial component of the solutions to these problems. While the most common application has been to fight and win internal and international wars, there has been a lot of attention recently to the possibilities of using private security forces as peacekeepers. On another front, in addition to the traditional use of private security providers to protect foreign investment by multinational corporations, lately they have begun to be evident in helping with international humanitarian assistance to displaced persons or victims of natural disasters. The prospect of using security privatization for peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance indicates that security privatization has a potential to move beyond its more conventional realist uses to achieve more idealistic ends. Finally, privatized security is playing a more important role than ever before in internal and international intelligence collection, especially during periods of instability.

Robert Mandel. . Lynne Rienner Publishers. 2002.

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