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Foreign Military Training

Training foreign militaries has a long history in the US and is used to pursue a number of different US foreign policy objectives: to improve the performance of foreign forces, to enhance the professional and democratic nature of foreign forces, to enhance the ability of foreign forces to interface with US forces or work toward US goals, and to reward friendly nations. Foreign military training became a centerpiece of the US grand strategy after the Cold War, both to enhance stability and democratization in post-communist states and to help stabilize postconflict states. The budget for the Department of Defense (International Military Education and Training, or IMET) programs alone increased fourfold from 1994 to 2002. In the wake of the 11 September attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, these efforts have intensified. In 2002, the US trained at least 100,000 foreign police and soldiers from more than 150 countries. The Department of State's budget for military training in FY 2005 requested nearly $5.2 billion under military assistance (including a variety of programs that provide security assistance: IMET, Foreign Military Financing [FMF], and Peacekeeping Operations).

As the US has increased its focus on foreign military training, it has also increasingly turned to PSCs to carry it out. Private firms such as MPRI, SAIC, Vinnell, DynCorp and others have worked for the US government training army and police forces in the Balkans, the Newly Independent States (NIS), former Warsaw Pact countries, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In Africa, PSCs played a significant role in both the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI now the African Contingency Operations Training Assistance, or ACOTA) and the African Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) as well as in initiatives to train in individual countries such as Nigeria. In the wake of the US war in Iraq, PSCs played a wide variety of training roles. Vinnell won an umbrella contract from the US Army to train the Iraqi Army, with subcontracts going to MPRI, SAIC, Eagle Group International, and Omega Training Group. CSC's DynCorp won a contract to train and support the Iraqi police. There was also a contract issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to train a private security force, the Iraqi Facilities Protection Force, to defend oil facilities and pipelines in the country. Erinys, a South African company, won that contract.

Evaluating the effects of foreign military training, even when carried out by US military forces, is complicated.Z°' Many factors inhibit a strong relationship between military training efforts and US goals. Improved performance among foreign forces depends on what the forces are called upon to do and how well this tracks with their training. Also, the democratic (or not) nature of foreign forces may be influenced by many factors (includiig the political goals of the leaders in their country) not related to military training. Furthermore, pursuing one US goal may undermine another. For instance, there are reports that US forces working with warlcrds in Afghanistan to gain access to al Qaeda hideouts (one US goal) nay work against President Karzai's efforts to consolidate control over the country by training a national Afghan Army (another US goal).

The changes introduced by contracting with PSCs for this training provides some functional advantages given the structure of US forces. PSCs can draw on a deeper pool of personnel with area experience. In the ACRI program, for instance, MPRI was able to provide Frenchspeaking instructors for francophone African states that would not be available from the ranks of the Special Forces. In Iraq, the US has relied on PSCs from a number of countries to train forces, and these PSCs have recruited internationally, providing a much larger labor pool. Contractors can also provide greater stability in training programs. While personnel rotate through units quickly in the active duty forces, PSCs can provide teams in which the same personnel stay in a country for several years. Finally, contractors can move personnel to the field more quickly in some circumstances, providing what some have called "surge" capability. As the US went about the monumental task of training the Iraqi Army, police, and other security forces, PSCs offered a vehicle for a rapid increase in trainers that bolstered the capacity of thinly stretched coalition forces.

Frequently, however, using contractors reduces the chances that training will comply with US policy goals in fluid political situations. The nature of the contract instrument reduces US policy flexibility to adjust to changes in events on the ground. The contract specifies tasks to be done and payment to be received for a specific period of time. During that time, however, US priorities may change. The contract, however, enshrines the original agreement and makes it possible for those with different interests - including both the host government and the contractor - to exercise their leverage to prevent change.

The contractor can use the complexity of US goals to suit their interests in the continuation of a contract. When it looks as if their contract might be frozen because a host country is violating human rights concerns or misbehaving in some other way, a company may claim that its contract should not be frozen because "engaging" human rights abusers may lead to improvements in civil-military relations and democratization that may enhance attention to human rights in the long term. In a number of instances, these kinds of arguments have allowed a contract to continue even when a legal embargo is in effect. When confronted with evidence that the same company's contract may be in violation of local laws or used politically by host country politicians in violation of human rights norms, though, the company can turn around and claim that it is serving US interests by enhancing the capacity of the host government's forces or rewarding cooperative behavior internationally. More than once, contractors told me that, "it is not our job to insure that our boss [the host country] abides by its own laws."

There are many possibilities for contradictions in US military training even when it is conducted by US troops. In some instances, the use of PSCs only aggravates existing tensions. But some concerns are not so prominent when US military personnel are doing the training. When training is scaled down, active duty personnel salute smartly and move on to their next posting. If the host government is uncooperative making training efforts less effective, active duty personnel have less to lose by reporting the truth. Those military personnel conducting training have fewer vested interests in continuing the training at a cost to US policy. While there may be debates over training programs - particularly at the higher levels of government - those on the ground from whom the various government officials receive information have fewer incentives to exaggerate when they are active duty personnel.

There are a variety of additional functional concerns raised about contracting out foreign military training missions. It deprives active duty US personnel of "engagement" opportunities (or chances to make long-term personal contacts with military personnel in foreign countries) that are one of the rationales for increased attention to training in the first place. Also when the US sends PSCs and not military personnel the host country perceives a lower level of US commitment and generally values this training less highly - there is a certain cachet attached to being trained by US troops. And there are questions about the relative costs of these missions. The policy slippage and frequent cost increases that occur when the US contracts for foreign military training reduces functional control.

Perhaps most importantly, however, the private option enables US government officials to forgo investment in (or reorganization of) military forces for new problems - using PSCs one time makes it more likely that they will be used in the future. While the private option provides flexibility in the short run, then, it is harder to control and frequently more costly than its public alternative and reduces incentives to reorganize the force. This is most dramatically illustrated by the US use of DynCorp for fielding international civilian police. Initially DynCorp allowed the US to field a force of international civilian police in Haiti that it had no other way of fielding. Over the long term, however, the DynCorp option has allowed the US government to avoid the creation of an international civilian police capacity. Civilian police have been routinely sent abroad over the last fifteen years and much evidence suggests that relying on contracts has resulted in poor training, little strategic vision, and, ultimately, less effective policy.

Contracting for foreign training also changes political control, or who has a role in deciding about how such missions will be carried out. The participation of PSCs in providing information or shaping the lens through which policy makers view a problem is a form of agenda setting. When a PSC is given this role in the policy implementation process, it acquires influence over a piece of the process. For instance, the US hired MPRI to evaluate the progress the Croatian Army was making toward PfP criteria - even as the US was paying the same company to train the Croatian Army. The particulars of this evaluation may have been perfectly reasonable, but the decision to contract with an entity that has a commercial stake in the result of the evaluation opens avenues for commercial interests to affect the shape of US policy.

In addition, private training changes the balance of control between the executive and legislative branches of government. The executive branch hires contractors, not Congress. Though Congress approves the military budget, it does not approve individual decisions to contract out training. It is harder for Congress to oversee PSC behavior. The annual consolidated report on military assistance and sales, for instance, does not include information on who is conducting particular training missions. Examples of executive use of PSCs to evade congressional restrictions abound. For instance, when Congress institutes stipulations on the numbers of US troops, the executive has used contractors to go above this number. Sometimes Congress has innovated and stipulated an upper limit on the number of contractors, but this has simply led PSCs to hire more local personnel. Thus, the executive branch, in its decisions to hire contractors and in its day-to-day implementation of policy is advantaged vis-a-vis Congress. Indeed, this change is often touted by members of the executive branch as one of the benefits of contracting out.

This is not to suggest that congressional oversight of foreign training is easy or that the executive does not have an advantage in this oversight in the first place. The institutional safeguards that give Congress indirect means of control over military forces, however, are not present with PSCs. For instance, Congress has long-standing ties to military organizations and can write laws to change them, which affect incentives for individual service members and provide mechanisms for congressional control. These mechanisms are not so readily available for PSCs. I am not arguing that there are no other ways to avoid congressional scrutiny - through the use of covert operations, for instance, or other programs in which congress has less input. PSCs simply add another tool to this list.

Also PSCs not only sell foreign training to the US, but also sell it directly to foreign governments through Foreign Military Sales (FMS). This possibility opens the way for an even greater role for the executive branch relative to Congress and even less transparency over foreign policy. In licensing the contract with Croatia, for instance, a few members of the executive branch managed to retain the neutral status of the US and still change events on the ground such that strategic bombing by NATO could push the Serbs to the negotiating table - the results of which were the Dayton Accords (and another contract for MRPI to train and equip the Bosnian military). We should not confuse an assessment of the benefits (or costs) of this policy with an assessment of whether change has occurred. Many argue that without the increase in Croatian capacities, there would have been no NATO intervention and no end to the conflict. The human rights abuses in the Krajina region in the wake of Operation Storm, however, also may not have occurred. Regardless of how one assesses the costs and benefits, though, it is clear that the policy process is different. When the executive branch has greater power over foreign policy decisions, policy (whether "good" or "bad") can be put in place more quickly without so many checks.

To the degree that PSCs working for the US government generally draw from American retired military personnel who are well socialized in international values and claim to conduct their work accordingly, social control is preserved. The work that MPRI did for the ACRI program drew personnel with good area and language skills and generally operated well within the bounds of integration with social values. Similarly, MPRI's conduct of ROTC training was not criticized for the behavior of the personnel doing the jobs. Though in some instances, government officials in the US have reported opportunistic behavior by retired US forces working for PSCs that drifted from the high standards of integration with social values in the US Armed Forces, for the most part American PSC behavior in the 1990s was consistent with patterns of social control among US forces. PSCs pulled directly from US professional military education in designing their curriculum. Though some cited this as a functional cost, complaining that US PSCs simply offer warmed over West Point or Fort Leavenworth curriculum not relevant to the threats host governments face, this curriculum is carefully designed to represent international values (not simply supporting civilian control of the military and respect for human rights, but claiming that these are integrally related to success on the battlefield). Adopting this curriculum does model a particular type of military professionalism - and one that is consistent with what activeduty US troops would present.

The US hiring pattern in Iraq, however, has weakened social control. The US has hired non-American companies and the American companies it has hired have recruited much more internationally. Partly a feature of the surge in demand precipitated by the role of PSCs in Iraq and partly a natural unfolding of the transnational market, this pattern nonetheless has yielded a more heterogeneous set of employees and companies that portends more potential change in the social control of training. Though mostly retired American soldiers worked for Vinnell and MPRI training, the Iraqi army and retired American police and military officers work for DynCorp to train the Iraqi police, the US contract with Erinys (a British security company) to train a private facilities protection force brought in expatriates from South Africa, Nepal, and the UK, among others. The questionable background of Erinys executives and the fact that it was such a new company led many to be surprised that it won the contract.

The Erinys bid was undoubtedly less expensive - according to a DynCorp official, the DynCorp bid was three times the cost. But the DynCorp bid also included helicopter surveillance - something that has since been awarded to another company, AirScan. This led some to conclude that the CPA was making decisions on the basis of cost alone in ways that sacrificed professionalism. Others have suggested that the dicey backgrounds of Erinys executives - who have worked securing oil lines for BP and mines for Ashanti Gold - may have been precisely what the CPA was looking for given the "Wild West" environment in Iraq. Regardless, however, the Erinys contract is part of a trend in Iraq that blurs the US's message about whether professionalism and proper behavior on the part of PSCs is important to its purchasing decisions. Many have claimed that this has lowered the level of professionalism in the country. According to Jerry Hoffman, CEO of ArmorGroup, "What you don't need is Dodge City out there any more than you've already got it." Richard Fenning, CEO of Control Risks Group, claimed that, "The danger is that unless the legal and operational status of such companies is clarified and institutionalized, responsible companies, conscious of their liabilities and reputation, may be driven from the arena."

Deborah D. Avant. . Cambridge University Press. 2005.

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