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Planet Debate 1 PMCs – Sherry Hall **PMSCs Status Quo**...... 6 Shift to PMSCs Now...... 7 Factors Fueling Shift to PMSCs...... 8 Factors Fueling Shift to PMSCs...... 9 Factors Fueling Shift to PMSCs...... 10 Factors Fueling Shift to PMSCs...... 11 **PMSCs Bad**...... 12 PMSCs Covert & Unaccountable...... 13 PMSCs Covert & Unaccountable...... 14 PMSCs Covert & Unaccountable...... 15 PMSCs Covert & Unaccountable...... 16 PMSCs Covert & Unaccountable...... 17 PMSCs Illegitimate...... 18 PMSC Contractors Violate Human Rights and Laws...... 19 PMSC Contractors Violate Human Rights and Laws...... 20 PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks...... 21 PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks...... 22 PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks...... 23 PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks...... 24 PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks...... 25 PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks...... 26 PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks...... 27 Undermining Democracy Makes PMSCs Unethical...... 28 Undermining Democracy Makes PMSCs Unethical...... 29 PMSCs Increase Terrorism...... 30 PMSCs Increase Terrorism...... 31 PMSCs Increase Terrorism...... 32 PMSCs Increase Terrorism...... 33 AT: “Can Regulate PMSCs”...... 34 AT: “Can Regulate PMSCs”...... 35 AT: “Can Regulate PMSCs”...... 36 AT: “Can Regulate PMSCs”...... 37 AT: “Can Regulate PMSCs”...... 38 AT: “Can Regulate PMSCs”...... 39 AT: “Can Regulate PMSCs”...... 40 AT: “Can Regulate PMSCs”...... 41 AT: “Can Regulate PMSCs”...... 42 AT: “Can Regulate PMSCs”...... 43 AT: “Contract Law Holds PMSCs Accountable”...... 44 AT: “Are Subject to US Legal Control”...... 45 PMSCs Like Mercenaries...... 46 PMSCs are Private Armies...... 47 PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive...... 48 PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive...... 49 PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive...... 50 PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive...... 51 Planet Debate 2 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive...... 52 PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive...... 53 PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive...... 54 PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive...... 55 PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive...... 56 Profit Motive Makes PMSCs Immoral...... 57 PMSCs Violate International Law...... 58 PMSCs Violate International Law...... 59 PMSCs Violate International Law...... 60 PMSCs Violate International Law...... 61 PMSCs Violate International Law...... 62 PMSCs Violate International Law...... 63 PMSCs Violate International Law...... 64 PMSCs Violate International Law...... 65 PMSCs Violate International Law...... 66 PMSCs Undermine Just-War Doctrine...... 67 Private Contracts for Security Less Ethical than Public...... 68 Private Contracts for Security Less Ethical than Public...... 69 PMSCs Allow Public to Ignore True Costs of Foreign Policy Decisions...... 70 PMSCs Undermine U.S. Security Goals and Policies...... 71 PMSCs Undermine U.S. Security Goals and Policies...... 72 PMSCs Undermine U.S. Security Goals and Policies...... 73 PMSCs Undermine Counterinsurgency Efforts...... 74 PMSCs Undermine Counterinsurgency Efforts...... 75 PMSCs Undermine Counterinsurgency Efforts...... 76 PMSCs Undermine Counterinsurgency Efforts...... 77 PMSCs Hurt Military Retention – Drain the Best Personnel Away...... 78 PMSCs Hurt Military Retention – Drain the Best Personnel Away...... 79 PMSCs Undermine Civil/Military Relations...... 80 PMSCs Undermine Civil/Military Relations...... 81 PMSCs Undermine Professional Military/Military Ethics...... 82 PMSCs Undermine Professional Military/Military Ethics...... 83 PMSCs Undermine Professional Military/Military Ethics...... 84 Privatizing War Undermines Overall Security...... 85 Privatizing War Undermines Overall Security...... 86 Privatizing War Undermines Overall Security...... 87 PMSCs Increase Militarism – Invisible Form of Warfare...... 88 Net Impact of PMSCs Negative...... 89 PMSCs Blur Lines – Not Purely Private...... 90 PMSCs Ineffective/Unreliable...... 91 PMSCs Ineffective/Unreliable...... 92 PMSCs Ineffective/Unreliable...... 93 PMSCs Ineffective/Unreliable...... 94 AT: PMSCs Do Good Things...... 95 AT: “PMSCs More Cost Effective”...... 96 AT: “PMSCs More Cost Effective”...... 97 Planet Debate 3 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “PMSCs More Cost Effective”...... 98 AT: “PMSCs More Cost Effective”...... 99 AT: “PMSCs More Cost Effective”...... 100 AT: “PMSCs More Cost Effective”...... 101 AT: “PMSCs Provide Critical Logistics Support”...... 102 AT: “PMSCs Provide Critical Logistics Support”...... 103 AT: “PMSCs Provide Critical Logistics Support”...... 104 AT: “PMSCs Provide Critical Logistics Support”...... 105 AT: “Can’t Afford to Pull PMSCs Out of Iraq”...... 106 AT: “Can’t Afford to Pull PMSCs Out of Iraq”...... 107 Should Ban PMSCs...... 108 Should Ban PMSCs...... 109 PMSCs Should Be Governed by Military Law...... 110 *Statism Answers*...... 111 Statism Challenges High Now...... 112 PMSCs Not Challenging Statism...... 113 Statist Control of the Military Good/Necessary...... 114 *Genocide Response Answers*...... 115 Still Unethical...... 116 UN Doesn’t Want to Use Contractors...... 117 UN Doesn’t Want to Use Contractors...... 118 UN Contractors Ineffective at Humanitarian Missions...... 119 UN Contractors Ineffective at Humanitarian Missions...... 120 PMSCs Undercut State’s Obligations to the UN...... 121 Unpopular With Less Powerful States...... 122 UN Contractor Force Undermines US Military...... 123 **PMSCs Good**...... 124 Long Historical Tradition of Mercenaries...... 125 Long Historical Tradition of Mercenaries...... 126 PMSCs Challenge Statism...... 127 PMSCs Challenge Statism...... 128 PMSCs Challenge Statism...... 129 Statism Root of Violence...... 130 Statism Root of Violence...... 131 “Moral” Objections to PMSCs Grounded in Statism...... 132 PMSCs Challenge “Total” and Ideological Wars...... 133 PMSCs Challenge “Total” and Ideological Wars...... 134 PMSCs Challenge Militarism...... 135 PMSCs Reduce Military Operational Lethality...... 136 PMSCs Promote Universalized Rights and Standards...... 137 PMSCs Promote Democracies...... 138 PMSCs Effective at Many Tasks...... 139 PMSCs Effective at Reconstruction...... 140 PMSCs Necessary for Success in Iraq...... 141 PMSCs More Cost Effective...... 142 PMSCs Provide Critical Logistic Support for Effective Missions...... 143 Planet Debate 4 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Critical to Effective Military Readiness...... 144 Nations have Sovereign Right to Contractors...... 145 US PMSC Policy Modeled...... 146 **Should Deploy PMSCs to UN Humanitarian Missions**...... 147 UN Wants to Use PMSCs...... 148 UN Lacks Capacity for Humanitarian Missions Now...... 149 UN Lacks Capacity for Humanitarian Missions Now...... 150 UN Lacks Capacity for Humanitarian Missions Now...... 151 Limitations on Traditional UN Action Justify PMSCs...... 152 PMSCs Good Response to Humanitarian Crises...... 153 PMSCs Good Response to Humanitarian Crises...... 154 PMSCs Good Response to Humanitarian Crises...... 155 PMSCs Good Response to Humanitarian Crises...... 156 PMSCs Good for Peacekeeping Operations...... 157 UN More Likely to Respond with a Force of Contractors than Regular Service Personnel ...... 158 UN More Likely to Respond with a Force of Contractors than Regular Service Personnel ...... 159 UN Empirically Relied on Contractors...... 160 UN Command More Effective with Contractors...... 161 UN Command More Effective with Contractors...... 162 UN Command More Effective with Contractors...... 163 PMSCs More Efficient Use of Resources...... 164 PMSCs Less Likely to Pull Out of UN Missions...... 165 Should Increase Role of PMSCs in UN Missions...... 166 UN Can Hold PMSCs it Contracts with Accountable...... 167 UN Can Hold PMSCs it Contracts with Accountable...... 168 US Action Critical to UN Employment of PMSCs...... 169 Proposal for Using Contractors...... 170 AT: Should Not Replace UN Forces with PMSCs...... 171 *Answers to Arguments Against PMSCs*...... 172 AT: PMSCs Dangerous and Unaccountable...... 173 AT: PMSCs Dangerous and Unaccountable...... 174 AT: PMSCs Dangerous and Unaccountable...... 175 AT: PMSCs Dangerous and Unaccountable...... 176 AT: PMSCs Dangerous and Unaccountable...... 177 AT: PMSCs Violate International Law...... 178 AT: PMSCs are Mercenaries...... 179 AT: PMSCs are Mercenaries...... 180 AT: PMSCs are Mercenaries...... 181 AT: PMSCs Bad – Motivated by Profit...... 182 AT: Mercenaries are Bad...... 183 AT: PMSCs Unethical...... 184 AT: PMSCs Unethical...... 185 AT: PMSCs Undermine Democracy...... 186 AT: PMSCs Undermine Security Goals...... 187 Planet Debate 5 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Undermine Security Goals...... 188 AT: PMSCs Undermine Security Goals...... 189 AT: PMSCs Undermine Security Goals...... 190 Impact of PMSCs on Stability Unclear...... 191 Planet Debate 6 PMCs – Sherry Hall **PMSCs Status Quo** Planet Debate 7 PMCs – Sherry Hall Shift to PMSCs Now

TREND TOWARD PRIVATIZATION OF MILITARY SERVICE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 40 The private sector is becoming an increasingly important partner of government. Politics is being increasingly privatized; not only is power shared with business, the commercial ethos is challenging the traditional professional ethos of public service. This is true of soldiers as well as doctors, civil servants and university professors. Military power is now judged by utilitarian standards. (Coker 1999).

CHANGING STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTS HAVE CAUSED INCREASE IN PMSCs Simon Chesterman & Chia Lehnardt, Professor and Researcher – NYU School of Law, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 1 Whether or not this extensive use of PMCs is evolutionary or remains exceptional, the growth of the industry shows no signs of slowing down. The privatization of military functions reflects a general enthusiasm for the outsourcing of state capacities in the industrialized world, but is also a consequence of the growing reluctance on the part of key states to intervene in conflicts that are not of immediate strategic interest or where domestic support for intervention is lacking. In addition, non-state actors such as transnational corporations and humanitarian organizations operating in fragile states are increasingly targeted by non- state violence, prompting them to turn to the commercial sector for want of other security options. Planet Debate 8 PMCs – Sherry Hall Factors Fueling Shift to PMSCs

GROWTH OF PMSCs FUELED BY ASSUMPTIONS OF LIBERAL CAPITALISM AND A RETHINKING OF JUST WAR DOCTRINES Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 5 This book focuses on PMSCs to better understand them, but also because they serve as a prism, to separate out some background trends and assumptions that have given these firms their staying power. If Avant is right, and “the PMSC train has left the station,” I want to illuminate the ideas that made such a train line possible. PMSCs are more than ambiguous entities that pique our curiosity; their prominence draws attention to larger theoretical issues at the heart of contemporary political life. This analysis requires an understanding of the background assumptions that have allowed this new phenomenon to flourish. Some of the assumptions, such as those of liberal capitalism, are familiar to us, and PMSCs operate according to the assumptions of contract and profit which lie at the heart of capitalism. But many of these conditions are truly new, having arisen during the last two decades. They include a new conception of military service in the post-Cold War era, and a novel view of risk and its impact on business and conflict. The assumptions that have helped PMSCs thrive at this historical moment include, too, a crisis in ethical and just-war thinking. If PMSCs are our future, which it seems like they are, then it will be a future that is quite different from the one we have come to know. And if they are the logical outcomes of shifts and changes that have been happening for a long time, then they have caught us by surprise. They are either the foreshocks, or the aftershocks, of a tectonic shift in the relationship between violence, the state, and politics.

PMSCs ON THE RISE AS PART OF THE OVERALL TREND TOWARD PRIVATIZATION AND ENHANCED EFFICIENCY Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 50 The political rationale behind the use of these forces has been given greater legitimacy by the third “origin” story: the increasing prominence of private organizations, or public-private partnerships in policy-making and governance. This rise has occurred both domestically and internationally, and it is due to a number of factors. The increasing use of private forces to take on formerly public tasks is found within the military, in domestic politics, and in international affairs. The transformation is driven by a number of key capitalist assumptions. First of all, private firms foster competition, which means cheaper, but also better products and services. As Doug Brooks of IPOA, repeatedly mentions, Fed Ex can do things “better, faster, and cheaper” than the US Postal Service. Private firms may be more autonomous, but their contractual relationships with the government can be severed quickly if needed. And the decisions of multiple actors and organizations can be more effectively coordinated through these networks. Planet Debate 9 PMCs – Sherry Hall Factors Fueling Shift to PMSCs

PERCEPTION OF PRIVATE FIRMS AS MORE EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE HAS DRIVEN THE RISE OF PMSCs Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 50-1 Not only does the privatized, market-based approach to solving problems provide better practical solutions to any particular need, it is also a “better” option on its own: it has an edge on the normative side of the scale. Private firms offered professionals better salaries, more flexibility, and, in general a more interesting (and mobile) career path than one in government, and gradually they began to attract the best talent – schools of public policy began sending their graduates to private firms or non-governmental organizations rather than government. This shift in the idea of public administration is part of what spawned the idea of a public-private hybrid. Sometimes these hybrids are referred to as public-private partnerships, or mixed regimes, and recently they have come under increasing scrutiny. Jonathan Koppell is one of the few researchers who have looked at the gradual rise and increasing autonomy of such hybrid organizations. In his account, hybrids, though not completely new, began extending their power and autonomy in recent decades because they seemed “more ‘business-like’ than a typical government program. They might be cheaper, and more effective, but they also just invoked a better idea of how to do business.” (Koppell 2003). Regardless of their true benefit – which his analysis questions –the use of hybrid organizations is only likely to increase, perhaps only because they are perceived as beneficial. Although domestic private security contracting firms are not officially referred to as hybrid institutions, they take on many of the same aspects; not only do they merely do business with the government, their activities are seen as part of national policy, and the risks of their actions and choices are ultimately backed up by public force. They gain privately from the relationship, but are ultimately part of a public policy, and any problems (fraud, mis-use of force, etc.) are ultimately borne out by the public. In the most direct case, the military has to step in and do the job if the contractors walk off the job: as happened when Custer Battles walked off the job of securing the Baghdad airport. More indirectly, the liability for contractor actions of firm fraud falls on the government or the contracting entity. And, as Koppell points out, the costs of adequately regulating contractors have to be deducted from any beneficial aspects of the arrangements.

PMSCs DRIVEN BY INCREASED SUPPLY OF SOLDIERS LOOKING FOR WORK Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 41-2 In 2004, a year into the war in Iraq, the New York Times Magazine profiled soldiers who had returned home with debilitating battlefield injuries. Pictured on the cover was one soldier who had been injured by a roadside bomb. Having lost his right arm and part of his hearing, this soldier was undergoing many operations to remove shrapnel from his face and body, and struggling, psychologically and physically, with the consequences of his experiences in Iraq. Unable to work, he spent his time attending physical therapy and group counseling sessions and driving around with another Iraq veteran. By the end of the article, however, he had hit upon a new plan for his future: “returning to Iraq as a security contractor for a private company” (Corbert 2004). The soldier was responding to the market for force. This first origin story is offered by those who argue that there is nothing truly new about the PMSC; that a market for force has existed whenever supply has aligned with demand. Mercenaries and contractors will inevitably increase to meet a rising demand, if there are enough otherwise unemployed soldiers to create the supply. For these scholars, the contemporary political economy resembles that of any other period in which veterans needed jobs. Here three factors stand out: the large pool of ex-military men and weaponry, providing the supply; the increase in failed or quasi-failed states, providing the demand; and a political and economic theory in favor of privatizing formerly public functions, making the supply answerable to the demand. Planet Debate 10 PMCs – Sherry Hall Factors Fueling Shift to PMSCs

LONG HISTORY OF OUT-OF-WORK SOLDIERS CONTRACTING OUT THEIR SERVICES Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 43 Scholars of military downsizing point to the long-established historical pattern of demobilized forces, unneeded and often unwanted at home, migrating to other areas of the world with their expertise for sale, not only as mercenaries, but as advisors, consultants, and trainers (Lock 1998). The Peloponnesian War that shattered the leadership of democratic Athens in the fifth century BCE was often fought with mercenary soldiers left over form the earlier Persian wars. At the end of the Peloponnesian War, members of the Greek armies hired themselves out as professional trainers of area militias. The Crusades were filled with men whose fighting power was destabilizing their home territories, and who needed some focus for their energies. In the modern era veterans of Napoleon’s wars emigrated to the new colonies in Latin America too find work, and the American Civil War contained fighters demobilized from (and disheartened by) the failed European socialist revolutions of 1848. After World War I, a large group of demobilized Russian and British officers were hired by Chiang Kai- Shek to fight the emerging Red Army under Mao Tse-Tung. Many demobilized Germans were also brought in as advisors, arms merchants, and military trainers, opening the door to a barter relationship between China and Germany, which in the 1920s lacked adequate cash and foreign exchange, and permitting Germany to begin rearming with Chinese raw materials. In the United States, veterans from both the Spanish-American War and World War I found immediate employment as strike-breakers in mining camps. Having often gambled away their money on the trip home, many veterans were willing to work for low wages replacing anyone on strike. The public, moreover, frequently sympathized more with out-of-work veterans than with strikers demanding higher wages. Local militias deployed against striking miners were often led by veterans from a wide variety of domestic and colonial wars, including the campaigns against the Sioux, the Boer War, and the Mexican Madero revolt. And, after World War II, the huge demobilization of soldiers, many of whom hailed from colonies, contributed in no small way to the wars of independence in colonial Africa and South Asia. The notorious mercenaries whose exploits made history in the 1960s for their commission of atrocities and their role in coups were World War II veterans.

TREND TO PMSCs REFLECT THE CHANGING NATURE OF AND MOTIVATIONS FOR PARTICIPATION IN WAR Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 58 In an almost complete reversal from state-based Cold War nuclear-deterrence planning, the wars of the present day pit transnational and privatized actors from “above” against sub-state but equally globalized combatants from “below.” Kaldor and van Creveld both describe a world in which the private contractor is the most obvious example of anew world order, an order in which individual actors are motivated by money and resources on the one hand, and identity on the other. The “new” wars of the last decade are wars fought neither for political ideology, nor for state goals as we know them, and by actors who often identify themselves only tangentially with a state. Contractors working for PMSCs are motivated by better pay, certainly, but also a desire to do what they do best, and for a cause that is often hard to put into-state based terms.

PMSCs GROWTH IN LINE WITH EXPANDING RISK ANALYSIS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 67 The language of risk currently shows up in a wide array of topics: liability law, criminology, financial regulation, health and environmental policy, and counter-terrorism, to name a few. All of these topics are unified by a concern with the politics of anger, and the cultural attitudes that underlie how risks are chosen for analysis, and how that analysis will inform decision-making. Certain risks—especially financial markets terrorist attacks, or environmental collapse, for instance, are especially resistant to rational risk analysis. As a result, some threats are vastly overblown and exaggerated, in order to justify risk-reduction services with an emphasis on certain types of solutions. PMSCs are embedded in this world in a number of ways: they assess risk, they offer solutions and services to manage and reduce risk, and they work closely with the insurance agencies that will reward those who take on these firms for risk reduction with “preferential terms.” Planet Debate 11 PMCs – Sherry Hall Factors Fueling Shift to PMSCs

INSURANCE INDUSTRY’S RELIANCE ON PMSCs HAVE FUELED THEIR RISE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 68 The PMSC industry owes much of its prominence and power to its relationship to the international risk- insurance business. Insurance companies provide security on a number of fronts: business ventures are made financially more secure by spreading financial risk and insuring against potential loss; and business actors are made physically more secure through the use of security training, bodyguards, and kidnap and ransom or extraction teams mandated by insurance contracts. The insurance industry contributes to a privatized mode of governance, allowing certain actions and disallowing others, providing physical and financial security, and backing up its preferred policies with the use of private security actors. Although insurance firms ostensibly act within the legal framework provided by their home state, they export these frameworks and practices to much more unstable areas. Thus, in places far from the reach of a stable state, the insurance industry provides a de facto form of governance, extending one of the most important functions of the modern liberal state: insuring that ventures can be undertaken without incurring prohibitive risk. Much research has been done on the role of the insurance company as a form of private authority and policy-making in global governance. Many private industries now rely on private security organizations in lieu of the state: “While the state has enormous legal power to spread risk and responsibility among different sectors of society, the insurance industry also has regulatory power…While the state has formidable military and police power, the insurance industry mobilizes private security systems. It forces policyholders to implement security measures intended to provide an efficient level of prevention , and thereby minimize actual harm and the future cost of harm.” (Ericson and Doyle 2004). The decentralization of what are traditionally state governmental functions, and the consequent shift toward a more regulatory role for the state, has resulted in the increasing prominence of private non-state actors addressing what used to be governmental responsibilities.

PMSCs INCREASED TO FILL POST COLD WAR VOID Daniel Isenberg, Senior Research Associate- British American Security Information Council, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 82 The standard explanation for the rise of private military companies (PMCs) is that the end of the Cold War gave states a reason to downsize their military forces, freeing up millions of former military personnel from a wide variety of countries, many of them Western. At the same time, the end of the Cold War lifted the lid on many long simmering conflicts held in check by the superpowers. Since markets, like nature, abhor a vacuum, PMCs emerged to fill the void, when conflicts emerged or wore on and no one from the West or the United Nations rode to the rescue.

MULTIPLE FACTORS FUELED GROWTH OF PMSCs Daniel Isenberg, Senior Research Associate- British American Security Information Council, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 82 In the United States, by contrast, one can trace the push for outsourcing of military activities back to the 1966 release of the revised Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-75. Private contractors were prominent in the “nation-building” effort in South Vietnam, and grew significantly over the decades. One Department of Defense (DOD) guide listed several factors driving the expanding role for contractors and suggested some of the complications to which this has given rise: “ Downsizing of the military following the Gulf War; Growing reliance on contractors to support the latest weapons and provide lifetime support for the systems; DoD-sponsored move to outsource or privatize functions to improve efficiency and free up funds for sustainment and modernization programs; and increased operating tempos. Today contractor logistics support is routinely imbedded in most major systems maintenance and support plans. Unfortunately, military operational planner have not been able to keep up with the growing involvement of contractors. Planet Debate 12 PMCs – Sherry Hall **PMSCs Bad** Planet Debate 13 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Covert & Unaccountable

PMSCs ARE HARD TO ANALYZE AND CATEGORIZE BECAUSE OF THEIR QUASI- ORGANIZATIONAL NATURE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 10-1 PMSCs are what organizational theorists refer to as “informal organizations” entities whose basic structure resists easy categorization. Such organizations can act effectively in unclear situations, are quick to adapt, and cohere through informal trust networks. Many times, such informal organizations play a “boundary-spanning” role between two other formal organizations—in this case the military and the bureaucracy (Scott 1981; Williams 2002). In public policy analysis, boundary-spanning organizations are often called “hybrids” or “quasi-organizations,” since they combine aspects of both public and private organizations. In 2007, the Congressional Research Service issued a report on the role of these hybrids in the “quasi-government.” The report focused on public-private partnerships with non- governmental organizations (NGOs) federally funded research organizations like the RAND Corporation, and any private business with “the federal government as a guaranteed customer”: “The quasi government, virtually by its name alone and the intentional blurring of the governmental and private sectors, is not easily defined. In general, the term is used to refer to entities that have some legal relation or association, however tenuous, to the federal government…While different categories of quasi governmental organizations can be described and found useful as an analytical tool, such categories are artificial, with porous lines of distinction and differentiation, and tend to be imposed upon the disparate entities after the fact. “(Kosar 2007) One reason PMSCs are hard to pin down is that they are more than one thing at once, and any analytical categories or typology will have “porous lines of distinction and differentiation.” In itself this may not be such a strange thing – many organizations may blur categories – but in the case of PMSCs, the categories being blurred are ones that have typically resisted any such combinations.

PMSCs AND THEIR EMPLOYEES ARE DIFFICULT TO IDENTIFY AND CHARACTERIZE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 9-10 The task of characterizing PMSCs qualitatively is also difficult. During a 2002 House of Commons hearing, a Member of Parliament commented on the difficulty of regulating these firms, noting that keeping track of the facts was “like sand going through your fingers: companies dissolve, ownership is vague and the soldiers themselves are not known or named …[these companies] are very protean, they are like an amoeba; they come and go” (MacShane 2002). Years later, and despite continued study, little has changed. The corporate structure of these firms, their exact affiliations with governments and businesses, and their legal status remain murky. On the ground, it is difficult even to identify who they are or for whom they work. Some security contractors might be well- trained, with recognizable uniforms. Others are outliers among an already hard-to-classify force. As one Marine Colonel put it: “On the other hand, there were other security contractors over there that were just cowboys. They clearly had neither the training nor the experience. Could I identify them? No. They word a mixed bag of uniforms. Nobody wore name tags. They didn’t have unit logos. You’d run into these people in town’ you would see them handling weapons improperly. You would see them with really kind of a bad attitude, and there’s nothing you could about it. How do you identify them? Well, there’s no license plate on their car.. They’re driving an SUV. Some of them weren’t even in any uniform even within the team.” (Col. Thomas X. Hammes, in Gaviria and Smith 2005).

PMSCs UNACCOUNTABLE – THEY ARE VERY DIFFICULT TO LABEL Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 10 Among scholars, the most common complaint is that PMSCs lack accountability. First, PMSCs are literally hard to count : it is difficult to ascertain how many there are (estimates of firms providing armed security in Iraq range from 50 to 75, and if the definition is widened to include firms that provide “security services” but are unarmed, the number could be as high as 280). It is hard to know how much money they government has paid for armed security contractors (estimates range from $6 to $10 billion). And it is unclear what kinds of jobs they are doing and where. Second, it is unclear exactly who is in charge—what the lines of authority are within companies and between firms, and their contracting and subcontracting authorities – and so not obvious who is liable for mistakes or breaches of contract or crimes. Third, PMSCs literally lack an “account” –a story or narrative that can make sense of their role. The lack of an explanation of what these firms are and how they came about, contributes to the sense that they are indeed shape-shifting, not just numerically and factually, but as organizations themselves. Planet Debate 14 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Covert & Unaccountable

LAWS THAT SUPPOSEDLY COVER PMSC CONTRACTORS NOT ENFORCED Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 148-9 But the idea of Blackwater as peacekeepers couldn’t be further from reality in the minds of some of the committee members. They were more concerned with the controversial issue of accountability, and whether it even existed in the private military industry. Taylor was ready for the question. He had armed himself with a list of applicable laws. “Our services support primarily federal entities. Private security firms, therefore, are accountable to many domestic federal statutes, regulations, and common law, which included the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, the War Crimes Act of 1996, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, the Anti-Torture Statute, the Defense Trade Controls Act, the Gun Control Act, Arms Export Control Act, Export Administration Regulations, International Traffic and Arms Regulation, the Defense Base Act, Federal Aviation Regulations, the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and the general order of Central Command, the Multinational Corps of Iraqi Forces, and the Combined Joint Task Force 76. “ The list sounded impressive. There was just one problem; not a single private military contractor had been held accountable under any of those laws. What good was a law if it wasn’t ever enforced?

BUSH ADMINISTRATION POLICIES GAVE RISE TO FEAR OF PMSCs AS ATTEMPTS TO LESSEN DEMOCRATIC CONTROLS AND OVERSIGHT ON THE USE OF FORCE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 14-5 Critics of PMSCs see the proliferation of firms and the increasing reliance of the military on their presence as a sure sign that the state is losing its monopoly on legitimate violence, and that the world will soon be awash in out-of-control mercenary bands, getting rich off of increasing instability. These pessimists see a widespread conspiracy to undercut democratic authority of the use of force both abroad and domestically. In the US, even before the publication of Jeremy Scahill’s book Blackwater: the Rise of the World’ Most Powerful Mercenary Army (2007), many saw the links between the Bush Administration, companies like Halliburton, former generals, and the iron triangle of K-Street lobbyists for the defense industry as hatching a plot to distance US use of force from all but the most serpentine processes of oversight. Scahill also asserts that the connections between Blackwater’s founder and CEO Erik Prince and the Catholic Church give these forces the veneer of “holy war.” Outsourcing military labor, like outsourcing other industries, has the effect of diffusing responsibility avoiding onerous regulations, and hiding the adverse affects of policy, such as the healthcare costs associated with long-term commitments to domestic employees. The conspiracy account maintains that the rise of the industry has been to the consequences of a number of under-the-radar deals between certain industries and certain governments.

PMSCs UNACCOUNTABLE – TO MILITARY COMMANDERS AND TO THE LAW Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 97-8 One of the biggest risks associated with the use of contractors and PMSCs in warfare is the lack of any clear, effective legal tools to control their behavior. The military refers to this situation as a “classic principal-agent problem,” where the agents of the military – its contractors – are only weakly control. “ Army personnel consider a commander’s inability to force contract performance…a serious problem. Even if a commander could legally direct contract personnel to do something, the commander would have no immediate recourse if they refused to comply . The commander could only take the issue to court and/or terminate the contract for nonperformance. “ (Camm and Greenfeld 2005) Currently the only way to punish those contactors who commit crimes or fail to perform their duties is to fire them or release them from their contract. This is for the simple reason that contract law, as a branch of civil law, was never meant to carry the burden of regulating the excessive use of lethal force. The next chapter addresses the question of how to reduce the legal risk associated with “unlawful belligerents” of a whole new type. Planet Debate 15 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Covert & Unaccountable

CONTRACTORS MUCH LESS LIKELY TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR CRIMES AND MISTAKES THAN THE REGULAR MILITARY Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 99-100 Running a sex ring in Bosnia, torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, shooting at unarmed civilians in “questionable” uses of force, mistaken “friendly fire” incidents with other contractors and members of the military, and general mayhem on the roads of Baghdad: PMSC members have been involved in a number of high-profile and notorious episodes wherein their misconduct would be considered criminal under international, domestic, or military law. And yet very few prosecutions have occurred. A 2008 study by Human Rights First asserted that: “To date more than 60 US military personnel have been court-martialed in the deaths of Iraqi citizens and more are under investigation. In contrast not one private contractor implicated in similar crimes in Iraq has been prosecuted…The Justice Department’s neglect has created a “shoot-first, ask questions later – or never” attitude among some contractors.” (Human Rights First, 2008). It is repeatedly claimed that PMSCs operate in a shadowy legal environment, unregulated and uncontrolled by anything but hazy market forces and voluntary codes of conduct. The business is frequently described as operating in the “grey area of the law,” or in the “shadows,” “beyond the law”, or simply as “unregulated.” Despite the fact that the industry has existed for many years in some form or another, and attempts have made to classify and clarify all sorts of aspects of it, the entire debate continues to be marked by confusion. As one critic pointed out, it is hard to believe that “we can regulate the ingredients of an Oreo cookie, but not the forces that work alongside our military” (Callahan 2004). Despite all the hue and cry about a “vacuum of law” or the lack of oversight, there are actually many layers of international and domestic law that could apply to these actors. There are enough standing regulations to prompt the remark that, as one executive noted, “we are the most regulated force on the ground that has ever been seen” (Beese, Christopher). Given this, the suspicion often arises that this murky world was created on purpose, in order to shield contractors from the reach of law, and enable a faster and more flexible procurement of services. Critics repeatedly allege that this obscurity was intentionally rigged to prevent proper oversight and regulation.

BLACKWATER EMPLOYEES AND OTHER PRIVATE CONTRACTORS NOT HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR CRIMINAL CONDUCT IN IRAQ Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 100 After Blackwater contractors opened fire on civilians in Baghdad in September 2007, killing 17 civilians., Congress convened another hearing on the company, and renewed its cries for regulation. Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, began by listing the problems associated with the State Department’s use of Blackwater to provide diplomatic security: “New documents indicate that there have been a total of 195 shooting incidents involving Blackwater forces since 2005. Blackwater’s contract says the company is hired to provide defensive services, but in most of these incidents it was Blackwater forces who fired first. We have also learned that 122 Blackwater employees, one seventh of the company’s current work force in Iraq, have been terminated for improper conduct.” (Waxman 2007). Representative Tom Davis followed up, noting that: “Incidents of erratic and dangerous behavior by security personnel from all the companies involved, not just Blackwater, are handled with little or no regard to Iraqi law. Usually, the bad actor is simply whisked out of the country, whether the offense is a civilian casualty, negligent discharge of a weapon, alcohol or drug abuse, or destruction of property. To date, there has not been a single successful prosecution of a security provider in Iraq for criminal misconduct.” In his response, the CEO of Blackwater, former Navy SEAL Erik Prince, testified that, “the Blackwater team acted appropriately while operating in a complex war zone”, and that the risks taken by the heroic men who worked for Blackwater had resulted in no deaths of those they were hired to protect. Planet Debate 16 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Covert & Unaccountable

PMSCs IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN HAVE NOT BEEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR SERIOUS CRIMES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 172 Since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 there have been persistent reports of contractors opening fire on Iraqi civilians and attacking their property without reasonable cause. There may have been scores of unlawful killings and other serious crimes of violence. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the figure is at least what investigative journalist Robert Young Pelton 2006 called “a not insignificant number.” In a comparison raised by industry critic Jeremy Scahill, from 2003 to early 2007 there had been 64 US military personnel charged with what he called “murder-related” offenses. Over this period there has been no similar charges brought (through any means) against armed US contractors although this has since changed. Amnesty International has compiled its own alarming list of allegations of contractor misconduct in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2005 the 3rd Infantry Division was responsible for security in and around Baghdad. Its then Deputy Commander was Brigadier Karl. R. Horst and he put the matter this way: “ These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when the escalate force…they shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place.”

PMCS ARE BOTH CORRUPT AND INCOMPETENT—MULTIPLE INCIDENTS PROVE Wayne ’02 , (Leslie, “America's For-Profit Secret Army,” NYT, Section 3; Column 5; Money and Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1, 10-13-2002) At times , the results have been disastrous. In Bosnia, employees of DynCorp were found to be operating a sex-slave ring of young women who were held for prostitution after their passports were confiscated. In Croatia, local forces, trained by MPRI, used what they learned to conduct one of the worst episodes of "ethnic cleansing," an event that left more than 100,000 homeless and hundreds dead and resulted in war-crimes indictments. No employee of either firm has ever been charged in these incidents. In Peru last year, a plane carrying an American missionary and her infant was accidentally shot down when a private military contractor misidentified it as on a drug smuggling flight.

GROWING NUMBER OF PMSCs UNACCOUNTABLE Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 4 Beginning in 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, the rise of private military companies like Blackwater has been nothing less than meteoric. Private contractors now occupy the battlespace in Iraq on a one-to-one ratio with US troops. They are often paid a lot more money by the taxpayer, and they aren’t governed by the same rules as US troops. The stark lack of oversight and accountability of the industry has led to numerous congressional hearings and has put the policies of the Bush administration into question. Has the United States government farmed out too many critical parts of its own missions? Who will police this growing shadow army? Planet Debate 17 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Covert & Unaccountable

INADEQUATE ACCOUNTABILITY DRIVES OPPOSITION TO PMSCs Simon Chesterman & Chia Lehnardt, Professor and Researcher – NYU School of Law, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 2 Acceptance of that market will largely depend on the reality and the perception of accountability mechanisms to guard against abuse. A useful starting point in the discussion on regulation is, therefore, to focus not on the identity of the actor but on the nature of the acts requiring regulation and accountability. Concerns relate primarily to the use of potentially lethal force by PMC personnel, but also to the impact these actors may have on the strategic balance of a conflict. Most of the existing regulation – notably international humanitarian law – is directed primarily towards the standing armies of states. As private actors take on more responsibilities a central question is whether the normative framework and accountability structures adequately address the new environment. Most commentators agree that they do not. Instead, it is often implicitly or explicitly assumed that it is business interests – rather than international and national law – that govern the use and conduct of PMCs. There is, in this context, good reason to be concerned about leaving issues of peace and war, life and death, to purely market mechanisms. It would be naïve, of course, to assume that traditional armed forces are necessarily virtuous and private armies inherently harmful to public interests. But the fact that profit-driven interests play a role in conflict does complicate control, transparency, and accountability issues. Periodic outrage surrounding PMScs and the apparent impunity with which their personnel engage in misconduct supports this view, lending credence to the perception that PMCs fall through the cracks of both national and international law. Planet Debate 18 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Illegitimate

COMBAT PMSCs ARE ILLEGITIMATE Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 13-4 A final difference, not visible in Table 1.1, is worth pointing out. There are only two examples of combat PMCs, and both are defunct; between the two of them, they only have three notable clients: the governments of Angola, Sierra Leone, and Papua New Guinea. The lack of combat-PMC action, and the disappearance of these PMCs, suggests that these companies were only marginally legitimate and were far from accepted actors on the international stage. Conversely, there are dozens of non-combat PMCs working for a wide range of clients, from state governments to NGOs to international organizations. It appears that combat and non-combat PMCs also differ in the degree to which they are accepted by the international community. Planet Debate 19 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSC Contractors Violate Human Rights and Laws

PMC CRIMINAL ACTIVITY INEVITABLE-- ENVIRONMENTS AND MOTIVATIONS ARE INTRINSICALLY VIOLENT Rothe and Ross (08/01/2010).[ Dawn L. Rothe , Old Dominion University. College of Arts And Letters. Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice. Jeffery Ian Ross, Ph.D. a professor, writer, and consultant specializing in policing, political crime, "Private Military Contractors, Crime, and the Terrain of Unaccountability.". Justice quarterly (0741-8825), 27 (4), p. 593. /hnasser] While much attention has been paid to organizational context and decisionmaking processes by scholars of state-corporate crime, there is a similarly rich criminological tradition which examines how social forces work within communities that are disorganized to produce criminal actions and actors (Rothe & Mullins, 2009). This also seems pertinent to understanding the criminogenic conditions associated with PMCs. After all, the influence of social disorder within immediate environments has powerful criminogenic effects (Rothe & Mullins, 2009). European and American criminologists have established that these disorganized environments have a pronounced tendency to produce criminal enterprises of varying levels of organizations (Mullins & Rothe, 2008a; Rothe & Mullins, 2006, 2008). Social disorganization theory (Bursik & Grasmick, 1993; Shaw & McKay, 1942) suggests that when communities possess a diminished capacity to create and enact informal mechanisms of social control, crime rates increase. Rothe and Mullins have noted that widespread social disorganization is most readily apparent in producing militias. Abject poverty, a lack of functioning infrastructure, and social institutions severely undercut by decolonization creates a profound vacuum of social order. These illicit organizations arise in such contexts to structure life and provide opportunities for community members to realize meaningful social identities. We see social disorganization as directly related to the lack of regulation or anomic conditions. In the absence of legitimate forms of social regulation, disorganization proliferates. Military organizations, or in the case at hand PMCs, are generally operating in such an environment. Their immediate goal accomplishment mechanisms are innately violent and thus prone toward producing additional atrocity when unchecked and constrained. Even corporate social disorganization can undermine or hinder the extant informal social controls within a corporation, thus allowing high rates of criminal activity to occur. In addition , as most PMCs operate in areas of conflict or under tumultuous conditions they are even more prone to experiencing the chaos that is a result of the disorganization and indirectly a result of the larger anomic conditions guiding their actions. For our purposes here, we consider the environment from which PMCs operate in as an example of criminal groups which arise out of or in response to social disorder anomic conditions, lack of regulation. We suggest that these factors (i.e., anomie and social disorganization) are central to understanding PMC’s criminal propensity. Additionally, due to the environment within which they operate they are uniquely situated, making generalizations difficult to translate to other corporate organizations. Thus, attention must be paid theoretically to the dynamicsand processes that are at work within and surrounding these organizations. Planet Debate 20 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSC Contractors Violate Human Rights and Laws

CONTRACTORS OPERATE WITHIN THE MILITARY FRAMEWORK AND REPRESENT THE US; THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS ARE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW Wolf 6 [Wolf, Antenor Hallo de. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Volume 13, Issue 2, Summer 2006, pp. 315-356 (Article)”Modern Condottieri in Iraq: Privatizing War from the Perspective of International and Human Rights Law” /hnasser] http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/gls/summary/v013/13.2wolf.html On the basis of the Taguba and Fay reports it can be argued that a number of CACI and Titan contractors, through commission or omission, directly contributed to violations of common article 3 to Geneva Conventions (III) and (IV) and article 76 of Geneva Convention (IV) as well as violations of articles 7 and 10 of the ICCPR and article 1 of the CAT. This leads to the following question: Is the United States responsible for violations of international humanitarian law and human rights committed by private parties in Iraq? According to international customary law, the state is responsible for acts of commission or omission, that entail a breach of an international obligation of the state and which are attributable to it under international law.104 Are the abuses possibly perpetrated by PMSC contractors attributable to the United States ? The responsibility of the United States for the conduct of its own soldiers and officers is clear. States are always responsible for their own breaches of international obligations and for those breaches committed by an organ of the state or its agents.105 The responsibility of the United States for the acts of CACI and Titan contractors is not so evident, however, because here we are dealing with acts committed by private entities. The state, in principle, is not responsible for the acts of private actors. Notwithstanding this general rule, breaches of international obligations committed by private actors while exercising governmental authority or other public tasks which have been delegated to them by law, or carried out under the state’s supervision or orders, are also attributable to the state.106 The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has concluded that this is especially the case when a state has “effective control” over the activities of these actors.107 The ICTY has also ruled that: [P]rivate individuals acting within the framework of, or in connection with, armed forces, or in collusion with State authorities may be regarded as de facto State organs. [note omitted] In these cases it follows that the acts of such individuals are attributed to the State, as far as State responsibility is concerned, and may also generate individual criminal responsibility.108 In addition, a state is also responsible if it has not taken the necessary measures to prevent breaches of its international obligations committed by private actors. This due diligence obligation requires that the state act diligently and promptly to prevent, investigate, and punish the harmful conduct of private actors.109 Planet Debate 21 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks

PMSCs ALLOW GOVERNMENT TO BECOME INVOLVED IN CONFLICTS WITHOUT DEMOCRATIC CONSTRAINTS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 94-5 A less desirable objective has been the “democratic deficit” arising from the shift in power from the legislature to executive government. If an American President wishes to involve the US in an armed conflict this has become easier because of the availability of contract forces which lessen pressure to deal with a legislature that may be unsympathetic. By encouraging thousands of security contractors to work in Iraq, the Republican Administration required fewer regular troops to be diverted to the Middle East. Similarly, fewer Reservists and National Guard have been called up. Other costs have appeared in their place. Open government, transparent process and public accountability have assumed lesser prominence. Nor is executive government under the same pressure to form empathetic alliances with other states. As one American officer described it, “When you can hire people to go toward, there’s none of the grumbling and political friction.” If costs occasioned by the use of force are sharply reduced and other factors remain unchanged, then military action seems more likely. Instead of the roughly 140,000 US troops in Iraq in 2006, an absence of contractors would have encountered at least somewhat greater difficulty in persuading the American public and Congress to acquiesce. For any democratically elected government seeking to launch a conflict, a military expedition is exactly the sort of matter over which the institutions of a robust democracy should be encouraged to engage in vigorous and informed debate. This is particularly so where the evidence supporting a case for war has been fabricated, manipulated, or contrived to meet ends that bear a doubtful relationship to national security.

PMSCs DECREASE DEMOCRATIC CHECKS ON WAR Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 20-1 A second type of objection to the private military industry is that, just as mercenaries made it easier for the state to go to war and to repress its people in the past, private military and PMCs might make it easier for modern states to fight war and also reduce democratic control over war. This argument finds echoes in theories of the democratic peace, which argue that public opinion can exert a strong effect on making a state more reluctant to go to war, particularly if too many soldiers are killed or if soldiers’ lives are placed in harm’s way. As Kant argues, “if the consent of the citizens is required in order to decide that war should be declared…nothing is more natural than that they would be very cautious in commencing such a poor game, decreeing for themselves all the calamities of war.” One objection to the private military industry is that it removes or lessens the restraints of public opinion, because the public will not notice or will be less worried about the deaths of private fighters than they would be about the killing of soldiers. The use of PMCs might lead to a reduction of democracy in states which hire these companies by diminishing democratic oversight decisions to go to war. Many commentators have noticed that PMCs are problematic because they might encourage covert wars, or act as proxies in conflicts in which the state finds it politically inexpedient to get involved. Both covert wars and the use of proxies allow states to enter into conflict without the usual range of democratic oversight. Even in open conflicts, the use of private military personnel instead of regular soldiers not only loosens the aforementioned constraint of public opinion but significantly reduces the number of obstacles to continuing a prolonged conflict. The current war in Iraq demonstrates the significant political obstacles to mobilizing larger numbers of troops. Because PMCs can perform a variety of military tasks, they can free up regular soldiers. The obstacles to increasing the number of PSC personnel on the ground are also far less significant than those in the way of mobilizing larger numbers of regular troops. The state might also find it easier to sustain wars that go against public opinion because of the presence of PMCs. Planet Debate 22 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks

BLACKWATER PERCEIVED AS A PARAMILITARY WING OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 100-1 The footage of Mr. Prince defending the actions of his company’s men as a “measured and appropriate” response to threats, and his defense that his convoy-protection details and helicopter support only provided “defensive” security, contradicted many reports of offensive actions. Media accounts of his testimony were almost uniformly negative, and no one seemed to come forward to defend Blackwater USA, not even their contracting agency the US State Department. Their domestic deployment after Hurricane Katrina in September 2005, their contract to do border security along the US-Mexican border, and their repeated requests to do humanitarian rescue in Darfur, put them in the spotlight again and again. The fall of 2007 seemed to spell “the beginning of the end,” as one contractor put it: all of the issues that had been smoldering along had suddenly crystallized: the lawlessness with which they operated in war zones hand the no-bid contractors with the US government which gave them business. Blackwater had become the Sandline of the US: a large, privately financed, well-established firm whose lose ties with the US government and the Republican Party made it look like they were the paramilitary wing of the Bush Administration.

PMSCs WERE CREATED TO EVADE THE RULES AND CODES THAT GOVERNED MILITARY PERSONNEL Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 101 Such appearances are not coincidental. In the political origin story referred to in Chapter 2, PMSCs were created in order for the executive branch and the Pentagon to bypass the strict rules of law and rigid practices that the military had developed over time, codes and rules that made its actions constrained and inflexible. Grey areas of conduct and murky legal codes would allow for more discretion, flexibility, and plausible deniability. Here, contractors would be seen as an outgrowth of mercenaries or covert operators, rather than as the more benign security workers. They would be part of the long tradition, documented so well by Janice Thomson, of privateers working in vague conjunction with national goals, but encouraged to operate at a hazy distance from those in power (Thomson 1994). In this story, the government actively wants to avoid checks and balances on a number of fronts. The President can avoid Congressional oversight. The Department of Defense can avoid public scrutiny. Contractors are freed from the onerous aspects of the established law of armed combat. And “citizens” are freed from the full implications and consequences of their foreign policy. This is game of smoke and mirrors played to create plausible deniability. Confusing matrices of laws give this story real staying power.

PMSCs UNDERMINE DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OVER USE OF FORCE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 135 No matter how effective they may be in current conditions, or how benignly they may present themselves, PMSCs continue to be considered ethically shaky and morally hazardous; almost every treatment of them in the last ten years begins by pointing this out. Singer says that they “rest on a confused and precarious moral position”. Avant ultimately argues that increased privatization undermines democratic control over the use of forces abroad. Even journalist Robert Young Pelton, who admits that he has “spent much of my adult life following the activities of mercenaries and soldiers-for-hire,” begins his expose of the industry noting that the only “moral leash that operates on these people is how they view themselves, not how the world views them” (Pelton 2006). Planet Debate 23 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks

CONTRACTORS UNDERMINE GOVERNMENTAL STRUCTURE- PMCS CREATE SECURITY OUTSIDE OF DEMOCRATIC CHECKS Salzman 8 [Zoe,New York University School of Law 2008 “Private Military Contractors And The Taint Of A Mercenary Reputation” International Law And Politics [Vol. 40:853 /hnasser] http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv2/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__journals__journal_of_internatio nal_law_and_politics/documents/documents/ecm_pro_058877.pdf In addition to challenging the state’s monopoly on the use of force, the privatization of military force also threatens the democratic state because it allows governments to make war while avoiding democratic accountability.82 Democratic governments are entrusted with a monopoly on the use of force because their power to exercise that force is limited by the rule of law and by accountability to their citizens.83 Private contractors, however, greatly undermine democratic accountability, and in so doing circumvent the democratic reluctance for war. By undermining the public’s control over the warmaking powers of the state, private contractors threaten the popular sovereignty of the state.84 Thus, the problem with private military force may not be simply a lack of state control, as discussed above, but also too much government control, particularly executive control, at the expense of popular, democratic control.85 At an extreme, a government, even a democratic government, might use private violence as a brutal police force to ensure its control over the people.86 In reality, however, a democratic government’s outsourcing of military functions undermines the democratic process much more subtly than this far-fetched scenario. Because the executive branch is generally in charge of hiring contractors, private contractors allow the executive to evade parliamentary or congressional checks on foreign policy.87 Indeed, [t]o the extent privatization permits the Executive to carry out military policy unilaterally . . . it circumvents primary avenues through which the People are informed and blocks off primary channels (namely Congress) through which the People can register their approval or voice their misgivings.88 Privatizing military force results in a lack of transparency and puts the military effort outside of the scope of the democratic dialogue, “obscuring choices about military needs and human implications.”89 Notably, in the United States, private contractors are not subject to the scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act,90 which greatly restricts the public’s ability to be well-informed about the government’s reliance on the private military industry. Thus, the privatization of military force allows the executive “to operate in the shadows of public attention” 91 and to subvert democratic political restraints.92 Planet Debate 24 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks

CONSTITUTIONALISM—PMCS ALLOW THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH TO CRIPPLE CURRENT CONGRESSIONAL CHECKS ON MILITARY ACTION Avant and Sigelman, Professor of Political Science at the University of California Irvine, January 2K8 (Deborah and Lee, “What Does Private Security in Iraq Mean for Democracy at Home?” http://www.international.ucla.edu/cms/files/ PrivateSecurityandDemocracy.pdf) Constitutionalism refers to established processes for ensuring that a range of institutional actors have input into policy. Known and accessible political processes that disperse power in established ways help make outcomes more predictable and reduce the potential for capricious action. 40 Privatization could affect constitutionalism by evading established processes for making and implementing policy. If the process of contracting avoids key veto points in the policymaking process, power may become centralized in ways that side step normal constitutional limits. For example, the use of contractors rather than military personnel could enable members of the executive branch to pursue policy without going through normal channels – evading checks from Congress or even from other portions of the executive branch; or leaders in the executive branch c ould encourage contracts between private security companies and foreign governments or other entities and thereby avoid formal government involvement altogether – what has been called “foreign policy by proxy.”41 Either way, privatization opens the door to bypassing veto points and thus eroding constitutionalism. To assess the impact of privatization on constitutionalism, we consider how contracting with PSCs or allowing PSCs to contract directly with foreign governments or other entities has affected the relative power of the legislative and executive branches and the associated number of veto points in the policyprocess. Even without contracting, the executive branch enjoys numerous advantages in military policy decision making. 42 Contracting enhances these advantages. The executive branch, not Congress, hires contractors. Although Congress approves the military budget, it does not approve – or often even know about – individual decisions for contracts. Information about contracts is held, and oversight of contracts is conducted, almost exclusively by the executive branch. Although the executive branch dominates military information and oversight, Congress has several avenues of influence – over military personnel, over funds for the military, over the structure of the service branches and the processes by which the military does its business, and over the deployment of US troops.43 Congressional authority over personnel ranges from limiting the size of the military to regulating and restricting how soldiers can be deployed and structuring chains of command and approving promotions.44 Congressional appropriations also frequently carry restrictions on the use of the money that regulates the use of military forces. Among the most important tools at Congress’ disposal is its ability to structure incentives within the services – requirements for entry, criteria for promotion, and so on.45 Finally, as a consequence of the War Powers Resolution, the President must consult Congress and seek its approval to deploy US military forces in conflict zones.46 This set of tools provides Congress with numerous means of swaying military policy.47 These avenues for influence are enhanced by congressional access to information about military units. Congress has the information to keep track of how many military units there are, and how, where, and when they are deployed. It has devised many procedures for receiving information about the military and it continuously uses these to direct the military on a short term as well as long-term basis. T hese tools, however, are of little avail for controlling contractors. Congress retains its power of the purse in the use of contractors, but it is more difficult to use this authority to direct the internal workings of PSCs– such as decisions about whom to hire for particular tasks. As the recent experience in Iraq has demonstrated, copies of contracts are hard for Congress to obtain and contracts for security services can be even routed through the federal bureaucracy (via the Interior or Commerce Department, for instance) in ways that mask their military impact.48 All of this makes it difficult for the legislative branch to affect either the internal processes of private firms or the terms on which the executive branch contracts with them.49 Congress’ access to information about contractors is also highly circumscribed. In instances of contracted foreign military training, for example, the annual consolidated report on military assistance and sales does not identify the contractor or even whether the job is done by troops or PSCs. Thus, members of Congress who are interested in overseeing individual firms may not even know which PSCs should be overseen or when.50 The executive can use this advantage to evade congressional restrictions on US actions. For instance, Congress often limits US involvement in a conflict by stipulating a ceiling on the number of US troops. By employing contractors, the executive can increase de facto US involvement. Sometimes Congress innovates by stipulating an upper limit on the number of contractors, but PSCs can evade this restriction by hiring more locals or third-party nationals.51 More generally, there are many ways to circumvent even the limited oversight and control mechanisms that Congress possesses. The availability of private contractors concentrates power in the hands of those in charge of hiring, dispersing funds, and overseeing contractors – generally activities undertaken in the executive branch. Planet Debate 25 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks

PMCS BYPASS PUBLIC DISCLOSURE POLICIES AND HAVE VIRTUAL MEDIA IMMUNITY Avant and Sigelman, Professor of Political Science at the University of California Irvine, January 2K8 (Deborah and Lee, “What Does Private Security in Iraq Mean for Democracy at Home?” http://www.international.ucla.edu/cms/files/ PrivateSecurityandDemocracy.pdf) Deploying PSCs should be expected to be less transparent than using troops. In the first place, there should be fewer public demands for transparency. Perhaps more importantly, private security mobilization can avoid the institutional mechanisms that have been developed over time to ensure transparency. These mechanisms range from triggers adopted to alert the media to pathways through which to access information. For example, reporters covering the Pentagon are accustomed to covering troops but may not be attuned to deployments of contractors. Also, casualty figures routinely collected and released by the military exclude contract personnel. Differences between the information available for tracking public agencies and private firms are also substantial. Even in highly sensitive policy arenas like security policy, the US has procedures such as the Freedom of Information Act that guarantee public access to information deemed relevant to the public interest. However, because private firms are assumed to operate in a market environment, the rules governing their information-sharing recognize the necessity for proprietary secrecy. Another way that transparency is reduced (somewhat paradoxically) is that even when information on private security firms is potentially available, it is more diffuse and harder to collect, aggregate, and analyze than parallel military information. For instance, in 2004 even as analysts were decrying the lack of information about CACI’s provision of interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison, CACI itself was advertising on its website for interrogators to serve in Iraq. The information was not so much secret as it was hard to amass. When information is hard to gather, transparency is reduced. To assess the impact of private security options on transparency more systematically, we first compare the processes by which Congress, interested citizens, and foreign governments can obtain information about the activities of troops versus private security companies. We then 21 contrast media coverage of US troops and private security companies in two similar incidents of captivity and over time in a single conflict. Avoiding the mobilization of military machinery sidesteps many institutionalized mechanisms that foster public awareness of foreign policy decisions and their implementation. Compared to the fanfare that accompanies deployments of military forces abroad, deployments of private security teams may pass virtually unnoticed. Television networks and major newspapers assign correspondents to the Pentagon and local television stations and newspapers routinely cover military bases within their circulation area and the families that are attached to them. Thus, coverage of military deployments is virtually automatic. PSCs, however, attract none of this coverage on a regular basis. Although the irresistible attraction of bad news may draw media coverage if something goes wrong, it may be harder for the media even to discover that something has gone wrong if they are not covering these deployments in the first place. As noted above, even casualty figures focus on troops and typically do not include contractors, thereby reducing the transparency of the human costs of war. 61 Taken together, these considerations imply that PSCs working for the government abroad should be less likely to generate the same degree of media coverage as troops would. Citizens also have less access to details about the use of PSCs and the policies that surround such use. Because PSCs are private, their assertions of control over proprietary information about the terms of their contracts, their operations, and their policies can reduce the access of journalists, NGOs, and other interested parties. In some cases, this proprietary privilege can be abused. For instance, in the recent furor over the contract of a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root, to repair oil fields in Iraq, significant portions of a Pentagon audit sent to the international monitoring board were blacked out. By law, commercially sensitive information must be concealed when government documents are released. Thus, the Pentagon sent the report to the firm before sending it out, and the firm claimed that it was permissible to black out not only proprietary information but also statements “that we believe are factually incorrect or misleading and could be used by a competitor to damage KBR’s ability to win and negotiate new work.”62 Even when they are not abused, proprietary limits on information can reduce the transparency of government policy. Because of these concerns, FOIA requests for contracts between the government and PSCs are often denied.63 Planet Debate 26 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks

PMCS ALLOW THE TRUE NATURE OF WAR TO BE KEPT FROM THE PUBLIC- THIS UNDER MINES THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS Salzman 8 [Zoe,New York University School of Law 2008 “Private Military Contractors And The Taint Of A Mercenary Reputation” International Law And Politics [Vol. 40:853 /hnasser] http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv2/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__journals__journal_of_international _law_and_politics/documents/documents/ecm_pro_058877.pdf At an extreme, a government, even a democratic government, might use private violence as a brutal police force to ensure its control over the people.86 In reality, however, a democratic government’s outsourcing of military functions undermines the democratic process much more subtly than this far-fetched scenario. Because the executive branch is generally in charge of hiring contractors, private contractors allow the executive to evade parliamentary or congressional checks on foreign policy.87 Indeed, [t]o the extent privatization permits the Executive to carry out military policy unilaterally . . . it circumvents primary avenues through which the People areinformed and blocks off primary channels (namely Congress ) through which the People can register their approval or voice their misgivings.88 Privatizing military force results in a lack of transparency and puts the military effort outside of the scope of the democratic dialogue, “obscuring choices about military needs and human implications.”89 Notably, in the United States, private contractors are not subject to the scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act,90 which greatly restricts the public’s ability to be well-informed about the government’s reliance on the private military industry. Thus, the privatization of military force allows the executive “to operate in the shadows of public attention” 91 and to subvert democratic political restraints.92

CIRCUMVENTION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE MAKES WAR INEVITABLE Salzman 8 [Zoe,New York University School of Law 2008 “Private Military Contractors And The Taint Of A Mercenary Reputation” International Law And Politics [Vol. 40:853 /hnasser] http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv2/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__journals__journal_of_international_law_and_p olitics/documents/documents/ecm_pro_058877.pdf This impediment to public debate is important because, as Immanuel Kant famously reasoned, the chances for peace are greatly increased when the people control the decision on whether or not to go to war, since it is the people themselves who will suffer “the miseries of war.”99 If, on the other hand, the decision rests with the head of state, he has little incentive to refrain from war because he bears none of its costs.100 At a fundamental level, therefore, the use of private contractors subverts Kant’s reliance on the democratic reluctance to go to war by circumventing the public’s reluctance to sustain casualties. 101 In Iraq, for example, contractor deaths are not counted towards the official death toll,102 allowing the government to present a far lower number of American casualties. Recent estimates suggest that the total number of contractors killed in Iraq is 1,000, with over 10,000 wounded or injured on the job.103 But, as the daughter of one contractor killed in Iraq put it: “If anything happens to the military people, you hear about it right away . . . . Flags get lowered, they get their respect. You don’t hear anything about the contractors.”104 Planet Debate 27 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Skirt Democratic Checks

PMCS ALLOW FOR LESS PUBLIC DEBATE AND POLITICAL BACKLASH- THIS THREATENS DEMOCRACY Salzman 8 [Zoe,New York University School of Law 2008 “Private Military Contractors And The Taint Of A Mercenary Reputation” International Law And Politics [Vol. 40:853 /hnasser] http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv2/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__journals__journal_of_international_law_and_politics/docume nts/documents/ecm_pro_058877.pdf The privatization of combat duties is potentially much more problematic than the privatization of other government functions because the privatization of the use of force inherently removes many of the burdens of war from the citizenry, thereby reducing public debate about national involvement in the conflict.93 Indeed, governments may turn to private military forces not because they are cheaper, but because they are less accountable and less likely to attract political backlash.94 For example, by outsourcing military functions, the executive branch is able to evade certain forms of democratic accountability by circumventing congressional caps on the number of troops approved for deployment.95 Employing private contractors also allows the executive to avoid instituting a draft, keep official casualty counts and public criticism down, and even to avoid arms embargoes.96 The government is also able to distance itself from mistakes by blaming them on the contractors. 97 By subverting public debate and by undermining the separation of powers, the privatization of military force poses a direct threat to the democratic system.

PMCS HAVE NO ACCOUNTABILITY- INHERENT ASPECTS OF DEMOCRACY ARE LOST Salzman 8 [Zoe,New York University School of Law 2008 “Private Military Contractors And The Taint Of A Mercenary Reputation” International Law And Politics [Vol. 40:853 /hnasser] http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv2/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__journals__journal_of_international_law_and_p olitics/documents/documents/ecm_pro_058877.pdf In addition, while contractors are technically regulated to some extent by their contracts,109 there is in fact a notable lack of means to ensure contractual compliance.110 Importantly, most militaries have no developed system with which to monitor contractual compliance.111 In Iraq, for example, a contractor allegedly involved in the Abu Ghraib abuse “posed a ‘different dilemma’” than the uniformed soldiers involved.112 Since the contractor could not be prosecuted under the UCMJ, the Army was confined to reporting him to the off-site Army officer responsible for the contract under which he had been hired.113 In fact , no contractor has ever been prosecuted for his or her involvement in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, although a private contractor was convicted for his role in the death of a detainee in Afghanistan.114 As this Section has demonstrated, when the state privatizes its military functions, a great deal of the accountability inherent in democratic government is lost, as “[t]here is, in the final analysis, no direct chain of command from the government to units of [private contractors].”115 Fundamentally, corporations are not subject to the same kind of electoral accountability as governments, because while “public accountability is shared . . . market accountability is sold.”116 While a PMC may be accountable in the sense that it must generate a profit in order to remain a viable corporation, a democratic government is held accountable in more complex and effective ways.

COVERT NATURE OF PMSCs DESIGNED TO SKIRT POPULAR OPPOSITION James DeFronzo, (Professor Emeritus, Sociology, U. Connecticut), THE IRAQ WAR: ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES, 2010, 238. Another PMF function is carrying out covert, semicovert, or other missions in which the use of uniformed US troops might constitute a political provocation. For example, Scahill describes how the Pentagon hired the PMF Blackwater to train an elite Azeri force to help protect American oil interests in Azerbaijan because using US troops might cause a hostile reaction from either neighboring Russia or Iran. Still another argument for PMFs is that through their elevated pay levels they constitute a mechanism for maintaining the skill levels of highly and expensively trained special operations or technical military personnel who might otherwise lose their proficiencies when they leave government military service and no longer be competent when their skills are needed. PMFs also theoretically reduce individual nations' military budgets by allowing them to downsize their armed forces with the knowledge that they can access a ready pool of military specialists to supplement their standing forces when temporary needs arise. Planet Debate 28 PMCs – Sherry Hall Undermining Democracy Makes PMSCs Unethical

PMSCs UNETHICAL BECAUSE THEY UNDERMINE CITIZEN OBLIGATIONS TO THE STATE Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 18 The second ethical objection to the use of private force centers around the idea that there is something morally important about the citizens’ military contribution to the state. The military relationship between the citizen and the state, according to this argument, results in restraint over the use of force and the reach of the state. A citizen army restrains the state by making it more difficult for the state to engage in war, and specifically more difficult for the state to use the armed forces to quash rebellion among its citizens. Hiring mercenaries disrupts this relationship, because the state will be far less restrained by public opinion in the decision to fight wars if its soldiers are foreign, and in case of rebellion will not need to worry about sympathy preventing soldiers from crushing citizens from the same community. Moreover, the citizen’s military duty to the state is a moral one, and mercenaries weaken the community’s moral fiber by performing the citizen’s duty.

HIRING MERCENARIES MAKES ALL CITIZENS MORALLY WEAKER Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 18-9 The origin of this objection can be traced at least as far back as Machiavelli and his contemporaries. Niccolo Machiavelli argued that the citizen owed a special, and irreplaceable, duty to the state. He writes that ‘the republic is the common good; the citizen, directing all his actions toward that good, may be said to dedicate his life to the republic; the patriot warrior dedicates his death.” Machiavelli’s concerns about the mercenary use revolve around a deep-seated feeling that native sons should fight for the republic, to ensure its health and success at war. The republic drew strength from the military service of its citizens. Hiring foreigners to fight thus diminished the strength of the republic. Humanists during the Italian renaissance argued that hiring mercenaries would undermine the moral safety of the republic. The decision to hire mercenaries instead of relying on citizens would mean that: “ The citizens would be corrupted because the permitted inferiors to do for them what should be done for the public good; the mercenaries would be agents of that corruption because they performed a public function without regard for the public good; and any ambitious individual could set himself above the republic and destroy it, by bringing the unthinking mercenaries to do for him what should only be done for the republic.” In other words, citizens would be morally weaker because of the decision to hire mercenaries, because mercenaries could not care for the republic in the same way as citizens. The republic would also run the risk of becoming dominated by a tyrant, because foreign mercenaries would be more willing to serve the interests of the tyrant rather than serve the public good.

RELIANCE ON MERCENARIES DEMONSTRATES MORAL BANKRUPTCY OF THE WAR Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 19-20 The ideal army, recruited from and at one with the people, would prevent tyranny. Mercenaries, because they fight only for their employers rather than for the community at large, will find it easy to subjugate citizens. Citizen soldiers, on the other hand, with a strong conception of the public good, would be less prone to “blind obedience” and more likely to disobey if the public good were threatened. Louis de Jaucourt, one of the contributors to the Encyclopedie, also worried that mercenaries would lead to despotism. Americans during the Revolution also took the position that the use of mercenaries led to tyranny. Indeed, the revolutionaries believed that England’s use of German mercenaries known as Hessians indicated its decline into despotism, and demonstrated the moral bankruptcy of the English cause. The Declaration of Independence highlighted King George III’s use of mercenaries as one of the prime grievances of the newly declared republic against its monarchical progenitor: “He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign Mercenaries, to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.” Planet Debate 29 PMCs – Sherry Hall Undermining Democracy Makes PMSCs Unethical

RELIANCE ON PMSCs UNDERMINE CITIZENS’ DUTY TO THE STATE Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 21-2 Another way of looking at the same problem is to argue that PMCs simply erode the citizen’s duty to the state, which is important for a democracy. The fact that PMCs might not display loyalty to the community left the writers of a Green Paper, ordered by the British government to examine PMCs, “uneasy”: “To encourage such activity seems contrary both to our values and to the way in which we order society. In a democracy it seems natural that the state should be defended by its own citizens since it is their state. And it is not an accident that the business of fighting for money often brings in unattractive characters.

MORAL OBJECTIONS APPLY TO ALL CATEGORIES OF PRIVATE FIGHTERS INCLUDING PMSCs Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 22 Discussing moral objections to the use of private force reveals that while private actors that use force might do very different jobs, and at first appear dissimilar, some moral objections apply to all types of private fighter. All the variants of private force outlined in this chapter have the potential to upset the relationship between the state and the citizen, and could make it easier for the state to use force become tyrannical, or sustain an unpopular war. It is important to note here that this criticism relates to the state as much as it does to the private fighter. The state that decides to privatize aspects of the use of force is more morally responsible for the disruption of democratic control over the use of fore than the private actor it hires. PMCs would not exist unless there was a demand for their services, and responsibility thus lies with the state. That said, the persistence of this objection to private force and its applicability to all types of private force helps explain why they mercenary label has been hard for the industry to shake off. Private fighters of all kinds are linked because they are subject to the same criticism; that they disrupt the military relationship between the citizen and the state. Planet Debate 30 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Increase Terrorism

THE UNACCOUNTABILITY OF PRIVATE MILITARIES MAKES THEM DETRIMENTAL TO THE WAR ON TERROR Sampson ’04 , (Anthony, “MERCENARIES ARE UNACCOUNTABLE - WHICH IS WHY GOVERNMENTS LIKE TO EMPLOY THEM; PARTS OF THE WORLD ARE LOOKING LIKE 14TH-CENTURY EUROPE, WHEN KINGS,” The Independent, First Edition; COMMENT; Pg. 39, 8-14-04) The rise of private armies has its own obvious logic in a privatised world, where national armies are increasingly undermanned and under growing pressure, and business corporations are setting the pace. And Jack Straw, back in 2002, officially endorsed the "outsourcing" of some military tasks to private companies. But the hazards are now much more apparent. Many private companies have shown themselves unaccountable to any government, while many mercenaries include men who owe no allegiance to any country, or to any recognised laws. Their unaccountability may be their main attraction to their clients, but it threatens to undermine the basic discipline on which real peacekeeping depends. When major governments surrender their monopoly of force to mercenaries, in countries where law and order are fragile, they are introducing a new danger to the "war on terrorism". They may see themselves as fighting "unlawful combatants" - as the Americans define the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. But they are recruiting their own unlawful combatants to the struggle, and threatening to extend the areas of chaos which provide the seedbeds of terrorism. Planet Debate 31 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Increase Terrorism

CONTRACTORS PREVENT U.S. FROM DEFEATING TERRORISTS THROUGH COIN- CONTRACTORS LEAD TO IRAQI DISAPPROVAL, AND INCREASED COSTS Singer 7 [ Peter, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, “Security for a New Century: Study Group Report” http://www.stimson.org/newcentury/pdf/111907PeterSinger.pdf /hnasser] Security for a New Century was honored to host Peter Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution and author of Corporate Warriors, for a discussion of private military contractors and their role in Iraq and future conflicts. Private military contractors (PMCs) are private firms (and their employees) that meet all of the following characteristics: they carry out a traditionally military task, using military techniques and technology, in the context of a war, against a combatant. A bodyguard for a celebrity, even in a war zone, is not technically a PMC. Many PMCs are military support firms, in a role parallel to supply chain logistics. Other roles often undertaken by contractors include military consulting or training and, most recently in the headlines, armed security. These socalled “private security” companies perform tactical functions such as guarding facilities and bases, guarding key individuals, and convoy escort. In Iraq, the size and scope of the PMC contingent is unprecedented. There are at least 160,000 PMCs, although that number only includes those associated with the Department of Defense, not those contracted by other agencies such as the Department of State. Camp Doha in Kuwait, the launching pad of the invasion of Iraq, was built, is operated, and continues to be guarded by PMCs. This presence has largely been shielded from public view, however. While troop casualties are reported widely in the media, contractor casualties rarely receive the same level of attention. Just over 1,000 PMCs have been killed, 13,000 wounded, and approximately 20 missing in action. One of the reasons more scrutiny of the rules governing PMCs is necessary is to protect the rights of PMC employees themselves. In Iraq, PMCs have been achieving critical mission goals, but their effect on the overall mission has been negative, for several reasons. Like a steroid, a ready supply of PMCs has allowed the U.S. military to lift weights it wouldn’t have been able to lift otherwise, enabling military commitments that might not receive the same level of support if soldiers were used instead. In effect, policymakers can avoid politically unpopular troop deployments by supplementing the force with PMCs much less visible to the American public. The ability to avoid difficult choices and political costs makes for bad policy decisions. Further, the “bigger is better,” Green Zone mentality with which PMCs approach their supply chain contacts can run contrary to the best approach for the overall mission. Contractors make more money when they provide more services, but more supply convoys serving larger stations with more people leave a bigger footprint in the occupied area, disconnecting troops from the local population. Turning these functions into for-profit endeavors has also cost taxpayers billions of dollars. A lack of oversight, mechanisms to drive down costs, and competition, aided by an outdated acquisitions system and a dearth of contract officers, has made the outsourcing process extremely inefficient. The Department of State, for its part, has lost the ability to see itself as a client and manager with regard to PMCs, as its effort to grant Blackwater employees immunity from prosecution demonstrates. Winning hearts and minds, moreover, is not part of the contract. PMCs are judged by their ability to get people or supplies from point A to point B, not how many people they steer away from the insurgency on the way. And although PMCs are not U.S. government personnel, their involvement in episodes such as the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse and the Blackwater shootings that killed Iraqi civilians in the fall of 2007 has soured the perception of U.S. efforts in Iraq because many Iraqis do not distinguish between soldiers and armed contractors. Within a broader context, where Iraq is one theater in a global war on terrorism, the perception of contractors as extensions of the U.S. government is an impediment to U.S. efforts to win the “war of ideas” against potential terrorists and insurgents. That PMCs seem to exist outside any legal jurisdiction compounds the problem further and contributes to a perception of a U.S. double standard with regard to Iraqis. At an individual level, PMCs might fall under the jurisdiction of local laws, extra-territorial application of civilian law (the Military Extra- territorial Jurisdiction Act or MEJA), or the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). None of these have been systematically applied. MEJA is generally not useful for prosecuting battlefield conduct because of the need to produce the political will, evidence, and witnesses for a trial in the U.S., as well as convince a jury to favor a foreigner over a U.S. soldier. (It does work well in cases with American victims and a clear parallel to civilian cases.) UCMJ applies military law to civilians during times of declared war as well as, since Fall 2006, contingency operations, but the Department of Defense has yet to provide implementation guidance. Additionally, two days before it dissolved itself, the Coalition Provisional Authority issued Order 17, which can be interpreted as giving foreign contractors immunity from Iraqi law. And while Iraqi licenses are required of firms contracted by DoD, the State Department does not have the same rule, meaning State allowed Blackwater to guard its staff even though the firm had no license in Iraq. Blackwater and similar firms appear to be above the law even as the State Department tries to promote the rule of law in Iraq. Planet Debate 32 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Increase Terrorism

IRAQI CIVILIANS ARE THE KEY INTERNAL LINK TO SOLVING FOR TERRORISM- WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS IS THE GREATEST TOOL FOR COUNTERING INSURGENCY IN IRAQ Miles 6[ Donna, writer for the American Forces Press Service “Combat Leaders Cite Relationship Building as Key to Victory” Department of Defense http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx? id=1549 /hnasser] “ Winning hearts and minds” is more than a cliche; it’s the critical factor that ultimately will determine victory or defeat in the global war on terror, Army leaders said yesterday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual convention here. Commanders returned from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan reinforced the importance of building relationships with and support from the local population. “The center of gravity is the support of the people,” said Army Lt. Col. Chris Cavoli, who commanded the 10th Mountain Division’s 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry, in northeastern Afghanistan. Cavoli cited the major difference between traditional warfare and the current operations under way in the Middle East. “In a regular, conventional war, military forces are committed to annihilating each other,” he said. But as U.S. forces work alongside their coalition and host-nation counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan, “everything we do is an arrangement designed to make people closer to the government … (and) to connect the people to the government.” Accomplishing that requires that the local people believe the coalition is acting in their best interest and cares about them and their future, the officers agreed. That begins with creating a secure environment, they said. Army Lt. Col. Chris Hickey, who commanded 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, in Tal Afar, Iraq, called security critical, not just to building support for the new national government, but for helping the coalition. “Security has cascading effects,” he said. “When people feel safe, they give you information.” When it comes to identifying and capturing or killing insurgents who hide among the local people, “Knowledge is often more important than firepower,” Cavoli said. Fighting insurgents and helping a new government get off the ground is a bit like walking a tightrope, the officers said. It requires force, but not too much force. “It’s critical to avoid overreacting,” Cavoli said. “You have to know to use one bullet when one bullet is needed.” Similarly, the officers said, it takes a balance between fighting the insurgency and taking on missions that build the country and its government. Army Lt. Col. Willard Burleson, who commanded the 10th Mountain Division’s 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry, in western Baghdad, cited the importance of infrastructure improvements that demonstrate the coalition’s concern for the people’s well-being. These projects can be as major as long-term electricity and sewage projects or as simple as sending U.S. troops to work alongside Iraqi soldiers to pick up trash in off the streets, he said. “These are important parts of what we do,” Burleson said. As troops conduct these missions, they come to recognize that victory “is not just about the attack,” he said. “It’s the effects.” Cavoli emphasized the importance of cultural sensitivity as troops build relationships with local people. “The way we do what we do is as important as what we do,” he said. Defeating the insurgency requires “persistent contact with the population” and behavior that projects strength and inspires trust in the locals, he said. “Relationships matter,” agreed Hickey. “You have to build trust. Mutual respect is a combat multiplier.” Ultimately, success in the war on terror will boil down to how well U.S. and coalition forces build the relationships needed to weed out terrorists and build Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s new democracies, the officers said. “Being able to treat a populous with dignity and respect is critical to getting things done,” Burleson said. Planet Debate 33 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Increase Terrorism

LAWLESSNESS OF PMC PRESENCE IN IRAQ UNDERMINES U.S. COIN EFFORTS Elsea, 10 [Jennifer, Legislative Attorney @ Congressional Research Service, “Private Security Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan: Legal Issues”, 1/7, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40991.pdf]/galperin U.S. departments and agencies contributing to combat or stability operations overseas are relying on private firms to perform a wider scope of security services than was previously the case. The use of private security contractors (PSCs) to protect personnel and property in Iraq and Afghanistan has been a subject of debate in the press, in Congress, and in the international community. While PSCs are widely viewed as being vital to U.S. efforts in the region, many Members are concerned about transparency, accountability, and legal and symbolic issues raised by the use of armed civilians to perform security tasks formerly performed by military personnel, as well as the adverse impact PSCs may be having on U.S. counterinsurgency efforts. Contractors working for the U.S. military, the State Department, or other government agencies during contingency operation in Iraq and Afghanistan are non- combatants who have no combat immunity under international law if they engage in hostilities, and whose conduct may be attributable to the United States. Contractors who commit crimes in Iraq or Afghanistan are subject to U.S. prosecution under criminal statutes that apply extraterritorially or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or by means of the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA). Section 552 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for FY2007 (P.L. 109-364) makes military contractors supporting the Armed Forces in Iraq subject to court-martial jurisdiction, although the military trial of a civilian contractor would likely be subject to legal challenge on constitutional grounds. Despite congressional efforts to expand court-martial jurisdiction and jurisdiction under MEJA, some contractors may remain outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, civil or military, for improper conduct in Iraq or Afghanistan. Planet Debate 34 PMCs – Sherry Hall

AT: “Can Regulate PMSCs”

REGULATING PMSCs VERY DIFFICULT Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 34 Looking at the organizational nature of PMSCs, it is clear that their own authority structures bear little resemblance to the formal vertical hierarchy of the traditional military. These firms are classic “informal organizations,” with fragmented and fluid structures of governance, and they pose a genuine problem for regulators of the industry. Christopher Kinsey has examined multiple PMSCs in the UK and calls the typical organizational structure a “loosely coupled organic network.” These organizations have a very different relationship to law than that of a strict hierarchical organization: “In the ‘quasi-government’ of these hybrid organizations management can do whatever is not forbidden to do by law, thus providing the basis for innovation and partnerships. Accountability will be for performance; however it may be defined and measured, rather than to strict conformance to law.” (Kosar 2007). Andrew Bearpark, who heads the British Association of Private Security Contractors, noted that any effective self-regulatory body needed to be local, limiting its members to only those based in the same state, “so that w can check up on guys within three phone calls.” The effective regulations would form a “matrix” of regulatory bodies and rules, thereby almost mimicking the horizontally integrated models of the networked and informal organizations being regulated.

DIFFICULT TO ENSURE ADEQUATE REGULATION AND OVERSIGHT OF PMSCs IN THE TYPES OF ENVIRONMENTS THEY OPERATE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 143 Frost’s idea of an anarchic ethic is not what Jowitt would see in a “frontier” organization. His citizens, who see themselves as confident bearers of human and political rights, are much more stable than those whose weak ties and casual use of violence mark Jowitt’s frontier society. His description of an anarchic ethic should not be confused with the violence of a complete lack of rules or principles. His anarchy is multi-faceted, and polymorphous, and protean, but ultimately all about the assertion and protection of rights on many fronts. In fact, Frost is careful to point out that this ethical defense of PMSCs is one that requires a coherent set of legal and ethical principles to which they can be held account by a public composed of equal “rights bearers.” PMSCs are not ethically problematic as long as the world is not divided into zones. His is an ideal defense of PMSCs that sees them as one type of international business among many others, with equal rights to operate as long as they abide by the norms and practices of their home state. And he claims that all states, as states, share normative values – or at least they should. By the end of his essay, however, Frost admits that this ideal vision breaks down in war zones: “The key to preventing [the ethically noxious] outcomes [of PMSCs] is regulation by public bodies. Within stable democratic states, this kind of regulation is relatively easy. However, within some unstable and dangerous territories beyond the borders of one’s own state, greater problems are encountered in attempting to monitor and regulate the activities of PMSCs.” (Frost, 2008) This admission is a telling one. Since most PMSCs do not operate in such zones, but instead in frontier settings wherein it is harder to recognize the fundamental rights of others, then the attempt to apply a code of ethics that reflects the more cosmopolitan world from which Frost speaks will merely paper over problems. A similar clash of cultures occurs when human rights activists advocate regulation to those who have been unleashed to be proxy forces on a frontier zone of sorts. Planet Debate 35 PMCs – Sherry Hall

AT: “Can Regulate PMSCs”

REGULATIONS FAIL BECAUSE THEY LACK A COHERENT LEGAL INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ENFORCEMENT Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 103-4 What unnerves us about the advent of the private military industry is the lack of coherence in the legal regime. This stems from the nature of contracts: specifically negotiated and usually short-term and informal relationships. There may be benefits to these contractual arrangements, even on the battlefield, but they remain a perplexing way to construct what is essentially a new legal person. The legal world of contract law does not contain in it a broad notion of “responsibility” or “honor,” or even those grand-sounding but important references to “humanity” or “civilized peoples.” And currently these ad hoc relationships do not have any coherent and mobile legal infrastructure – lawyers, judges, courts-martial proceedings, etc. – to deal with abuse. Laws on the books mean nothing without a legal infrastructure willing to investigate and prosecute crimes and fraud. In this case, the problems have been magnified by the collision of the three distinct legal genealogies, with three distinct legal personals: first, a business contractor, governed by contract regulation; second, a security guard, distinct from the military soldier but with some of his rights and responsibilities; and third, a civilian non-governmental worker, unconnected to any US government agency, working in conflict zones. So far, attempts to force PMSCs into any one box have been unsuccessful.

INCREASED OVERSIGHT COUNTERPRODUCTIVE AND UNDERMINES THE EFFICIENCY ADVANTAGES OF PMSCs Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 138 In response to the argument that PMSCs are a necessary (if dirty) choice, the remedy for their potential to operate too violently must be more effective oversight. But here another ethical problem emerges: the problem of diffused responsibility, or “many hands.’ When too many regulatory eyes are charged with the job of oversight, responsibility can be so diffused as to be ineffective. This is most often merely a problem of organizational inefficiency, with no ethical dimension to it at all. However, complex oversight mechanisms become an ethical problem when they result in inaction. Each oversight organization can “pass the buck” to some other agency until the problem disappears. Agencies can lose control of a problem when there are too many hands involved in the process. Oversight involving too many hands can become bureaucratically cumbersome and authoritatively weak. One of the apparent advantages of contractors is that they are nimble and cost-effective; but realistically, the cumbersomeness and cost of their oversight ought to be factored into the calculation of their cost and efficacy, it rarely is. The problem of many hands includes the problem of sluggishness: issues can linger in bureaucratic or legal slow lanes while demands on the ground shift, and actions again become virtually unregulated. Finally, the “many hands problem” is exacerbated by the “slipperiness” of the hands involved: the classic principal-agent problem of an agent continually trying to maximize profit and for minimum performance, or principals trying to shirk their own obligations and not pay. The case of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan has only underscored this accusation. The problem of many slippery hands characterizes the problem of contracting and sub-contracting among several government agencies, in the midst of a confusing array of entities on the round in Iraq, and hiring many types to do the work. But in order to exercise control, there has to be someone who can command, in the world of contracting, there are too many hands involved for any effective command. Planet Debate 36 PMCs – Sherry Hall

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SWISS INITIATIVE FAILS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 105-6 In October 2008, a document concerning PMSCs was forwarded to the UN Secretary General from the Swiss Representative sponsored by the government of Switzerland and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The “Montreux Document” (sometimes referred to as the “Swiss Initiative”) is the result of two years of meetings and negotiations between state representatives from 17 countries, PMSC industry members, NGO officials, journalists and academics. The long-awaited document reminds states of their obligations under existing international law, and lays out “best practices’ that could help to provide a framework for licensing and regulation. The overall goal is “to promote respect for international humanitarian law and human rights law” by those states who contract with PMSCs for services, those states on whose territory PMSCs operate, and those “home states” wherein PMSCs are based, or whose citizens work for them. The document is filled with good recommendations. One example directs that those who contract with PMSCs should require that the company “post a bond that would be forfeited in case of mis-conduct or non-compliance” with relevant international and national laws. However, although the document makes clear that the trend toward increasing use of PMSCs is worrisome, and pretty much unstoppable, its recommendations are soft-peddled as reminders and suggested, couched in the language of “best practices” that evokes corporate good governance or project management. It is suggested that sates ‘consider establishing corporate criminal responsibility for crimes committed by the PMSC, consistent with the Contracting State’s national legal system.” For territorial states, on whose soil PMSCs will be operating: “The following good practices aim to provide guidance…[the state should] evaluate whether their domestic legal framework is adequate to ensure that the conduct of PMSCs and their personnel is in conformity with relevant national law, international humanitarian law and human rights law, or whether it needs to establish further arrangements to regulate the activities of PMSCs.” (Swiss Government 2008). The problem with this suggestion is that most states that need to have PMSCs on their own territory need them precisely because they do not have a civil and legal infrastructure capable of monitoring and regulating the activities of armed contractors on their territory. Planet Debate 37 PMCs – Sherry Hall

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ETHICAL CODES OF BEHAVIOR DIFFICULT TO APPLY TO PMSCs IN WAR ZONES Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 151-2 Ethics are intimately connected – linguistically and in practice – with the idea of ethnicity, that celebration of one’s own community. Ethics is some sort of rule abiding behavior that has as its central concern, I would argue, the maintenance of a group standard or norm. Professional ethics and the like are primarily oriented back toward the need for the group identity to be as unsullied as possible: there may be concern for victims of abuse, but it is not the main focus of ethics. Even Aristotelian ethics are habits that have the primary benefit for those who practice them. The etymology of the world reveals this orientation towards one’s self, or one’s own. Private security contractors can be part of associations that help build up the professional contractor ethic. They can write and maintain codes of conduct, and can self-regulate based on such codes. They can, like other professional associations, monitor and evaluate each other for lapses of all sorts. And gradually, as is already happening, a certain ethos will build up around the firms and the contractors, with its own customs and allowable practices, its own excuses and allowable justifications. They can be called professionally ethical if they abide by these rules. And this is mostly the level at which the debate is taking place. PMSCs say give us rules; monitor us well (and we’ll monitor ourselves too); and we can be seen as legitimate professional forces in the field. But for social and political theorists, the twentieth century has exposed moral problems that go beyond the simple application of good ethics. The ethical uncertainty that can be found in the vague phrasings of codes of conduct (“we will at all times abide by human rights norms”) reveals a deeper uncertainty about the moral good. Here it is helpful to distinguish “ethics” from “morality,” a word that is often used synonymously. In contrast with the reflexive orientation of ethics, morality is oriented toward others, usually those outside of one’s own circle. How we should regard, or tolerate, or interact, or care for, others is the much bigger problem of moral behavior. In war zones, private contractors must have a professional ethic as employees of a firm, and as members of an emerging profession, but they must also, like soldiers, have an attitude toward those in and amongst whom they operate, and against whom their aggression can be directed. For the most part, the relationship between one person and another, where morality is concerned, involves a real asymmetry of power. Morality is required where one person ahs the power to do something to the other person, without any kind of immediate reciprocity. In a war zone, no one is asked to actually care about their potential victims. In the Balkans, the ICRC tried to deter war crimes by reminding militia members of a “warrior ethic” by putting out posters that said “warriors don’t rape women, warriors don’t kill children.” They reminded them of the group norm to which they belonged. But they did not ask them to care for their potential victims, to behave morally, as one to another. This is the hard part, and understanding the problems that crop up here at this level of behavior will require a detour into moral theory in the late twentieth century. Planet Debate 38 PMCs – Sherry Hall

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NATURE OF CONTRACT LAW MAKES REGULATING PMSCs DIFFICULT Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 130 Hypothetically, it should be possible to create a workable legal remedy to honor all of these commitments. In fact, however, the specific circumstances of the private military or security contractor, working in a war zone abroad, renders any such neat remedy impossible. The reason for this relates to the three primary questions asked above: the question of status, and what I would term the “time/space” problem – the question of jurisdiction (what space is this?) and the question of what kind of “time” it is – wartime or peacetime? Legal answers to these questions do not admit of hybrid or quasi-entities. In the language of the ICRC, in a war zone you are either a combatant or a non-combatant. It is either a time of war or a time of peace, and those who bear arms do so either lawfully or unlawfully, under the rules of war or not all. Contract law cannot cover the lawful use of force by a private employee in an international zone. Unlike domestic private security providers, who act within strict confines of a domestic policing order, and can only very rarely bear arms, private military contractors serving in Iraq or Afghanistan currently have no such overarching legal order, except the contract. This relationship to the legal structure is what makes them akin to privateers and mercenaries of old, rather than their specific actions motivations, or profiles on the ground. And it is the inability of the primary contracting entities – national governments – to find any workable legal status under which contractors can operate that makes it seem as if these seemingly lawless mercenary-like forces are intended to be that way.

DIFFERENT CONCEPTIONS OF SECURITY MAKE REGULATIONS DIFFICULT Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 134 The ethics of PMSCs are also formed by the ethics of private security guards in general. Here I employ research done on privatized policing by Clifford Shearing and others. In a recent study done for the Department of Justice, Shearing and Balyley contrasted the “mentality” of a private security force with that of a public police force (Shearing and Balyely 2001). In this case, Shearing’s research demonstrates that public and private forces have different ideas of what constitutes security—and, by extension, justice. It is necessary to understand these different mentalities before any workable normative judgments can be made about PMSCs; and especially before any workable legal or regulatory policies can be put in place.

CURRENT REGULATIONS FAIL BECAUSE THEY DON’T ACCOUNT FOR THE UNIQUE IDENTITY OF PMSCs Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 155 PMSCs are relatively unregulated forces on the ground, not because there is a dearth of specific regulations governing the work that they do, but because extant regulations are not yet calibrated to PMSCs in a way that identifies with clear legal structures to investigate and prosecute – a specific legal person or actor, with specific and workable rights and duties. Like terrorists, they are caught in a clash of legal cultures. The solution is either to create a new body of law that would specifically address these actors, or else to maneuver them firmly under existing legal personalities. Planet Debate 39 PMCs – Sherry Hall

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SELF REGULATION DOOMED TO FAIL Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 159 The current status quo represents the worst-case scenario. PMSCs are flourishing on all fronts; even Blackwater, under its strange new name, Xe, has just secured a renewed contract to guard State Department employees. Clearly confident, they recently hosted a tour group form a conservative Catholic college at their Moyock, North Carolina facilities. We are kidding ourselves if we believe that allowing many hands to regulate an already shady industry (one that is sometimes justified as a necessary dirty business) will ever result in any real reforms. Hearings can take place, shock can be expressed, calls for reform can be made, and changes will languish in order for business to continue as usual. There may be very good reasons for the world of PMSCs to have grown and flourished in the last decade. That growth might reasonably be allowed an experiment whose results we are not being called in to evaluate. As with other experiments with allowing the market to compete with the state for provision of essential services without lose public regulation, there is a need for assessment and reform. The status quo solution is tantamount to admitting that the abuses that have occurred are acceptable prices to pay in return for private profits and the governmental abdication of public responsibility.

LEGITIMACY OF GOVERNMENT NOT A WORKABLE LIMIT ON PMSCs Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 103 There is also a difference between state and corporate perceptions of legitimacy. Early in Colonel Spicer’s autobiography, the reader is struck by the frequency with which he describes the importance of PMC support for “legitimate” governments. On its face this is a proper enough intention. The difficulty lies in ascertaining the legitimacy of a government that may exercise authority over a limited part of a populace, territory, or borders. That government may in fact carry out few of those functions expected in the West. Moreover, it may do so with limited tolerance of dissent, while embracing say, patrilineal tribalism. It is not surprising that legitimacy as measured by functional or representative yardsticks is doubtful in weak states; or that claims to sovereignty are often violently disputed from within. On the other hand, Spicer refers in passing to the dictators of Africa, Asia and the Balkans and laments that the UN will not “take them on.” He champions a familiar view. The more skeptical reader will recall that some of the more odious dictators of recent times were in the past valued friends of those Western states with which Spicer’s business requires sound relations. Saddam Hussein and the USA spring to mind. In business – as elsewhere – timing is everything.

US DOES NOT APPLY LAWS TO ITS CONTRACTORS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 90 This shift has been supported by an American approach of deliberately limiting governance of the new corporate players in international military affairs just as home state governments did three centuries ago. Employees of DynCorp, CACI, TITAN and others have been implicated in torture, other forms of aggravated assault, sexual assault, bribery and various other nefarious acts. Yet the US government has evinced remarkably limited interest in developing effective legal means to draw those concerned and their US employers to account. Attempts to utilize existing law during the Iraq occupation have been less than vigorous. In other words, powerful governments of both the past and the present have found it expedient to keep some distance from the operations of companies where these firms exercise (or misuse) coercion or violence on their behalf. Greater importance has been attached to burden shifting than effective governance. Planet Debate 40 PMCs – Sherry Hall

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MANY PRACTICAL DIFFICULTIES WITH ENFORCING REGULATIONS AGAINST CONTRACTORS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 153 At the international level there are two problems: a dearth of customary norms regarding modern military contractors; and treaties which tend to be of marginal relevance or which are poorly drafted, or both. For example, the 1989 Mercenaries Convention does not even identify the modern PMSC or its personnel. Another problem is uncertainty regarding applicable criminal justice regimes applying to PMSCs and their servants engaged in operations on a battlefield or a peacekeeping zone. Consider the recognizable anatomy of criminal law enforcement. This requires identification of authorities competent to supply jurisdiction and suitable laws known to be effective. These empower investigative agencies with the authority to carry out necessary conduct exercised via sovereign, multi- national or supranational authority. Skilled personnel are required to attend crime scenes, speak with various parties, observe and collect forensic evidence in conformity with prescribed procedures. They may identify, detain and interview suspects in conditions which do not prejudice the collection and later use of evidence procured. Military investigators are trained to do this. It is difficult to see how civilians could carry out that function in a war zone, although this has been suggested. Planet Debate 41 PMCs – Sherry Hall

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STATE REGULATIONS ONLY LEGITIMATIZE PMCS- THIS DECREASES STATE CONTROL OF FORCE, AND THE LEGITIMACY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW Krahman 9 [Erik, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) 2009 “Private Security Companies and the State Monopoly on Violence: A Case of Norm Change?” http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/PRIF_Prvt_Security_and_The %20State_Monopoly_on_Violence.pdf /hnasser] In international relations, the state monopoly on the legitimate use of force has sought to outlaw the private use of armed force between the citizens of different countries. While its implementation was never as successful as at the national level, it became a guiding norm in the twentieth century, shaping the UN Charter, the international laws of conflict and the UN and African Union conventions against mercenarism. The potential consequences of the transformation of this norm for international security may be even more profound than at the domestic level because fewer attempts have been made to control the private use of armed force. The Montreux Document provides an illustration of the failure of states to respond to the transformation in the norms and practices regarding the international use of collective force by private security contractors. By reasserting existing international law, the document neglects the fact that these laws are based on the premise of the state monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and the primacy of interstate wars. Both no longer describe many contemporary conflicts with the result that large sections of the global private security industry and their operations are exempt from legislative controls at the international level. Since Western states have tightened the regulation of private security firms working within their domestic boundaries, the consequences of the proliferation of PSCs at the international level are likely to primarily concern so-called “areas of limited statehood”, where such legislation is missing or not effectively enforced. Countries split by internal conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan, but also weak states such as Sierra Leone fall into this category. The consequences of the increased availability and acceptance of private armed force in international affairs may be positive or negative. On the positive side, PSCs operating internationally can help to re-establish peace in countries with weak indigenous military or police forces, protect NGOs which seek to help people in conflict regions, and permit transnational corporations to invest and operate in areas of limited statehood. In addition, PSCs are playing a growing role in security sector reform programmes, i.e. in training national military and police forces in order to create the foundations for a functioning state monopoly on the legitimate use of violence in these countries in the first place (Krahmann 2007). Nevertheless, the benefits of using PSCs can be dubious. A clearer picture of the effects of legitimizing private armed forces in international affairs appears to be emerging in the light of the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One danger regards the proliferation of small arms and light weapons. Although scholars agree that PSCs are only one factor, the legitimization of private armed contractors can contribute to the small arms trade and related transfers (Makki et al. 2001; COST 2006). In most cases PSCs bring their own weapons with them to fulfil their contracts, in others they obtain them locally. In Afghanistan, only the government, foreign militaries and embassies are permitted to import weapons, but the lack of public security has created a huge demand for armed guards. According to Swisspeace (Joras/Schuster 2008: 14), this has created a major dilemma with the result that PSCs have variously hired local staff and “turn a blind eye to the source of their weapons”, or buy arms on the black market. The organization estimates that a private security guard in Afghanistan owns on average 3.5 weapons, suggesting that there could be about 43,750 small arms in the possession of PSCs in the country (Joras/Schuster 2008: 15). However, there have also been instances such as in Sierra Leone and Papua New Guinea where PSCs have acted as arms brokers. In Sierra Leone, this caused a major scandal because the exports circumvented a UN arms embargo and took place with the knowledge of the UK government. The consequences of the changing conception of legitimacy with regard to the private use of collective force can also be more severe at the international than at the domestic level. The most important consequence appears to be the challenge to the laws of war which have largely been based on the presumption of the state monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and attempts to outlaw mercenarism (Chesterman/Lehnardt 2007). Although international humanitarian law includes detailed stipulations for contractors accompanying state militaries as well as for non-state combatants, these are often inapplicable for three reasons. First, PSCs typically operate in areas where there is no declared war, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq today. Second, many PSCs work for private organizations, businesses or individuals and not for national armed forces. Third, PSCs do not engage, or at least claim not to engage, in offensive military action and it is therefore not clear whether they are “combatants” who “take part in hostilities”. In the absence of applicable international laws, the regulation of PSCs by their home states, i.e. the states where a PSC is registered, or the states where a PSC is operating, is particularly important. However, only the USA and South Africa have laws which control the export of private security services abroad, and the countries where PSCs are deployed often lack the capabilities to enforce local laws on private security contractors. Planet Debate 42 PMCs – Sherry Hall

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ACCOUNTABILITY ONLY LEGITIMIZES PSC USE OF FORCE- THIS UNDERMINES INTERNATIONAL LAW FURTHER Krahman 9 [Erik, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) 2009 “Private Security Companies and the State Monopoly on Violence: A Case of Norm Change?” http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/PRIF_Prvt_Security_and_The %20State_Monopoly_on_Violence.pdf /hnasser] In addition to their weak legal legitimacy, the international use of private armed force can also inhibit the political accountability of PSCs. As at the domestic level, the main cause of this problem is the primary accountability of PSCs to their clients and shareholders and not to the people who are otherwise affected by their actions. In international affairs, the difficulties of holding private security guards politically accountable can be exacerbated if the contracting parties are not based or living in the country of operation. Foreign intervention forces often have status of armed forces agreements which exempt their soldiers and private contractors from local political and legal accountability. This creates the impression with local populations that criminals are being “whisked away”.26 As a Kabul-based journalist reports, this “rankles an Afghan population with no means of pursuing justice”.27 In short, while PSCs have at least legal legitimacy in Europe and North America, in international affairs their perceived legitimacy is neither legal nor political. It is rather practical considerations that legitimize the private use of violence. The main arguments put forward for the legitimacy of the use of armed force by PSCs in zones of conflict or limited statehood are the failure of local governments or the international community of states to ensure public security, forcing individuals to resort to self-defence with the assistance of armed security guards. Finally, the private use of armed force can affect the contexts and purposes for which violence is deployed in international affairs. In contrast to states which are only permitted to deploy military force either against or in other states in exceptional circumstances such as self-defence, the protection of international peace and to prevent genocide, private actors can hire and use international PSCs across national borders without any other restrictions than the ability of the host states to regulate and control their operations. As a consequence, NGOs and transnational corporations have become less dependent upon local governments or Western militaries for protection in zones of conflict or areas of limited statehood. Within these regions, NGOs and transnational corporations can use private protection to implement their own agendas or interests. In the NGO community, this has facilitated a merging of the development and security agendas (Duffield 2001). With the support of PSCs, NGOs are able to take more “proactive” stances towards providing aid in conflict regions. Instead of relying exclusively on local acceptance and support for their role in areas where violence is commonplace, NGOs have moved towards deterrence and protection by means of private security guards (Spearin 2006: 235). Nearly one third of NGOs use armed security guards today (Buchanan/Muggah 2005: 9). The hiring of PSCs has been even more widely accepted among transnational corporations. Extractive companies in the oil and mining sectors, in particular, rely extensively on private security to protect their installations in countries such as Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone and Iraq. Despite the emergence of the concept of corporate social responsibility, the contexts and purposes for which private guards are employed in these countries have not (yet) evolved to significantly benefit the larger community (Feil et al. 2008: 29). In some cases, PSCs and transnational corporations collaborate with and support corrupt national police forces, as in Nigeria. In other countries, they install themselves as an independent police force competing with local agencies, like in Afghanistan where citizens feel harassed by private security guards who set up road blocks, search pedestrians and “interfere with the lives of everybody” (Joras/Schuster 2008: 27). In sum, even where the clients of PSCs seek to benefit their host country, the interests and security of the customer remain the primary goal of private security guards. Planet Debate 43 PMCs – Sherry Hall

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CALLS FOR REGULATION ARE INADEQUATE- THE ISSUE OF LINKING PROFITS TO WAR IS ONLY SOLVED THROUGH WITHDRAWAL The Nation 7[ “End of the Shadow War” October 15 /hnasser ] http://web.ebscohost.com.go.libproxy.wfubmc.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer? vid=1&hid=6&sid=978fa706-c457-4de6-ab67-1218b8756479%40sessionmgr14 Some members of Congress have proposed steps to rein in the cowboy contractors roaming Iraq. Senator Barack Obama introduced legislation earlier this year that would require clear rules of en gagement for armed contractors, expand the military code of justice to govern their actions and provide for the Defense Department to “arrest and detain” contractors suspected of crimes and turn them over to civilian authorities for prosecution. Such changes are essential if private contractors are to continue to play a role in US military operations overseas. But calls for greater regulation and oversight miss the larger issue. As The Nation’s Scahill said in his testimony before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee on September 21, “In the bigger picture, this body should seriously question whether the linking of corporate profits to war- making is in the best interest of this nation and the world.” Some in Congress are finally beginning to ask that question. Democratic Senators Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill have proposed legislation creating a Commission on Wartime Contracting modeled after the Truman committee, which investigated waste and fraud during World War II. “We now have more contractors on the ground in Iraq than we do American troops. This situation is unprecedented in our history and is fraught with legal challenge,” said Webb. “Hundreds of billions of dollars have been appropriated and spent in Iraq alone, resulting in billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse.” Blackwater should answer for the crimes of its soldiers in Iraq. But it shouldn’t have soldiers in Iraq. Calls for withdrawal must include troops like those who fired on the fleeing crowds in Nisour Square.

REGULATION CAN’T SOLVE MORAL OBJECTIONS ABOUT THE STATUS OF CONTRTACTORS Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 23 All the moral objections (and, indeed, some of the practical objections not outlined here) to private force can be further divided into objections about the status of private actors that use force and the activities of these actors. Objections that focus on the actions of the private military industry, like the objection that a private actor might be more likely to commit human rights abuses or lacks accountability, might be met or at least diminished with regulation that is designed to control actions. On the other hand, objections that stem from the status of the private military industry, based around the idea that the private use of force is morally inappropriate, cannot be met by regulation as easily. These objections are fundamental; they are not objections to what private fighters do, but an objection to what private fighters are: individuals or groups that exchange military services for financial gain. Analyzing moral objections is thus crucially important in understanding the potential for regulation of the private military industry. Objections about activities might be met through regulation; the objection that private fighters do not kill for an appropriate cause can be met by changes in practice; but the objection that private force undermines the appropriate relationship between citizen and state is not so easily overcome.

MANY PROBLEMS WITH REGULATING PMSCs Chia Lehnardt, NYU School of Law - Researcher, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 156 Of course, shifting conceptual boundaries will not render international law a sufficient tool to regulate the use and conduct of PMCs. The enforcement problems of international law are well known. PMCs thrive in weak and failing states which have little bargaining power and are unlikely to be in a position to monitor and restrict PMC conduct, or to enforce the responsibility of another hiring state. Even where states are willing and in principle able to monitor the activities of PMCs, the private nature of PMCs provides them with means of protection from scrutiny not available to public actors, such as arguments of privacy and client confidentiality. Issues of extraterritorial jurisdiction compound the problem. Planet Debate 44 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “Contract Law Holds PMSCs Accountable”

CONTRACT LAW INADEQUATE TO REGULATE ACTIONS OF PMSCs Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 129 Here is where the interesting quandary appears. According to recent research, even though contracts are made within an almost hyper-legal setting, legal remedies are rarely used; instead, the relationship is merely broken off. The market takes care of faulty contracts by punishing those who consistently fall short of expectations. “On the one hand, most political, economic, and social theory suggests that in the market economy the law of contract comprises a fundamental mechanism of social order. Lawyers…in their emphasis on the fundamental of the law of contract within the legal system, hold that this legal regulation provides the crucial element in sustaining the social system. On the other hand, evidence from empirical studies of contractual behavior indicates the marginal and sometimes socially disintegrative effects of the law of contract . Consumers who purchase defective products almost never vindicate their legal rights in the courts.” (Collins 1999). Applying the legal regime of contract law to constrain the behavior of private military companies, we are struck by two facts. First, the actual regulations that apply to military contractors and firms are diffuse, and confusing. They do not contribute to the creation of a comprehensible legal identity for any of the actors. Planet Debate 45 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “Are Subject to US Legal Control”

PMSC POSSESSION OF PROHIBITED WEAPONS PROVES THAT THE US GOVERNMENT CONTROL OVER THEM IS INADEQUATE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 167 One recent problem has been the indeterminacy of weaponry employed in certain armed PMSC operations. The matter is not one resolved through reliance on corporate adherence to states’ requirements consistent with international agreements and norms. Company personnel working for US-based PMSCs face lethal risks in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. They may not consider it in their interests to eschew what Steve Fainaru of The Washington Post Foreign Service described as “prohibited” weapons. In his example, “Crescent Security” personnel at Tallil air base in Iraq were found in possession of fragmentation grenades and anti-armor weapons. This matters because the US military has proscribed company possession of these weapons, yet the firm’s employees saw fit to procure and possess them with the intention to use them in the hazardous circumstances of their employment. This was the case in spite of the fact that the US government is at least as modern as most others and its armed forces are probably no less effective in administration and enforcement where this role falls to them. To company staff the possession of this hardware may have appeared prudent and sensible in their violent situation. They may even have been correct. But the larger point is not that the company personnel may have breached various contractual and legal obligations. The significance is twofold: first, the opinion of corporate agents regarding suitable weapons differed from the view held by representatives of their principal (that is, agencies of the US government); and second, company employees were prepared to act upon this conviction. This is a classical variant of a principal/agent control dilemma, where the parties’ intentions differ notwithstanding the precision with which their contract is drawn. This would not occur (or would be a different type of problem) if company tasks had been carried out b y the US military or State Department. Planet Debate 46 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Like Mercenaries

PMSCs SHARE MANY DANGEROUS AND NEGATIVE TRAITS WITH MERCENARIES Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 12-3 To those who express confusion about what private military and security contractors are, there is a ready answer: they are merely modern versions of the age-old mercenary fighter, a throwback to the day of mercenaries and pirates, private actors wielding deadly force as proxies for governments and corporations. This negative characterization is one that PMSCs have been unable to shake. Two related criticisms have always dogged mercenaries: lack of discipline and lack of reliability. At least since the beginning of the modern state system, every description of them refers to their general untrustworthiness and risk aversion. Frederick the Great, in the eighteenth century, claimed that contracted mercenary forces possessed “neither courage, nor loyalty, nor group spirit, nor sacrifice, nor self-reliance.” Clausewitz noted that the contracted forces he observed were “an expensive and therefore small military force. Even smaller was their fighting valued: extremes of energy or exertion were conspicuous by their absence and fighting was generally a sham” (Clausewitz 1976). PMSCs garner the same criticism. Any attempt to legitimize the business has been met with the suspicion that security contractors or the firms they work for are ineffective, untrustworthy, undisciplined, disloyal, corrupt, and generally renegade. We hear about the “cowboy” attitude of security contractors, endangering regular military forces with their bravado, or we hear of contractors underperforming – doing an incomplete or substandard job, and then running away with the money. There is good evidence that these claims are often exaggerated, and historical examples of organized mercenary groups have often belied this criticism. Certainly, regular troops also shirk and mutiny and underperform. But in comparison to regular, state-based militaries, who can be ordered into combat under highly policed command-and-control structures security contractors most often seem like just a trumped-up version of their mercenary cousins: as both a risk to operational control and risk- averse. Nothing captures this tension like the ongoing debate about the use of the “M” word.

CRITICISMS OF MERCENARIES APPLICABLE TO PMSCs IN IRAQ Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 40 Yet the adventures of two generations ago would be out of place in the corporatized private military and security companies of today. This is not to deny that one might reasonably oppose some mercenaries as a matter of principle. Those employed several decades ago against indigenous groups by colonialists or neo-colonialists are one example. Infamous and ultimately unsuccessful units of mixed competence notoriously fought in the Congo and elsewhere in Africa during the 1960s. Opposing that kind of violence and those who engaged in it has seemed ethical to anti-colonialists in particular. More recently, paramilitary PMSCs in Iraq have engaged in excessive violence in the absence of a functional criminal justice regime. To oppose their deployment in the absence of proper criminal restraint is another reasonable view.

PRIVATE MILITARY CORPORATIONS ARE CORPORATE ENTITIES THAT ORGANIZE MERCENARY FORCES Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 89-90 Before examining the benefits and risks of private security companies, it is important to first define and differentiate between private military companies (PMCs) and private security companies (PSCs). This distinction is essential to an assessment of the role of the UN and other multilateral agencies play in addressing problems which require both political neutrality and the application of military force. Abdel-Fatuau Musah, of the Center for Democracy and Development in London and a long-time student of private military and security groups in Africa, defines PMCs as follows: “Private Military Companies are corporate entities comprising military and intelligence entrepreneurs whose activities include but are not co-extensive with: organizing mercenaries into temporary armies for combat operations in foreign conflicts on behalf of a party to the said conflict; procuring war material and logistics; providing military training and advice and acting as force multipliers to clients’ armies; intelligence gathering on behalf of the client state/party to conflict and or foreign states; and guarding installations and providing VIP escort. PMCs usually pay cash to their personnel and receive payment both in the form of cash and in kind typically in the form of mineral concessions from their clients. Gurkha Security Guards, Sandline International, and the now defunct Executive Outcomes are examples of PMCs.” Planet Debate 47 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs are Private Armies

BLACKWATER IS A PRIVATE ARMY WITH HIGH TECH MILITARY WEAPONS AND SUPPLIES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 3 Eric Prince is the well-known proprietor and recently departed chief executive of ‘Blackwater’, a PMSC having a brief history of operational effectiveness colored by multiple criminal justice issues. His past employees or contractors today face allegations of multiple manslaughter, firearms trafficking and murder while associated with his company. US Congressional and Senate opponents tend to portray Prince as a ruthless war profiteer. He has certainly secured rapid and spectacular profits from the US treasury in a controversial fashion. Aside from these matters his firm is noteworthy for other reasons. The company draws on probably unequalled industry resources in a range of logistic and paramilitary capabilities. For example, Blackwater possesses light fixed wing transport and at least one propeller-driven ground attack aircraft; several helicopters and a sizable anti-piracy ship; company designed and manufactured armored personnel carriers and dirigibles – the latter created for surveillance purposes. Equally important is access to a formidable range of military expertise which can be deployed to carry out a range of tasks or to train others, either in the US or elsewhere. Planet Debate 48 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive

PMSC CULTURE FUNDAMENTALLY DISTINCT FROM THE SOLDIER – PROFIT MOTIVE AND PUBLIC INTEREST DO NOT ALIGN Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 31-2 When industry members make this claim, they are arguing that the profession of the soldier is not dependent on actual current attachment to a military; it is a way of live that extends beyond active service. But, while it may be true that the public values of the professional soldier may outlast service in the military, it is not clear that they mesh as well with the private values of a PMSC. As one retired US general put it, “The profit motive never aligns 100 percent with the public interest.” PMSC defenders reply to this criticism by noting that motivation should not be the deciding factor: “Who cares why the go? All that matters is what they do when they get there.” This focus on the final outcome, however, ignores the argument that organizational culture matters: actions are framed in different ways depending on whether you are working for a PMSC or a military. Colonel Thomas Hammes has been one of the most outspoken critics of the idea that military culture can be easily exported to other types of organizations: ‘ “And oftentimes the terms of the contract, will actually be in tension with what needs to be done, because contracting, you try to be about efficiency. Wartime is not about efficiency, it’s about effectiveness. The American way of war is ‘We don’t care what it costs. Let’s get it done right and save lives.’ Contracting is about the most efficient way rather than the most effective way.” (Garviria and Smith 2005) The culture of the soldier and the culture of the business professional are often described as diametrically opposed. To use Max Weber’s language, the “calling” of each is dramatically different. For the soldier, at least in the version of soldiering popularized by military historians and theorists of the modern state, the call was to a way of life marked by group norms, physical and mental discipline, sacrifice for a larger political entity (the nation-state, or an ideology), and the subordination of individuals to group goals and identities.

SIERRA LEONE EXPERIENCE PROVES THAT PROFIT MOTIVE DISTORTS THE QUALITY OF PROTECTION FROM THE PMSC Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 17 A variation on this argument is that private actors, who are interested only in profit rather than the good of the state, will fight only in areas where there are profits, bringing security only to some states and only to some parts of those states. In Sierra Leone, “wherever they [EO] went, civilians stopped dying. The trouble was that they only went where the payoff was high.” David Shearer alleges that EO’s strategy in Sierra Leone was financial; because it was partially paid in diamond concessions, Sierra Leone’s diamond areas were opened first. According to these arguments, security in Sierra Leone was geographically specific; it was not supplied as a public good. Because EO was not motivated by the common good, it behaved in a way that did not ensure the common good. The power of the moral objection in this case is fascinating, because it was made even in a situation where it could be argued that the state was no more motivated by notions of the common good than were PMCs. In Sierra Leone, where financial and military collusion between rebels and state soldiers was so rife that soldiers became known as “sobels,” or soldier-rebels, it seems certain that security was not provided as a public good. Moral objections can prevent clear-headed analysis of a situation. Planet Debate 49 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive

PMSCs INCREASE LIKELIHOOD OF BRIBERY Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 111-2 Management may also behave deviously in lobbying and competition tactics. A contractor might seek to influence the views of elites within P5 states and the rotating ten members of the Security Council. This could be achieved through funding key political parties or patronizing their leaders and providing allies with a revolving door of corporate sinecures. Something not wholly dissimilar has been an unremarkable convention in the West for decades. Contractor representatives may also toil at influence peddling, wider political donations and some judicious but effective bribery. Some of the targeted leaders may also be politically intolerant. Their electorates – if that is a meaningful concept—may know nothing of campaign or other contributions supplied by ambitious tenderers. And in authoritarian states, inquiries into benefits paid to cabinet members or senior civil servants seem improbable. Contractors are also likely to have assiduously studied the legal environment in which influence buying might be a lawful if discreet enterprise. If or when elected to the Security Council, a newly pliant government may exhibit unexpected approval of privatization measures. Those responsible will understandably wish to maximize company chances of securing a contract. And they will quickly realize that prerogatives held by the Security Council are exercised through a process known for its obscurity. Profit for a PMSC investor should be relatively generous compared to the return on other investments, as a UN enterprise will almost certainly be littered with plentiful dangers. Nevertheless, the specter of attractive profits will also be an incentive to engage in sharp practice and political gamesmanship.

PROFIT MOTIVE MEANS THAT THERE IS NO GUARANTEE THAT PMSCs WILL PROMOTE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 123 While the effects of private military intervention were beneficial in Sierra Leone and Angola, the corporate interests responsible viewed stability as valuable only in so far as involvement in violence lading to the stability generated profit. A PMC may create socially constructive circumstances. Equally, it may not. The point is that a PMC is not necessarily an ideological ally of democracy or any other kind of government. And if one accepts the thesis Stevens called “the militarized commerce” of diamond mining in Angola by EO affiliate DiamondWorks, this could prove a model for future corporate conduct in extractive industry within collapsed stats. Although EO’s military effectiveness shortened the conflict in this state, Stevens emphasizes the militarized defense of assets, effective bribery and exclusion of indigenes from the bulk of the benefits obtained. This view concludes that extractive industry removes part of a nation’s capital and very probably places it in the hands of a few foreigners identified as neo-colonialists. Control of such wealth is thought to provide an unhealthy influence which no modern national-state should tolerate. If this analysis is accurate, the principles of political economy one might glean are at least unsettling. PMCs in Africa might be viewed as a free market tool of an increasingly globalized economy through which foreign shareholders rather than a distressed citizenry are likely to determine what is done with national wealth. If it is true that the price of security has been consideration in the form of rights to exploit assets of considerable value, one is at least bound to include the value extracted in assessing the genuine price paid for services rendered. Planet Debate 50 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive

FACT THAT PMSCs ARE DRIVEN BY PROFIT MOTIVE MEANS THEY ARE LESS LIKELY TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR MISTAKES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 155-6 Brooks’ notion that PMSCs would take action against delinquent employees was especially doubtful. An obvious conflict of interest arises, something which becomes more pointed should delinquents be in management rather than uniformed ranks. The fact that Brooks thinks in this fashion hints at a broader problem. He promotes a corporatized system of administration which has no equivalent to those necessary disciplinary instruments armies properly carry. A chain of command, military laws, criminal investigators, military police, courts-martial and penitentiaries are all absent. The inevitable consequence is that when challenged over allegations of misconduct involving violence in Iraq or Afghanistan, American corporate management reacts defensively according to principles routinely applied in US litigation. Management is not necessarily to be condemned for this, as the problem is not wholly of their making. But in the absence of a coercive apparatus analogous to those integral to military forces, management will serve predictable interests. In descending order these are; its own and irregularly those of its shareholders, sometimes employees, less often contractors and rarely foreign citizens harmed by corporate negligence or more international employee villainy.

PROFIT MOTIVE COMPLICATES INCENTIVES Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 225-6 Nobody can accuse Blackwater of actively encouraging the drug trade in Afghanistan. Yet, as any economist can recognize, the company’s incentives were complicated: as long as the drug trade continued, and as long as the company remained in the good graces of the Afghan and U.S. governments, it would have work. Prince’s men had been contracted to help train narcotics officers in the NIU. Intercepting drug shipments was not a job for the faint of heart. Drug traffickers had successfully been transporting poppy out of the country on the backs of donkeys traveling narrow mountainous passes along the border. Other drug runners had loaded the drug into the back of pickup trucks, often taking little effort to cover it up. Those shipments had been fairly easily detected, but stopping a drug shipment one truck at a time wasn’t going to stop the flow of narcotics out of the country. Afghans had to be trained in more aggressive tactics, such as how to conduct a successful raid, how to collect and interpret intelligence, and how to fight their way out of an ambush. Many parts of Afghanistan were still under the influence of powerful drug lords who ruled their territory with an iron fist. Being a part of the Pentagon’s Narcoterrorism Technology program would also be profitable. Five companies stood to support the program, worth up to $15 billion. Blackwater had a K-9 unit back at Moyock that trained dogs in explosives and drug detection, and Prince knew the dogs could do the same work in Afghanistan. He would soon send over a dog and a handler to prove his point.

PROFIT MOTIVE ENCOURAGES LONGER CONFLICTS Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 92 The biggest obstacle to the use of private security forces is the difficulty in regulating their performance, particularly in regard to human rights violations and conflicts of interest. In effect, as war is profitable for a security business, there is a “moral hazard” in employing forms whose profits depend upon the continuation, rather than termination, of war. Planet Debate 51 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive

PMC USE FORMS A NEW NEOLIBERAL MODEL OF THE SOLDIER WHOSE BEHAVIOR IS DRIVEN SOLELY BY MARKET MECHANISMS – THIS ACTS AS A REINFORCEMENT OF NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIC SYSTEMS WHERE ONLY CAPITAL HAS MEANING Krahmann, 10, [Elke, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Department of Politics University of Bristol “State, Citizens and the Privatisation of Security”, Pgs. 265-268, dgeorge] While contemporary Neoliberal theorists have primarily based their argument on the state and the economy, the general principles of democratic control outlined in the preceding section are also applicable to the armed forces. The primary aim of these principles is to increase the ability of citizens to choose between competing security providers and to use market mechanisms to promote compliance with popular policy preferences and norms. Neoliberals, such as Friedman, have traditionally seen the professional soldier as the ideal embodiment of these principles. “Over the past decades, however, the private military contractor has increasingly emerged as a new Neoliberal model of the soldier. According to Neoliberal thought, the democratic control and accountability of this model rests on four characteristics: professionalism, private standard-setting, globalization, and specialization and civilianization The professionalization of private military contractors is an important condition for the emergence of a Neolíberal system of democratic control over the legitimate use of violence by private security providers. The transition from freelance mercenaries to incorporated private military companies has been the foundation for this development. 'While mercenaries operate outside the legal framework of the market, private military companies recognize and work within its formal and informal rules. The contemporary private military industry is a legitimate participant in the marketplace bound by business and contractual law and the mechanisms of competition, supply and demand. Private military companies have become subject to judicial prosecution for contractual obligations and to concerns about business reputation and industry best practice. Both mechanisms enable governments and citizens to exert direct control over the industry as consumers of private military services."` In addition, professionalization defines democratic standards of behavior for the individual military' and security contractor, According to Avant, military professionalism incorporates several cure principles: civilian control of the military, abidance by the rule of law, respect for human rights and the laws the entry of private military companies into the public marketplace the same professional principles play an important role in the social and democratic control of private military contractors. Private military firms have an interest in ensuring that their employees comply with these standards to protect their reputation and profits, and to prevent costly law suits. For these reasons the professionalization of the industry has already progressed significantly. Contemporary private military companies are incorporated businesses with boards of directors, fixed headquarters and huge numbers of personnel. The largest and most well-known firms, such as KBR, CSC with its subsidiary DynCorp, and Communicalions with MPRI and Titan, arc joint stock companies floated on stuck markets. Many Enns comply with professional industry management standards such as ISO 9001 and some companies have developed their own codes of conduct, such as Erinys, Control Risks and Triple Canopy.“ The professionalization of private military contractors is closely linked lo private standard-setting and the self-regulation of the sector. As argued in the preceding section, they enhance democratic control and accountability since they facilitate the self-government of private firms and the transmission of consumer preferences regarding corporate standards and private business behaviour through market mechanisms. In terms of the private military contractor as the new model of the soldier, it means that individual behaviour has not only to comply with public law, but also a growing range of subsidiary regulations and standards. Since industry self-regulation frequently lacks convincing punitive measures, the socialization of employees becomes crucial for ensuring the effectiveness of these regulations. So far, private military businesses have largely relied on the professional standards many of their personnel have acquired through training within national armed forces, But some private military such as DynCorp are requiring employees ro sign :1 pledge to their firm’s code of conduct or to enroll in training courses before certain deployments. The globalization of the market for private military contractors is another factor in the democratic control over armed forces according to Neoliberal thought. Specifically, the globalization of personnel recruitment and industry competition increases the choice that states and citizens have between alternative security providers, thus exerting pressure to conform to public norms and expectations. In a global market consumers of private military services can easily replace contractors who do not abide by the law or professional standards with those who do. Moreover, globalization allows companies to use local personnel and expertise and, thus, work in a more cost-efficient and effective rnanner. Finally, global private military firms and contractors can be employed in international crisis management," Transnational actors who lack armed forces, such as international] organizations or NGOs, particularly benefit from a globalization of the market for private military contractors. The resulting ability of non-state actors to address. transnational security threats where state action is slow or prevented by intergovernmental diplomacy contributes to the provision of security at subsidiary levels and receives its democratic legitimacy, at least partly, from the donations Planet Debate 52 PMCs – Sherry Hall

and personal participation of citizens who feel directly concerned about these security issues. (CONTINUES NEXT PAGE – NO TEXT SKIPPED) Planet Debate 53 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive

(CONTINUES PREVIOUS PAGE, NO TEXT SKIPPED) Owing to its advantages, a global market for private military personnel and firms has indeed been emerging over the past decades. As noted in the preceding chapters, in Iraq private military staff have come from a variety of countries, ranging from the USA and the UK to Fiji and Ukraine. In addition to states, international organizations and NGOS have gained from thc growing competitive global market for private military contractors. The USA, the UN, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOVVAS), the African Union and a range of NGOs have hired private military contractors to supply :1 variety of peacekeeping and pence support functions ranging from demining to logistics and personnel protection.’ Finally, the increasing specialization of private military personnel and the associated civilìanization of their identity can enhance the democratic control over private contractors. In this view, specialization facilitates the reduction of state-controlled armed forces by separating combat from support functions and by limiting national militaries to the former, Specialization within the private military industry also contributes to differentiating between military and civilian means for combating contemporary security threats. The outsourcing of non-military tasks to private contractors highlights the civilian nature of a large section of contemporary security provision and can help to ‘de-scrutinize”’ threats such as terrorism, crime and migration and move them from State to private security provision. The second is the civilianization and privatization of contemporary security management. While there is some empirical evidence for such developments, there can only be established in the long term. So far, cuts in the armed forces in the UK and the USA have been outweighed by the employment of private contractors. Moreover, efforts of the US and UK governments to include private military personnel within the rules and regulations of their national armed forces have blurred the boundaries between soldiers and contractors instead of civilianizing security. In conclusion, Neooliberalists suggest that a return to the theory’s core principles can contribute to improving democratic control and accountability of contemporary armed forces in multiple ways. Firstly, professionalization, industry self-regulation and private standard- setting encourage the compliance of individual private military contractors with democratic norms, expectations and processes. Neoliberal forms of self-governance thereby aim to address the weaknesses of nation-states with regard to the transnational regulation of private military personnel. Secondly, the globalization of the market for private contractors gives. states and citizens as customers a greater choice of security personnel and firms. Increased global competition promotes democratic control and accountability since consumers are less dependent 'upon individual contractors. Thirdly, the specialization of military and security contractors helps to distinguish between combat and civilian functions and, thus, can highlight the decreased utility of military means in combating present security threats. Planet Debate 54 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive

THAT JUSTIFIES WAGING UNENDING WARS AGAINST ALL GROUPS THAT DON’T CONFORM TO THOSE MARKET NORMS Giroux, 05, Henry A. Giroux 2005 (The Terror of Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Significance of Cultural Politics http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25115243.pdf Henry A. Giroux holds the Global TV Network Chair in Communications at McMaster in Hp.13-14) Corporate power increasingly frees itself from any political limitations just as it uses its power through the educational force of the dominant culture to put into place an utterly privatized notion of agency in which it becomes difficult for young people and adults to imagine democracy as a public good, let alone the transformative power of collective action. Once again, democratic politics has become ineffective, if not banal, as civic language is impoverished and genuine spaces for democratic learning, debate, and dialogue such as schools, newspapers, popular culture, television networks, and other public spheres are either underfunded, eliminated, privatized, or subject to corporate ownership. Under the aggressive politics and culture of neoliberalism, society is increasingly mobilized for the production of violence against the poor, immigrants, dissenters, and others marginalized because of their age, gender, race, ethnicity, and color. At the center of neoliberalism is a new form of politics in the United States , a politics in which radical exclusion is the order of the day, and in which the primary questions no longer concern equality, justice, or freedom, but are now about the survival of the slickest in a culture marked by fear, surveillance, and economic deprivation. This is a politics that hides its own ideology by eliminating the traces of its power in a rhetoric of normalization, populism, and the staging of public spectacles. As Susan George points out, the question that currently seems to define neoliberal "democracy" is "Who has a right to live or does not" (1999,para.34 ). Neoliberalism is not a neutral, technical, economic discourse that can be measured with the precision of a mathematical formula or defended through an appeal to the rules of a presumptively unassailable science that conveniently leaves its own history behind. Nor is it a paragon of economic rationality that offers the best "route to optimum efficiency, rapid economic growth and innovation, and rising prosperity for all who are willing to work hard and take advantage of available opportunities" (Kotz 2003, 16). On the contrary, neoliberalism is an ideology, a politics, and at times a fanaticism that subordinates the art of democratic politics to the rapacious laws of a market economy that expands its reach to include all aspects of social life within the dictates and values of a market-driven society . More important, it is an economic and implicitly cultural theory-a historical and socially constructed ideology that needs to be made visible, critically engaged, and shaken from the stranglehold of power it currently exercises over most of the commanding institutions of national and global life. As such, neoliberalism makes it difficult for many people either to imagine a notion of individual and social agency necessary for reclaiming a substantive democracy or to be able to theorize the economic, cultural, and political conditions necessary for a viable global public sphere in which public institutions, spaces, and goods become valued as part of a larger democratic struggle for a sustainable future and the downward distribution of wealth, resources, and power. As a public pedagogy and political ideology, the neoliberalism of Friedrich Hayek (1994) and Milton Friedman (2002) is far more ruthless than the classic liberal economic theory developed by Adam Smith and David Ricardo in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Neoliberalism has become the current conservative revolution because it harkens back to a period in American history that supported the sovereignty of the market over the sovereignty of the democratic state and the common good. Reproducing the future in the image of the distant past, it represents a struggle designed to roll back, if not dismantle, all of the policies put into place over seventy years ago by the New Deal to curb corporate power and give substance to the liberal meaning of the social contract. The late Pierre Bourdieu captures what is new about neoliberalism in his comment that neoliberalism is a new kind of conservative revolution [that] appeals to progress, reason and science (economics in this case) to justify the restoration and so tries to write off progressive thought and action as archaic. It sets up as the norm of all practices, and therefore as ideal rules, the real regularities of the economic world abandoned to its own logic, the so-called laws of the market . It reifies and glorifies the reign of what are called the financial markets, in other words the return to a kind of radical capitalism, with no other law than that of maximum profit, an unfettered capitalism without any disguise, but rationalized, pushed to the limit of its efficacy by the introduction of modern forms of domination, such as 'business administration', and techniques of manipulation, such as market research and advertising. (Bourdieu 1998, 35) Neoliberalism has indeed become a broad-based political and cultural movement designed to obliterate public concerns and liquidate the welfare state, and make politics everywhere an exclusively market-driven project (Leys 2001). But neoliberalism does more than make the market "the informing principle of politics" (Duggan 2003, 34), while allocating wealth and resources to those who are most privileged by virtue of their class, race, and power. Its supporting political culture and pedagogical practices also put into play a social universe and cultural landscape that sustain a particularly bar baric notion of authoritarianism, set in motion under the combined power of a religious and market fundamentalism and anti-terrorism laws that suspend civil liberties, incarcerate disposable populations, and provide the security forces necessary for capital to destroy those spaces where democracy can be nourished. All the while, the landscape and soundscape become increasingly homogenized through the spectacle of flags waving from every flower box, car, truck, and house, encouraged and supplemented by jingoistic bravado being broadcast by Fox Television News and Clear Channel radio stations. As a cultural politics and a form of economic domination, neoliberalism tells a very limited story, one that is antithetical to nurturing democratic identities, values, public spaces, and institutions and thereby enables fascism to grow because it has no ethical language for recognizing politics outside of the realm of the market, for controlling market excesses, or for challenging the underlying tenets of a growing authoritarianism bolstered by the pretense of religious piety. Neoliberal ideology, on the one hand, pushes for the privatization of all non-commodified public spheres and the upward distribution of wealth. On the other hand, it supports policies that increasingly militarize facets of public space in order to secure the privileges and benefits of the corporate elite and ultra-rich. Neoliberalism does not merely produce economic inequality, iniquitous power relations, and a corrupt political system; it also promotes rigid exclusions from national citizenship and civic participation. As Lisa Duggan points out, "Neoliberalism cannot be abstracted from race and gender relations, or other cultural aspects of the body politic. Its legitimating discourse, social relations, and ideology are saturated with race, with gender, with sex, with religion, with ethnicity, and nationality" (2003, xvi). Neoliberalism comfortably aligns itself with various strands of neoconservative and religious fundamentalisms waging imperial wars abroad as well as at home against those groups and movements that threaten its authoritarian misreading of the meaning of freedom, security, and productiveness. Planet Debate 55 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive

PMC PRESENCE IS AN EXPLICIT ENDORSEMENT OF NEOLIBERALISM – SHIFTS THE STATE’S MONOPOLY OVER VIOLENCE TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR Schreier and Caparini, 05, [Fred, consultant with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Swiss Ministry of Defense and Marina, Senior Fellow at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Ph.D., King’s College, University of London, “Privatising Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security Companies,” p. 46, March, Geneva Centre For The Democratic Control Of Armed Forces, GScholar, http://se2.dcaf.ch/serviceengine/Files/DCAF/18346/ipublicationdocument_singledocument/BA695123-3145-4CAA-B29A- A60711724C96/en/op06_privatising-security.pdf]/galperin Perhaps the most important factor in the recent rise of the PMC and PSC industry is the normative shift toward the marketisation of the public sphere: the privatization revolution – the ultimate representation of neo- liberalism12 – which provides the logic, legitimacy, and models for the entrance of markets into formerly public sector domains. Privatization has gone hand in hand with globalization. Both dynamics are supported by the belief that comparative advantage and competition maximize efficiency and effectiveness. Privatization has been touted as a testament to the superiority of the marketplace over government in provision of certain services. Outsourcing expenditures topped $1 trillion worldwide by 2001, doubling in just 3 years.13 And the pressure for outsourcing will not subside. For example, for a number of years it has been official British government policy to outsource certain defence functions. Britain’s public-private partnership, dubbed “Private Finance Initiative”, is all about “paying privately for the defence we cannot afford publicly”.14 Thus, transport planes, ships, trucks, training, and accommodations may all be provided on long term leases from private firms. The equipment will be leased to other customers during down time. Pilot training of the Royal Air Force is largely outsourced,15 and up to 80 percent of all army training now involves civilian contractors in some way. 16

PMCS ONLY SERVE FINANCIAL INTERESTS- CONTRACTORS EXACERBATE CONFLICT FOR PROFIT Salzman 8 [Zoe,New York University School of Law 2008 “Private Military Contractors And The Taint Of A Mercenary Reputation” International Law And Politics [Vol. 40:853 /hnasser] http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv2/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__journals__journal_of_international_law_and_p olitics/documents/documents/ecm_pro_058877.pdf Similarly, there is often a vast difference between the public good that the state’s use of force is meant to achieve and the private good that is the desired result for a PMC.118 A PMC is a corporation and, like any other corporation, it “work[s] for the shareholder . . . [and its] job is to go out and make the most money for those people.”119 Unlike a state, which is under pressure to resolve conflicts, there is little incentive for private contractors to encourage the resolution of the conflicts120 that motivated their hire in the first place. Thus, when military force is sold as a commodity on the market, there is a risk that private contractors, who “directly benefit from the existence of war and suffering,”121 will aggravate a conflict situation in order to keep their profits high.122 For example, “[t]here have. . .been allegations that Halliburton has run additional but unnecessary supply convoys through Iraq because it gets paid by the trip”—a clear case of a company’s incentive to turn a higher profit leading it to risk aggravating the conflict.123 In sum, “[s]oldiers serve their country; contractors serve their managers and shareholders.”124 Nevertheless, a PMC does have reputational concerns that generally encourage it to perform its contract successfully, which in many cases may help resolve the conflict.125 Even if their participation can sometimes assist in the immediate, short- term resolution of a given conflict, however, on a broader level contractors can “worsen the conditions for long-term stability.”126 Private contractors can be used to “help prop up rogue regimes, resist struggles for self- determination, and contribute to the proliferation and diffusion of weaponry and soldiers around the world—axiomatically a destabilizing and thus undesirable phenomenon.”127 In addition, private contractors sometimes remain in a country after the conflict (and their contract) has ended. This happened in Sierra Leone, where the government paid for the contractors’ services in mining subsidiaries, leading the PMC Executive Outcomes to retain a militarized presence in Sierra Leone long after its contract had ended in order to protect these mining assets.128 This militarized presence destabilized the already vulnerable country by creating a parallel force that ultimately became a challenge to the national army.129 Planet Debate 56 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive

CREATING VIOLENCE FOR PROFIT UNDERMINES THE STABILITY OF HUMAN LIFE- VIOLENCE IS A NATURAL EXPRESSION WHICH SHOULD NOT BE CHANNELED FOR MONETARY PURPOSES Sheehy, 10 [Benedict Sheehy, School of Law University of Newcastle, Jackson N. Maogoto, Dr. of Philosophy , March 7TH 2010, “THE PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANY—UNRAVELLING THE THEORETICAL, LEGAL & REGULATORY MOSAIC”, http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=jackson_maogoto] A safe peaceful environment and fair and effective political process are the driving and ultimate objectives in developing /maintaining paradigms of ordering human affairs; meaning achieving this is and ought to be the priority of all policy decisions . The issue of whether the ordering involves public or private means, and the related issues of economic efficiency and market liberties are secondary, as the dominant values supporting human wellbeing are at stake. Accordingly, the matter of raw economic motivation for violence is problematic, and its related sub-issue of violence for profit is highly problematic . Humanity’s history has demonstrated time and time again that mankind is not driven by a single over-riding concern, whether capitalism’s economic dominance, communism’s brutal equality, or Nietzsche’s will to power . Humans are complex creatures working from a variety of different motivations , at times congruent and at times conflicting, all needed to make human life sustainable, worthwhile, and decent. This drive for a sustainable , worthwhile, decent life embodied in the political processes of the Nation-State should not be adumbrated by the will of a few with economic power who are prepared to pay others committed to the delivery of efficient violence to assist the wealthy who achieve their own narrow goals without due regard for the rest of the population and its interests. While Clausewitz feared that “political, social, economic, and religious motives” had become “hopelessly entangled” in modern warfare,8 it may well be that it is and has always been that way. Nevertheless, his comment alerts us to an important reality — the resort to violence is too important an action to be left to the boardroom . Violence is the expression of a number of important complex human motivators and should not simply be a cheaper or easier means for the greedy or intransigent to gain power and/or monopolize resources . As these corporations become larger—both economically and politically—corporate managers increasingly engage in decision-making traditionally exercised by politicians.9 While the political process has its own worries and politicians have their own agendas, it provides at least some level of transparency and accountability above that offered by the private corporate actor. It is thus unsettling that PMCs dedicated to profiting by violence or potential violence have amassed power such that they can affect conflict resolution, world economic stability, and geo-strategic negotiations, more so that their power stands unchecked .10 A further alarm needs to be raised as the PMC, classified as a non-State actor, enjoys the rights and privileges of a private actor, including the privileges of free movement, relatively minor scrutiny of action, the privacy accorded to citizens, and lack of accountability to the general public, yet carries out the functions of violence traditionally accorded to the State and subject to the correlated scrutiny and accountability . Planet Debate 57 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Driven by Profit Motive

PMCs CAUSE WAR – PROFIT MOTIVE UNDERMINES FOREIGN DEMOCRACY AND INCREASES AGGRESSION Orts, 02 [Eric Orts, Professor of Legal Studies and Management, Wharton School @ UPenn, “Corporate Governance, Stakeholder Accountability, And Sustainable Peace,” http://www.wdi.umich.edu/files/Publications/WorkingPapers/wp427.pdf]/galperin On the purely economic dimension, private corporations may seek to make profits and enhance shareholder value by engaging in the business of war, that is, manufacturing and selling weapons, munitions, and military services. Recent activities in this industry give a sense of the scale of this business. On October 27, 2001, the U.S. Defense Department awarded the largest military contract in American history to Lockheed Martin Corporation in the amount of $200 billion for the building of a new Joint Strike Fighter supersonic stealth jet.76 Also in October 2001, the U.S. Justice Department blocked a proposed friendly acquisition of Newport News Shipbuilding by General Dynamics valued at $2.6 billion on the grounds that the deal would create a monopoly in the construction and sale of nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.77 The government prefers a merger between Newport News and Northrup Grumman.78 News of the September 11 bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon sent military stocks upwards.79 Similar, though perhaps smaller, connections between business corporations and national military budgets apply to both companies and countries outside the United States.80 Clearly, there is much money still to be made in war, and today business corporations act as the primary vehicle for the purpose. Special issues of law and ethics arise in military contracting. Billion-dollar contracts must create great temptations for corporate executives or other employees to fudge the rules on political lobbying and fair economic competition. The regulation of government procurement contracts has therefore been traditionally very detailed.81 In the United States, a large Defense Contract Auditing Agency oversees defense procurement.82 Companies themselves recognize the special nature of the legal and ethical problems they face, and the defense industry in the United States has organized a voluntary Defense Industry Initiative on Business Ethics and Conduct.83 Another important issue involves the regulation of financial contributions to political campaigns.84 Although it is not illegal for business corporations to contribute to the political process, the question arises whether a military contractor should, as a matter of policy, have significant influence in choosing political leaders. At least arguably, the economic objective should not allow corporations in the business of war to support candidates with particularly aggressive foreign policy agendas. But these issues slide into the topic of legal and ethical constraints on the economic objective. Before considering these important areas, however, I would like to mention one troubling trend that raises the issue of whether business corporations should sometimes be banned from engaging in at least some kinds of military profit- making. This trend relates to the recent increase in what have been called “private military companies” (PMCs).85 In June 1997, the Pentagon held a conference on the “privatization of security” in sub- Saharan Africa.86 Members of a new growth industry of PMCs were on display, as well as the private security representatives of some large oil companies, such as Texaco and Exxon.87 For example, Military Professional Resources, Incorporated (MPRI) claims “the greatest corporate assemblage of military expertise in the world,” including seventeen retired U.S. generals as well as hundreds of former U.S. Special Forces personnel.88 Vinnell Corporation is another example. It employs approximately 1,000 former U.S. military personnel in training 65,000 members of the Saudi National Guard, the personal security contingent protecting the Saudi Royal family.89 Executive Outcomes (EO) is a South African company that fields thousands of combat soldiers in sub-Saharan Africa. EO’s air capabilities include a fleet of helicopters and MIG fighter jets.90 The existence and use of PMCs raises a central question with respect to the economic objective of corporate law. Unlike informal or ad hoc networks of mercenary armies in the past, PMCs today have developed a “distinct corporate nature,” including “a desire for good public relations.”91 But are corporate “soldiers of fortune” to be accepted as just another way of doing business? At least, the issue of the intrinsic legitimacy of these kinds of businesses arises. A primary aspect of the claim to legitimacy by political states involves the assumed monopoly on military force that they exercise. Private military companies threaten to erode this monopoly of coercive force. The economic objective of maximizing shareholder value does not compare favorably with theories of political democracy as a legitimate basis for the use of military force. A good argument can made, therefore, for an international agreement to ban PMCs, though the social forces of globalization may make such an agreement difficult to achieve. At the same time, it is accurate to observe that the rise of PMCs responds to “the pullback of western nations and the United Nations from peacekeeping and peace enforcing” missions, especially in poor or developing countries.92 At least, the international community should seek to regulate the actions and behavior of PMCs, probably through an international treaty – in other words, through the development of morally informed legal constraints.93 Already in the United States, for example, some regulation is provided under the Arms Export Control Act and the Export Administration Act.94 The Arms Export Control Act provides conditions for the foreign sale of U.S. goods and services, and the Export Administration Act regulates the export and sale of so-called “dual-use” material that has both civilian and military applications.95 Similar controls are imposed in other countries.96 International regulation of private companies engaged in the actual provision of military services as “modern mercenaries,” however, is lacking, if not entirely absent. Planet Debate 58 PMCs – Sherry Hall Profit Motive Makes PMSCs Immoral

FIGHTING FOR MONEY IS IMMORAL Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 17-8 There is a clear line of thought that to kill without an appropriate cause is unjustified and immoral, a line of thought that runs from the middle ages until today. Again, it is important to emphasize that even though those objections to mercenaries might be unfair, in that it is very difficult to prove the degree to which private actors are motivated by money, or that a financial motivation leads to bad behavior, or indeed that the state or its forces are motivated by the common good in a way that private fighters are not, they cannot be dismissed. This is in part because of the prevailing belief, outlined above, that killing in warfare must be justified by, to use Bogden’s words, a sentiment to hallow the use of arms. There are social rules about when killing is justified. When individuals kill, we require a reason, such as self-defense. When states go to war, they too have been required to supply reasons before they fight, in order to justify the lives lost. The problem with mercenaries is that many people simply cannot accept their justification for fighting and killing. Of course, one of the simplest solutions to the moral problems posed by fighting for money is to avoid actually fighting. Today’s PMCs, which avoid combat, accordingly also avoid one of the main criticisms that can be leveled at the private security industry. Even if a PMC were directly ordered by a state government to engage in combat and fight and kill, it is likely that moral disapproval over the financial motivation of that fighting would continue. Planet Debate 59 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Violate International Law

PMSCs VIOLATE INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 107 International humanitarian law (IHL) is the body of law that contains both human rights law and the law of armed combat (LOAC), and since its twentieth-century codification, it has consistently banned any person on the battlefield that might appear to be anything resembling a mercenary. The evolution of this negative norm is intertwined with the history of the LOAC, and the attempt to legitimize certain kinds of combatants – those that can be made to obey the laws – and delegitimize any combatant that does not fall under its legal umbrella (Percy 2007). Although contracted or mercenary forces have been used in warfare from the very beginning of recorded history, an anti-mercenary bias began to show itself in the laws of armed combat in the early twentieth century, first with the Hague Convention of 1907, then with the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and again in he 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions. Some portions of these latter protocols remain unratified by the United States and some other great powers, but they have in effect achieved the status of customary international law, recognized as legitimate, if not entirely binding. Although PMSCs present themselves as being much more than trumped up bands of mercenaries, it is important to understand both the law and the customs behind the anti-mercenary prohibitions in international law.

LAW OF WAR NECESSARY TO SURVIVE WARS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 118 To the uninitiated, it often seems strange that law appears in the midst of war. Centuries of civilization have realized that war needs rules in order to be fought and survived. Even as war is transformed, the necessity of the rule of law remains: to add some order the battlefield; to enable the return to some sort of peace and stability; and to distinguish those who are honored and legitimate from those who are criminals or outlaws. “Without law to define what is and is not permitted, there can be no war. Though written international law is comparatively recent, previous ages were no less dependent on the war convention for their ability to fight…Before there was international law there were bilateral treaties between kings. These in turn were preceded by the law of nature, the code of chivalry, the ius gentium, Greek religion and custom, and earlier still, the customs and usage of tribal societies.” (van Creveld 1991). In the late-modern era in which we find ourselves, the internationally codified laws of war have achieved what I would term “canonical” status. They are treated as almost sacred repositories of what is right and just in warfare. In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Forces Committee, military JAGS noted that the “Geneva Conventions an the Uniform Code of Military Justice which honors them, represent the gold standard of the law of war (Zernike 2006). Planet Debate 60 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Violate International Law

PMC’S VIOLATE INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW PRINCIPLES – THEY’RE DEFINED AS CIVILIANS BY THE U.S. AND AREN’T ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN HOSTILITIES Cameron, 07 [Lindsey, U of Geneva, “International Humanitarian Law and the Regulation of Private Military Companies”, Feb. 8-9, http://www.baselgovernance.org/fileadmin/docs/pdfs/Nonstate/Cameron.pdf]/galperin One of the fundamental principles of the IHL of international armed conflicts is that one must distinguish between civilians and combatants, since it is only lawful to target combatants.16 The principle of distinction is crucial to IHL’s ability to protect civilians from the violence of armed conflict. Furthermore, only combatants may lawfully directly participate in hostilities: this is the “combatants’ privilege”.17 The fact that combatants may lawfully directly participate in hostilities means that they are immune to prosecution for lawful acts of war – for example , killing enemy soldiers – but not immune from prosecution for commission of violations of IHL. If captured , combatants have the right to be prisoners of war unless they have failed to distinguish themselves from the civilian population while fighting.18 The flipside to this “privilege” is that combatants may be directly targeted and killed with impunity by opposing enemy combatants. Examples abound of PMC employees directly participating in hostilities, and lobbying by the companies indicates that some seek a more robust role in combat operations generally;19 consequently, it is imperative to determine whether they are combatants under international humanitarian law such that they may benefit from “combatants’ privilege”. Members of the armed forces of a (state) Party to a conflict are combatants.20 As one author notes, this “confirms that lawful combatants act in a public capacity.” 21 International humanitarian law does not set out the steps that states must take in order to incorporate individuals into their armed forces; that is a matter of internal law.22 However, it does set out certain minimum requirements for those forces: they must be organized under a command responsible to a Party to the conflict and subject to an internal disciplinary system.23 Incorporation of a PMC employee into the armed forces of a Party to a conflict therefore depends on the will and internal legal regime of the state in question. It would be entirely possible for states to incorporate PMCs into their armed forces if they choose to do so; if they did, PMC employees would have combatant status. However, the will of an individual to be a member of a state’s armed forces, without more, is not sufficient for that individual to be a part of the armed forces.24 The fact that some official form of incorporation is necessary is evidenced by the fact that a specific provision in the article of Additional Protocol I defining combatants stipulates that states that incorporate their own police forces or other paramilitary forces into their armed forces must inform the opposing side .25 This also suggests that international humanitarian law anticipates that even though it is a matter of domestic law as to how members of armed forces are recruited and registered within a state, it should be understandable to opposing forces precisely who constitutes those forces . Planet Debate 61 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Violate International Law

PMC USE VIOLATES INTERNATIONAL LAW – THEY’RE NOT VISIBLY MARKED AS COMBATANTS Schreier and Caparini, 05 [Fred, consultant with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Swiss Ministry of Defense and Marina, Senior Fellow at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Ph.D., King’s College, University of London, “Privatising Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security Companies,” p. 46, March, Geneva Centre For The Democratic Control Of Armed Forces, GScholar, http://se2.dcaf.ch/serviceengine/Files/DCAF/18346/ipublicationdocument_singledocument/BA695123-3145-4CAA-B29A- A60711724C96/en/op06_privatising-security.pdf]/galperin It is unclear exactly what laws apply to the privatized military and security industry. One great problem is the ambiguous legal status of PMCs and PSCs in regard to existing international treaties relevant to conflict and war. This is partly because the whole structure of diplomacy and international recognition rests on the state as a cornerstone and building block of international law and international relations. There is no clarity about the exact relationship between governments and private military and security companies. In their own interests, governments and their military institutions often publicly distance themselves from such companies. Contractors do not fall under the narrowly defined international laws on mercenaries. Nor do most national laws – where they exist at all – clearly apply to contractors. In Iraq for example, US law does not fully apply to PMCs and PSCs because many of the contractors are not American. Contractors are no longer restricted to acquisition and logistics but are found nearly everywhere. And their presence in the battlespace is a reality. But PMC employees are not “noncombatants”,172 as unarmed contractors are under the 4th Geneva Convention173 because they carry weapons and act on behalf of the government. However, they are also not “lawful combatants” under the 3rd Geneva Convention174 because they do not wear regular uniforms or answer to a military command hierarchy. These armed contractors do not fit the legal definition of mercenaries because that definition requires that they work for a foreign government in a war zone in which their own country is not part of the fight. Thus legally, they seem to fall into the same grey area as the unlawful combatants detained as suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.175 This legal murkiness creates real problems in Iraq . International humanitarian law (IHL) requires soldiers on both sides to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants. Armed contractors wearing quasi-military outfits and body armour blur these distinctions, making it harder for the enemy to play by the rules of war – assuming that insurgents and terrorists wanted to in the first place. And it leaves armed contractors open to treatment by foreign governments as unlawful combatants. Should they stray into neighbouring countries, for example, it is possible that they would be locked up on these grounds. Planet Debate 62 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Violate International Law

PMC USE DESTROYS U.S. ILAW CREDIBILITY – THEY’RE UNACCOUNTABLE Schreier and Caparini, 05 [Fred, consultant with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Swiss Ministry of Defense and Marina, Senior Fellow at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Ph.D., King’s College, University of London, “Privatising Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security Companies,” p. 46, March, Geneva Centre For The Democratic Control Of Armed Forces, GScholar, http://se2.dcaf.ch/serviceengine/Files/DCAF/18346/ipublicationdocument_singledocument/BA695123-3145-4CAA-B29A- A60711724C96/en/op06_privatising-security.pdf]/galperin Contractors are not only complicating traditional norms of military command and control, they are challenging the basic norms of accountability that are supposed to govern the government’s control of violence. Accountability is being answerable or liable for one’s conduct or actions.207 The lack of accountability is one of the major problems associated with the private military and security industry. Few states have statutes that even recognize that PMCs exist. For those states in which PMCs typically operate, the legal structures and political environments are often too weak to challenge PMC usage and practices. In particular , there is not enough oversight and control of private military and security firms that sell services directly to foreign countries. With the exception of the US and a few other countries, PMCs are not truly subject to governmental control or scrutiny, partly because they are not beholden to government, and because, as with transnational companies in general, they do not confine their activities within the borders of any single state. If a nation puts too much pressure on a firm, it can simply “shop around” for alternative, more permissive environment in which to base itself. In fact, all the mechanisms typically used by multinationals to avoid taxation or labour and environmental regulations are available to PMCs to avoid oversight . Despite national legislation , state capacity and willingness to monitor and enforce anti-mercenary laws often remain lacking, sometimes due to national interests, resource constraints, or conflicting priorities. It is the duty of government to maintain disciplined armed forces. National armed forces are accountable domestically through the political process. Soldiers who commit war crimes, together with their military commanders and political superiors who bear responsibility, can be prosecuted in national courts and the International Criminal Court. However, the same levels of accountability do not apply to the private sector. The principal difference with regard to legal status is that PMC employees are subject to the terms of their contract, but they are not subject to the military legal code of service discipline, are not commanded by a military commander, and are not trained to conduct operations in accordance with the Laws of Armed Conflict.208 A combatant is defined as an individual who “is commanded by a person with responsibility, wears a fixed distinctive sign such as a uniform, carries arms openly, and conducts operations in accordance with the Laws of War”.209 This definition is critical because contractors have the right to carry arms for self-protection, operate in areas of conflict, and can wear company uniforms, which brings their status into question. With PMCs, command and control structures are all too often unclear . Planet Debate 63 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Violate International Law

PMCS HURT U.S. INTERNATIONAL LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS CREDIBILITY – ABUSE OF CIVILIANS AND LAWLESSNESS Gómez, 08 [José, UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, 9/8, “Impact in human rights of private military and security companies’ activities”, http://www.privatesecurityregulation.net/files/Impact%20in%20Human%20Rights%20of%20Private%20Military%20and %20Security%20Companies%27%20Activities.pdf]/galperin “ Private contractors” working for PMSCs may commit abuses and human rights violations while fulfilling their activities in situations of violent or low-intensity conflict. The potential for human rights abuses in such situations is an ever present threat, and it is nearly impossible to hold PMSC employees accountable for their actions. In a conflict area with active hostilities fought in the heart of cities with unclear distinctions between combatant and non combatant, it is impossible to distinguish defensive from offensive roles. PMSC personnel in Iraq are involved in exchange of fire with insurgents on a daily basis. Security provisions necessarily involve military engagement. There is no perceptible difference between regular soldiers and the private contractors protecting convoys (transporting ammunitions and fuel), material, buildings or persons. Providing security in such an environment necessitates being armed and ready to shoot, often under uncertain circumstances where combatants and civilians are difficult to separate. As observed in many incidents, PMSC employees can use excessive force and shoot indiscriminately resulting in civilian casualties. There are cases where PMSC employees have used forbidden arms or experimental ammunition prohibited by international law2. Private contractors often circulate without identification and drive in unidentified sport utility vehicles (SUVs) with tinted glasses and no plates, behaving similarly to the infamous death squads. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the two countries with the largest presence of PMSC staff, the population is confused and finds it extremely difficult to distinguish employees of different companies from state forces. Reports indicate erratic behavior of PMSCs employees in Iraq with mottos such as: “what happens here to-day, stays with us today”. It has also been alleged that “private security guards” would also detain Iraqis without authorization.3 According to coinciding different sources, on 16 September 2007, in Al-Nisour Square in the neighborhood of Mansour in Baghdad, security contractors protecting a United States Department convoy, which was allegedly attacked, opened fire on civilians killing 17 persons, using security company helicopters firing into the streets, resulting in civilian casualties and injuries. The security firm Blackwater claimed that its personnel came under attack by “armed enemies” and fired back in self-defense. Iraqi authorities and witnesses claim the security personnel opened fire unprovoked . In October 2007, an oversight panel of the United States House of Representatives released a report indicating that Blackwater employees had been involved in at least 196 firefights in Iraq since 2005, an average of 1.4 shootings per week. In 84% of those cases , the report stated, Blackwater employees opened fire first, despite contract stipulations to make use of force only in self-defense. Unfortunately, the case of Blackwater is not an exception. Other PMSC have been reported to be involved in such incidents, in particular the killing of four women in Kirkuk and the involvement in a shooting of employees of another PMSC protecting a convoy, in central Baghdad, which left two Iraqi women dead.4 This type of incidents involving PMSC has been prevalent in the reconstruction of Iraq since its 2003 occupation: other PMSC have also been involved in similar incidents. Outsourcing military and security functions has an inherent danger in losing State control over the use of force. In Iraq, by Order 17 issued by the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority on 27 June 2004, contractors are immune from prosecution. PMSCs often operate outside government control and with limited effective oversight from State organs. They provide services from interrogation to strategic intelligence in a field that is a key aspect of waging war and may not only cause torture and inhumane treatment but violate rights such as freedom of movement and privacy.. When involved in crimes or human rights violations, these private security guards have not been sanctioned or brought before a court of justice , as exemplified by the involvement of contractors in torture and shootings against civilians in Iraq. The employees of two PMSCs who were involved in human rights abuses in the prison of Abu Ghraib in 2003 have never been subject to external investigations nor legally sanctioned, despite assurances given by the Government of the United States of America. U.S. Army records would indicate that CACI and Titan translators and sub-contractors worked, in 2003, at Abu Ghraib prison when human rights abuses were perpetrated. Although the violations were carried out mostly by military police, several private interrogators have also been accused of torture. Planet Debate 64 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Violate International Law

PMC’S ARE THE BIGGEST IMPEDIMENT TO GLOBAL ILAW COMPLIANCE – LEGAL AMBIGUITY AND EXPLICIT VIOLATIONS Maogoto and Sheehy, 09 [Jackson, senior lecturer @ University of Manchester School of Law, and Benedict, senior lecturer in Law, RMIT University, Melbourne, “PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANIES & INTERNATIONAL LAW: BUILDING NEW LADDERS OF LEGAL ACCOUNTABILITY & RESPONSIBILITY”, Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 11:99, http://cojcr.org/vol11no1/99- 132.pdf]/galperin Many examples of contemporary PMC involvement in traditional military activities abound around the globe and highlight the significance and extent of these battlefield contractors. While some involvements may be less controversial, others are highly contentious, particularly where PMCs are used as a substitute for political processes or engage in activities that breach international law and violate human rights. For example, PMCs in Colombia provided a whole range of services, from flying Blackhawk helicopters in “drug eradication missions”8 on behalf of the U.S. government to manning surveillance aircraft in the Colombian government’s military campaign against guerrilla rebels. Executive Outcomes, a South Africa-based PMC, used fuel air explosives in Angola, which is a highly effective but particularly torturous weapon.9 Turning to the Middle East, it was the use of PMC personnel by California Analysis Center Incorporated (“CACI”) in interrogations that resulted in the most widely publicized incident of misconduct of the many reported PMC misdeeds—the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal.10 In western countries the use of PMCs in the ongoing global “War on Terror” manifests in the practice labeled “extraordinary rendition,” involving the transfer of individuals to countries that harbor no qualms about using all manner of process and procedure, including torture and extra-judicial detention and incarceration to “extract information.”11 Each of the foregoing cases/incidents violate various international norms including the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”)12 and the 1949 Geneva Conventions13 prohibiting governments and their militaries from taking such actions. However, the ambiguous legal status and amorphous character of PMCs under existing international law offers leeway for countries to not only bend but breach their international legal obligations, thus tearing at the very fabric of the international legal order.14 These examples of PMC personnel presence and activity in conflicts and the government trend of increasing reliance on civilian contractors to perform military operations means that this anomaly will become more and more typical, and performance to date presents critical problems for the implementation of international human rights laws and humanitarian norms. Planet Debate 65 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Violate International Law

PMC USE EXPLICITLY VIOLATES INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW – OFFSHORING RESTRICTIONS PROVE Camacho, 8 [Paul, Consultant @ The William Joiner Center @ U of Mass. Boston, “Danger Across the Arc of Instability,” 4/10, http://www.smcm.edu/democracy/_assets/_documents/Camacho%20-%20ARTICLE%20Private%20Contractors.pdf] If prior incidents were of insufficient magnitude, the allegations of private entities being involved in the incidents at Abu Ghraib , which were neatly sidestepped by the administration by way of the focus on and prosecution of lowly enlisted functionaries, then certainly the incidents involving Blackwater employees brought the issue to the systemic agenda of the legal profession . PMCs in Iraq have basically operated within their contractual brackets issued by the D epartment o f D efense r esulting in a condition where contractors are viewed as coalition allies, but exempt from the same rules (e.g. Geneva Conventions) which the formal military is subject to .11 It has been noted across the literature that international and or national law bounding the activities of the military corporate organizations is vague, weak, insufficient, and relatively unenforceable .12 Topics in the literature that engage the legal aspects of PMCs include but are not limited to • Discussion of the UCMJ and Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) • Geneva Conventions of 1949, their Additional Protocols of 1977 and customary international law 13 12 • Procedural rules and processes such as the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR ) which was supplemented with Defense Department involvement (DFARS) • Discussion of issues of accountability have noted that PMCs are international entities and as such they utilize the same principles of "off-shoring" to circumvent taxes and regulations that are available to other multi-national corporations 14 • Issues of international and humanitarian law 15 including questions about • The extent of state responsibility for PMC operations / behavior • Reparations for violations of International Humanitarian Law ( IHL and International Human Rights Law ( HRL ) • Issues concerning the legal status of civilian workers and “Status of Forces Agreements ” (SOFAs) as well as The Hague (1907) and Geneva Conventions (1949) and their applications to US in Iraq 16 At the domestic level, the conclusions of those on the continuum of those concerned to those opposed to the present extent and expansion of the PMC industry ask if the use and expansion of PMCs has gone too far and virtually all studies call for comprehensive regulation . The National Defense University study notes five reasons for regulation: challenge political-military control; rules regulating PMCs are unclear; lack of transparency; insufficient accountability; public interest stakes.17 At the international level the concern is not simply governmental control, but rather an issue of good global governance . Global governance both acknowledges the state and limits of the United Nations as well as the rise of the market sector international entities that have been established in response to a functional need accelerated by the continued 5globalization of the state and society.18 The public sector or space is shrinking in all areas of sociopolitical and economic life; including the security and defense sector – PMCs as a factor in the security market is accepted. The matter at hand is the degree of oversight and establishment of new “rule sets” appropriate to this change in the global condition. 19 Planet Debate 66 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Violate International Law

PMC’S KILL IHL ADHERENCE – EMPHASIS ON AGGRESSIVE ACTION Perrin, 6 [Benjamin, Max Stern Fellow and Wainwright Scholar at the Institute of Comparative Law, Faculty of Law, McGill University, Montreal, “Promoting compliance of private security and military companies with international humanitarian law”, September, http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/review-863-p613/$File/irrc_863_Perrin.pdf]/ One of the most significant risks to international humanitarian law is posed by private military and security companies that profit from their ‘‘bad’’ reputations in a segmented market. Certain clients may seek out firms that are willing to be more ‘‘aggressive’’ in their interpretation of international humanitarian law or even to violate it for a price.85 Certain members of the private military and security company industry have recognized that some firms are attractive, in part, precisely because they are outside formal state armed forces, ‘‘far less trained, far less accountable, and already tainted, albeit slightly, with a whiff of dirty tricks’’.86 By hiring these ‘‘bad’’ firms, clients may perceive a benefit in signalling that their posture is more aggressive in a given armed conflict or post-conflict environment, as the United States has done in private military and security company procurement in Iraq, prompted by the growing insurgency. This phenomenon is reflected in the decision to hire Aegis Defence Services, founded by Tim Spicer (founder of the now defunct Sandline International), to conduct ‘‘mobile vehicle warfare’’ as well as ‘‘counter-snipping’’. Commentators have speculated that Spicer’s ‘‘history and record of taking on dicey tasks may have led him to be more attractive than the companies that play more strictly by the rules’’.87 Indeed, given the prospect of private military and security companies rebranding or reincorporating, it appears that the main way in which brand differentiation and market segmentation is taking place in this industry is through the identity of the officers or directors of these firms (such as Col. Spicer).

UN AND INTERNATIONAL LAW OPPOSED TO MERCENARIES Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 24-5 There are two main sources of opinion on private forces within the UN system. First, the Commission on Human Rights has been examining the question of private force since the early 1980s, and housed the Special Rapporteur on Mercenaries. Until 2004, the Special Rapporteur was Enrique Bernales Ballesteros; he was replaced by Shaista Shameem, who took a somewhat softer line on private force. In 2005 the position was abolished and replaced by a UN working Group on Mercenaries, whose work will be discussed below. Secondly, the General Assembly itself has been an active voice against the use of private force since the 1970s. The General Assembly has adopted over one hundred resolutions making specific reference to mercenaries and indeed, has repeated a strongly-worded resolution that calls mercenaries criminals annually since the mid-1970s. General Assembly radicalism, of course, partially results form a vocal majority of states that have had experience with mercenaries (the African states) or states that use the term “mercenary” to describe and condemn unwanted foreign actions in order to galvanize international opinion against a particular situation (Colombia, Nicaragua, and Cuba). The work of these two UN groups, in addition to the development of international law in the 1970s and 1980s, strongly institutionalized dislike of mercenaries on moral grounds within some bodies of the UN, particularly the General Assembly and what is now the Human Rights Council. The creation of international laws dealing with mercenaries early in their appearance on the world stage left may with a sense that mercenaries and PMCs are banned by international law, even though in reality no such explicit ban exists. In addition, the mention of mercenaries in other international legal instruments, including the General Assembly’s Definition of Aggression and the Draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind meant that the idea of mercenarism as a criminal act was kept alive in other instruments. Indeed, the mere fact that mercenarism was included in the Draft Code alongside crimes like genocide and slavery demonstrates the degree to which international law-makers disliked the idea of private force. Planet Debate 67 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Violate International Law

FACT THAT PMSCs ARE HIRED BY LEGITIMATE STATES DOESN’T MEAN THAT THEY DON’T VIOLATE INTERNATIONAL LAW Chia Lehnardt, NYU School of Law - Researcher, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 140 The fact that PMCs are often staffed by former military personnel and retain tight links to a certain state is often assumed to mean that such entities will be wary of acting against the interests of that state, or that it will act in a state’s interest for commercial reasons. Some writers even speak of “foreign policy by proxy” or “covert wings of governments.” Similarly, PMCs seek to dispel suspicions by arguing that they will work only for legitimate governments. Nevertheless, what states perceive to be in their interests is not necessarily in line with international law; nor do “legitimate” governments always act in accordance with international law. If PMCs are a convenient too to pursue foreign policy ends without the appearance of state involvement, the incentive for states to use PMCs to circumvent international obligations—or to save the costs of abiding by them—is apparent. Planet Debate 68 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine Just-War Doctrine

PMSCs VIOLATE JUST WAR DOCTRINE – VIOLENCE ONLY LEGITIMATE IF UNDERTAKEN ON BEHALF OF THE “PUBLIC” Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 147-8 A longstanding way of addressing the problem of ethical wars has been through the languages of the just-war tradition, developed by early Christian thinkers in the aftermath of the fall of Rome and the barbarian invasions of the fifth century. Since then, it has become the central theory by which violence is justified -- literally made just, or acceptable within a community. The West is not alone in needing certain arguments or justifications to legitimate violence; holy war, or jihad, requires that certain moral conditions be met as well. But for the last 1,500 years, the language of just war – debated, abused, or ignored for the most part – has characterized the way in which war is judged, regardless of how it is fought. One of the central tenets of just-war theory is that the authority that allows or starts a war on other violent action be legitimate. The state is the only legitimate authority that can authorize legal violence, and the only justified violence is that authorized by a state (or people that deserve recognition as a state). When the violence of a guerilla war takes on a kind of legitimacy, either because it is widely supported by a people or because it attempts to overthrow a form of government widely deemed illegitimate (for instance, the “wars of national liberation” of the mid-twentieth century), then the “nation” – the people – can establish the legitimacy of the violence even if the “state” deems it an insurgency. In any of these cases, even with all of their gray areas, violence is deemed justified if it is on behalf of a larger entity – a people or a public. PMSCs seriously undermine much of the foundation of this doctrine and thus they are hard to talk about using the traditional ethical guidelines.

JUST WAR DOCTRINE IS AN ATTEMPT TO LIMIT THE HUMAN AND ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS OF WAR Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 146-7 In the twentieth century, the rise of wars of national liberation, or guerrilla warfare, or more widely any kind of insurgency, signaled the end of what could be termed a war of reciprocity: bipolar warfare wherein both sides hold a lethal balance of firepower. Here, in the ideal classical image, rules are maintained through the threat of reprisals and an underlying idea of reciprocity: one side “behaves” because it expects the other side to behave along with it. When fighting wars in which one side explicitly attacks the rules – aiming at civilians, using disproportionate means – then it becomes increasingly hard to employ any kind of mutually agreed upon restraint. This is where the modern liberal ideals of warfare run aground; where we are forced to fight wars “on the cusp” of allowable behavior (Coker 2007). “This is ultimate challenge facing a world that would like to make war more humane for its soldiers, and for society itself: will the other side play by the same rules. The rich man’s option is to sanitize war; the poor man’s is to make it even more horrendous than it is.” (Coker 2001). On the other side of global civil society, and a society of sovereign states, there is the increasing awareness of what might be called a global “uncivil” society. The wars that are currently being fought reveal the problem resulting from wars fought between these new configurations of combatants. Two simultaneous trends mark the ethics of these new wars: the increasing “humanization” of combat, wherein humanitarian fighting is an explicit goal, and the simultaneous use of enormous power and the global reach of destructive capability. Coker’s most recent books describe a trend of increasing concern with humanizing warfare in twentieth- century warfare, and the confusion of ethical languages that has resulted from this effort. In Humane Warfare, he chronicles efforts to humanize the warrior. These efforts invoke language echoing that of St. Augustine, the earliest just-war theorist, and claim that war should be fought without intentional cruelty, without explicit hatred of the enemy, and in order to make the world safer for humanity as a whole. In recounting the complex history of the ways the late-twentieth-century warrior has been transformed into a more “feminized” and risk-averse soldier, he notes that NATO intervention in Kosovo symbolized the transformation: “For the moment the West is still in the war business, but it is attempting to change its nature by fighting wars more humanely. Post-material societies fight post-material wars – they try to avoid the material (human and environmental) damage which was essential to warfare for two millennia. The once familiar and accepted without question, now cast it in a light that is offensive to the liberal conscience.” (Coker 2001) Coker notes that many find this effort to sanitize conflict a sham, and adopt a cynical attitude toward a culture whose left hand doesn’t seem to know what its right hand is doing, and a military that wants to convince itself of its humanity through a form of “clean an gentle” warfare. Planet Debate 69 PMCs – Sherry Hall Private Contracts for Security Less Ethical than Public

PRIVATE SECURITY CONTRACTS ETHICALLY PROBLEMATIC BECAUSE ONLY THE GOVERNMENT HAS A SOCIAL CONTRACT TO PROTECT PUBLIC INTERESTS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 145 The other prominent defender of the ethical use of PMSCs, Deane-Peter Baker, uses an analogy taken from the world of the domestic private security guard: the bar bouncer, the mall cop, the bodyguard. Baker especially defends the fundamental right to contract for certain kinds of services. Baker’s argument and the example he uses to illustrate it, however, falls flat when the question of accountability is raised. In his example, a woman has to walk through a dangerous neighborhood at night, and the local police are nowhere to be seen. “Believing (rightly) that her chances of being attacked are high, Jane enters into a contractual arrangement with a bouncer at a nightclub she happens to pass, who agrees to protect her on her walk through the neighborhood for an agreed fee. As it happens, Jane is attacked, and her companion does intervene to save her. Do we think that Jane’s companion is in some sense unethical? No.” (Baker 2008) But what happens if the hired bodyguard, having gotten her safely through the neighborhood, then attacks her? This scenario, ad-hoc contract is broken. But where would the woman go, and for what type of enforcement and remedies? Or what if, as Jane and her bodyguard were walking through the neighborhood, they witnessed another woman being attacked? Jane’s bodyguard would be perfectly ethical in not intervening. Since his contract only specified Jane’s safety. But this would not be a moral act. Baker’s example is of the kind of contract that might take place in a frontier-setting, with short-term contracts backed up by a threat of imminent violence, not the type of embedded social contracts that would take place within a zone of relative law and order. Imagine instead that the police had been called to escort Jane through the neighborhood (let’s say they had the resources to do this). Jane could have been the victim of police brutality or corruption, but then two levels of contract have been broken: the promise to protect a specific person, Jane and the social contract to offer general security, on behalf of the public. Those two layers of responsibility are backed up by a legal system that offers at least the hope of legal justice. Here the relevant distinction is that of center and periphery from the previous chapter. Jane and the policeman, on the other hand, are at the legal center, in a much more comprehensible relationship. Theirs is a social contract, not just a private contract. And with relational contracts, as I argued in the last chapter, the remedy is most often that of just “termination of the relationship,” with little additional care for the wider public.

PRIVATE SECURITY ARRANGEMENTS ETHICALLY SUSPECT EVEN IF THEY ACT IN AN ETHICAL MANNER Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 145-6 My second account of how PMSCs resist traditional accounts of ethical actors takes its bearings from the idea that PMSCs are a form of policing. PMSCs can certainly be seen as a form of mercenarism: that point has already been addressed ad nauseum, with various ethical ramifications. But another, less sensationalistic, analysis sees them as mere extensions of the private security guard trend that has been researched domestically for at least three decades. The ethical relevance of this argument is twofold: the expansion of privatized security makes security into a commodity only available tot hose who can pay, and the ethical norms of private security police are frequently detrimental to wider community norms) or to the possibility of building them. PMSCs can be said to provide security for some, but not justice. To the extent that they are a new face of international policing, they are thus ethically problematic in their social impact, even if their operational procedures are individually blameless. Planet Debate 70 PMCs – Sherry Hall Private Contracts for Security Less Ethical than Public

PMSCs LIKELY TO ENGAGE IN TRAFFICKING Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 114 In exploiting the link between the capacity to inflict violence and a willingness to turn this to profit, modern corporations are likely to grapple with similar temptations to those experienced by mercantile empires of centuries past. This is because wars today are in one sense no different to wars of any era. They still involve familiar commodities; diamonds, goad, and precious gems, addictive drugs, lumber, oil, other valuable minerals, weapons sales, slavery, illicit currency movements and the labor required to move it all. As in the past, contemporary commerce is conducted by governments, warlords and organized crime. The means also remain unchanged: violence, diplomacy and subterfuge. Each takes an assortment of recognizably sordid and time-proven forms. It is almost certain that there will be potent enticements for a UN contractor to dabble in the same lucrative businesses. That lure may well be much greater than in the past. This is because today’s contract military is better educated and organized than their historic counterparts. In particular, they are financially and commercially far more sophisticated. Several scenarios drive these concerns. For example, security firms originating in Southeastern Europe face difficulties with organized crime and related political affiliations. Eastern European criminals have already tried to buy Scandinavian security firms and a tender application from that region may warrant examination with care. Not that there is anything new in un efforts to suppress transnational and organized crime, something which had absorbed UN energies for some years. Planet Debate 71 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Allow Public to Ignore True Costs of Foreign Policy Decisions

HIDDEN NATURE OF PMSCs SHIELD THE PUBLIC FROM THE REALITY OF POLICY DECISIONS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 148 The third account of the ethics of PMSCs is unrelated to the first two, but return to a central debate in the ethics of current warfare: the prevalence of what scholars have dubbed “virtual warfare.” In virtual warfare, technology contributes to a feeling of practicing a sterile warfare from afar that is falsely clean and gentle; technology can deceptively increase the felt “virtue” of those using it, even as it distances them from their targets. PMSCs are not directly a part of this aspect of virtual warfare. But their effect on those utilizing them can be similar; as proxy forces that allow the full cost of a war to be kept hidden, they are an example of what has been called a “virtual mobilization”. The ethical problem is that, by outsourcing violence, Westerners may shield themselves form the reality of their policy decisions.

VIRTUAL WAR PRODUCES SYSTEM OF TOTAL DOMINANCE WHICH MASKS ACTUAL VIOLENCE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 150 Another critic of virtuality, however, asks not for moral clarification, but critical theoretical understanding about the more complex assumptions grounding such a commitment to virtuality. James Der Derian is a scholar of military and international politics and his book, Virtuous War (2001), focuses on the ways in which the combination of virtuality and virtue have produced an insatiable appetite for war that is technologically complex but politically facile. The original root of the word “virtual” conveyed, he points out, a “sense of inherent qualities that can exert influence by will, as in the virtu of Machiavelli’s Prince, or by potential, as in the virtual capacity of the computer.” And here the road becomes both murkier and more revealing. Der Derian’s book combines interviews with those who plan and “game” new modes of warfare, visits to the war-gaming arenas in the Mojave Desert, and simulation laboratories in Los Angeles, with the thought of postmodern theorists such a Baudrillard, Deleuze, Foucault, and Benjamin. This cumbersome combination supports a theory of war as a culmination of everything modern; the need for a politics that appeals to a mass, the ability to endlessly reproduce images, the desire for a total system of domination that can be both centrally operated and easily shifted, and an organizational theory that will allow for rapid dominance but still respond to the need for immediate shifts of purpose and posture. Like Ignateiff, Der Derian sees the dominant effect of this as a distancing of war from death, from destruction, from bodies, even as it needs to produce these very things. Modern war relies on the death and mutilation of others, but in a falsely “clean and gentle” manner. Planet Debate 72 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine U.S. Security Goals and Policies

PMSCs CAN UNDERMINE U.S. SECURITY GOALS EVEN WHEN THEY CARRY OUT THEIR CONTRACTS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 19 The third question concerns the form or content of the private security provided: is it direct combat support, or is it merely advice and training? In the language of principal-agent theory, this pertains to the task the agent is being asked to carry out. There are important implications here, since, as many commentators have noted, some tasks are better suited to a contract, and others are not. Colonel Hammes highlighted this problem: “I think contractors are best used for mundane, repetitive tasks that are clearly defined within a legal structure; for instance, running a training facility in Kuwait. MPRI [Military Professionals Resources, Inc.] runs a superb training facility with retired NCOs [non-commissioned officers] –vast experience, but it’s not a combat zone. Very clearly defined regulations, rules, very clearly defined product which it is hired to deliver. You get into trouble when you put them in a situation – for instance, the security force guarding Ambassador Bremer. Blackwater’s an extraordinarily professional organization, and they were doing exactly what they were tasked to do: protect the principal. The problem is in protecting the principal they had to be very aggressive, and each time they went out they had to offend locals, forcing them to the side of the road, being overpowering and intimidating, at times running vehicles off of the road, making enemies each time they went out. So they were actually getting our contract exactly as we asked them to and at the same time hurting our counterinsurgency effort.” (Gaviria and Smith 2005)

CONTRACTORS TREATED WITH DISTRUST AND RESENTMENT BY REGULAR SERVICEMEMBERS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 30 From within the military itself, numerous concerns have been expressed with the rules and guidelines for interaction between military and contractor security forces (Castillo 2000). At the most basic level, there is the problem of logistics and supply, and the widely varying equipment and armor available to each company. As one ArmorGroup official explains, the two biggest headaches for the company are the bureaucratic details on either end of any contractor’s tour; entry and exit visa requirements, supply and resupply lines, contingency rescue operations, medical care, and evacuation guidelines going out. Contracting out a large portion of any military’s efforts diffuses this logistical hassle, but makes it just as labor-intensive. Discussions of interoperability begin with these essential details. Beyond this lie the legal questions of command and control, and who bears responsibility for the individual actions of the contractors. Finally, there is international law, including the basic laws governing armed conflict and the status of those working in and around the regular military. These concerns reveal underlying tensions between those within the military on a number of fronts: pay scale, risk acceptance, evacuation and casualty procedures, rules of engagement, and organizational cultures. Moreover, there seems to be a distrust of those who are now working as contractors, alongside a certain amount of envy and resentment, and a knowledge that someday they could be working for the same outfits (White 2005; Kelty 2008). Planet Debate 73 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine U.S. Security Goals and Policies

PMSCs UNDERMINE MILITARY MORALE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 117-8 Another reason for resistance arises from the present unpopularity of military recruitment in several societies and notably the U.S. Here, labor targets remain unmet and some American officers have publicly suggested that their government forms its own Foreign Legion as a military life becomes increasingly unattractive to today’s citizens. Radical ideas of this sort are accompanied by growing concern that the commercialization of military labor is exerting undesirable effects on both morale and military culture. Outsourced firms in the US today develop curriculum and provide military training, so it is at least conceivable influences other than purely government requirements may color the content of what is taught. Even if this is not the case, few would deny that those virtues military life traditionally extols now compete with the money offered elsewhere. There is some evidence that a preoccupation with cash rather than patriotism is causing tension amongst senior US officers. This should be expected, as older uniformed personnel react against something they consider subversive. They have a point. Some ex-soldiers working for PMSCs have conducted themselves in a manner which has brought discredit upon an institution that no longer controls them. To coin the language of the market, senior American officers wish to protect “the integrity of their brand.” On the other hand, career expectations have changed in America’s highly materialist society. Today’s US military compete with other employers by offering education and skills to advance a potential recruit’s life after military service. For this reason the armed forces are becoming more of an occupation and less a vocation. A second career is now likely after reaching pensionable age of between one and two decades of service. Hence the old emphasis on selfless devotion to the state is now less noticeable in military advertising.

PMSCs UNDERMINE TROOP MORALE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 118 More troubling is the perception by career militaries that their governments seek the support of armed contractors in order to sustain unpopular conflicts. This could foment a decrease in loyalty among regular troops as they become cynical over the purposes for which they are ordered in a conflict alongside better paid contractors. Moreover, those contractors are already viewed with competitive suspicion. Pay differences between private security and uniformed US military in Iraq have already been the cause of some antagonism. More significantly, if militaries become less anchored to traditional views on their roles in democracies, then military institutions may in turn become less politically reliable. A people, their state, and their military have formed the legs of an accepted Clausewitzean framework supporting legitimized violence for well over 200 years. A perception that this political dependability is eroding could easily cause an apprehensive government to respond by limiting the involvement of its citizens in UN contract operations.

PMCS VIOLATE INTERNATIONAL LAW - THEY’RE MERCENARIES WHO COMPLICATE MILITARY OBJECTIVES AND CREATE REGIONAL TENSION Kidwell, 05 (Last modified) [Deborah, M.A. in history and M.S. in edu at OSU, asst. prof of military history @ U.S. Army command, 9/13, “Public War, Private Fight? The United States and Private Military Companies”, http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/download/csipubs/kidwell.pdf]/galperin In a larger sense, however, using military providers can be a volatile solution that raises ideological, legal, moral, and ethical concerns. As profit-driven entities whose mission may derive from any conceivable source with funding, the services PMCs offer their clients do not necessarily derive from any compelling national or humanitarian interest. Only the written provisions of the contract define contractor responsibilities. These organizations are largely extralegal and are not bound or protected by the International Laws of War or typical rules of engagement. In fact, outspoken critics consider them to be simple mercenaries—warriors for hire outlawed by the Charter of the United Nations. Many PMCs frequently conduct operations in unstable, lawless situations and the old adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely can apply. In an unstable environment, PMCs are capable of becoming the law themselves. The extralegal status of these entities and other sovereignty questions have the potential to create international friction among allies and enemies alike, making joint and multinational operations more difficult for regular forces. Moreover, PMCs may complicate civil conflicts by becoming just another belligerent party in an already complex security environment. Planet Debate 74 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine U.S. Security Goals and Policies

PMC’S ARE PERCEIVED AS OPERATIVES OF THE U.S. AND GUT OUR CREDIBILITY Camacho, 8 [Paul, Consultant @ The William Joiner Center @ U of Mass. Boston, “Danger Across the Arc of Instability,” 4/10, http://www.smcm.edu/democracy/_assets/_documents/Camacho%20- %20ARTICLE%20Private%20Contractors.pdf]/galperin The political drawbacks actually cover a rather wide scope. In international terms PMCs are seen as an arm of the corporate first world or first world / Western governments. This is particularly the case in Iraq. Thus when the PMC fails to perform professionally or worse, when their behavior results in international furor, the nation – 11 state / employer is severely compromised . Whether perception or reality, contractors were at the center of the international incident at Abu Ghraib and DynCorp employees were linked to organized prostitution in Bosnia and Blackwater and Triple Canopy employees to the shooting of civilians in Iraq. Planet Debate 75 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine Counterinsurgency Efforts

PMC PRESENCE IN IRAQ DIRECTLY COUNTERACTS COUNTERINSURGENCY – 6 REASONS Singer, 07 [Peter, Director of 21st century defense initiative, September, “Can't Win with 'Em, Can't Go To War without 'Em: Private Military Contractors and Counterinsurgency”, http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/0927militarycontractors.aspx] The use of private military contractors appears to have harmed, rather than helped the counterinsurgency efforts of the U.S. mission in Iraq. Even worse, it has created a dependency syndrome on the private marketplace that not merely creates critical vulnerabilities, but shows all the signs of the last downward spirals of an addiction. If we judge by what has happened in Iraq, when it comes to private military contractors and counterinsurgency, the U.S. has locked itself into a vicious cycle. It can't win with them, but can't go to war without them. The study explores how the current use of private military contractors: * Allows policymakers to dodge key decisions that carry political costs, thus leading to operational choices that might not reflect public interest. The Abrams Doctrine, which has stood since the start of the all- volunteer force in the wake of Vietnam, has been outsourced. * Enables a "bigger is better" approach to operations that runs contrary to the best lessons of U.S. military strategy. Turning logistics and operations into a for- profit endeavor helped feed the "Green Zone" mentality problem of sprawling bases, which runs counter everything General Petraeus pointed to as necessary to winning a counterinsurgency in the new Army/USMC manual he helped write. * Inflames popular opinion against, rather than for, the American mission through operational practices that ignore the fundamental lessons of counterinsurgency. As one set of contractors described. "Our mission is to protect the principal at all costs. If that means pissing off the Iraqis, too bad." * Participated in a series of abuses that have undermined efforts at winning "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people. The pattern of contractor misconduct extends back to 2003 and has involved everything from prisoner abuse and "joyride" shootings of civilians to a reported incident in which a drunken Blackwater contractor shot dead the security guard of the Iraqi Vice President, after the two got into an argument on Christmas Eve, 2006. * Weakened American efforts in the "war of ideas" both inside Iraq and beyond. As one Iraqi government official explained even before the recent shootings. "They are part of the reason for all the hatred that is directed at Americans, because people don't know them as Blackwater, they know them only as Americans. They are planting hatred, because of these irresponsible acts." * Reveals a double standard towards Iraqi civilian institutions that undermines efforts to build up these very same institutions, another key lesson of counterinsurgency. As one Iraqi soldier said of Blackwater. "They are more powerful than the government. No one can try them. Where is the government in this?" * Forced policymakers to jettison strategies designed to win the counterinsurgency on multiple occasions, before they even had a chance to succeed. The U.S. Marine plan for counterinsurgency in the Sunni Triangle was never implemented, because of uncoordinated contractor decisions in 2004 that helped turn Fallujah into a rallying point of the insurgency. More recently, while U.S. government leaders had planned to press the Iraqi government on needed action on post-"surge" political benchmarks, instead they are now having to request Iraqi help in cleaning up the aftermath of the Blackwater incident. The U.S. government needs to go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate its use of private military contractors, especially armed roles within counterinsurgency and contingency operations. It needs to determine what roles are appropriate or not for private firms, and what roles must be kept in the control of those in public service. As part of this determination, it is becoming clear that many roles now outsourced, including the armed escort of U.S. government officials, assets, and convoys in a warzone, not only are inherently government functions, but that the outsourcing has created both huge vulnerabilities and negative consequences for the overall mission. A process must immediately begin to roll such public functions back into public responsibility. Planet Debate 76 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine Counterinsurgency Efforts

PMC’S MAKE U.S. MILITARY EFFORTS IN IRAQ IMPOSSIBLE – COST-PLUS CONTRACTS, LAWLESSNESS, AND LACK OF COMPETITION Singer, 08 [P.W., National Security Fellow at Brookings, Ph.D. in Security Studies from Harvard, “Outsourcing the Fight,” Brookings, June 5, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0605_military_contractors_singer.aspx]/galperin Handing over control to contractors has also led to allegations of war-profiteering . Almost all of today's logistics firms are operating under "cost-plus" contracts--a structure that is ripe for abuse. Examples in Iraq range from billing for soldiers' meals that were never cooked or served to convoys shipping "sailboat fuel" (as Halliburton-KBR truck drivers laughingly termed charging the government for moving empty pallets from site to site). According to testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government and Reform, the Defense Contract Audit Agency has identified more than $10 billion in unsupported or questionable costs from battlefield contractors--and it has barely scratched the surface. Such losses don't just represent misspent funds; they represent lost opportunities to actually support our diplomatic and military goals. The situation has gotten so bad that the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction dubbed corruption as the "second insurgency" in Iraq. Many worry that the lack of control due to outsourcing could weigh even heavier and even put an entire military operation at risk. Consider what happened during the 2004 Sadr uprising, where a spike in attacks on convoys caused many companies to either withdraw or suspend operations, causing fuel and ammunition stocks to dwindle. It is important to remember that private contractors are not bound by the same codes, structures and obligations as those in public service. As Tom Crum, then the chief operating officer for KBR's logistics operations, wrote in an internal memo, "We cannot allow the Army to push us to put our people in harm's way. ... If we in management believe the Army is asking us to put our KBR employees in danger that we are not willing to accept, then we will refuse to go." As civilians, this choice is their right to make. But as retired Army Major Gen. Barry McCaffery testified to Congress in 2007, the consequence of turning over so much of the supply system to private civilian firms, which have this right to decide when and where they deploy, makes our logistics system "a house of cards." In the same way that companies such as Cisco were forced to reconsider their outsourcing policies in the late 1990s, after they lost the ability to deliver on core functions, the military (with a push from Congress) needs to reevaluate what is appropriate to outsource and what is not. If a task is critical to the mission's ultimate success or failure, then perhaps it should be kept in-house. In other words: Feel free to outsource the Burger Kings, laundries and base construction, but maybe we ought to keep roles like military interrogators, armed troops and movement of critical supplies (all now outsourced) inside the system. The Pentagon also has to do a much better job of being a smart client. Far too few contracts get any true competition to drive down prices. Instead, they tend to be bundled together into massive structures, where a few prime contractors (just three in the new version of LOGCAP) are the ones that dole out sub-contracts. Add in the largely cost-plus contract structure, and savings tend not to accrue. There also aren't enough eyes and ears working on behalf of the government client to monitor contractor performance. In 1998, there was one financial auditor for every $642 million in Pentagon contracts. Today, there is one auditor for every $2.03 billion in contracts. These auditors aren't just required to catch false billings and cost overruns, but also to ensure quality. That soldier's electrocution didn't happen because of malice; it happened, as an internal Pentagon e-mail revealed, because KBR's inspections were never reviewed by a "qualified government employee," and the Army wasn't aware of "the extent of the severity of the electrical problems." Planet Debate 77 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine Counterinsurgency Efforts

PMCS AREN’T SUBJECT TO AUTHORITY- AS A RESULT THEY UNDERMINE THE MILITARY EFFORT TO WIN OVER THE IRAQI PEOPLE Krepinevich, 8, [President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, frmr member of the personal staff of three defense secretaries, the Office of Net Assessment, the National Defense Panel, the Defense Science Board, and the Joint Forces Command’s Transformation Advisory Board, “An Army at the Crossroads,” CSBA / hnasser] Although the precise number of private contractors deployed in these operations is unknown, the number in Iraq alone is reportedly approximately 160,000.132 These contractors are used in a wide variety of roles and come from at least 30 different countries, ranging from local Iraqis to American and British workers to Guatemalans and Ugandans.133 Private contractors play a major role in providing in-country logistical support for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, with some 20,000 American contractors as well as large numbers of host-country or third-country nationals employed in these roles.134 More controversial has been the use of private contractors as security guards. According to one estimate, in 2006 there were some 181 private security companies working in Iraq alone, with some 48,000 employees.135 Military commanders have substantially less control over private contractors than they do over military personnel. As CBO has noted, “A military commander can influence the contractor employee’s behavior through the contracting officer and the contractor’s desire to satisfy the customer, but the commander has limited direct control over any one employee.”136 Moreover, unlike military personnel, civilians and contractors participating in undeclared wars and contingency operations are not generally subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), further reducing their accountability to military commanders.137 Another problem is that private contractors tend to have a narrower perspective concerning their roles. For example, private security guards may well focus solely on protecting their clients, and discount the negative impact their actions might have on the broader military aim of wining the “hearts and minds” of the local population. By contrast, military personnel are much more likely to see the necessity of performing their duties in a way that does not, if at all possible, alienate or offend the local population. The result is that, even if private security contractors are well trained and well intentioned, they may operate in a way that undermines the US military’s efforts. In addition to these potentially critical operational and strategic shortcomings related to the use of private contractors, there are also concerns that the reliance on private contractors to support deployed combat forces may have proven inefficient in budgetary terms. As noted earlier, studies have generally shown that civilian government employees and, especially, private contractors can perform infrastructure type functions more cheaply than can military personnel. However, as CBO has noted, that evidence “pertains to peacetime functions performed in the United States and may not necessarily extend to combat operations overseas.”138 Certainly, serious questions have been raised about the efficiency of private contractors used in a variety of roles in Iraq and Afghanistan, including allegations of widespread corruption. Planet Debate 78 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine Counterinsurgency Efforts

PRIVATE CONTRACTORS AREN’T UNDER ANY CONTROL AND CAN PUT ENTIRE MILITARY OPERATIONS AT RISK Singer 10 [Peter W. Singer , the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings., “Outsourcing the Fight” July 12 /hnasser] http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0605_military_contractors_singer.aspx?p=1 In 1992 a relatively little-known, Texas-based oil services firm called Halliburton was awarded a $3.9 million Pentagon contract. Its task was to write a classified report on how private companies, like itself, could support the logistics of U.S. military deployments into countries with poor infrastructure. Conspiracy theories aside, it is hard to imagine that either the company or the client realized that 15 years later this contract (now called the Logistics Civilian Augmentation Program or LOGCAP) would be worth as much as $150 billion. The use of private contractors in U.S wars dates back to the sutlers, merchants who followed behind Revolutionary and Civil War armies selling incidentals to the troops like jam or whiskey. But the size and scope of the private military industry today is unprecedented. In Iraq alone, there are some 180,000 private military contractors performing functions that once would have been handled by soldiers in uniform. The vast bulk of these contractors handle military support functions: building and operating military bases, maintaining and repairing military equipment and vehicles, and moving massive convoys of supplies that are both vital to the operation's survival (like gas and ammunition) and not so vital (like Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza). Getting those jobs done has incurred a great cost, both financial and human; according to Department of Labor insurance claims, 1,292 contractors have been killed and 9,610 wounded as of April 2008. Contracting out logistics has brought the skills and resources of hundreds of companies from around the world to support the war effort . But, much like when a business outsources too much of its supply chain, this process has caused a loss of control. While companies only perform the jobs specified in their contract, war is an environment in which flexibility is needed most. Take for example the recent news that at least 12 U.S. soldiers have been accidentally electrocuted inside their bases in Iraq. Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, a highly decorated Green Beret, was killed while taking a shower 11 months after KBR (nyse: KBR) contractors had first found potentially serious electrical problems in the facility's construction. But KBR's contract didn't cover "fixing potential hazards." It only required them to repair items that were already broken. Handing over control to contractors has also led to allegations of war-profiteering . Almost all of today's logistics firms are operating under "cost-plus" contracts--a structure that is ripe for abuse. Examples in Iraq range from billing for soldiers' meals that were never cooked or served to convoys shipping "sailboat fuel" (as Halliburton-KBR truck drivers laughingly termed charging the government for moving empty pallets from site to site). According to testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government and Reform, the Defense Contract Audit Agency has identified more than $10 billion in unsupported or questionable costs from battlefield contractors--and it has barely scratched the surface. Such losses don't just represent misspent funds; they represent lost opportunities to actually support our diplomatic and military goals. The situation has gotten so bad that the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction dubbed corruption as the "second insurgency" in Iraq. Many worry that the lack of control due to outsourcing could weigh even heavier and even put an entire military operation at risk. Consider what happened during the 2004 Sadr uprising, where a spike in attacks on convoys caused many companies to either withdraw or suspend operations, causing fuel and ammunition stocks to dwindle. It is important to remember that private contractors are not bound by the same codes, structures and obligations as those in public service. As Tom Crum, then the chief operating officer for KBR's logistics operations, wrote in an internal memo, "We cannot allow the Army to push us to put our people in harm's way. ... If we in management believe the Army is asking us to put our KBR employees in danger that we are not willing to accept, then we will refuse to go." As civilians, this choice is their right to make. But as retired Army Major Gen. Barry McCaffery testified to Congress in 2007, the consequence of turning over so much of the supply system to private civilian firms, which have this right to decide when and where they deploy, makes our logistics system "a house of cards." In the same way that companies such as Cisco were forced to reconsider their outsourcing policies in the late 1990s, after they lost the ability to deliver on core functions, the military (with a push from Congress) needs to reevaluate what is appropriate to outsource and what is not. If a task is critical to the mission's ultimate success or failure, then perhaps it should be kept in-house. In other words: Feel free to outsource the Burger Kings, laundries and base construction, but maybe we ought to keep roles like military interrogators, armed troops and movement of critical supplies (all now outsourced) inside the system. The Pentagon also has to do a much better job of being a smart client. Far too few contracts get any true competition to drive down prices. Instead, they tend to be bundled together into massive structures, where a few prime contractors (just three in the new version of LOGCAP) are the ones that dole out sub-contracts. Add in the largely cost-plus contract structure, and savings tend not to accrue. There also aren't enough eyes and ears working on behalf of the government client to monitor contractor performance. In 1998, there was one financial auditor for every $642 million in Pentagon contracts. Today, there is one auditor for every $2.03 billion in contracts. These auditors aren't just required to catch false billings and cost overruns, but also to ensure quality. That soldier's electrocution didn't happen because of malice; it happened, as an internal Pentagon e-mail revealed, because KBR's inspections were never reviewed by a "qualified government employee," and the Army wasn't aware of "the extent of the severity of the electrical problems." Finally, the Pentagon needs to use its massive buying power to shape and sanction the market, much like Wal-Mart does to wring out efficiencies and send warnings to any vendors that think to cross it. For example, the new LOGCAP contract, potentially worth up to $150 billion, went to KBR, DynCorp and Fluor. Yet, as the Project on Government Oversight found, these same three companies have been cited for 29 cases of serious misconduct in the last decade--a category of allegations that includes false claims against the government, violations of the Anti-Kickback Act, fraud and conspiracy to launder money. There's no doubt that demand for outsourced logistics has grown, and that private military contractors are bigger than ever. But we've yet to see whether the government will advance equally in its efforts to become a smart regulator and customer of this marketplace. Planet Debate 79 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Hurt Military Retention – Drain the Best Personnel Away

PMSCs COSTLY – SIPHON OFF HIGHLY SKILLED MILITARY TRAINED AT SUBSTANTIAL TAXPAYER EXPENSE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 119 The freedom to earn larger sums of money in private employment carries other consequences. Losing those traditionally paid from the public purse represents the loss of a considerable investment. Training at taxpayer expense can easily be valued at hundreds of thousands or even several millions of dollars in the case of fighter pilots. These personnel have to be replaced in a cycle which becomes shorter than is desirable while delivering additional costs to taxpayers. The public and their elected officials have begun to observe a circular process that has drawn much comment: taxpayer dollars are spent on training service personnel who then leave and hire themselves back o the government which bore the cost of their training in the first place. Moreover, the government finds itself paying a higher rate for those skills from the same personnel when they were uniformed military. This is exactly what is happening in the US intelligence community. CIA employees have resigned early to return as higher-paid private sector contractors—to the public unease of the Director of Central Intelligence, General Hayden. The general is wary of his agency becoming what he called “…a farm system for contractors.” If some of these CIA personnel offered say, analytical services to a UN contractor offering higher pay, this may provoke resistance from the US government. These workers would be lost to another entity, their training having been subsidized by the US taxpayer. Other states possessing advanced military/intelligence communities could be in a similar position.

BRAIN DRAIN OF MILITARY PERSONNEL TO PMSCs COSTLY Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 255 In May 2008, some answers were delivered as to just how extensively the U.S. government had come to rely on private contractors. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report included the results of an investigation into just how much brain drain the government was losing to the private sector. The investigative arm of Congress reported that some 2,435 former senior officials with the pentagon had left to work for some fifty-two private contractors.

PMSCs OPPOSED BY STATES THAT FEAR LOSS OF LOYAL AND SKILLED EMPLOYEES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 119-20 There is another aspect to this argument. States which oversee costly and sometimes sensitive military training not only lose their investment but also some of their control over how this investment is utilized. A monopoly over pay packets, pensions and superannuation has until recently been a decisive influence over individual conduct. Historically this has provided states with firm control over the lives of men and women trained to inflict harm on others through state-of-the-art means. No government takes lightly the idea of several hundred of its more lethal employees being redeployed at their own volition to serve an institution over which their government does not exercise control. Notwithstanding ubiquitous secrecy agreements, governments may be concerned that allowing employees to become UN contractors could risk weakening institutional loyalty. It does not matter that their nationals’ purposes may be ethically defensible. Retaining a fraying monopoly of control holds a strong appeal for many governments. Planet Debate 80 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Hurt Military Retention – Drain the Best Personnel Away

PMC’S ARE DETRIMENTAL TO MILITARY RETENTION – PROVIDE A FINANCIAL INCENTIVE TO LEAVE THE U.S. ARMED FORCES Schreier and Caparini, 05 [Fred, consultant with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Swiss Ministry of Defense and Marina, Senior Fellow at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Ph.D., King’s College, University of London, “Privatising Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security Companies,” p. 46, March, Geneva Centre For The Democratic Control Of Armed Forces, GScholar, http://se2.dcaf.ch/serviceengine/Files/DCAF/18346/ipublicationdocument_singledocument/BA695123-3145-4CAA-B29A- A60711724C96/en/op06_privatising-security.pdf]/galperin PMCs differ from mercenary outfits in that they are mainly hired by governments and corporations, ostensibly to provide military and security services, whereas non-state armed groups, aiming to undermine the constitutional order of states, generally hire mercenaries. PMCs usually recruit former soldiers from the national armed forces of the country where they are based. Some firms only recruit from their home military, whereas other are truly multinational in employee base, recruiting soldiers from all corners of the world: Gurkhas from Nepal; soldiers from South Africa’s old apartheid defence forces;60 former members of the French Foreign Legion, the Soviet, Warsaw Pact and Chilean armed forces, or paramilitaries from Fiji. Others are recruited from different intelligence services, SWAT-teams or drug enforcement organizations. A few firms also recruit from guerrilla and rebel groups, but the bulk of the personnel have served for at least some time in the military. The most prized are plucked from the world’s elite Special Forces units: Americans from the Navy Seals, Delta Force, Special Forces commandos, and Rangers ; British from the Special Air Service,61 the Special Boat Service, and Airborne Commandos; Russians from the Alpha Team and Special Forces units of the former KGB, or from the Spetsnaz of the former Red Army.62 Representing the peak of the military profession, these typically are far more accustomed to interacting with foreign nationals in conflict areas than the average service member. Proficiency in reconnaissance, intelligence, foreign languages, and cultural appreciation are skills learned during their military training and carried over into their professional approach taken as civilian specialists. Frequently they are former and retired senior NCOs, men in their 30s and early 40s likely to have combat experience. For those willing to pay the price, this level of experience contributes to a more relaxed environment that simplifies operations. Since some PMCs unblushingly charge $500 to $1,500 a day for their most skilled operators,63 military leaders are openly grumbling that the lure of such payment a day is siphoning away some of their most experienced Special Operations people at the very time their services are most in demand.64 Competition over elite troops from PMCs working in Iraq is now so intense that the US Special Operations Command has formulated new pay, benefits, and educational incentives to try to retain them65 and in the UK, it has led the Army to offer soldiers yearlong “sabbaticals” to staunch the long-term damage being caused by elite troops leaving to work for PMCs in Iraq.66 Planet Debate 81 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine Civil/Military Relations

PRIVATIZING WARFARE WEAKENS CIVILIAN- MIILITARY RELATIONS- PRIVATIZED FORCES CORRUPT THE VIEW OF SOLDIERS Schreier and Caparini, 05 [Fred, consultant with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Swiss Ministry of Defense and Marina, Senior Fellow at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Ph.D., King’s College, University of London, “Privatising Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security Companies,” p. 46, March, Geneva Centre For The Democratic Control Of Armed Forces, GScholar, http://se2.dcaf.ch/serviceengine/Files/DCAF/18346/ipublicationdocument_singledocument/BA695123-3145-4CAA-B29A-A60711724C96/en/op06_privatising-security.pdf] A real dilemma in civil-military relations traditionally has been finding a way to cultivate and sustain a body of people with the ability to do things considered abnormal by civilians – to transcend physical discomfort, master fear, and kill and coerce enemies – without undercutting the day-to-day comity that undergirds society. Stable civil-military relations have kept warfighters separate from the rest of society without allowing them to become so isolated that they might turn against society. Though this risk is rather limited in Western democracies, the privatization of warfare is likely to widen the gap between soldiers and civilians and to weaken the link between the armed forces and society – a process that started with the abolition of mandatory conscription in most Western countries. Since PMCs generate military power that does not reside in the nation-state, the balance in Clausewitz’ trinity between the people and passion, the commander, his army, and creativity, and the government and rationality will be disrupted.186 Adding the private military industry as a third and outside party will not only reshape civil-military relations, but will complicate control and good governance, and may even destabilize the delicate balance. In stable democracies, where the risk of mutiny or coups is remote, the addition of that industry will raise concerns about relations between public authorities and the PMCs. But in weak or developing states, where power often comes from the barrel of a gun, the hiring of PMC services may undermine the regime’s control over the military. Civil-military theory and practice require a clear separation of the military institution from the domains of politics and economics: … the military profession is monopolized by the state. …The skill of the officer is the management of violence; his responsibility is the military security of his client, society. The discharge of the responsibility requires mastery of the skill; mastery of the skill entails acceptance of the responsibility. Both responsibility and skill distinguish the officer from other social types. All members of society have an interest in its security; the state has a direct concern for the achievement of this along with other social values; but the officer corps alone is responsible for military security to the exclusion of all other ends”. … Does the officer have a professional motivation? Clearly he does not act primarily from economic incentives. In western society the vocation of officership is not well rewarded monetarily. Nor is his behaviour within his profession governed by economic rewards and punishments. The officer is not a mercenary who transfers his services wherever they are best rewarded, nor is he the temporary citizen-soldier inspired by intense momentary patriotism and duty but with no steadying and permanent desire to perfect himself in the management of violence. The motivations of the officer are a technical love for his craft and the sense of social obligation to utilize this craft for the benefit of society. The combination of these drives constitutes professional motivation. Society, on the other hand, can only assure this motivation if it offers its officers continuing and sufficient pay both while on active duty and when retired”.187 And the military professional’s “relation to society is guided by an awareness that the skill can only be utilized for purposes approved by society through its political agent, the state.188 Today, the fact is that the values of the professional soldier within society and the spirit of selfless service embodied in their duty on behalf of the country have begun to erode, even in such states as the US and the UK where the military remains one of the most respected government institutions. More than other things, it is military contracting with the PMC industry and the overwhelming presence of ex- soldiers in its employment rolls that threaten these military virtues. PMCs alter the former exclusivity of the military by marketing the unique expertise their employees acquired from serving in the publicly funded military. PMCs are hired by the civilian leadership in government because they possess skills and capabilities that provide them greater effectiveness than would reliance on the traditional military. But by seeing officers, NCOs, and specialists leaving public service while still remaining in the military sphere, and cashing in on the expertise and training that taxpayers paid for, the public’s respect for the institution and its faith in the good motives of the military leadership may fade. Since these privately recruited individuals see themselves as no longer bound by the codes, rules, and regulations that once made military service unique, and sell their skills on the international market for profit, the privatization of military services under contract is perceived as corrupting the armed forces both in the eyes of society and of those who remain in the ranks. Moreover, those in the service also fear that the military pension system might be called into question since profit is being incurred from the very same service for which the public is paying retired personnel back. All these elements reinforce the danger even in stable democracies that the introduction of an external, corporate party into civil-military relations ultimately can have a serious impact on the domestic distribution of status, roles, and also the resources of the state’s professional armed forces . In more dire circumstances, where PMCs and PSCs are called in because of real risks of, or of already existing, internal violence and tensions between the local government and the military, the potential impact of outside actors on civil-military relations can be much greater: either PMCs and PSCs may become a counterweight to the local military and reinforce the regime, or they may become a real threat to civil-military relations and to regime survival where these relations are already troubled. Planet Debate 82 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine Civil/Military Relations

PMSCs IN IRAQ HAVE UNDERMINED CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS Simon Chesterman & Chia Lehnardt, Professor and Researcher – NYU School of Law, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 4 The use and conduct of PMCs in Iraq, by contrast, have posed different problems and challenges to regulation. This is illustrated most starkly by the difference in treatment of individuals implicated in the Abu Ghraib torture incidents, depending on whether they were part of the US forces or PMC employees. In chapter five David Isenberg analyses how PMCs operating alongside the coalition forces—but outside the military chain of command—have complicated civil-military relations. He argues that this has created problems of coordination and created opportunities for the US government to evade public accountability for certain aspects of the Iraq conflict. Planet Debate 83 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine Professional Military/Military Ethics

PMCS THREATEN THE MILITARY PROFESSION- THEIR CRIMES DESTROY THE MILITARY FUNCTION Andrew F. Krepinevich, 8, [President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, frmr member of the personal staff of three defense secretaries, the Office of Net Assessment, the National Defense Panel, the Defense Science Board, and the Joint Forces Command’s Transformation Advisory Board, “An Army at the Crossroads,” CSBA / hnasser] In the early post-Vietnam era, the military profession went through what some considered a crisis. The justification for the war was questionable and victory denied, but it was the lack of military professionalism of a handful of servicemen and women more than any other factor that caused the American military to rededicate itself to the profession of arms. Today, the profession faces another crisis, for it and its nobility are in danger of being sold to the lowest bidder. This problem, however, is not merely a concern of soldiers, and it is not only a concern of honor. The moral argument for professional soldiers not being responsible for the crimes of jus ad bellum (if such an argument is possible at all) is based on the role soldiers play in the profession of arms, and mercenaries operating in a separate chain of command undermine the very possibility of such a profession. I do not believe that the crisis has yet reached the point where talk of the military profession is meaningless, but I know that military professionals cannot fight alongside and independently of large numbers of mercenaries for extended periods of time without becoming mercenaries themselves. This claim is not intended as hyperbole, and it is not a reflection of the character of those serving in PMFs. I am not claiming that professional soldiers become mercenaries because they are corrupted by those in PMFs. Rather, the continued existence of PMFs performing a military function destroys 32 M. Hedahl the ability for the profession to exist at all. If the performance of military functions in contingency operations by PMFs becomes a commonplace occurrence (and, if something is not done very soon, we will reach this point in the very near future), then our military uniforms, medals, and even codes of honor will become nothing more than anachronistic window dressing. Planet Debate 84 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine Professional Military/Military Ethics

AS THE GOVERNMENT BECOMES MORE RELIANT ON PRIVATE CONTRACTORS, THE VALUE OF THE MILITARY LESSENS Singer 7 [ Peter W. Singer , the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings., “Black Water the Roger Clemens of War”/ hnasser] http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2007/1214_military_contractors_singer.aspx?p=1 It seems that 2007 will go down in history as the year of artificial performance enhancers. In the world of sports, you've got guys like Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds. In the military realm, you've got Blackwater . That's right, just when it seemed the questions that surround private military contracting couldn't get more simultaneously odd and disturbing, Blackwater (the company involved in the September shootings in Baghdad, which left 17 Iraqi civilians dead) has been sued by the victims' families for, among other things, sending heavily-armed "shooters" into the streets of Baghdad with the knowledge that some of these "shooters" are chemically influenced by steroids and other "judgment- altering substances." The lawsuit, aided by the non-profit Center for Constitutional Rights based in Washington, claims not just that the civilians were killed by Blackwater employees, but that the company was responsible as it "created and fostered a culture of lawlessness amongst its employees, encouraging them to act in the company's financial interests at the expense of innocent human life." Most recently, the plaintiffs asserted that " Blackwater knew that 25% or more of its "shooters were injecting steroids or other judgment altering substances, yet failed to take effective steps to stop the drug use ." Blackwater has, of course, vehemently denied many of the claims in the lawsuit; its spokesperson, channeling Major League Baseball's denials, told the media that the use of steroids is "absolutely in violation of our policy." The company also sought to defuse its recent spate of negative press with a public relations blitz that included changing the corporate logo to look less threatening, having the firm's CEO, Erik Prince, take questions on that hard-hitting venue The Today Show (other topics covered on that episode included "tips for improving your sex life" and "eco-friendly Halloween costumes"). The latest step: arranging for its private military parachute team to serve as the halftime show at the upcoming Armed Forces Bowl (how's that for irony?) football game in Fort Worth. It will remain for a jury to figure out whether the lawsuit has merit or not. (The claims of steroid use are not without precedent, however. In 2005, U.S. Marines busted a steroid-dealing network in the U.S. embassy complex that provided hypodermic needles and large amounts of anabolic steroids to contractors. Nine Americans working for KBR and Blackwater were reported by the Washington Post as being kicked out of Iraq for their role in it.) For the public, however, we should be thinking about this issue of contractors and steroids in another way. Our military's use of the private military industry has become an addiction that parallels athletes' increasing turn to artificial substances to get ahead. Just as a dose of steroids give athletes the ability to hit the ball further than ever before, so too has injecting more than 160,000 private military contractors into Iraq allowed the operation to perform tasks that would otherwise be difficult . It is for this reason that many see no problem with seeking that "competitive advantage," on either the playing field or the battlefield. And, yet, short-term performance enhancement comes at a cost. Just as steroid use leads to side-effects that range from acne and heart damage to even death, the turn to more and more contractors has led to such results as billions of dollars missing in taxpayer funds, soldiers poached away from a stretched thin military, and contractors " Getting Away with Murder," as one recent report on the industry was entitled. As 2007 comes to a close, both sports and the military must figure out a larger question, however. Many of these addictions' side effects may prove to be manageable, or at least pushed back under the table, be it through new designer drugs or various new laws and policies. And yet, we cannot get around the fact that even if we were able to solve the side effects that come with our new addictions, something about just accepting them doesn't settle right. The reason figures like Bonds and Clemens and now the dozens of other baseball stars are treated with more contempt than celebration by both fans and fellow athletes is not merely because our concern about their shrunken testicles or bloated heads. Nor is it about them breaking the rules, per se. Even if using steroids were made legal, it would still trouble our notion of the game's ideals. It would still run afoul of the sense that baseball is supposed to be a game won on smarts, skill, strategy, and dedication - not out of a syringe. Achievement that comes only from a lab is not really athletic accomplishment to be honored at all. The same sort of concern of ideals versus reality plays out when governments become more and more reliant on private companies in the public realm of the military. The addiction to private contractors in public military operations is troubling not only because of side effects like lost taxpayer money or incidents as what happened with Blackwater's shooters in Baghdad (whether they used steroids or not). Rather, it is because the military is a unique sort of profession. It is responsible for the safety of all of society. It is for this reason that the military is the only profession to have its own system of law and we speak of its role in society as one of duty, honor, and sacrifice. Insert "private" in front of military and we must, in turn, substitute such honored concepts as "service" and "mission" with profit-oriented words like "job" and "contract." This doesn’t make the people in these roles evil or bad, much like many of the players who used steroids are ones we will still cheer for come spring . But, just the same, our ideals begin to fall by the wayside. The long- term health and respect of the military profession and, most importantly, its role in a democratic society is jeopardized. Much as sports like baseball must now figure out what to do about steroids, and whether to let such figures as Bonds into the Hall of Fame, the American military must figure out just how far it is willing to hand over its professional identity to profit seeking actors outside the force. To put it another way, do we just accept Bonds and Blackwater as the future? Or, are we going to put an "asterisk" besides the recent era and reign back in our addictions? Planet Debate 85 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undermine Professional Military/Military Ethics

PMCS OFTEN ENGAGE IN THE ILLEGAL TRADE AND PURCHASE OF VALUABLE NATIONAL RESOURCES IN COUNTRIES- PMCS HAVE MOTIVES AT ODDS WITH THE MILITARY Singer 1 [the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. “Corporate Warriors Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and Its Ramifications for International Security” Singer, P. W. International Security, Volume 26, Number 3, Winter 2001/02, pp. 186-220 (Article) /] http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ins/summary/v026/26.3singer.html Another risk of outsourcing is that a firm’s motivations for fighting may differ from those of its client. This is particularly a problem for clients that contract type 1 firms. These clients are often those most in need yet least able to pay and thus at the highest risk of default. In a number of cases, this imbalance has led to the creation of curious structures that attempt to align client and firm incentives. In a sort of Faustian bargain, a client locks in a firm’s loyalties by mortgaging valuable public assets, usually to business associates of the PMF. This often takes place through veiled privatization programs.49 To be paid, a firm must protect its new, at-risk assets, effectively tying its fortunes to those of its client. This was how cash-poor regimes in Angola, Papua New Guinea, and Sierra Leone allegedly compensated their PMFs—specifically, by selling off mineral and oil rights to related companies. Rebel groups in Sierra Leone and Angola are also rumored to have reached similar arrangements with rival corporations. In the long term, however, potentially valuable resources for the nation as a whole are lost forever to meet short-term exigencies. “Strategic privatization,” in which the asset being traded as payment is located within an opponent’s territory (e.g., a lucrative mine), provides an added variation. Even if during an intrastate conflict the regime is not in military control of certain public assets, as the internationally recognized sovereign, it can still legally privatize and sell them to a PMF or its associates in return for the PMF’s services. In this case, the PMF must then seek out and attack the government’s opponent in order to secure payment. This represents a modern parallel to Michael Doyle’s notion of “imperialism by invitation,” whereby parties that control ties to the international market acquire more power than their local rivals. 50 The Angolan government has been most effective in using this strategy, selling concessions that have placed mining companies and their type 1 protectors astride its opponent’s lines of communication, thus adding to the government’s recent strategic gains. Planet Debate 86 PMCs – Sherry Hall Privatizing War Undermines Overall Security

THE PRIVATIZATION OF WAR RISKS A REGRESSION TO THE DARK AGES, IN WHICH ONLY THE RICH CAN AFFORD PROTECTION Sampson ’04, (Anthony, “MERCENARIES ARE UNACCOUNTABLE - WHICH IS WHY GOVERNMENTS LIKE TO EMPLOY THEM; PARTS OF THE WORLD ARE LOOKING LIKE 14TH- CENTURY EUROPE, WHEN KINGS,” The Independent, First Edition; COMMENT; Pg. 39, 8-14-04) As the fighting escalates in Iraq, we have to be more concerned about the use of mercenary armies - oops, I mean private military firms - which have taken over part of the role of the allied forces. At a time when the British and American armies are stretched close to their limits, in operations which need to be strictly controlled, are we allowing private armies and contractors too much power? Is war, like so many other industries, gradually being privatised? It's worth looking back at the development of mercenaries, which have always had a sinister image as "the dogs of war". They came into the limelight nine years ago in Africa, where the weak government in Sierra Leone hired the shadowy British company Sandline to defeat the rebel army - which it achieved in two weeks with the help of helicopter gunships. Since then British mercenary companies have proliferated through Africa, forming and re-forming and changing their names to baffle investigators, but showing signs of strong financial links with control from London and South Africa. Many of the soldiers are ex-members of the Afrikaner military or police with connections with the old apartheid regime, and a dubious record of civilised behaviour. The Pretoria government of President Mbeki has effectively disowned them; when earlier this year mercenaries were arrested and imprisoned in Zimbabwe, on their way to mount a coup in Equatorial Guinea, the Zimbabwe government was apparently acting on a tip-off from Pretoria. Their leader Simon Mann, a well-connected buccaneer from Eton and the Scots Guards - who had been a co-founder of Sandline - is trying to use his influence in London to achieve his release; the outcome may reveal something about how far he enjoys discreet backing from the British Government. But the role of the mercenary companies has spread far beyond Africa, and for the past year it has been Iraq which has provided by far their biggest opportunity for profits. Most Western companies employed private security companies, and the American proconsul Paul Bremer was himself protected by guards hired by the American firm Blackwater. The American mercenaries had a dangerously ambiguous status, or lack of status. Officially the army had no obligation to protect them, yet it felt obliged to come to their rescue when necessary. When four Blackwater soldiers rashly arrived at the dangerous city of Fallujah, and were hideously murdered and mutilated by the Iraqi rebels, the much-publicised atrocity encouraged American marines to take revenge, rampaging into the city centre, and killing hundreds of Iraqis, including many innocent civilians. Since the interim Iraqi government took over in July, the role of mercenaries has increased rather than diminished, and they received new recognition when a contract worth nearly $ 300m was signed with Tim Spicer, the head of the British company Aegis - a co- founder with Simon Mann of Sandline (which officially went out of business in April). Other parts of the world were also becoming happy hunting grounds for private armies, whether in the Middle East, Africa or Central Asia, as big corporations felt more need of protection in the wake of 11 September, which weak governments or failed states could not provide. Are we regressing to an earlier age, before nation-states had acquired their disciplined armies with a monopoly of force, and both governments and business relied on mercenaries for their survival? Parts of the world are looking like 14th-century Europe, when kings and city-states had to pay private armies to protect them ; and the English mercenary Sir John Hawkwood marched his "white company" through the continent, selling his services to popes and potentates in return for short-lived security. So are we heading towards the privatising of wars, whose outcomes will be decided by whoever can pay most to freebooting soldiers beyond the control of governments? Planet Debate 87 PMCs – Sherry Hall Privatizing War Undermines Overall Security

PMCS CREATE A COMPLICATED BALANCE OF POWER – MAKES IT HARDER FOR STATES TO MAINTAIN RELATIONS Singer 1 [the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. “Corporate Warriors Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and Its Ramifications for International Security” Singer, P. W. International Security, Volume 26, Number 3, Winter 2001/02, pp. 186-220 (Article) / hnasser] http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ins/summary/v026/26.3singer.html The privatized military industry lies beyond any one state’s control. Further, the layering of market uncertainties atop the already-thorny issue of net assessment creates a variety of complications for determining the balance of power, particularly in regional conflicts. Calculating a rival’s capabilities or force posture has always been difficult. In an open market, where the range of options is even more variable, likely outcomes become increasingly hard to discern. As the Serbs, Eritreans, Rwandans, and Ugandans (whose opponents hired PMFs prior to successful offensives) all learned, not only can once-predictable deterrence relationships rapidly collapse, but the involvement of PMFs can quickly and perhaps unexpectedly tilt local balances of power.

PMCS CREATE A COMPLICATED BALANCE OF POWER – MAKES IT HARDER FOR STATES TO MAINTAIN RELATIONS Singer 1 [the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. “Corporate Warriors Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and Its Ramifications for International Security” Singer, P. W. International Security, Volume 26, Number 3, Winter 2001/02, pp. 186-220 (Article) / hnasser] http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ins/summary/v026/26.3singer.html The privatized military industry lies beyond any one state’s control. Further, the layering of market uncertainties atop the already-thorny issue of net assessment creates a variety of complications for determining the balance of power, particularly in regional conflicts. Calculating a rival’s capabilities or force posture has always been difficult. In an open market, where the range of options is even more variable, likely outcomes become increasingly hard to discern. As the Serbs, Eritreans, Rwandans, and Ugandans (whose opponents hired PMFs prior to successful offensives) all learned, not only can once-predictable deterrence relationships rapidly collapse, but the involvement of PMFs can quickly and perhaps unexpectedly tilt local balances of power. Planet Debate 88 PMCs – Sherry Hall Privatizing War Undermines Overall Security

PMCS UNDERMINE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND WEAKEN STATE USE OF FORCE Wodarg 8[ Wolfgang, Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe (PACE) and a Board Member of Transparency International Germany “Private military and security firms and the erosion of the state monopoly on the use of force” Report Political Affairs Committee 12/22 / hnasser] In recent years, the traditional state monopoly on the use of force has been diluted, or even undermined, in a growing number of states. This phenomenon, which has become noticeable since the end of the cold war, grew stronger after the 11 September terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. 2. Many former military professionals and a lot of military hardware lost their raison d’être and function after the breakdown of the Iron Curtain. This was the ground on which the new private military and security businesses were rapidly growing. 3. The erosion of the state monopoly on the use of force is today taking place by way of an increasing recourse by states to services offered by private organisations providing military and policing services, hereafter referred to as private military and security companies (PMSCs). 4. This phenomenon is not limited to sovereign states and their governments. Other actors, such as major international organisations (like the United Nations), private businesses, humanitarian agencies, the media and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), avail themselves of such services in pursuit of security-related goals. 5. The shift in public security obligations to the private sector has already contributed to transforming the balance of power inside societies affected by this trend, and to a gradual destabilisation of international relations. 6. In all the countries where PMSCs are active, it is becoming more and more perceptible that the relationship between citizens and state power institutions (military and police) is changing and is becoming increasingly disturbed. 7. The recourse to services of PMSCs – especially in “weak” and “fragile” states – entails disempowerment of the state, the weakening of public governance and a decreasing capability to resolve conflicts by civilian means. It often leads to erosion of public order and may ultimately result in the collapse of the state itself. 8. The growing activities of PMSCs in various conflict zones throughout the world, often beyond any government or public control, also weaken and undermine the role of the international community of nations in maintaining international peace. 9. One of the consequences of this latter trend is the shift in priorities in political choices from prevention to rapid action, and from the civilian handling of crises to the solution of conflicts by the use of force. 10. The European democratic model, with its way of dealing with internal, common, external and international problems in accordance with its values, has become more and more attractive worldwide. 11. The uncontrolled activities of European private military and security companies, whose practices often run counter to the principles to which the European states are committed, may undermine the moral standing and international reputation of these states. 12. Therefore, Europe has particular responsibilities in addressing the issue of the regulation of activities of PMSCs on the basis of common principles. The Council of Europe, with its experience in defining, promoting and protecting common standards in the field of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, offers the appropriate framework for this and should take the lead. Planet Debate 89 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Increase Militarism – Invisible Form of Warfare

PMSCs DISTANCE WARFARE FROM CITIZEN CONTROL Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 134-5 Finally, I argue that the use of PMSCs is another form of virtual warfare. Similar to the way in which risk- transfer warfare works to hide the costs of war from those who can authorize it, virtual warfare works to distance citizens from those who act in their name.

PMCS MAKES MILITARY POWER EASIER TO OBTAIN AND LOWERS THE COSTS OF WAR- ASSETS ARE EASILY CONVERTED TO MILITARY THREATS Singer 1 [the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. “Corporate Warriors Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and Its Ramifications for International Security” Singer, P. W. International Security, Volume 26, Number 3, Winter 2001/02, pp. 186-220 (Article) / hnasser] http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ins/summary/v026/26.3singer.html The military privatization phenomenon means that military resources are available on the open market. Where once the creation of a military force required huge investments in both time and resources, today the entire spectrum of conventional forces can be obtained in a matter of weeks, if not days. The barriers to acquiring military strength are thus lowered, making power more fungible than ever. For example, economically rich but population-poor states such as those in the Persian Gulf now hire PMFs to achieve levels of power well beyond what they otherwise could. The same holds for new states and even nonstate groups that lack the institutional support or expertise to build capable military forces. With the help of PMFs, not only can clients add to their existing military forces and obtain highly specialized capacities (e.g., expertise in information warfare), but they may even be able to skip a whole generation of war skills. The result, however, may be a return to the dynamics of sixteenth-century Europe, where wealth and military capability went hand in hand: Pecunia nervus belli (Money nourishes war).55 This ability to transform money into force also means a renewal of Kantian fears over the dangers of lowering the costs of war. Economic assets can now be rapidly transformed into military threats, making economic power more threatening, which runs contrary to liberalist assumptions Likewise, modern liberalism tends to assume only what is positive about the profit motive. It views the spread of capitalism and globalism as diminishing the incentives for violent conflict and the rise of global civil society as an immutable good thing.56 The emergence of a new type of private transnational firm that relies instead on the existence of conºict for its profits counters the assumption that nonstate actors are generally peace orientated. Planet Debate 90 PMCs – Sherry Hall Net Impact of PMSCs Negative

LONG RUN COSTS OF PMSCs OUTWEIGH SHORT-TERM BENEFITS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 89-90 The immediate benefits of private forces may eventually be outweighed by the adverse effects of their use: they may appear to offer a risk-free option, and may minimize risks on the ground and at home, but in the long run, the widespread use of contractors may destabilize the trust and restraint that democracies have imposed historically over military force. Planet Debate 91 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Blur Lines – Not Purely Private

PMSCs BLUR THE LINE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE INDUSTRY Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 97-8 Other concerns arise from PMC mindfulness of not only great power interests, but of those illiberal men who run what is left of decaying states. There exists some evidence that a few PMSCs have agreed to part ownership of foreign subsidiaries also owned by leaders of weak states. These firms may generate healthy profits, but joint ownership in those circumstances suggests erasure of the line between public governance and private interests. The modern state becomes an armed fiefdom, supported by newly effective military and security advisers. Not that larger powers are slow to defend their interests where some discrimination in clients is considered necessary. The British government apparently stopped Sandline from assisting the Kosovar Liberation Army once the Foreign Office concluded that such support would not serve UK interests. Similarly, the US State Department prevented MPRI from assisting the Mobutu regime as it disintegrated in Zaire during 1997. Both examples are evidence that tenacious state authority persists while undergoing the present transformation. It would seem that Sandline was an early if faltering example of transnational PMSCs that are likely to follow. These will probably mature under the symbiotic if watchful gaze of big power intelligence communities, tax officers, customs agencies and federal police political units. The more powerful executive governments will allow this to occur because they have both overt and more clandestine purposes for these entities. For example, when US firm Ronco violated a UN embargo with arms shipments to Rwanda, influence exerted by the US government was helpful in procuring company withdrawal intact. Discreet patronage by a strong state has been and will remain a necessity for ambitious companies and certainly for those known to regain a paramilitary capability. Planet Debate 92 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Ineffective/Unreliable

RELIANCE ON PMSCs RISKY – LABOR DISPUTES POSSIBLE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 107-8 Agent and principal may also encounter unhappy industrial relations that carry unexpected consequences. For example, a threatened strike by a security firm in Baghdad in 2006 seemed likely to leave diplomats without bodyguards and convoys without armed escorts. Another private security company guarding Baghdad airport in 2005 briefly closed the facility over a pay dispute. The matter in 2006 remained an industrial irritant, a threat to Iraq’ air traffic and a gnawing security problem for the Americans at nearby Camp Victory. These kinds of problems are unlikely where regular military units are dispatched to guard airports, convoys or diplomats. For sovereign soldiers to strike on operations would be multinous and carry consequences much worse than losing their jobs. An individual UN contractors could be subject to military law such as that devised for a contract legion identified in Chapter 6 and Appendix I.. However, whether a corporate employer would weather an industrial relations buffeting as robustly as a state organ remains to be seen.

US PMSCs HAVE FARED POORLY IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 110 Some ethical and practical perils will attend contractor operations. Some might seem surprisingly conventional or even mundane. For example, it is possible that contractor management could prove sub-standard in a host of familiar ways. It may have an organizational culture which alienates its employees, offers the UN Secretariat, irritates lower-paid states’ troops and fails to instill loyalty or respect in those who are exposed to it. Or it may be simply incompetent. Some US military train-and-equip companies have already performed poorly in Iraq. Other American corporations involved in contract policing in Afghanistan have also delivered unsatisfactory training in some accounts. Moreover, where performance indicators are non-existent, experimental or in their infancy, management may see opportunities to promote services which result in greater profit rather than greater effectiveness.

CONTEMPORARY CONFLICTS NO MORE LIKELY TO BE EASILY RESOLVED – COMBATANTS STILL VERY MOTIVATED TO FIGHT Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 150-1 There are other reasons for caution. Although the history of colonial counterinsurgency over the twentieth century was a mostly sobering chronology of recurrent defeat for Western imperialists, the contemporary context is very different. Fewer intrastate conflicts could be termed national liberation or anti-colonial struggles. Several are resource wars with an ethnic aspect. Others mix narco-politics with militant dissent. But none of these changes suggest that deployments in present circumstances and any less hazardous. Future UN adversaries are likely to have learned lessons from the conflicts of the 1990s. For example, opponents could obtain a propaganda advantage by characterizing their UN backed foes as neo-colonialists. In expectation of an armed assault sanctioned by the UNSC, shrewd warlords may form covert alliances with corrupt governments of neighboring states. They may agree to swap diamonds, gold or drugs for replenishment, fuel, transport, rest, training, banking facilities and so on. Moreover, if they are fighting for the wealth provided by extractive resources, there is not likely to be a compromise solution. If they lose, they lose all. Retreating warlords would become fugitives before probably capture and perhaps even prosecution on human rights related charges before a modern tribunal. If convicted they are likely to serve lengthy terms of imprisonment. Hence their motivation in fighting is likely to be firm. Planet Debate 93 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Ineffective/Unreliable

CONTEMPORARY INSURGENCIES HAVE SUFFICIENT EQUIPMENT – NO HIGH TECH ARMAMENTS ADVANTAGE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 151 Nor do the distinctly modern causes of much contemporary conflict justify excessive faith in superior technology, Western organization and highly skilled manpower. These met with widespread failure where colonial forces sought to suppress third world insurgents of the past. And today’s opponents may be more formidably equipped. Future suppliers to IPOA adversaries will probably evolve into bespoke outfitters, keen to meet the needs of tomorrow’s niche war participants. These merchants are likely to equip combatants on the advice of experienced guerillas. They in turn will probably assist in securing a new generation of supplies, paid from better organized, resource fuelled budgets. Much of the materiel required for today’s guerrilla operations is already accessible on global markets. It should not be difficult to purchase recent generation infra-red and thermal imaging devices; prepared foodstuffs; signals equipment with sophisticated encryption; cheap global positioning navigation gear; reliable Soviet designed helicopters suitable for assault, light and medium cargo lift, troop mobility and medevac; less costly but effectively refurbished missiles and obsolete but serviceable artillery; medical assistance including diseases prophylaxis, treatment of trauma in the field and airborne evacuation crews; and last, efficient financial arrangements to expedite payment for all of it. Merchandise is likely to include newer items like imagery from commercial space surveillance. Google and small, unmanned drones that supply airborne imaging. As the Tofflers suggest, new technologies are now landing in global markets with a rapidity that is changing the nature of conflict. Newer combatants are also likely to be trained buy competent military advisers who will be well remunerated through extractive revenue. Their skills and other goods and services are available to the cashed-up belligerent who understands the successful organization of future violence. In this environment even assessing an adversary’s skills and equipment could prove a challenging task for a group of contractors.

PMSCs DON’T COORDINATE WELL WITH U.S. MILITARY Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 161 Members of the military working alongside the hired help would find poor coordination between the commanders on the battlefield and the contractors in Iraq, and it would become apparent in increasingly frustrating ways for leaders on the ground. Not only was it hard to know where the contractors were going, it was also hard to know where they had been. Contractors didn’t drive around in marked vehicles, so telling one from the other was nearly impossible without stopping the convoys and questioning the people in them. Military leaders complained that contractor-protected convoys would blow through intersections, or even Iraqi police checkpoints, without bothering to stop. In one sign of stunningly aggressive behavior, an unidentified contractor ran a U.S. military Humvee off the road. Inside the Humvee was a very angry U.S. general.

CONTRACTORS UNDERMINE COUNTERINSURGENCY OPERATIONS BECAUSE OF LACK OF DISCIPLINE Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 161-2 According to a senior DoD official, the contractors in general, and Blackwater specifically, “were very difficult to work with, overly aggressive. Part of counterinsurgency is kicking down doors and getting people, but part of it is winning the people…how do you that when they see Suburbans, with the guys with big muscles and machine guns hanging out the side, driving through checkpoints? There was a discipline problem.” Planet Debate 94 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Ineffective/Unreliable

MILITARY EFFECTIVENESS IS JEOPARDIZED FROM SEPARATE COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS AND PMC BEHAVIOR WITH CIVILIANS Hedahl 9 [ Marcus Hedahl , served as a Program Manager in both the United States National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He was also an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at the U.S. Air Force Academy . “Blood and Blackwaters: A Call to Arms for the Profession of Arms.” Journal of Military Ethics; 2009, Vol. 8 Issue 1, p19-33, 15p/ hnasser] However, as noted earlier, the ultimate goal of our military is not merely to be as cost effective as possible. The use of military security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan also has negative impacts on military effectiveness. There are the tactical concerns: for example, there are potential negative consequences of the breakdown in a cohesive battle plan when two groups are using separate communications systems. There are also strategic concerns: the use of these contractors brings with it negative consequences in a counterinsurgency campaign _ ‘Iraqi citizens do not distinguish between employees of Blackwater and the US Military. All they see is Americans with guns’ (Ricks 2007). Therefore, there also seem to be good reasons based on military effectiveness against outsourcing security functions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

PMCS ARE UNRELIABLE AND HAVE BECOME TOO DEPENDABLE- THIS CAN RISK MILITARY OPERATIONS Singer 1 [the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. “Corporate Warriors Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and Its Ramifications for International Security” Singer, P. W. International Security, Volume 26, Number 3, Winter 2001/02, pp. 186-220 (Article) / hnasser] http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ins/summary/v026/26.3singer.html The loss of direct control as a result of privatization carries risks even for strong states. For U.S. military commanders, an added worry of terrorist targeting or the potential use of weapons of mass destruction is that their forces are more reliant than ever on the surge capacity of type 3 support ªrms. The employees of these firms, however, cannot be forced to stay at their posts in the face of these or other dangers.47 Because entire functions such as weapons maintenance and supply have become completely privatized, the entire military machine would break down if even a modest number of PMF employees chose to leave. Planet Debate 95 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Ineffective/Unreliable

PMCS ARE UNRELIABLE AND HAVE FEW INCENTIVES TO STICK TO CONTRACTS- LEAVING THE MILITARY HELPLESS- SIERRA LEON PROVES Singer 1 [the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. “Corporate Warriors Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and Its Ramifications for International Security” Singer, P. W. International Security, Volume 26, Number 3, Winter 2001/02, pp. 186-220 (Article) / hnasser] http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ins/summary/v026/26.3singer.html As PMFs become increasingly popular, so too does the danger of their clients becoming overly dependent on their services. Reliance on a private firm means that an integral part of one’s strategic success is vulnerable to changes in market costs and incentives. This dependence can result in two potential risks to the security of the client: (1) the agent (the firm) might leave its principal (the client) in the lurch, or (2) the agent might gain dominance over the principal. A PMF may have no compunction about suspending its contract if a situation becomes too risky in either financial or physical terms. Because they are typically based elsewhere, and in the absence of applicable international laws to enforce compliance, PMFs face no real risk of punishment if they or their employees defect from their contractual obligations. Industry advocates dismiss these claims by noting that firms failing to fulfill the terms of their con- tracts would sully their reputation, thus hurting their chances of obtaining future contracts. Nevertheless, there are a number of situations in which shortterm considerations could prevail over long-term market punishment. In game- theoretic terms, each interaction with a private actor is sui generis. Exchanges in the international security market may take the form of one-shot games rather than guaranteed repeated plays .45 Sierra Leone faced such a situation in 1994, when the type 1 firm that it had hired (the Gurkha Security Guards, made up primarily of Nepalese soldiers) lost its commander in a rebel ambush. Reports suggest that the commander was later cannibalized. The firm decided to break its contract, and its employees fled the country, leaving its client without an effective military option until it was able to hire another ªrm.4

OUTSOURCING LEADS TO CUTTING CORNERS TO GAIN PROFIT- PMFS DON’T HAVE INCENTIVES TO TAKE NECESSARY RISKS Singer 1 [the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. “Corporate Warriors Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and Its Ramifications for International Security” Singer, P. W. International Security, Volume 26, Number 3, Winter 2001/02, pp. 186-220 (Article) / hnasser] http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ins/summary/v026/26.3singer.html Problems of incomplete information and monitoring generally accompany any type of outsourcing. These difficulties are intensified in the military realm, however, because few clients have experience in contracting with security agents. In most cases, there is either little oversight or a lack of clearly defined requirements, or both. Add in the fog of war, and proper monitoring becomes extremely difficult. Moreover, PMFs are usually autonomous and thus require extraterritorial monitoring, which is always problematic. And at times, the actual consumer may not be the contracting party: Some states, for example, pay PMFs to supply personnel on their behalf to international organizations. Another difficulty is the firms’ focus on the bottom line: PMFs may be tempted to cut corners to increase their profits. No matter how powerful the client, this risk cannot be completely eliminated . During the Balkans conflict, for example, Brown & Root is alleged to have failed to deliver or severely overcharged the U.S. Army on four out of seven of its contractual obligations.43 A further manifestation of this monitoring difficulty is the danger that PMFs may not perform their missions to the fullest. PMFs have incentives not only to prolong their contracts but also to avoid taking undue risks that might endanger their own corporate assets. The result may be a protracted conflict that perhaps could have been avoided if the client had built up its own military forces or more closely monitored its private agent. This was certainly true of mercenaries in the Biafra conflict in the 1970s, and many suspect that this was also the case with PMFs in the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict in 1997–99. In the latter instance, the Ethiopians essentially leased a small but complete air force from the Russian aeronautics firm Sukhoi—including Su-27 jet fighter planes, pilots, and ground staff. Some contend, though, that this private Russian force failed to prosecute the war fully—for example, by rarely engaging Eritrea’s air force, which itself was rumored to have hired Russian and Ukrainian pilots. Planet Debate 96 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Do Good Things

IF PMSCs DO PERFORM TRULY VALUABLE SERVICES – THEN THEY SHOULD BE INCORPORATED INTO THE MILITARY – IF WE’RE NOT WILLING TO SEND IN SOLDIERS WE SHOULDN’T SEND IN CONTRACTORS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 157 Can we live without PMSCs? Formally uniting these forces with our military has two major implications. First, we may not be able to pursue the foreign policies we want to, if their true costs are revealed. If the only way to follow through on the commitments we have made to places like Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Colombia, and others is to provide a surge of private security providers, then perhaps we should not be there. If there is no political will to formally deploy those public servants who are legally allowed to use weapons, whether within the formal military or in special reserve units, then there doesn’t seem to be a sufficient national interest. Second, if we are only willing to send semi-combatants into war zones, or do drug eradication or stability operations if they can be hired “on the cheap,” so to speak (that is, for short-term contracts with minimal safeguards and benefits), then we are demonstrating our half-hearted commitment to these goals. If we are going to live with them, we should formally invite them into the house. Can we live without them? Repeatedly the charge is made that the only alternative to hiring armed contractors is the return of a draft, compelling the service of citizens in the military. This is a false assumption, based on continuation of our force numbe3rs and their current basing. Planet Debate 97 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “PMSCs More Cost Effective”

CONTRACTORS LIKELY TO INFLATE COSTS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 110-1 Cost containment in armed conflicts is subject to notorious risks because organized violence tends to create an impetus to raise rather than lower or at least contain expenditure. Some escalation is reasonable where equipment is unexepectedly damaged, personnel become ill or are injured, where additional or specialized transport is required; more time is necessary than anticipated and so on. Even so, mounting costs may be unreasonable where keeping each soldier or piece of leased equipment in theater suggests opportunistic exploitation. For example, would the company contrive the deployment of unnecessary logistic support and specialized, higher cost employees who may be less than vital in the circumstances? This type of moral hazard became infamous in cost-plus profiteering over the last five years in Iraq. Certainly, some replacement or upgrading of equipment may be time consuming to locate and negotiate and expensive to purchase. But military procurement is a field notoriously tarnished through inflated prices, sub-standard quality and corruption of government bureaucracies. The UN and its contractors enjoy no particular immunity from these risks. Complex military procurement in turn raises the necessity for effective methods of oversight and accountability. Both are historically difficult to create and maintain.

NO CLEAR EVIDENCE THAT PMSCs ARE COST EFFECTIVE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 141-2 Comparative cost is another keenly debated issue. Putting IGOs like the UN to one side for a moment, a primary question would appear to be whether profit-driven corporations carry out defense-related tasks more efficiently and more cheaply than states’ bureaucracies. Is superior efficiency really the reason why the number and size of states’ contractors have risen over the last two decades. On one hand, Singer argues that the cost of massive Pentagon outsourcing over more than a decade has not provided what he calls “proven comprehensive cost savings.’ It may be that the market creates distortions which belie claims of economic efficiency. On the other hand, the recent Republican Administration claimed that the US Department of Defense saved billions of dollars through outsourcing over recent years via “Public-Private Competition.” Industry advocate Doug Brooks takes the view that PSCs and PMCs provide services more efficiently, more rapidly and at a lower cost than states can provide them. The logical consequence is that a state’s armed forces garner financial benefits and may re-deploy their workforce, time, money and physical resources saved. He sees correct in some circumstances but emerging evidence supports a more restrictive and less certain view. It seems likely that the American taxpayer saves money where there is genuine competition. Otherwise, cost effectiveness appears demonstrable in some circumstances but inconclusive in others.

NO EVIDENCE THAT PMSCs SAVE MONEY Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 255-6 Just three months earlier, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its own figures about private contractors. The United Stats was using contractors more than it ever had. In Iraq, they were operating on a one-to-one ratio alongside U.S. troops. The CBO also found that U.S. agencies had awarded some $85 billion to contractors for work performed in the Iraq theater, which included the countries of Iraq, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. The Department of Defense had spent $76 billion of that total; the U.S. Agency for International Development awarded $5 billion, followed by the State Department at $4 billion. Another $10 billion had been spent for work performed in Afghanistan. The CBO tackled another question that had been looming over the industry for years. What was the cost of a contractor in comparison to a member of the military? Were the taxpayers in fact saving money by hiring out, as Prince has long argued? Industry leaders had been boasting for years that they were a cost-saving measure, but they didn’t have the data to prove it. “ The costs of a private security contract are comparable with those of a U.S. military unit performing similar functions,” according to the report. “During peacetime, however, the private security contract would not have to be renewed, whereas the military unit would remain in the force structure.” In other words, there was no savings during wartime, but “demobilization” was a lot faster with contractors: the government could shut down its contracts quickly. Planet Debate 98 PMCs – Sherry Hall Planet Debate 99 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “PMSCs More Cost Effective”

PRIVATE CONTRACTOR OPERATIONS ARE MORE COSTLY- COSTS FOR PMCS ARE PULLED AWAY FROM OTHER DEFENSE MEASURES Post 4[“In Iraq, Contractors' Security Costs Rise” By Mary Pat Flaherty and Jackie Spinner Washington Post Staff Writers 2/18 http://www.sallyportglobal.com/_build/docs/wash_post.tcharron.021804.pdf /hnasser] Attacks on the private contractors rebuilding Iraq are boosting security expenses, cutting into reconstruction funds and compelling U.S. officials in Baghdad to contend with growing legions of private, armed security teams spread throughout the country. While attacks on military targets and Iraqi citizens have received widespread attention, the assaults on the companies, which have left at least 17 dead and others wounded, are lesser known. Those attacks could jeopardize the success of the coalition efforts in Iraq, according to a Coalition Provisional Authority document reviewed by The Washington Post. A draft of security guidance for contractors prepared by the CPA's Infrastructure Security Planning Group in Baghdad says, "Spiraling costs, excessive work delays, lost materiel and workforce casualties in the current threat environment have the potential to put Coalition success at risk." The CPA's Program Management Office is seeking to hire a central coordinator for the private security teams in anticipation of the thousands of foreign workers and hundreds of new work sites that will flood Iraq starting next month, when nearly $10 billion in U.S.-funded rebuilding contracts are due to be awarded. "The number of soft Coalition targets will grow dramatically," the draft states. U.S. and coalition military forces, which are being trimmed and face continuing attacks, cannot provide contractor protection, and neither can fledgling Iraqi forces, the draft states, leaving private teams as the main protection for contractors. But tighter licensing, registration and identification are needed "to prevent fratricide," the document says. The draft says the threat to coalition forces and contractors is "assumed" to remain at current levels through next year, leaving rebuilding companies vulnerable to attacks both from antioccupation elements and criminal rings. That combination could intensify bidding wars for experienced security personnel and cause more money to be pulled away from rebuilding under government contracts that allow companies to pass on security and other costs, providing little incentive to hold down those expenses. Security costs are consuming about 10 percent of each construction contract, up from 7 percent in October, according to the Baghdad office that manages reconstruction projects for the Coalition Provisional Authority. Costs on high-profile targets, including pipelines, run higher. The added expenses may cause some projects to be delayed or canceled, said Darrell Crawford, chief of staff for the office. The CPA would not publicly release information about attacks and killings of contractors. A review of news reports since last August found accounts of 17 deaths of foreign contractors and five injuries in incidents in five cities or towns. U.S. officials courting companies to take part in the rebuilding insist that security is not an issue for contractors and said accounts have been overblown. "Western contractors are not targets," Tom Foley, the CPA's director of private-sector development, told hundreds of would-be investors at a Commerce Department conference in Washington on Feb. 11. He said the media have exaggerated the issue. Planet Debate 100 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “PMSCs More Cost Effective”

WASTEFUL DEFENSE SPENDING INEVITABLE WITH PMC USAGE- CONTRACTUAL PRIORITIES CREATE UNRESTRAINED FUNDING CAP 10 [ Center for American Progress, “A Dangerous Reliance on Defense Contractors “http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/04/defense_contractors.html/print.html /hnasser ] The Bush administration spent the better part of a decade refusing to face up to the manpower implications of its open-ended commitment of forces—particularly in Iraq. And because they didn’t have the courage of their convictions to reinstitute the draft, they were forced to take three disastrous steps: active duty forces have been deployed and redeployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan without sufficient dwell time; the National Guard and Reserve have been transformed from a strategic to an operational reserve, alternating deployments with active forces; and private contractors have been tasked with filling in the gaps, often taking on missions traditionally reserved for uniformed forces. The disastrous consequences of this final step—the widespread use of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan—are already widely known. Indeed, the incidents that were arguably the most detrimental to the U.S. mission in both countries involved contractors, from the torture at Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base to the indiscriminate shootings at Nisour Square in Baghdad in 2007. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has not fully learned from its predecessor’s mistakes. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced late last month that the Pentagon will begin an internal investigation into the Defense Department’s broader efforts to fund information operations. The inquiry was prompted by a contract funded by the Defense Department that allegedly set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan to help track and kill suspected militants. Revelations of similar contracts under the Bush administration have not been uncommon, but these new allegations demonstrate the Obama administration’s disconcerting willingness (or acquiescence) to continue its predecessor’s reliance on private contractors to execute wartime operations traditionally carried out only by U.S. special forces, intelligence agencies, and the State Department. Equally troubling is the clear lack of oversight over the ballooning DOD-wide information operations budget despite numerous instances of flagrant contractor abuse in the recent past. The scale of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan require the United States to employ contractors in logistical and on-base functions such as supply and equipment delivery or food preparation services. But the Obama administration must make a clean break from the Bush administration’s overreliance on private contractors to conduct security and intelligence missions in combat zones. The New York Times broke the story in mid-March that a senior civilian Defense Department employee, Michael Furlong, had inappropriately used $25 million “from the Pentagon's program against roadside bombs to hire private contractors to gather information on suspected insurgents in Afghanistan—activities that Furlong says were authorized by top U.S. military commanders.” Furlong allegedly hired former Special Forces and intelligence personnel to undertake surveillance on potential targets in both countries—an act that is generally considered illegal when carried out by civilian personnel. Perhaps such instances of abuse were inevitable given the dramatic increase in funding for Department of Defense-wide information operations in the past several years, particularly within the Central Command area of operations. Funding for such operations in that theater (which includes Iraq and Afghanistan) increased from $40 million in 2008 to $110 million in 2009 to a requested $244 million in 2010. And overall information operations throughout DOD in fiscal year 2010 amounted to over $528 million. Funds under this broad category have been used to finance news articles, billboards, radio and television programs, and even public opinion polls in several countries. The high-level priority that the Pentagon’s civilian and military leaders have placed on such operations has created an atmosphere of virtually unconstrained funding in which abuses were bound to occur. In fact, when Congress pressed the Pentagon to report the total amount budgeted for information operations—or strategic communications as they are frequently called— across all services and commands late last year, Secretary Gates “found that no one could say because there was no central coordination.” This realization prompted “multiple studies” in late 2009 that were aimed at getting a better understanding of individual services’ plans for strategic communications this year. It is unclear whether the Furlong program was discovered under one of these studies or through other avenues. The current administration is wisely following Obama’s campaign commitment to redeploy out of Iraq, which will ease the enormous strain placed on the men and women of our armed forces over the last seven years. But this latest episode reveals that it has yet to fully reverse the dangerous U.S. dependence on private contractors. Planet Debate 101 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “PMSCs More Cost Effective”

PRIVATE CONTRACTOR OPERATIONS ARE MORE COSTLY- COSTS FOR PMCS ARE PULLED AWAY FROM OTHER DEFENSE MEASURES Post 4[“In Iraq, Contractors' Security Costs Rise” By Mary Pat Flaherty and Jackie Spinner Washington Post Staff Writers 2/18 http://www.sallyportglobal.com/_build/docs/wash_post.tcharron.021804.pdf /hnasser] Attacks on the private contractors rebuilding Iraq are boosting security expenses, cutting into reconstruction funds and compelling U.S. officials in Baghdad to contend with growing legions of private, armed security teams spread throughout the country. While attacks on military targets and Iraqi citizens have received widespread attention, the assaults on the companies, which have left at least 17 dead and others wounded, are lesser known. Those attacks could jeopardize the success of the coalition efforts in Iraq, according to a Coalition Provisional Authority document reviewed by The Washington Post. A draft of security guidance for contractors prepared by the CPA's Infrastructure Security Planning Group in Baghdad says, "Spiraling costs, excessive work delays, lost materiel and workforce casualties in the current threat environment have the potential to put Coalition success at risk." The CPA's Program Management Office is seeking to hire a central coordinator for the private security teams in anticipation of the thousands of foreign workers and hundreds of new work sites that will flood Iraq starting next month, when nearly $10 billion in U.S.-funded rebuilding contracts are due to be awarded. "The number of soft Coalition targets will grow dramatically," the draft states. U.S. and coalition military forces, which are being trimmed and face continuing attacks, cannot provide contractor protection, and neither can fledgling Iraqi forces, the draft states, leaving private teams as the main protection for contractors. But tighter licensing, registration and identification are needed "to prevent fratricide," the document says. The draft says the threat to coalition forces and contractors is "assumed" to remain at current levels through next year, leaving rebuilding companies vulnerable to attacks both from antioccupation elements and criminal rings. That combination could intensify bidding wars for experienced security personnel and cause more money to be pulled away from rebuilding under government contracts that allow companies to pass on security and other costs, providing little incentive to hold down those expenses. Security costs are consuming about 10 percent of each construction contract, up from 7 percent in October, according to the Baghdad office that manages reconstruction projects for the Coalition Provisional Authority. Costs on high-profile targets, including pipelines, run higher. The added expenses may cause some projects to be delayed or canceled, said Darrell Crawford, chief of staff for the office. The CPA would not publicly release information about attacks and killings of contractors. A review of news reports since last August found accounts of 17 deaths of foreign contractors and five injuries in incidents in five cities or towns. U.S. officials courting companies to take part in the rebuilding insist that security is not an issue for contractors and said accounts have been overblown. "Western contractors are not targets," Tom Foley, the CPA's director of private-sector development, told hundreds of would-be investors at a Commerce Department conference in Washington on Feb. 11. He said the media have exaggerated the issue. Planet Debate 102 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “PMSCs More Cost Effective”

BLACK WATER COVERS UP THE DETAILS OF OPERATIONS FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND PRESS- THEIR FAILURES IN IRAQ COST THE TAX PAYERS MILLIONS Neff 8 [ Joseph Neff, reporter for “The News and Observer in North Carolina” Jun 1, 2008 “Prívate Military Contractors: Determining Accountability”/ hnasser] http://web.ebscohost.com.go.libproxy.wfubmc.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&hid=9&sid=a66e647a- 274f-47f7-933d-36233c60b682%40sessionmgr111 In weaving this story together, we had some extraordinary luck for a mediumsized paper, circulation 170,000. We had a young stringer in Iraq, Charles Crain, who was in Fallujah that day talking vwth local police. He vñtnessed the mob beating the men's bodies hanging from the bridge, and he kept his head low. Crain later got his hands on a video of the ambush made by the attackers. Families of the four men were the most helpful, sharing stories, photos and e-mails from Iraq. With what we learned in Iraq combining with what we'd reported in North Carolina, we were able to publish a seven- part series in which we profiled the contractors and Blackwater and unraveled events as best we could. As our initial series ran, we started to receive calls from people who would become our reliable and invaluable sources. A big breakthrough occurred when we obtained copies of contracts between Blackwater and its guards and Blackwater and the companies it worked for. The contracts explained a lot. Why was it so hard to get Blackwater workers to speak wdth us? The contract forbade it and, if someone did talk, Blackwater could demand $250,000 in damages , payable in five business days. The contract also revealed the 70 2008 Iraq and Afghanistan flaws of the mission. The contract mentioned Fallujah by name in discussing the dangers of Iraq. Each Blackwater vehicle must have three men so that 360-degree field of fire could be watched. There were only two in Fallujah. There must be reconnaissance, a heavy weapon, and armored vehicles—the Fallujah mission had none of those, and the men killed in Fallujah had none of those. We later obtained reports from another Blackwater team that skirted Fallujah that same day and returned safely. Blackwater threatened legal action if we published the reports, which were extremely pointed about where blame should be placed . These reports conveyed the men's anger: They had vigorously protested about being sent out short- staffed, without maps, and into a part of the country they didn't know. "Why did we all want to kill [the Baghdad office manager]?" one member wrote the day after the massacre. "He had sent us on this fucking mission and over our protest. We weren't sighted in, we had no maps, we had not enough sleep, he was taking 2 of our guys cutting off [our] field of fire. As we went over these things, we knew the other team had the same complaints. They too had their people cut." Had the Marines sent a lightly armed, short- staffed squad into Fallujah, without maps or reconnaissance or planning, there would have been a court martial. The contracts also revealed a little-reported part of the war. The reliance on private contractors and a web of subcontractors can come with a staggering price. Four layers of private companies existed between the taxpayer and the guards killed in Fallujah . Blackwater paid the guards killed in Fallujah $600 aday Blackwater was contracted to Regency Hotel, a Kuwaiti company. Blackwater billed Regency $815 a day. Blackwater also billed Regency separately for all its overhead and costs in Iraq: insurance, room and board, travel, weapons, ammunition, vehicles, office space and equipment, administrative support, taxes and duties. Regency then added its OVVTI profit and costs and billed it all to a European food company, ESS. The food company added its costs and profit and sent its bill to Kellogg Brown & Root, a division of Halliburton, which added overhead and profit and presented the final bill to the Pentagon. What was the final tab to taxpayers? Was it double, triple or quadruple the $600 paid to the slain guard? We knew it was far higher, but the exact added cost was impossible to figure. We also found that Army auditors could not answer that question . The Defense Contract Audit Agency could examine the books of Kellogg Brovm & Root, but they have no authority to audit the legion of subcontractors working indirectly for the United States. After our story ran in October 2004, U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman requested billing information and invoices from the Pentagon. He didn't begin to get a response for almost two years. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Waxman chairs has been aggressively investigating Blackwater and other private military contractors. Blackwater has produced tens of thousands of pages of documents to the committee under subpoena, and Waxman has released several investigative reports corroborating our work. Ironically, Congressional staffers say that Blackwater has been much more forthcoming than the State Department. Planet Debate 103 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “PMSCs More Cost Effective”

PMCS ARE NOT COST EFFECTIVE- SALARIES AND LACK OF COMPETITION Avant 4[ Deborah,Director of International Studies and the Center for Research on International and Global Studies (RIGS), Political Science School of Social Sciences “Think Again: Mercenaries” July 1, Foreign Policy /hnasser] http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/07/01/think_again_mercenaries?page=0,1 Numerous studies on privatization and outsourcing suggest that two conditions must be present for the private sector to deliver services more efficiently than the government: a competitive market and contractor flexibility in fulfilling their obligations. But governments frequently curtail competition to preserve reliability and continuity. For instance, military contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root (a subsidiary of Halliburton) won a no-bid contract to rebuild Iraqi oil fields in 2003 because the Pentagon determined it was the only company with the size and security clearances to do the job. Moreover, governments often impose conditions that reduce contractors' flexibility. For example, when the U.S. Army outsourced ROTC training in 1997, a long list of requirements for trainers resulted in a higher estimated cost than that of the previous program. A 2000 report on logistics support in the Balkans by the U.S. government's investigative arm, the General Accounting Office (GAO), faulted the military for poor budgetary oversight. Perhaps most telling, cost-effectiveness is not one of the three reasons for outsourcing listed in a 2003 GAO report on military contracting . (The reasons: to gain specialized technical skills, bypass limits on military personnel that can be deployed to certain regions, and ensure that scarce resources are available for other assignments.) News reports on the war in Iraq have noted the relatively high salaries of contractors -- some $20,000 per month, triple or more what active-duty soldiers earn -- but such figures fail to explain whether contractors are indeed cost-effective. Some analysts argue that contractors are ultimately cheaper because they allow the military to avoid the expense of recruiting, training, and deploying personnel. However, most contractors are recruited and trained by governments at some point in their careers. In addition, U.S. military leaders have voiced concern that the lure of corporate contractors undermines Army personnel retention -- a worry shared by military leaders from Britain to Chile. Planet Debate 104 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “PMSCs Provide Critical Logistics Support”

USING PMCS IN IRAQ KILLS READINESS – CONTRACTUAL ISSUES, PROTECTION REQUIREMENTS, AND LOGISTICS Schreier and Caparini, 05 [Fred, consultant with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Swiss Ministry of Defense and Marina, Senior Fellow at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Ph.D., King’s College, University of London, “Privatising Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security Companies,” p. 46, March, Geneva Centre For The Democratic Control Of Armed Forces, GScholar, http://se2.dcaf.ch/serviceengine/Files/DCAF/18346/ipublicationdocument_singledocument/BA695123-3145-4CAA-B29A- A60711724C96/en/op06_privatising-security.pdf]/galperin Outsourced support is guided by a contract – a legal, binding document outlining a statement of work and expectations. Even when written with the best of intentions , a contract cannot cover every possible contingency in advance. If mission requirements change, the statement of work and expectations may need changes. If changes are made, the contract itself may require modification – and many times this will carry associated changes in cost. To stop during combat, no matter how briefly, to rewrite or renegotiate a contractor’s obligations severely limits a commander’s ability to accomplish the mission. Commanders need the flexibility to do what is needed, when it is needed, and to the degree it is needed. To have any less flexibility increases risks significantly. Hence, the art and science of writing contracts is becoming critical to ensuring flexibility, sustainability, and survivability in the battlespace, and every commander and logistician must be familiar and knowledgeable about the contract process.136 Thus, rather than being able to concentrate on operations, the commander may have to devote a significant amount of his time and energy to dealing with contractors’ shortcomings and problems. And rather than having a professional , dependable logistics team on which he can rely, he must concern himself with contractual issues and problems. Moreover, the commander must be prepared for the eventuality that the contractor’s personnel may decide to leave the theatre if they feel their security is threatened . The issue is less whether large defence contractors will continue to service the contract, but whether or not they will be able to keep their employees in the battlespace when and where needed. Furthermore, if subcontractors are performing for a parent contractor, will the subcontractor be as reliable as the primary contractor?137 The military must have personnel available to backfill these personnel. Additionally, the commander will have to provide force protection for contractor personnel. Contractors cannot provide their own security; this is a military function and can have a significant impact on resources during heightened activity or combat operations. This means that an additional force structure will be required to protect contractors, even if they are former military personnel. This additional force structure will become especially critical in a situation with asymmetrical threats or when contract personnel are directly supporting the warfighters and moving with lead combat elements. For example, everyone in an area of operations is equally vulnerable to nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) threats, and everyone requires the same minimum-essential protection. There are costs, both in equipment and in training, associated with preparing contractor personnel to survive NBC attacks.138 Given an asymmetric threat in the nonlinear battlespace, there is no “safe” zone within the area of operation. Thus, the bottom line remains that force structure will be required to provide force protection for all civilians working in the theatre of operations, whether in rear areas, on forward lines, or in forward-deployed task forces. Most military personnel are classified as combatants and can be relied upon to assist and augment the fighting force, as well as to provide self-protection and defend equipment and terrain. As history shows, logisticians have always been the “infantry in reserve”. But PMC personnel are not necessarily cross - trained to execute tasks that are not part of their job description. As a result, use of PMCs can compromise the ability to deal with the unexpected. Not only may they be unlikely to take over tasks which are not part of their contractual obligations; they cannot be ordered to do them by the military chain of command .139 In days past, the commander could routinely turn to his troops to perform tasks other than their primary specialty when the work required relatively little skill or training. Given today’s sophisticated weapon and support systems, however, turning to military members in times of PMC failure will become less of an option. This contingency, more than any other, might dominate battle planning for military commanders of the next generation.140 Using contractors also deprives some military personnel of valuable field experience and training. The problem-solving opportunities that are so critical to the preparation of senior logistics officers and NCOs are no longer available.141 Additionally, while the contractors can relieve some of the burden on cooks and supply technicians, these personnel do not get the operational experience they need to be effective members of the team when they really are required. A further problem resides in the “no looking back” nature of outsourced support. When contractors become responsible for providing supplies, this leaves no trained force structure capable of handling this function in the battlespace. If, after a long trial period, the concept of substituting parts of the logistics by contractor services does not prove successful, the military will find itself unable to instantly grow, train, and benefit from the experience of the mid- and upper-level managers developed within the enlisted and officer corps. It may take close to an entire service career of 20 years before the military can regain the capability now resident in its personnel.142 Planet Debate 105 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “PMSCs Provide Critical Logistics Support”

PMC USE GUTS MILITARY READINESS – FLEXIBILITY, VISIBILITY, AND RESOURCE WASTE Schreier and Caparini, 05 [Fred, consultant with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Swiss Ministry of Defense and Marina, Senior Fellow at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Ph.D., King’s College, University of London, “Privatising Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security Companies,” p. 46, March, Geneva Centre For The Democratic Control Of Armed Forces, GScholar, http://se2.dcaf.ch/serviceengine/Files/DCAF/18346/ipublicationdocument_singledocument/BA695123-3145-4CAA-B29A- A60711724C96/en/op06_privatising-security.pdf]/galperin The “ideal battlespace” would not contain any civilians. The presence of noncombatants as well as “civilians authorized to accompany the force” in the area of operations greatly complicates the life of a commander. Complexity is compounded when the commander is dependent upon PMCs to accomplish his mission. From an operational perspective, outsourcing is supposed to improve flexibility and relieve pressures on support personnel. However, one of the most obvious downsides of going into the battle with civilians is the loss of flexibility – one of the key tenets of successfully waging war. A commander’s freedom and ability to improvise quickly in using tactics, employing weapons, and deploying personnel have long been considered essential to victory in combat. Flexibility is equally essential for effective logistics performance – adapting logistics structures and procedures to changing situations, missions, and concepts. To resolve the challenges inherent in using contractors, the commanders must have information and awareness of contractors working in and around their areas of responsibility. Maintaining visibility of contractors and coordinating their movements are vital if the commander is to manage his available assets and capabilities efficiently and effectively. However, this visibility is difficult to establish since contractors are not really part of the chain of command and, in general, are not subject to the same orders that apply to soldiers regarding good order and discipline.133 And commanders have no easy way to get answers to questions about contractor support.134 Lack of information and awareness of PMCs or PSCs and their presence in supporting combat operations tend to result in: gaps in doctrine regarding who is responsible for securing lines of communication used by commercial suppliers; loss of visibility of assets moving in and around the theatre of operations ; loss of control of contractor personnel and equipment; increased force responsibility for supporting contractor personnel in the areas of life support, force protection, housing, medical care, transportation, and operational and administrative control; use of additional manpower, material, and funding resources to support contractor personnel; concern about the availability of commercial supplies and services in a hostile environment; and gaps in providing logistics support if commercial supply lines become disrupted.135 In addition, Status of Forces Agreements and other arrangements with host nations may complicate the commander’s situation by restricting entry, movement, and action of PMCs and PSCs . Planet Debate 106 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “PMSCs Provide Critical Logistics Support”

THE USFG HAS BECOME DEPENDENT UPON CONTRACTORS- THIS CYCLE OF DEPENDENCY TURNS PUBLIC OPINION AGAINST THE MILITARY Singer 7 [Peter W. Singer , the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings., “Can't Win with 'Em, Can't Go To War without 'Em: Private Military Contractors and Counterinsurgency”/ hnasser] http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/0927militarycontractors.aspx?p=1 The recent incident involving Blackwater contractors in Iraq has brought to light a series of questions surrounding the legal status, oversight, management, and accountability of the private military force in Iraq. This for-hire force numbers more than 160,000, more than the number of uniformed military personnel in Iraq, and it is a good thing that attention is finally being paid to the consequences of our outsourcing critical tasks to private firms. An underlying question, though, is largely being ignored: whether it made sense to have civilians in this role in the first place. Regardless of whether the Blackwater contractors were right or wrong in the recent shootings, or even whether there is proper jurisdiction to ensure their accountability or not, there is a crucial problem . The use of private military contractors appears to have harmed, rather than helped the counterinsurgency efforts of the U.S. mission in Iraq. Even worse, it has created a dependency syndrome on the private marketplace that not merely creates critical vulnerabilities, but shows all the signs of the last downward spirals of an addiction. If we judge by what has happened in Iraq, when it comes to private military contractors and counterinsurgency, the U.S. has locked itself into a vicious cycle. It can't win with them, but can't go to war without them. The study explores how the current use of private military contractors: Allows policymakers to dodge key decisions that carry political costs, thus leading to operational choices that might not reflect public interest. The Abrams Doctrine, which has stood since the start of the all-volunteer force in the wake of Vietnam, has been outsourced. Enables a "bigger is better" approach to operations that runs contrary to the best lessons of U.S. military strategy. Turning logistics and operations into a for-profit endeavor helped feed the "Green Zone" mentality problem of sprawling bases, which runs counter everything General Petraeus pointed to as necessary to winning a counterinsurgency in the new Army/USMC manual he helped write . Inflames popular opinion against, rather than for, the American mission through operational practices that ignore the fundamental lessons of counterinsurgency. As one set of contractors described. "Our mission is to protect the principal at all costs. If that means pissing off the Iraqis, too bad." Participated in a series of abuses that have undermined efforts at winning "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people. The pattern of contractor misconduct extends back to 2003 and has involved everything from prisoner abuse and "joyride" shootings of civilians to a reported incident in which a drunken Blackwater contractor shot dead the security guard of the Iraqi Vice President , after the two got into an argument on Christmas Eve, 2006. Weakened American efforts in the "war of ideas" both inside Iraq and beyond. As one Iraqi government official explained even before the recent shootings. " They are part of the reason for all the hatred that is directed at Americans, because people don't know them as Blackwater, they know them only as Americans. They are planting hatred, because of these irresponsible acts." Reveals a double standard towards Iraqi civilian institutions that undermines efforts to build up these very same institutions, another key lesson of counterinsurgency. As one Iraqi soldier said of Blackwater. "They are more powerful than the government. No one can try them. Where is the government in this?" Forced policymakers to jettison strategies designed to win the counterinsurgency on multiple occasions, before they even had a chance to succeed. The U.S. Marine plan for counterinsurgency in the Sunni Triangle was never implemented, because of uncoordinated contractor decisions in 2004 that helped turn Fallujah into a rallying point of the insurgency. More recently, while U.S. government leaders had planned to press the Iraqi government on needed action on post-"surge" political benchmarks, instead they are now having to request Iraqi help in cleaning up the aftermath of the Blackwater incident. The U.S. government needs to go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate its use of private military contractors, especially armed roles within counterinsurgency and contingency operations. It needs to determine what roles are appropriate or not for private firms, and what roles must be kept in the control of those in public service. As part of this determination, it is becoming clear that many roles now outsourced, including the armed escort of U.S. government officials, assets, and convoys in a warzone, not only are inherently government functions, but that the outsourcing has created both huge vulnerabilities and negative consequences for the overall mission. A process must immediately begin to roll such public functions back into public responsibility. Our military outsourcing has become an addiction that is quickly spiraling to a breakdown. Many of those vested in the system, both public and private leaders, will try to convince us to ignore this cycle. They will describe such evident pattern of incidents as "mere anomalies," portray private firms outside the chain of command as somehow "part of the total force," or claim that "We have no other choice." These are the denials of pushers, enablers, and addicts. Only an open and honest intervention, a step back from the precipice of over-outsourcing, can break us out of the vicious cycle into which we have locked our national security. Planet Debate 107 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “PMSCs Provide Critical Logistics Support”

PMC’S KILL U.S. MILITARY READINESS – PROFIT MOTIVE CAUSES INEFFICIENCY AND ERRORS Schreier and Caparini, 05 [Fred, consultant with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Swiss Ministry of Defense and Marina, Senior Fellow at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and Ph.D., King’s College, University of London, “Privatising Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security Companies,” p. 46, March, Geneva Centre For The Democratic Control Of Armed Forces, GScholar, http://se2.dcaf.ch/serviceengine/Files/DCAF/18346/ipublicationdocument_singledocument/BA695123-3145-4CAA-B29A- A60711724C96/en/op06_privatising-security.pdf]/galperin The military focuses on life and death, whereas business seeks profit.129 It is clear that contractors providing combat service support to deployed missions are in business primarily to make money. Often, they will not do any more than that which is agreed in their contract, and they will do everything they can to save money and thereby increase their profits. This makes their employment problematic from the outset. Typically, military operations employ a certain degree of redundancy to ensure that if there are any failures in equipment or support, these can be rectified with minimal impact and delay. Additional stores, equipment, and spares are usually kept close at hand. When required, military supervisors can pitch in to ensure that tasks are completed correctly and on time. This also provides a boost to the morale of the more junior personnel and promotes unit cohesion. However, a civilian contractor supervisor may not follow the same work ethic. In keeping with the new “just in time” business practices, he may not have more than the minimum stock on hand, and he may not wish to get his hands dirty when the objective in his mind is only to meet the minimum requirement or standard.130 Conversely, once the fighting starts, the objective of the commander and the force can no longer be to cut costs or save money but to accomplish the mission. The profit motive and the inflexibility of contractor personnel also contribute to their lack of commitment to the overall objectives of the military mission. While acceptable levels of service are provided when the tempo of operations is relatively moderate, there is little doubt that the quality of service and overall readiness of the unit will go down as the situation deteriorates and the contractor starts to experience difficulty. Additionally, the increase in operational tempo will likely bring with it an exponential increase in cost when additional requirements are placed on the contractor.131 Planet Debate 108 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “Can’t Afford to Pull PMSCs Out of Iraq”

PHASING OUT SECURITY COMPANIES IS KEY TO IRAQI STABILITY- LONG TERM GAIN OF CONTRACTOR ELIMINATION OUTWEIGHS THE SHORT TERM INABILITY OF IRAQI FORCES TO TAKE CONTROL Towry 6 [ Bobby A., United States army colonel, “PHASING OUT PRIVATE SECURITY CONTRACTORS IN IRAQ”/] http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/ksil520.pdf The primary reason the United States and our coalition partners are still in Iraq is to provide a secure and stable environment that allows Iraq to establish their version democracy. The United States and our coalition partners recognize Iraq as a sovereign country, and we respect Iraq’s authority and ability to provide security within its borders. In order for this respect to have relevance, the United States and our coalition partners cannot continue to allow, and in some cases hire, private security companies to operate as independent paramilitary organizations. Third country nationals waving and firing weapons indiscriminately are of little value in providing long-term stability and security for Iraq. The United States does not allow private security companies to roam our countryside, point weapons in the faces of our citizens, and discharge their weapons indiscriminately - therefore we cannot allow these practices to continue in Iraq. If we do, we will continue to undermine the sovereignty of Iraq. While there are tactical risks in phasing out private security contractors, the risks in doing nothing are much greater. Currently, there are no controls on how many private security companies or contractors operate in Iraq – today, tomorrow, or two years down the road. A solid strategy to phase out private security contractors and replace them with an Iraqi special security force, manned by Iraqis, expertly trained, well equipped, and answering only to the sovereign government of Iraq, will result in a much safer, more secure, and stable Iraq. Planet Debate 109 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: “Can’t Afford to Pull PMSCs Out of Iraq”

THE U.S. AND IRAQI GOVERNMENT CAN FORM SUSTAINABLE SECURITY IN A YEAR- PHASING OUT CONTRACTORS AND TRAINING IRAQI SECURITY FORCES SOLVES Towry 6 [ Bobby A., United States army colonel, “PHASING OUT PRIVATE SECURITY CONTRACTORS IN IRAQ”/] http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/ksil520.pdf Phasing out private security contractors in Iraq has significant tactical risks that need to be mitigated for the strategy to be successful. The tactical risks can best be described as the difference between the ability of the new Iraqi special security force to protect companies involved in the Iraqi reconstruction, and the level of protection those same companies are currently receiving from their private security contractors . As mentioned above , the Iraqi government must fully commit to forming a new Iraqi special security police that will provide the same level of security that the contractors are getting from their own private security contractors. It will take time to organize, train, and equip this new Iraqi special security force– most likely a year or more before the Iraqi government can start the recruiting effort with any success. This is due to the need to ensure only quality citizens are recruited for the special security force. Strict admission standards are required to ensure this quality. Recruits for this special program must meet, at a minimum, all of the following requirements: be a natural born or naturalized Iraqi citizen; have a minimum of one-year experience, in addition to basic training, in the new Iraqi military, Iraqi border security, or Iraqi law enforcement; and be honorably discharged from the organization. These requirements are similar to those required by reputable private security organizations operating in the United States and helps ensure that only the best recruits enter into this specialized program .36 The U.S. military and coalition members must also agree to design a training program, and certify the Iraqi special security force as trained before they assume any security responsibilities. This certification provides assurance to the contractors involved in the reconstruction efforts that the new Iraqi special security forces are prepared for their role in providing security. With a single standard established by the coalition, actual training of the force could be accomplished via contracts, with a maximum of three security firms currently operating in Iraq. A competitive bidding process, with strict screening criteria, is the best way to ensure a quality companies are selected at a competitive price. A minimum number of contracts allow the U.S. and coalition military forces to focus on a small number of primary trainers to ensure standardized training across the force. This type of standardization in training eliminates the variations in training standards as described below by Peter Almond of The New York Times. Since 2003, the demand for private security guards in Iraq has been so great — from guarding oil pipelines to VIP protection — that many companies have started from scratch, and there are huge variations in the standards of recruitment and training. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed or injured in what are usually described as defensive actions by private security guards as the specter of unaccountable mercenaries hangs over the country. 37 Based on the Blackwater training model, the training facilities will be able to produce approximately 150 Iraqi special security police officers, trained for a variety of private security missions, every eight weeks by each training contracting firm. If contracts are given to three training contracting firms, it will take over 133 training sessions, almost seven years, to match the almost 20,000 private security contractors operating in Iraq now. While this is not an overly aggressive replacement rate, it will allow the new Iraqi government ample time to phase out private security contractors in an orderly manner. If the Iraqi government wants to move this process at an accelerated rate, then the contractors responsible for training could use a model similar to that of the police-training program that DynCorp, a subsidiary of California-based Computer Sciences Corp., used to land the initial police-training contract in Iraq. In 2004, DynCorp contracted with the State Department to operate a training camp capable of handling 3,000 recruits, and 1,000 trainers and support staff, at any given time. The contract called for the camp to turn out 35,000 Iraqi police officers in just two years.38 By all accounts, DynCorp was successful with this training program, making this a possible model to use if necessary . 39 The new Iraqi special security police will be equipped with standard Iraqi military issued equipment. While some special modifications to this equipment may be required in order to support specific mission requirements, the basic weapon will be that used by the Iraqi military and police forces. Since all recruits would have received extensive training on these weapons in their previous government service, this will reduce the need for weapons training and any “special logistics” requirements of the security force . To ensure that the new Iraqi special security police force is properly equipped and sustained, the U.S., as the largest financial contributor to the reconstruction efforts, should accept the responsibility for contracting, purchasing, and fielding the equipment for the first 20,000 graduates. By taking on this responsibility, the United States will ensure equipping standardization across the security force thus making long-term sustainment of the equipment easier. Planet Debate 110 PMCs – Sherry Hall Should Ban PMSCs

SHOULD BAN PMSCs Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 156 It twill come as no surprise that my first suggestion is the outright ban on any armed private security contractors. Anyone operating in conjunction with a military operating, in and around a war zone or disaster zone, and carrying a weapon should be part of the regular armed forces, and governed by formal military law. This requirement carries with a number of assumptions that I will detail below, but it begins with the following four principles.

U.S. TROOPS ARE SUBJECT TO REGULATIONS – PMCS AREN’T SUBJECT TO THESE, AND SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM AREAS OF COMBAT Hedahl 9 [ Marcus Hedahl , an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at the U.S. Air Force Academy . “Blood and Blackwaters: A Call to Arms for the Profession of Arms.” Journal of Military Ethics; 2009, Vol. 8 Issue 1, p19-33, 15p/ hnasser] Even given all these facts, there are some who continue to contend that such contractors do not infringe upon the core military function because they are merely providing security. Their function is not inherently different from the function provided by private security officers throughout the world. Private security personnel protect business in dangerous countries and government buildings within the United States. These security personnel do not infringe upon the central function of the military because they are not infantrymen; security is not combat. In order to respond to this argument, perhaps the most important task is to discuss briefly what exactly the central function of the military profession is. Putting oneself in danger for the betterment of the nation-state may be a necessary condition, but it cannot be a sufficient one. For, in today’s society, numerous members of the government and private employees put themselves in some degree of danger for the betterment of the nation-state. The function of the military has to be based on a difference in kind and not degree. Sir Hackett famously argued that the core function was the management of violence in the service of the state (Hacket 1986: 194). This is certainly true, but, to be more precise, it is not just any violence, but rather combat for which the soldier is the expert (for otherwise we could include police and others). It is the possibility to engage in combat, or, more precisely, the capability to become a lawful combatant that sets the soldier apart. Security personnel within the U.S. and elsewhere are subject to and subordinate to the local police. If the use of force becomes more than an extremely unlikely exception to the rule, then responsibility for security of the area reverts back to the local police force. And, such domestic security personnel have no more chance than any other citizen of engaging in combat or becoming a lawful combatant. However, none of these features holds when security functions are outsourced in areas caught in the penumbra of war and peace, places like Iraq and Afghanistan. So, we may not require the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C. to be protected by soldiers. We may not even require the security of every private company in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to be guarded by soldiers. It seems reasonable, however, to claim that any persons involved in security operations for the U.S. Government in an area in which it is reasonable to believe they may become combatants need to be U.S. servicemen and women. It is the potential to become lawful combatants and the reasonable normative expectation to be treated as such that separates the profession of arms. Therefore, the military profession needs to insist on the elimination of any private security contractors within contingency operations. In areas like Iraq and Afghanistan, any private contractors that continue to work directly for the U.S. Government (i.e., not private security for businesses) should be unarmed. Furthermore, this change ought to be as grave a concern for the military profession as the outsourcing of treatment determination is for the medical profession. Planet Debate 111 PMCs – Sherry Hall Should Ban PMSCs

IN ORDER FOR THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT TO TAKE CONTROL, ALL PRIVATE SECURITY FORCES HAVE TO BE REMOVED. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO ENSURE SOVEREIGNTY Towry 6 [ Bobby A., United States army colonel, “PHASING OUT PRIVATE SECURITY CONTRACTORS IN IRAQ”/ hnasser] http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/ksil520.pdf The solution is clear; in order for the new Iraqi government to be recognized as a sovereign country, it must be responsible for every aspect of security in Iraq. With the recent 9 increase in Iraqi security capabilities, the overall ability of the new Iraqi government to provide all aspects of security – to include that of providing security for contractors operating as part of the reconstruction efforts in Iraq – is much improved. The increasing security capability shows Iraqi citizens’ resolve for ensuring the security of their country, and also indicates the availability a large pool of potential labor from which to draw and form this new security force. While in 2003/2004 the strategy was not feasible due to a lack of qualified labor, today, this labor potential exists, and is expanding. The strategy to support this solution is the elimination of all private security personnel. This includes private security personnel operating on Iraq’s roadways for convoy security, private bodyguards, and static security operations conducted outside of United States government or coalition member controlled bases and camps. In short, all security requirements will become the responsibility of the new Iraqi government, with the only exception being security for companies that are in direct support of U.S. military or coalition member combat operations. The U.S. military or coalition members will maintain responsibility to provide security for companies involved in supporting combat operations, such as is presently provided by U.S. troops for Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KRB). Three pillars provide the basis of the strategy; they are organization, command structure, and recruiting and equipping the force. First, the new Iraqi government must recognize, and agree to form and organize a new Iraqi security organization that is responsible for the specific mission of providing security for contractors involved in reconstruction efforts. This acceptance of security responsibilities is crucial to ensuring that present and future companies feel safe to invest their resources in Iraq. The second pillar of the strategy is the command structure for the new Iraqi special security police force. Security forces must be subordinate and accountable to the Iraqi Minister of Interior. This type of command structure will limit or eliminate the possible use of these special security police as an unauthorized paramilitary organization for offensive engagements for personal or local political gains. Another benefit of having them answer to the Minister of Interior will be the increased ability to integrate the Iraqi special security police horizontally and vertically with all other security efforts of the new Iraqi government. The third pillar of the strategy is recruiting and equipping the force. In order for the new security organization to be relevant, the special security police must be recruited, trained, and regulated by the new Iraqi government. The ranks of the special security force must be comprised of only legally born or naturalized Iraqi civilians. They must not include foreign-hired contractors. This will ensure that the Iraqis, who have a national interest in security of their country, provide security, vice the mercenaries who do it today. As the new Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped, they will replace private security contractors currently operating in Iraq. This phased approach is viable until all foreign private security contractors can be replaced. In the interim period, between the initial conception and full implementation of an Iraqi special security police, private security contractors will continue to operate under the direct supervision of the new Iraqi special security police for the term of their contract. This term must include a predetermined number of years to ensure a finite end date of the security contract. MORAL OBJECTIONS JUSTIFY ABOLITION Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 26 Moral objections and the tendency towards abolitionism suggest six sets of implications for the current regulatory debate and the shape of future regulation. First, it is important to emphasize that abolitionist concerns—based on the status of private actors, rather than their actions – are unlikely to go away; improving the behavior of private actors and ensuring that it stays improved does not address the concerns of those who belief that it is simply wrong to privatize force. Planet Debate 112 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Should Be Governed by Military Law

PLACING PMSCs UNDER MILITARY LAW GETS ADVANTAGES OF BOTH SYSTEMS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 156 Private security providers are part of the US Military’s “total force,” like it or not. There is no real dividing line between offensive and defensive security in a war zone. Anyone who has ever played any kind of sport knows the expression: “The best defense is a good offense.” In war strategy, defense and offense are linked, and private security providers who defend their practices by invoking the distinction are playing word games. In policing, defense and offense are also linked. Private security providers note that they, like their domestic security counterparts, will not pursue the enemy: they will only defend their vehicles, passengers, or themselves, against incoming fire. They will only practice self-defense and the defense of others. This tactic is not unusual during certain kinds of military fights as well: it is a form of “picking your battles,” or moderating the use of force in order to focus on the mission on hand. Defense and offense here are just tactics employed when needed. The recent debate about the application of military law, or USMJ, to private security contractors has made their membership in the total force even more clear. If they are governed under military law, and they carry weapons openly, and are under a chain of command (including a contracting officer, but now formally including the combatant commander), it is hard not to argue that they are, legally speaking, combatants. If this is so, we should formalize this relationship, and create a formal “combatant for hire” reserve service unit. Planet Debate 113 PMCs – Sherry Hall *Statism Answers* Planet Debate 114 PMCs – Sherry Hall Statism Challenges High Now

NON-STATE ACTORS CHALLENGE TO STATISM OCCURING NOW Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 5 Speaking more broadly, the ideal image of a globe populated by territorially and legally bounded sovereign states is being challenged by the rise of strong non-state actors of all kinds: armed groups, ranging from recognized rebel and guerilla movements to transnational criminal and terrorist networks, multinational corporations, and international non- governmental organizations (NGOs). Our world may consist not of territorially bounded areas so much as of alternating zones of law and lawlessness, places where state power is so weak as to demonstrate a failed state altogether, and where contracts are enforced and security provided in distinctly sub-state ways. This fluid situation has contributed to a changing culture of warfare, or armed conflict, or complex emergencies---or, in the newest nomenclature, “contingency operations.” Not only are there new actors on the ground amidst violent conflict, but the ways in which we define and understand conflict are changing. The legal and ethical categories that have been traditionally used to judge warfare do not seem adequate to the task: they are “on the cusp” of comprehensibility (Coker 2007). Planet Debate 115 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Not Challenging Statism

PMSCs SIGNAL A TRANSITION IN STATES – NOT THEIR COLLAPSE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 91-2 Since the late seventeenth century it has been widely accepted that states may in part be defined by their claim to a monopoly on legitimate violence. National defense and civil order have driven the creation of military budgets that have absorbed less than 1 percent to something like 30 percent of GNP in almost all states since 1945. The need for stability within states also provides the impetus for much funding of police and domestic intelligence agencies. The prerogative of legitimate violence has in turn informed tenets of international law regarding criteria for statehood, one of which is the existence of government. And it has been states’ fundamentally coercive attributes which have often figured most prominently in their dealings with other states. The exact nature of this situation has never been static. Today, private authority carrying an element of coercion is again expanding and challenging traditional notions of conduct both within and between states. Hitherto military functions of the state are increasingly being transferred to non-state entities. This is consistent with a decreasing political will amongst both wealthy and poor states to sustain those financial and other costs embodied in the maintenance of a monopoly on the use of violence. However, one should be unhurried in drawing exaggerated meaning from a shift in responsibilities. A state monopoly on violence may no longer exist, but the authority to legitimize its use remains with states and the UN in certain circumstances. It is the legitimate exercise of this function which is arguably in the process of devolution from governments to others. This delegation does not suggest state authority is facing extinction. State roles are being altered, reconfigured or contracted out in a continual transformation that should not be unexpected. Outsourcing a capacity to wield violence is only one facet of a more general phenomenon. Spear suggests that privatization may be seen in modern states as indispensable in achieving the “lean” condition thought desirable for armed forces. Herbert Wulf has been quick to see that neo-liberal searches for cost effective and market-based solutions are also created by the powerful and imposed on the weak. This creates a different kind of lean state with more contentious results. Planet Debate 116 PMCs – Sherry Hall Statist Control of the Military Good/Necessary

STATIST CONTROL OF THE MILITARY VITAL TO RESPONSIBLE AND ACCOUNTABLE USE OF FORCE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 136 A month after the posts about the ethics of PMSCs on the contractor list-serve in 2008, Michael Walzer entered the debate. As the most respected force in any discussion of the ethics of war, he published a short essay in The New Republic wherein he posed the question: “Is there an ethics that justifies Blackwater?” In the essay he decried the ironic use of our own “private militias” in the Iraq in the effort to disarm Iraqi private militias, and create a unified security force with a monopoly on the use of force. He noted that accountability on all levels was lacking with the use of private contractors. And he argued that “we had best take a statist view of military activity” if we wanted any real type of accountability and responsibility with regard to violence. “ The state is the only reliable agent of public responsibility that we have. Of course, it often is not reliable, and it often doesn’t represent a democratic public…Still, there isn’t any agency other than the state in the contemporary world that can authorize and then control the use of force – and whose officials are (sometimes) accountable to the rest of us.” (Walzer 2008). Planet Debate 117 PMCs – Sherry Hall *Genocide Response Answers* Planet Debate 118 PMCs – Sherry Hall Still Unethical

UTILIZING PMSCs TO RESPOND TO GENOCIDE DOESN’T MAKE THEM ETHICAL – IT SHIELDS THE UNETHICAL INACTIVITY OF STATES Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 136-7 His [Walzer] signature verbal hedges, italicized above, made the difficulty of arguing about ethics apparent: it is hard to get things right. And at the end of the essay he noted that there are “exceptions to every rule”: perhaps we should use PMSCs in the genocide in Darfur, as its representatives have so often argued it could do. Walzer admitted to being uncomfortable with the idea, but also with the idea that states could avoid any meaningful accountability for inaction against genocide. Perhaps a Blackwater mission in Sudan or Chad would be exactly what inactive states deserved, he implied. (The Blackwater offer echoed the standing offer made by Michael Grunberg, referred to earlier in Chapter, who commented that the right PMSC could stop all civilian casualties in Africa for $1 billion). If the ends are worthy, and the means are affordable, then why quibble over sovereignty and the international order? Walzer’s essay perfectly characterized the lukewarm attitude toward a more widespread use of PMSCs. His reluctant endorsement (which received a large amount of criticism) encapsulated two ethical criticisms: states are shirking in their international treaty obligations to respond to victims of genocide, and states are being morally two-faced as they hire militias to disarm other militias. An even deeper criticism was implied: Americans are unwilling to admit that their chosen political goals may require questionable means. So, although the term “mercenary” can seem sensationalistic, it does identify a central ethical problem. This problem is not the ethics of those who fight when the opportunity calls, but the ethics of the governments and corporations that use them. Most analysts are relatively sympathetic to the difficulties of judging the complex intents and motivations of individuals, and no one is dumb enough to believe that patriotism or “the public good” motivates people all of the time. The most important ethical problems is the fact that governments are using these firms. Planet Debate 119 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Doesn’t Want to Use Contractors

UN AMBIVALENT ON USING CONTRACTORS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 59-60 For the present the UN retains a conflictual position on private military and security services. It publicly decries them but members employ them in various forms. There is a UN treaty for the suppression of mercenaries, yet the document is poorly drafted and lacks widespread support. UN organs face escalating threats to their operations, which at times compel them to hire armed contractors to secure employees’ safety. At the same time the Organization’s senior staff issue polemical criticisms against various firms. The UN met defiant mercenaries with decisive violence once in the 1960s. But the Organization has yet to demonstrate a coherent grasp of the modern private security phenomenon as a logical ally. It has poured resources into 17 years of reports and a more recent expert committee, but is only beginning to engage with the industry in order to develop ethical models of operation and a suitable legal regime. It may be precisely because the industry understands various UN weaknesses that the Organization’s institutions go to some lengths to resist outsiders’ assistance. Growing corporate capacities form an obvious threat to the control of peacekeeping and other operations. At present it remains too early to tell whether modern security companies will find eventual acceptance at the UN for constructive reasons which in turn promote adherence to a practical regulatory regime. It is equally possible that for some time these companies will remain transgressive figures treated with oscillating hypocrisy and ambivalence; where acceptance is stymied by obstructive conduct which serves interests other than the purposeful service of the Charter objectives.

UN WILL NOT SPEND THE MONEY TO DEPLOY CONTRACTORS TO ALL AREAS IN NEED OF HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 106 Another issue is finite resources. Despite a recent decline in the number of conflicts, the near future will probably supply the world with perhaps two dozen major struggles at any one time. Not even the largest UN contractor could deploy in all of them. Rivalry amongst multiple claimants would be inescapable. Many of them are likely to put valid cases for UNSC assistance. Less fortunate populations in some of the more cruel struggles would doubtless request UN assistance through humanitarian intervention. But no matter how well equipped and trained, states seem likely to resist paying for a contract force likely to reach more than a very modest size. In the light of thinking after the Rwanda genocide, a reinforced brigade of 5000 may be adequately ambitious. This is small in comparison to those formations even modestly equipped states may project if they choose. A disagreeable truth is that the strength of likely opponents would determine chosen theaters as much as the merit in claims by the suffering. Planet Debate 120 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Doesn’t Want to Use Contractors

DIFFICULT TO RAISE THE MONEY FOR HUMANITARIAN MISSIONS EVEN IF IT IS JUSTIFED Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 107 Cost is always a sensitive matter in multilateral operations. Over a decade ago Kinloch identified a Netherlands government estimate of US$500-550 million for procurement and USS$300 million annually to pay for a brigade of 5000. In the mid-1990s Urquhart suggested a figure of $380 million per year to train and equip another force 5000 strong. These figures are of limited use in 2009 because military organization and technology have moved on. Whatever the figure, producing the money will require the goodwill of a powerful group of states. Yet in terms of global military expenditure, the sum would be very small. If for argument’s sake a brigade cost $500 million to equip and $500 million annually to run, that first year total of $1 billion would be less than one thousandth of today’s arms expenditure. This seems a tiny sum when balanced against potential benefits. It is an amount easily affordable to states in the prosperous West in particular, where leaders have become accustomed to funding smaller defense budgets since the decline of the Cold War. The question is whether major contributors will be inclined to spend the necessary money for reasons they believe serve their own interests as much as those of the less fortunate. Put another way, whether or not there is a future consensus over money would be largely a consequence of the political value donors perceive they would reap in operations that are more effective.

UN NOT READY TO EMBRACE PMSCs Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 83 In the Fall of 2000 a senior UN official was approached to discuss United Nations initiatives in partnering with other international institutions. Near the end of the discussion he was asked: “What do you think about privatizing peacekeeping?” He reacted with dismay, recounting horror stories of mercenaries run amok in Africa. “The United Nations is a public institution,” he remarked. “Giving its functions over to private companies would be irresponsible and dangerous.” The response is a symptomatic of a much larger problem. Although the United Nations has for the last four years eagerly pursued the idea of partnering, not one of its historical peacekeeping initiatives mentions the idea of privatization. And yet without privatization of certain security functions, prospects for meaningful improvement of peacekeeping operations are slim. Planet Debate 121 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Contractors Ineffective at Humanitarian Missions

LITTLE EVIDENCE THAT UN CONTRACTORS CAN SUCCESSFULLY QUELL OR DETER HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 105 Another concern is the paucity of evidence supporting the proposition that future humanitarian intervention is likely to deter gross human rights abuses (although it may inhibit some in the short term). Sustained combat operations may be necessary to subdue delinquent government, insurgents or both. Consider the ferocious violence in the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda during the 1990s or the present situation in Sudan in 2009. The problem is the absence of certainty that grave human rights abuses carried out by a ruthless enemy may be quelled in weeks or months. What is the Security Council to do should operations be prolonged over months or longer with no clear victory? Determined guerrilla tactics and a war of attrition against UN company forces could only be sustained for a finite time. At some point, political and contractual pressure would necessitate deployment of either larger UN formation or regional units. On the other hand, the consequence of a failure by UN members to provide the required troops and materiel would be a humiliating contractor withdrawal. The consequences for a distressed people expecting sustained assistance would be considerably more serious.

UN CONTRACTOR FORCES INEFFECTIVE AT REGIONAL INTEGRATION Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 144 There is also a question of how well a contractor might be able to coordinate its operations with regional forces. Contrasts may be conspicuous. For example there have been limited if well publicized efforts to develop African Union forces to the point where they possess a modest ability to function within a regional peacekeeping framework. However, this multi-state force has limited training, inadequate logistic capacity and a restricted supply of modern equipment. The practical value of its performance in Darfur has been very limited. Imagine this force finding itself assisted by several battalions of professional UN contractors in a context other than Darfur. The corporate soldiers would probably be largely ex-NATO. They would have contrasting ethnic origins, the latest equipment, better training and vastly superior logistics extending from ordnance supply to their diet. Where contrasts are this stark there could well be some tension. A more general rupture is quite likely where the purposes of a regional force are purportedly the same as those prescribed by the Security Council, but in reality serve more selfish ends. One is mindful that the record of some African forces is less than faultless. In these circumstances a regional organization might contemplate a corporate presence with something less than comradely empathy.

PMCS ARE TOO CORRUPT TO CONTRIBUTE POSITIVELY TO GENOCIDE PREVENTION. The Boston Globe ’ 06, (“PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANIES RAISE CONCERNS,” Third Edition, LETTERS; Pg. E10, 4-30-06) The article treats as credible the argument that "private military companies" such as Blackwater should be contracted to carry out peacekeeping operations in places like Darfur. It further offers without serious rebuttal their claim that they are retooling themselves to become defenders of human rights. You quote Blackwater vice chairman J. Cofer Black as you might cite an Apple Computer executive describing the next generation of ipod technology. Shouldn't the reader have been told that Black is a former career intelligence officer at the CIA? Isn't it relevant that Black most recently headed the agency's Counterterrorism Center, an office to which some of the Bush administration's most egregious violations of human rights have been traced? There was a time not long ago when the media commonly employed terms like "soldier of fortune" and "mercenary" to describe trained military personnel who hire themselves out on a contract basis to anyone able to pay them. That these contractors have organized themselves into Beltway-savvy corporations does not change the nature of their enterprise. Such corporations have nothing to offer efforts to end genocide in Darfur. Planet Debate 122 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Contractors Ineffective at Humanitarian Missions

PRIVATE SECURITY FIRMS ARE NOT NECESSARILY MORE EFFECTIVE Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 91 Use of private security firms does not guarantee better implementation. Many of the mistakes in peacekeeping or peace enforcement come not from misapplication of resources, but from mistaken objectives or unclear objectives. Military missions are often confused by the conflicting demands of interested parties. When this confusion is transmitted down the chain of command, military forces necessarily become ineffective, regardless of whether they are private or public entities. This was evident in Bosnia, where UN peacekeeping forces received contradictory messages fro their superiors about how to respond to various situations. Private security forces would have to be monitored closely and could thus be expected to behave more cautiously.

MANY RISKS USING PMSCs IN HUMANITARIAN MISSIONS Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 94-5 In addition to the inherent limitations of employing private security forces, there are several special risks. First, member states, not being involved in the conflict themselves, may not be able to accurately determine the amount of funding that should be given to private security firms. If the private security firm receives less than it needs to protect itself, it could withdraw or forego achieving its objectives. And if the PSC is dishonest, it could inflate the risk. Still, UN force faces similar hazards. Setting standards for gauging performance in peacekeeping or peace enforcement thus becomes necessary where private security forces are to be used. Secondly, the legitimacy of private security companies remains open to question. How should they be registered and regulated? Should only the UN be allowed to use them? If the UN, why not NATO, OSCE, other regional bodies? Some Security Council resolutions ban the use of mercenaries, albeit in an unregulated context. Mercenaries were used in Sierra Leone and various other African conflicts with mixed results. Being professional soldiers, they were merciless in combat and in the field; while effective, they were not well- liked. Moreover, the violence that mercenaries inherently engender could produce lingering problems, contributing to further violence and extensive conflict. Planet Debate 123 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Undercut State’s Obligations to the UN

PMSCs UNDERCUT NATION-STATE OBLIGATIONS TO THE UN Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 105 From the other side of the transaction, expected benefits of reliable deployment, increased efficiencies and at least some lower costs would be balanced against raised risks in other areas arising from a decrease in principal control. One of these is likely to be Security Council management over battlefield choices in the use of force. A certain respect for the agent’s judgment would be desirable whether first-class military skill has been purchased by a principal holding less than flawless military proficiency. Theater operations should not be micro-managed by the UN Secretariat and UNSC where confidence building between principal and agent would benefit from the exercise of unaccustomed latitude towards those holding and exercising military expertise. One may take the view that a corresponding and perhaps competing risk emerges: that contracting out the execution of UN policy to a corporation may create a shift away from the idea of common obligation amongst the UN membership. One might also suggest that many relieved governments are likely to welcome decreased exposure for exactly this reason.

PMSCs CAN UNDERMINE UN UNITY Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 108 Finally, there may be some truth in a discouraging observation offered by Adam Roberts when he considered the merits of a UN rapid reaction force. Roberts opined that the UN and the office of the Secretary-General might be undermined by a grasp at military functions. He emphasized that some of the more notable UN achievements had been based on negotiation and consent of the parties. This is a point not easily contradicted. Would a robust mandate which directs a corporate agent to absorb or dispense violence test the boundaries of state cooperation and inflame suspicion of UNSC purposes? Even in a disciplined, corporatized form, experiments with effective forces could prove inimical to those fragile and finite possibilities open to the UN in advancing the cause of peace. Planet Debate 124 PMCs – Sherry Hall Unpopular With Less Powerful States

UN CONTRACTOR INTERVENTION FORCE WILL BE RESISTED BY LESS POWERFUL STATES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 16 It is not difficult to tease out other scenarios in which states’ interests would prove incompatible with attempts to create a permanent force from donor states’ units. Take a handful of Hoffman’s observations: states that are powerful are not likely to create an entity that would interfere with their own efforts to shape international politics as they would wish. On the other hand, less powerful states will resist an institution likely to enforce their role as weaker instruments of stronger states. They would object to a force likely to interfere with their own attempts to resolve disputes should they view such efforts as fair by their lights. And should a weaker state challenge the status quo for reasons arising from its vital interests, many other states would be likely to find their sympathies or interests engaged on the side opposing the status quo – which an intervention force would probable be ordered to defend. Planet Debate 125 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Contractor Force Undermines US Military

SUPPORTING UN CONTRACTOR FORCE EXACERBATES MILITARY RETENTION PROBLEMS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 121 Until relatively recently the West has watched with a generally indifferent gaze as parts of the third world have weakened. However, affluent UN members now contemplate their own unwelcome wave of domestic disruption. Radicalized Islamic minorities are increasingly vocal in their empathy with violent struggles Moslems face elsewhere. Some first-world states may become wary of losing limited resources to private contractors at a time of increased subversion and occasional political violence within their borders. A changing climate since 9/11 has imposed escalating budgets and expanded personnel targets within intelligence and security services. Finding the labor to staff the military segment of these bureaucracies could become a sensitive issue. In several affluent states, ranks of uniformed volunteers are proving increasingly hard to fill. Regardless, few Westerners are willing to tolerate conscription to their armed forces as an alternative. Again, retention of existing personnel is a persuasive reason to resist recruitment to a UN contract legion. Planet Debate 126 PMCs – Sherry Hall **PMSCs Good** Planet Debate 127 PMCs – Sherry Hall Long Historical Tradition of Mercenaries

MERCENARIES ARE AN ANCIENT TRADITION Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 65 Hiring soldiers to fight other people’s wars is an ancient practice, from antiquity to Renaissance Italy to, indeed, the American Revolution. The British hired German soldiers from the Hesse region to take up guns on their behalf during the Revolutionary War. Friedrich von Steuben, born in the Magdeburg region of what is now Germany, fought for the freedom of the colonies. Once the war was won, his service was honored with U.S. citizenship and a state that today sits in Lafayette park across the street from the White House in Washington D.C.

LONG TRADITION OF USING PRIVATE SECURITY FIRMS Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 95 The use of private security is as old as mercantilism itself. The United East India Company of the Netherlands was granted powers to make war, conclude treaties, acquire territories, and build fortresses as part of its service to the government or crown. Chartered companies such as the British East Africa Company, which extended the imperial power of governments and royalty, were common in the age of imperialism. The United Kingdom is reputed to have hired 30,000 Hessian soldiers to fighting the American Revolutionary war in order to avoid conscripting its own citizens. Lord Lugard observed that these “empire-building” companies were, at best, an imperfect form of government. Today, however, the use of regulated private force may prove essential to meeting contemporary needs.

LONG HISTORY OF MERCENARIES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 40-1 These criticisms do not obscure the fact that there is nothing natural or permanent about the present organization of military forces. It was only comparatively recently that state building autocrats wrested a monopoly over legitimate violence from their competitors. Mercenarism has traditionally been an unremarkable means of waging war for any number of groups and causes. From the ancient world to the formation of modern states in the seventeenth century, hiring mercenaries has been a matter of unremarkable convention. Particular regions held reputations for the efficiency and skill of their troops. In the ancient era the Greeks were well-considered. Much later, it was the Swiss. As late as the eighteenth century all the major European armies relied heavily on mercenaries serving an internationalized military labor market. For example, the British employed their King’s German Legion in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries while the selection of mercenaries for service within regular British and Indian Gurkha units continues today. And the Papacy enjoys the distinction of being the beneficiary of the longest continuous mercenary contract in history: that between the Vatican and its Swiss guard. Both cheerfully celebrated a five hundredth year of loyal service in 2006. Planet Debate 128 PMCs – Sherry Hall Long Historical Tradition of Mercenaries

LONG HISTORY OF MERCENARIES – OBJECTION TO THEM IS QUITE RECENT Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 41-2 One does not have to delve back far in more modern times to find examples of military employment which confound stereotypes of enduring crudity. During the Spanish Civil War General Franco deployed colonial forces against an International Brigade that by some yardsticks was also mercenary. Perhaps surprisingly for a regime that elevated racial purity, Nazi Germany employed more foreign soldiers than any other state involved in World War II. On the other side Americans donned foreign uniforms and took foreign orders and currency when fighting in the Battle of Britain for the RAF; and the French Foreign Legion did not prove so sentimental over the notion of a democratic rather than Vichy French state as to prevent its regiments fighting on both sides. Whether ancient or modern, warfare has often confounded those who expect a predictable demonstration o f allegiance to one party and no other. During the Cold War communist advisers from East Germany, Russia, China and Cuba assisted fraternal comrades in various theaters for honorable reasons as they probably saw it. The West had its own examples. British officers and NCOs commanded Baluchi and Omani troops on behalf of the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman from the 1950s to the 1970s. Nor is there a shortage of more recent examples likely to confuse those seeking an easy, homogenous profile. The Saudis employ Pakistanis. The French have their Foreign Legionnaires and the Spanish their own less-publicized French Legion, which employed foreigners until the mid-1980s. There have been Tamil separatists from Sri Lanka fighting in the Maldives; Koreans in the Congo; Britons assisting Turks in Cyprus; South Africans and Britons in Papua New Guinea; and American mercenaries in Colombia and Azerbaijan. Depending on how liberal one’s criteria might be, the idea of the mercenary is further clouded by the difficult categorization of several thousand Western security personnel who have been employed in Iraq from 2003 to the present. The use of mercenaries has been common over the centuries for very plausible reasons. When life was much briefer, those who lived a comfortable existence did not wish to risk their lives fighting when they could hire foreigners to carry out this task. The idea that there is something wrong with this arrangement is quite recent. In the mid-eighteenth century the French king Charles VII found himself contemplating thousands of unemployed Gascon and French mercenaries who had returned from an unsuccessful campaign in the service of Emperor Frederick III. These bands were a threat to Charles’s feudal authority. Mockler records that Charles took some of them into his pay, crushed the rest and formed the first regular standing army in Europe. Planet Debate 129 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Challenge Statism

PMSCs CHALLENGE THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF THE STATE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 4 PMSCs challenge the essential and longstanding idea of what constitutes a political state, and how violence, anywhere, is named legitimate, or not. An abbreviated version of Max Weber’s definition of a state is often repeated by social scientists: a state “claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory (Weber 1946:78). Weber’s definition is much wider than this, however, and underscores the connection between justice, power, community, and security that is the essence of politics: “Today, the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one. Today, we have to say that the state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly on the use of physical force within a given territory…Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence. Hence ‘politics’ for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution o f power, either among states or among groups within a state.” (Weber 1946:78) A few sentences later he specifies that “legitimate” means “considered to be legitimate,” that is, law and “right” rest upon a shared consideration among people, which is the essence of politics. The connection between the state and the use of fore, and by extension modern political life itself (which includes the debates about what should or should not be considered legitimate), is explicitly challenged by the flourishing industry of PMSCs, whose access to the use of force is so often only weakly linked to the state. The issue is even more important than Weber’s definition, however. As Deborah Avant puts it: “state control of force (though often imperfect) has provided the best (even if highly uneven) mechanisms human kind has known for linking the use of violence to political processes and social norms within a territory.” In other words, Max Weber’s definition of the state represents the best way by which violence actually is judged, and by extension, controlled.

PMSCs CHALLENGE NOTION THAT STATES HAVE MONOPOLY ON VIOLENCE Simon Chesterman & Chia Lehnardt, Professor and Researcher – NYU School of Law, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 1 The claim to legitimate violence has long been understood to be the exclusive domain of states. Internally, the German sociologist Max Weber used this monopoly to define what a state is; externally, international law on the use of force seeks to regulate what a state does. Mercenaries and the modern phenomenon of private military companies (PMCs) – commercial firms offering military services ranging from military training an advice to combat – challenge this neat schema, a challenge that has achieved greater significance due to the rise in private military activity following the end of the Cold War.

CRITICIZING PMSCs IS PART OF THE EFFORT TO PROP UP THE STATE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 13-4 So far, the group has kept its name, perhaps echoing the sentiment expressed by Washington Post reporter Steve Fainaru, who – when he was criticized for using the term “mercenary” in many of his accounts – replied: “The other day you were suggesting that I used the M word, as you call it, because it sells. In fact, I think it’s self-evident that we’re talking about mercenary activity. I wouldn’t use if it I didn’t believe it, and I’m not throwing it around to call people names. I know all the arguments, etc., but to me that’s the most accurate term available.” (Fainaru 2008) In fact, the history of the modern state begins with the explicit rejection of mercenaries. Although rarely adhered to in practice, the ideal of a state-based standing army drawn from its own citizenry, holding in Max Weber’s oft- quoted line, “a monopoly on the legitimate use of force,” has become almost a truism, posted like a motto over the door of the state. Private militias and mercenary companies need to be disbanded and delegitimized if the project of proper state-building is going to occur, and part of this effort involves condemning them – justly or unjustly – as dirty and dangerous. No one was more explicit about this project than Machiavelli. Planet Debate 130 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Challenge Statism

OPPOSITION TO AND CRITICISM OF PMSCs AS MERCENARIES GROUNDED IN SUPPORT FOR THE NATION-STATE SYSTEM Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 14 Machiavelli’s two major works, The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, constitute the beginnings of a modern political theory. The centerpiece of his advice for new states, whether republics or principalities, is the need for a state to possess its “own arms,” that is, sovereign control over those who fight for it. “ The principal foundations that all states have, new ones as well as old…are good laws and good arms, and where there are good arms there must be good laws, I shall leave out reasoning on laws and shall speak of arms.” (Machiavelli 1985) The use of the word “arms” is deliberate. Not only must a state possess the ability to defend itself with an army and armaments; these arms must be attached to “the body politic.” They must be “one’s own,” and not borrowed or rented from any others. Machiavelli’s rejection of mercenary forces is explicit: they are lazy, untrustworthy, bad fighters, and motivated only by pay. “Mercenary and auxiliary arms are useless and dangerous…for they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, unfaithful; bold among friends, among enemies cowardly; no fear of God, no faith with men; ruin is postponed only as long as attack is postponed and in peace you despoiled by them, in war by the enemy. The cause of this is that they have no love nor cause to keep them in the field other than a small stipend, which is not sufficient to make them want to die for you.” (Machiavelli 1985). The connection between a rejection of mercenaries and the creation of a state-based citizen army as the foundation of the modern state system is made again and again in the writings of political theorists. Sovereign control over militias, the monopoly over the use of force, is the lifeblood of the state. The condemnation of PMSCs as a return to the days of mercenary armies, regardless of their efficacy, stems from this sense that they are anathema to the meaning of a nation-state. The mercenary label thus accounts for much of the negative reaction to these firms; we are culturally and politically opposed to anything that seems to symbolize the undoing of the state (Lanning 2005).

RELIANCE ON AUXILIARY FORCES UNDERMINES THE LEGITIMACY OF THE STATE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 16-7 Machiavelli’s criticism of auxiliary forces comes from his reading of Roman history, in which the empire’s military forces were divided between legions, composed of Roman citizens, and auxiliary forces, made up of non-citizens from various ethnic groups who often served at the edges of the empire, far from their own ethnic base. According to Machiavelli, auxiliary units were well-organized, well-coordinated, and highly skilled. And, importantly for Machiavelli, they were aware of their power and had varying levels of loyalty to the central state of Rome: “Let him, then, who wants to be unable to win make use of these arms [armies], since they are much more dangerous than mercenary arms. For with these, ruin is accomplished; they are all united, all resolved to obey someone else…A wise prince, therefore, has always avoided these arms and turned to his own…And it has always been the opinion of judgment of wise men ‘that nothing is so infirm and unstable as the reputation of power not sustained by one’s own force.’” If PMSCs are a new type of auxiliary force, more dangerous precisely because of their organizational unity and skill, what type of force might this be? Recent examples of auxiliary or proxy forces resemble those of the Romans: either ethnically based units that serve alongside regular military units, such as the Ghurkas in the British Army, or the Swiss Guard unit that has historically guarded the Vatican. The French Foreign Legion might be a better example, since its members come from a variety of national backgrounds. The ability to become a French citizen after three years’ service is similar to the Roman example. But these auxiliary units serve in a specific branch of the French armed services: soldiers are governed under military law, and classified as members of the military. By contrast, PMSCs are a distinctly new version of auxiliary force. Planet Debate 131 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Challenge Statism

TREND TOWARD PRIVATIZATION OCCURS SIMULTAENOUSLY WITH A GROWING QUESTIONING OF THE SYSTEM OF STATES Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 53 This rise of private authority is helped by an ideology that the market provides a more efficient playing ground and the fact that certain professional identities are tied to a notion of mobility and flexibility. There is another level of explanation, however, that looks at the vacuum that private authorities rushed in to fill, the waning or declining power of the state itself. The same series of questions that opened up around the end of the Cold War – about the potentials of globalization, or the rise of a global civil society—also included a number of serious questions about the future role of the state itself. Many scholars began to see the end of the Cold War not as a victory of one form of state (liberal democratic capitalist) over another (communist), but as heralding a gradual demise of states altogether. Either states were failing because they were no longer propped up by the Cold War superpowers, or they were failing because they had over-extended themselves during the Cold War, or else they were heading toward eventual collapse as they faded into obscurity and irrelevancy. “State death” became a focus of much study, along with the end of all sorts of other things.

MERCENARISM DECLINED AS STATES SOLIDIFIED THEIR POWER Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 42 Evolving states’ interests eventually caused mercenarism to weaken for other reasons. Governments required citizens (some of whom were no longer subjects) to restrain themselves from individual acts of violence against other states or their citizens. As Thompson observed, states’ rulers began to claim exclusive authority over the space within their boundaries, making it increasingly difficult to disclaim responsibility for violence originating from within those some borders. A sensitive distinction arose: between international violence carried out by an individual – characterized as a private and usually criminal act; and the act of a nation-state, being one of aggression. Thomson is probably correct in her view that the origin of anti-mercenary laws was the need to prevent citizens from intriguing with other states or forming their own private armies. She also points out how states’ leaders did not intend to eliminate merenarism altogether, as many benefited from it. Instead, mercenarism was gradually displaced by the rise of neutrality. Through neutrality state’ governments could create new controls over their citizens and enhance their monopolistic authority to make war. This seems a strong claim and states retain a clear interest in restraining their citizens from interfering with a sovereign posture of neutrality.

PMSCs SUPPLANTING THE STATE’S ROLE IN MONOPOLIZING VIOLENCE Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 88 Max Weber defined the authority and legitimacy of the State by its monopoly over the means and instruments of violence. As seen from the African experience in particular, private security companies are increasingly supplanting this primary responsibility of the State to provide security for people and investment. Globalization, coupled with the weakening of the State – particularly in Africa due to the changing patronage systems in the wake of the end of the Cold War, and in Asia due to the economic shocks of the financial crisis—has led to an uncoupling of the West’s security reach and its business engagement. This vacuum has led to the increased privatization of violence to obtain and sustain political power. Private security companies (PSCs) have flourished under these conditions—Executive Outcomes and Sandline in Angola and Sierra Leone, Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) in Croatia and Bosnia, to mention two of the most prominent. PSCs have become the modern embodiment of mercenary forces, protecting governments and multinational business interests alike. Globalization has made its mark on the security field as arms proliferation, illegitimate resource appropriation, transnational corporate greed, and the rise of multinational private security firms became inextricably linked. Planet Debate 132 PMCs – Sherry Hall Statism Root of Violence

STATES RESPONSIBLE FOR MORE VIOLENCE AND THREATS TO THEIR CITIZENS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 55 Mr. Ballesteros’s view was unconvincing in another sense. For it has not been mercenary corporations or interstate war which have routinely inflicted the most harm upon citizens of states over the latter half of the last century. A point made by Steven Brayton is that corrupt native soldiers and their dictatorships have proved far more dangerous than mercenaries. This arguments points to a larger and quite remarkable argument put by the American R.J. Rummell: that interstate warfare destroyed fewer lives in the twentieth century than governments inflicted within their own borders. It is government which has proved more lethal to its own citizens. Ironically, it was the search for a general interstate peace after World War II which drove the drafters of the UN Charter to forge a document that explicitly defends principles of the sovereign equality of states, non-use of force and non-intervention amongst members. These serve to protect UN states whose conduct shows an acceptance of rules and norms. They also shelter those whose conduct suggests otherwise.

STATE GOVERNMENTS POSE A GREATER DANGER TO CIVILIANS THAN PMSCs Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 48-9 For rulers of these states personal enrichment is a major determinant when considering foreign deployments. This is why their military commands are often warlord fiefdoms which defend valuable assets rather than less selfish goals. Hence there is nothing ill-conceived or wrong-headed in identifying their behavior as “mercenary.” Earlier reasoning suggested that the motives of privately employed mercenaries are difficult to determine and categorize. That is not the case here. Financial ambition was unambiguously identified as a criterion in the definition of an individual mercenary in the 1977 First Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions; and with some incongruity, in the anti-mercenary OAU Convention. The irony in both suggests a yawning conceptual vacuum. With or without their own mercenaries, states’ governments pose a much greater danger to civilians than PMSCs, while at the same time imperiling the value of sovereignty. Several African elites profit from Dietrich calls “patrimonial networks.” Some occasionally escape criticism through undistinguished analyses of anti-mercenary treaties. And all benefit from a muted response by Africans to state mercenarism.

STATES KILL AND REPRESS PEOPLE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 56 This should not be surprising. “War makes states,” declaimed Charles Tilly, before establishing a convincing analogy for state making as a form of racketeering or organized crime. Tilly was careful to acknowledge that the analogy could be overdone. However, in lurching to judgment on the industry, it is well to recognize that government remains the chief extractive, repressive and threatening authority likely to inflict itself on any state’s citizen. This is the case whether government is a modern democracy or an oppressive dictatorship. Planet Debate 133 PMCs – Sherry Hall Statism Root of Violence

STATES MONOPOLIZE VIOLENCE TO INCREASE THEIR POWER – THEY DO NOT ACT IN WAYS TO PROTECT THE INTERESTS OF THEIR PEOPLE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 56-7 It is also helpful to remember that Mr. Ballesteros and his successor Dr. Shameem never represented the welfare of hapless victims within states. They presented States. The distinction matters greatly because it is states’ representatives who execute and ratify treaties, not those often captive populations who endure their governments’ sometimes brutal administrations. The demos or political entity represented by a population does not find its personification in every government. Tyrannical leaders will resist threats to their monopoly on legitimized violence by resorting to indigenous forces or ill-disciplined foreign mercenaries. Since 1945 both have been employed to subjugate unfortunate populations. Such governments will have been heartened by Mr. Ballesteros’s sixteenth and final report, which was an essay in unrelenting dogmatism, in which PMSCs were painted in the blackest of terms. He also referred to the need for international and national laws to regulate these companies and means to: “…differentiate military consultancy services from participation in armed conflicts and from anything that could be considered intervention in matters of public order and security that are the exclusive responsibility of the state.” But it is precisely the authority of a number of states which poses an increasingly vexed issue. What of states administered by delinquent governments whose daily occupation is extracting resources from state assets? This is the case in several African examples. For that matter, how would Mr. Ballesteros have categorized the training of Croats within their fledgling republic by the American military train-and-equip firm MPRI? This preparation subsequently led to a very successful military action against Serbian components of the former Yugoslav state. Did Mr. Ballesteros support the uti possidetis principle (in keeping borders stable) and thereby side against the Croats; or for them through support for the “self-determination” of their people? And how would he reconcile one position with the other?

STATE IS OFTEN THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM – NOT THE SOLUTION Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 57 One might turn the same argument on its head and argue that a genuine liberation movement attacking an illegitimate government should not be restrained as to where it might seek advice. Oddly, Ballesteros appeared to contest the nature of a perhaps legitimate national liberation movement which might oppose a tyrannical government. Even the Committee of Experts which followed Ballesteros and Shameem cautioned that there may be “some difficulty” in his proposal to define a mercenary as one recruited to “deny self-determination” while simultaneously “undermining the territorial integrity of a State.” He cannot have both. These conundrums suggest that human suffering in several troubled regions arises where government has become the problem rather than the solution. Mr. Ballesteros believes that internal security should be a role for state organs and not delegated to a private company. Yet all over the world this is exactly what is occurring amongst states both rich and poor. Planet Debate 134 PMCs – Sherry Hall “ Moral” Objections to PMSCs Grounded in Statism

MORAL OBJECTIONS TO MERCENARIES GROUNDED IN TRUST IN THE STATE Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 26 The Working Group demonstrates the influence of moral objections to private force in another way. The Group has stated that one of its main priorities is examining “the role of the State as the primary holder of the monopoly of the use of force and related issues such as sovereignty and State responsibility to protect and ensure respect for human rights by all actors.” This focus rather than a focus on the activities of the private military industry itself, underlines the fact that moral objections to private force are objections based on status. The Working Group is interested in private force because of what it is:, by its nature, private force upsets conventional understandings of the monopoly on force. The notion that the state has (and out to have) not only monopoly on the use of force but also must protect its citizens is related to the objections about tyranny outlined above. Planet Debate 135 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Challenge “Total” and Ideological Wars

CONTRACTED MILITARY LESS LIKELY TO ENGAGE IN TOTAL WARFARE AND BARBARIC SLAUGHTER THAN SOLDIERS FIGHTING FOR THE “STATE” Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 61-2 Metaphysical wars were fought by soldiers who had a “calling” to be a soldier; that is, they were those non- mercenary citizen-soldiers (eventually, all volunteer professional soldiers) who took an oath to a profession, or a way of life. The state set itself up as the ultimate “end” for which such soldiers fought, and this language remains the mainstay of military ethics, the ethics of a profession with allegiance to the higher, metaphysical (literally non-material) entity of the Constitution, or the state itself. The (public) social contracts, civil and military, that mark the political theory of the seventeenth-century state were not at all the same as the (private) contracts of today. They were, in Coker’s insightful formulation, more covenants than contracts. The distinction is crucial: “professional armies had moved from having a contract with a feudal master or the Crown to a covenant with Society. Social contracts produce governments, nations, and centralized power: they are the basis for all political society. A covenant, by comparison, produces families, communities, and traditions. It is the basis of civil society. The two forms of association are maintained in different ways: a contract by external threat if it is broken and a covenant by internalized identity, loyalty, obligation and responsibility. What makes a covenant more ‘virtuous’ than a contract is that it is unconditional. Contracts are bilateral and are based on terms. They are enforced by penalties. Their conditions precede agreement. Covenants, by contrast, tend to be open-ended. What Hegel saw in the modern soldier was a man with a vocation, not a job.” (Coker 2001) This vocational calling to something beyond the soldier was what constituted his metaphysical existence, and his potential ability to sacrifice his life for that state. It led to the total mobilization and total warfare of the Hegelian state, the inability to individualize the millions killed (civilian and soldier alike) in such conflicts that became the apotheosis of the modern state, and the ironic postmodern retreat to contracts, rather than covenants and individualized goals instead of sacrifice for the state. Compared to the wholesale slaughter of early-twentieth-century battlefields, and the annihilation of whole cities that accompanied it, the non-metaphysical nature of late-twentieth-century warfare is a positive step away from what looked like a lofty but horrific abyss. Now, the army boasts that “it’s not just a job, it’s an adventure”: the professional vocation that still endows the officer ranks of the military is sold to new recruits as a chance for individual betterment, and adventurous experience. But this may only be a real problem for those who overly romanticize the modern battlefield as a place where thousands would accept the authoritative demand that they sacrifice themselves for a noble cause. This is metaphysical war, and it now strikes most Westerners as something almost barbaric, as nationalism gone horribly wrong.

PRIVATIZED WARS LESS LIKELY TO BE TOTAL WARS FOUGHT ON IDEOLOGY Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 61 Second, the types of new wars that are being fought do not lend themselves to the horrific demands of what Christopher Coker called “metaphysical warfare,” war fought for abstract ideals, especially that of the nation- state. What Edward Luttwak referred to as “post-heroic warfare” is now fought for unclear reasons. As one former British army officer put it, “In Iraq, the look on most American soldiers’ faces says: ‘Why am I here?’” In contrast, the culture of private military contractors has no ideal of heroism to live up to, and needs no larger justification for the mission than the fact of a business contract. These “postmodern” militaries are rarely fighting classic wars of defense, and have often tangential or more opaque relationships to overt state goals. Although there are still traditions of military service, many of these globalized soldiers join the military “more for the desire to have a meaningful personal experience than out of either national patriotism or an occupational incentive” (Battistelli 1997). Planet Debate 136 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Challenge “Total” and Ideological Wars

CONTRACTORS MORE LIKELY TO FIGHT ACCORDING TO JUST WAR PRINCIPLES – STATE-CENTRIC MOTIVES MORE LIKELY TO LEAD TO TOTAL WAR Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 67 Companies hold another advantage over states which have traditionally determined moral conduct in war. Where states’ troops fight, each side is indoctrinated to believe that truth and morality is invested solely in its side. One way of life is usually portrayed as virtuous and the other as typically beyond redemption. Consequently, aside from irregular observance of the laws of war, it is hardly surprising that costly and time consuming brutalities result. As Roggeveen argues, it is often fighting “evil” which leads to ethnic cleansing and atrocities. Fighting for money and loyalty to a contract legion is much more desirable than fighting for one’s ethnicity, to avenge wrongs committed centuries ago, or in defense of a wounded god. It is not that contractors will be devoid of cruelty and viciousness. Far from it. Paramilitary conduct in Iraq has supplied strong anecdotal evidence of serious shortcomings. But UN contractor violence is likely to be constrained by the new military law described in Chapter 6 and the international humanitarian principles this would embody. Planet Debate 137 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Challenge Militarism

DIFFICULTY CATEGORIZING PMSCs RUPTURES TRADITIONAL PARADIGMS OF THE HIERARCHICAL MILITARY STRUCTURE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 37-8 The profile of the private contractor, with its shifting identity that has aspects of humanitarian aid, business, and the military, easily becomes the focus of anxiety and mistrust. The contractor becomes a “dirty” or “polluted” category, a type that fits in many worlds at once, but none of the unambiguously. Contractors are akin to those whom anthropologist Mary Douglas describes as “marginal” and “dangerous”: “These are people who are somehow left out of in the patterning of society, who are placeless. They may be doing nothing morally wrong, but their status is indefinable” (Douglas 1966). There are always dangerous entities, she points out, but what dangers we choose to focus upon and what we choose to ignore speak volumes about our social life. Specifically, we create social categories – businessman, humanitarian, soldier – that allow s to judge certain kinds of actions as acceptable or unacceptable, even comprehensible or incomprehensible. For a while, we push ambiguous entities into some non-ambiguous category (mercenary or soldier, for instance), but eventually the cognitive dissonance builds and we are forced to invent new social categories, and ultimately new legal identities. Seen in this light, PMSCs show up in the same ambiguous and fraught ambiguous category as transnational terrorists, or our enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, currently stuck in a strange legal limbo, awaiting some workable legal categorization. Protean organizations may be perplexing, but they can also signal a powerful new realignment of forces that speak to novel ways of seeing the world. They may result in new legal doctrines, or new paradigms of governance, and new ways of fighting wars. In the midst of the agitation they cause, they may signal a shift in the larger environment that nurtures them. It could be that PMSCs are in fact powerful adaptations to under- analyzed institutional and cultural trends. Organizational theorists have studied these types of protean and informal organizations that arise in complex environments, wherein established laws and customs are breaking down, and new practices are emerging. These organizations are not necessarily lawless, or without governing principles, but they may seem to appear out of nowhere. For instance, John Padgett has looked at how certain kinds of new organizations, hard to characterize and understand, can often be the springboard for novel ways of structuring a social and legal world (Graham 19998). These newly emerging organizations often act in a “multivocal” way, as I have argued PMSCs do, spanning boundaries and creating new alliances and networks (Padgett and Ansell 1993).

SHIFT AWAY FROM METAPHYSICAL WARFARE UNDERMINES RATIONALE FOR MILITARISM Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 62 Metaphysical warfare demanded bodily sacrifice for communal needs. In its place, non-metaphysical warfare elevates the physical body of the solder as something to be protected and rescued. This makes war itself a completely disorienting pursuit: the anarchic ethics of global civil society make it harder for militaries to do their jobs: “In a world in which individuals must produce, stage and cobble together their biographies themselves,” militaries must balance individual rights against the need for the subordination of the individual to group demands (Coker 2001). And it is not just the individual soldier who receives our care and attention; the individualized victim of our policies is also recognized. Planet Debate 138 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Reduce Military Operational Lethality

PMSCs REDUCE LETHALITY OF MILITARY OPERATIONS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 62-3 Finally, there is the complex issue of what is variously called “casualty aversion,” or more negatively “casualty phobia.” High numbers of battlefield casualties are no longer seen as readily justifiable. Casualties of all sorts require accounting and explanations, within the force and to the public. Lamentable to some, and a sign of a welcome change to others, this has led many analysts of the private military industry to see them as part of a picture that will help minimize the lethal effects of military operations by hiding a large part of the force from view. The relationship between casualty aversion and the rise of contract ethics are both related to the death of what Coker calls “metaphysical warfare.” This change is addressed more fully in the next chapter, but provides the background assumptions that make “new soldiers” good material for the PMSC industry. Planet Debate 139 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Promote Universalized Rights and Standards

PMSCs ETHICAL – PROMOTE COSMOPOLITANISM AND UNIVERSALIZED RIGHTS IN AN ANARCHIC INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 142-3 Jowitt’s theory helps to clarify the problem with defending the use of PMSCs as acceptable if only they are better regulated. If, by definition, they operate in zones wherein regulation is not available, in frontier zones, the calls for oversight, regulation, and better contracts will never be enough. The only rule of law that operates effectively in frontier-like settings is military law, imposed on the chaos of war, so to speak. Nevertheless, two recent defenses of the ethics of PMSCs do use the language of civil and human rights law. Mervyn Frost’s article “Regulating Anarchy: the Ethics of PMSCs in Global Civil Society” is one such defense. Frost bases his defense of PMSCs in his larger theory of an “anarchic ethics,” those ethics that mark a world wherein every person has membership in a “society of sovereign states, and simultaneously in a “global civil society.” Based on these memberships, a certain language of a set of practices develops that reinforces these principles, including the right to contract, and to act beyond the borders of one’s own state, as long as in doing so, no one else’s rights are abused. Given this, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with PMSCs. His defense of PMSCs comes from the perspective of the cosmopolitan world of boundaries, populated by self-conscious “rights holders.” Any person, as citizen of a state, has an intrinsic right to set up a firm, and as long as that company does not harm the rights of others, do whatever business the market and the state I which that business is located allow them to do. Frost uses the example of Tim Spicer, the head of Aegis, the PMSC profiled earlier in my Introduction: “For citizens who are setting up a PMSC, it is crucial that they do not flout the rules of the practice within which they are constituted as citizens…For if [Spicer] were to be seen as an enemy of the state, as an international terrorist, as a person guilty of treason and so on, this would undermine the standing of his PMSC in the public domain.” (Frost 2008) Global civil society, along with functioning sovereign states, offers hope for the extension of rights and multiple versions of sovereignty; and, by extension, it offers freedom from overarching control of a group’s way of life. Defending “anarchic ethics” means defending the messy, complex, layered reality of multi- faceted rights-based claims for justice and recognition. This is the cosmopolitan vision that offers an escape from the stranglehold of modernity’s inclination to standardize and universalize. Planet Debate 140 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Promote Democracies

MANY PMSCs ENGAGED IN PROCESSES THAT HELP PROTECT AND PROMOTE DEMOCRACIES James O. C. Jonah, Finance Minister Sierra Leone, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. v Although political scientists often announce the withering of the state and the prominent role of non-state actors, there is still a residue of belief that only sovereign states should possess a monopoly over the use of force. This may be one reason why the use of PMCs is so abhorrent to many. There has been a tendency to label most, if not all, PMCs “mercenaries”. Even though some types of PMCs share some attributes with mercenary groups, they are not stereotypical mercenaries. More often than not, PMCs have contracts with legal governments and they are not collaborating with rebel forces to topple established governments. In one instance in Sierra Leone a PMC made a valuable contribution to the democratic process. Furthermore, not all PMCs have been engaged in combat operations. Many are engaged in training of police personnel and other forms of training, along with the provision of logistic support. Planet Debate 141 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Effective at Many Tasks

MANY MILITARY AND SECURITY FUNCTIONS CAN BE DONE BY PMSCs Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 98 In Afghanistan and Iraq much outsourced work has been in logistics, in which a large provider like KBR has received income that dwarfed EO’s earnings at its apogee. The logistic field supplies much of the revenue generated by armed conflict through embedding the support necessary to maintain a military organization. The domain is very broad and extends from surveys, planning and assessments to the provision of food, fuel, billets, troop transport and other materiel. It involves tasks as varied as washing uniforms, managing mess halls and removing waste of all kinds. It encompasses construction of bases, airports, fences and roads. There are roles in linguistic and interpreter services, recruitment, records, inventory maintenance and other administrative jobs. In military support the technical field is also lucrative and US weapons systems are heavily dependent on contractor maintenance. Chalmers Johnson has listed Patriot missiles, Apache helicopters, Paladin artillery, M1A1 Abrams tanks and “virtually all the unmanned aerial vehicles used by the military and the CIA.” One might add F-117 stealth fighters, the B-2 bomber and the aging U-2 surveillance aircraft. Growth continues. Expanding areas include information technology, communications and new weapons systems; intelligence collection and analysis; and various forms of training. The collection, processing and distribution of military mail for US forces form a billion dollar enterprise that may also be privatized.

PMSCs PERFORM MULITIPLE FUNCTIONS THAT HELP U.S. MILITARY MEET ITS GOALS Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 147-8 Finally, Taylor’s panel was up. In his opening statement, he laid out one of Prince’s favorite arguments in support of using private military contractors: “Since the American Revolution, private security firms have played an integral role in the successful development and defense of our nation. The role of the private security firm has not changed that much over time. Providing specialized capabilities and surge capacity to U.S. government in flexible, cost-effective packages, and building capacity for friendly foreign governments continue to be more competencies of our industry.” His testimony shed light not only on what Blackwater was doing for the U.S. government, but also on what it wanted to do. “Today, private security firms perform a number of roles from executive protection and static security, to training partner nations, to providing both ground and aviation logistics support, all in dangerous environments. In the future private security firms will likely be called upon to support stability operations and peacekeeping efforts.”

CONTRACTORS PERFORM MANY JOBS FOR THE MILITARY Janine Wedel, (Prof., Public Policy, George Mason U.), LESSONS FROM IRAQ, 2008, 117-118. Contractors do the following: Draft official documents. Websites of contractors working for the Department of Defense have posted announcements of job openings for analysts to perform such functions as preparing the Defense Department budget. One contractor boasted of having written the Army's Field Manual on "Contractors on the Battlefield." Choose other contractors. The Pentagon has employed contractors to counsel it on selecting other contractors. Perform most information technology (IT) work: Contractors were doing more than three-quarters of the federal government's IT work, even before the war-related major push to contract out. Information technology is a critical force behind contemporary military operations. Planet Debate 142 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Effective at Reconstruction

US INCREASINGLY RELYING ON PRIVATE CONTRACTORS FOR RECONSTRUCTION MISSIONS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 109 In a pivotal December 2005 Presidential Directive, President Bush announced that the State Department would be given control of Iraqi reconstruction. His Administration wished to bolster stabilization operations in Iraq at the same time as it fought an escalating conflict. That decision removed Pentagon responsibility. This had been expected, as the Department of Defense had proved unsuited to the task. A defense policy directive issued soon after the announcement made it clear how reconstructing shattered states and engaging in stability operations was to become “a core military mission” and an integral part of US military doctrine. These operations are to occur once an enemy has collapsed on the battlefield although it may be able to sustain guerrilla operations. The doctrine represents a shift away from the earlier, established belief that stabilization and reconstruction operations were detrimental to wider combat readiness. Even though there remains some uncertainty as to whether US plans will be adequately funded, the American strategy for provincial reconstruction teams is likely to employ civilian contractors in growing numbers. In 2006 five teams were created in Iraq and they have been judged by military analysis to be a “cornerstone” of a broader counter-insurgency strategy. At about the same time the US Defense Department’s February 2006 Quadrennial Review formalized a doctrine the Pentagon termed “The Long War.” This was followed the next month by a new National Security Strategy for the United States which embraced a doctrine of “Post Conflict Stabilization and Reconstruction.” If civilian involvement is greatly expanded in the newer conflicts, the attendant most of private security is likely to be considerable if US or friendly armed forces do not provide it. American PMSCs in particular seem likely to enjoy enhanced growth as a consequence of the US government’s apparent belief in the inevitability of American involvement in perpetual armed conflict.

BLACKWATER PERSONNEL DID AID U.S. MILITARY IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 199-200 “After 9/11, when the U.S. began its stabilization efforts in Afghanistan and then Iraq, the United States government called upon Blackwater to fill a need for protective services in hostile areas. Blackwater responded immediately. We are extremely proud of answering that call in supporting our country,” Prince read, adding that “Blackwater personnel supporting our overseas missions are all military and law enforcement veterans, many of whom have recent military deployments. No individual ever protected by Blackwater has ever been killed or seriously injured. There is no better evidence of the skill and dedication of these men.” It was a claim that elided the plane crash in Afghanistan – technically, his men were not performing security duties in that case. Planet Debate 143 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Necessary for Success in Iraq

US HAD TO TURN TO PMSCs TO HELP PROVIDE SECURITY IN IRAQ Daniel Isenberg, Senior Research Associate- British American Security Information Council, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 83-4 This reliance on private contractors increased greatly after the initial major combat operations phase, due primarily to the fact that the U.S. political leadership grossly underestimated the number of troops that would be required for stability and security operations. As part of its plan to bring democracy to the Middle East, Iraq was to be made into a new country: this would in turn require a massive reconstruction project to overcome the effects of more than two decades of war, against Iran and then the United States, and sanctions. But, once again, the United States miscalculated and did not anticipate the emergence and growth of the insurgency. Since US forces were not available to protect those doing reconstruction, such firms had no choice, if they were going to continue to work in Iraq, but to turn to PMCs in order to protect their employees. At least ten to fifteen cents of every dollar spent on reconstruction is for security, according to the Inspector General for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). PMCs provided three main categories of security services in Iraq: personal security details for senior civilian officials, non-military site security (buildings and infrastructure) and non-military convoy security. Rather than work directly for the US government or the CPA, most PMCs were subcontracted to provide protection for prime contractor employees, or were hired by other entities such as Iraqi companies or private foreign companies, seeking business opportunities in Iraq. Planet Debate 144 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs More Cost Effective

PMSCs MORE EFFICIENT Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 34 Finally, the private sector operates on the principle that less is more, or equivalently, that efficiency is king. Unlike the public sector, where the level of expenditure is often taken as a sign of one’s commitment, the private sector seeks to maximize results from a minimal use of resources. These advantages have only grown stronger with the advent of globalization. An increasingly interconnected world enhances the private sector’s interest in peace, since a disturbance in one part of the world can lead to ripple effects that influence events thousands of miles away. The private sector has a role in peace processes in myriad ways. The process of peace is complex and multi-staged, from peacemaking to peace-keeping and enforcement to peacebuilding. To varying degrees of effectiveness, the private sector has an important part to play at almost every stage. Moreover, at each step, the rise of globalization and the shift in the nature of war only serves to increase the private sector’s influence. Planet Debate 145 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Provide Critical Logistic Support for Effective Missions

U.S. DEPENDENT ON PMSCs TO CARRY OUT CRITICAL MILITARY MISSIONS Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 65-6 But in more recent times, corporations who hire out professionals to support military missions are often accused of ‘war profiteering.” The fees charged by companies have come under scrutiny and raised questions about whether the practice has gone too far, and whether the U.S. government still has a handle on what “inherently governmental” truly means. Today’s hired help has responded to criticism in much the same way, reminding critics that they are performing work at the request of the U.S. government. Most of the larger companies are well aware of the public perception, and many of them don’t like the term mercenary. Thus, the term private military contractor has taken hold. Love them or hate them, the truth is, no modern democratic government attempts to handle all supply, logistics and manufacturing needs strictly through the public sector. The United States is no exception.

PMSCs HISTORICALLY PROVIDED IMPORTANT LOGISTICAL SUPPORT Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 66-7 U.S. contracting was initially meant to be logistical in nature. In Vietnam, the U.S. military relied on private companies to build basses and handle other noncombat tasks. The Pentagon had more recently employed private contractors in Colombia to help boost its total force working in support of drug eradication. There was supposed to be a line between the military and its contractors when it came to combat versus support. Of course, there were always hazards, and the line could blur. While contractors were generally paid handsomely, there was always a risk. Planet Debate 146 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Critical to Effective Military Readiness

US MILITARY FORCES INCREASING HOLLOWED OUT � CAUSING INCREASED RELIANCE ON CONTRACTORS Thomas Donnelly & Frederick W. Kagan, American Enterprise Institute, 2008, Ground Truth: the future of U.S. land power, p. 39 (HARVMP2378) Because the Bush administration has refused until very recently to contemplate increasing the size of the ground forces, the army and marines have had to support these strains out of a fixed pool of resources. They have responded by deploying every combat unit in the active force, including units based in Korea and units that were serving as the permanent "opposing force" at combat training centers. The army has hollowed out its institutional base force, drawing officers and senior NCOs from its educational, training, doctrine, and other key base units to fill out combat units. The dramatic increase in the use of contractors - recent reports indicate that there are now more contractors in Iraq than soldiers - is another result of the strain on the ground forces.

MILITARY DEPENDENT ON CONTRACTORS FOR CRITICAL SERVICES Janine Wedel, (Prof., Public Policy, George Mason U.), LESSONS FROM IRAQ, 2008, 117. The virtual transfer of many military functions to the private sector has occurred at the same time that government oversight, and the capacity for it, has diminished. The Department of Defense is ever more dependent on contractors to supply a host of "mission-critical services," according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). These services include information technology systems, interpreters, and intelligence analysts, as well as weapons system maintenance and base operation support. And, today, not only such services, but also functions that were once the responsibility of military personnel, along with entirely new portfolios, are now essentially in private hands.

TROOP SHORTAGES MAKE PRIVATE CONTRACTORS NECESSARY Tony Geraghty, (British War Correspondent), SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE, 2009, 5. The major powers were cutting their standing regular armies drastically. Their combined military manpower dropped from 6,873,000 in 1990 to 3,283,000 in 1997 and the downward trend continues. The number of soldiers on UN peacekeeping duties also dropped from a peak of 76,000 in 1994 to around 15,000 by 1998. Marching in step with the trend, the US bankrolled almost 4,000 contracts with PMCs. As a result, hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers came onto a jobs market that was glad of their services. Planet Debate 147 PMCs – Sherry Hall Nations have Sovereign Right to Contractors

SOVEREIGN NATIONS SHOULD BE ABLE TO MAKE THE DECISION TO HIRE CONTRACTORS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 57-8 The Special Rapporteur at least acknowledged the failure of the Mercenaries Convention in stopping mercenary numbers growing on five continents. He then explained the rise with the fallacious reasoning that this occurred because “…[e]mpirical evidence shows that international law does not deal thoroughly enough with mercenary activities.” This was a straw man. International law is often weak in enforcement. Economic forces would have been a more plausible well-spring for an argument as to why mercenarism thrives. He instead rebounded with a revision of the definition of “mercenary” in light of the failure of the UN Convention. This landed him on contentious ground because he attempted to restrict a government’s prerogative in choosing personnel it might hire to defend national interests. Why should a sovereign government be prevented from hiring advisers and trainers from elsewhere who may assist in addressing its national security issues? He further confuses the matter by introducing the unexplained concept of “destabilization of legitimate governments.” He is silent on what criteria are to be met by governments seeking legitimacy. A proscription on hiring private military advisers would seem an unfair restraint where say, an embattled government has to make decisions regarding defense against criminalized insurgents assisted by the government of a hostile state. This would be even more unreasonable if that same beleaguered government unambiguously met Ballesteros’s unstated criteria for legitimacy. And a proscription on hiring mercenaries would be still more unreasonable where the government of a hostile state which funds those criminalized insurgents does not meet his legitimacy criteria. Planet Debate 148 PMCs – Sherry Hall US PMSC Policy Modeled

US SUPPORT FOR PMSCs WILL BE MODELED Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 89-90 When a new generation of private military interests was being formed around 1990 Thomson posed a prescient notion: if changes in the nature of war caused the decline of mercenarism, subsequent changes could lead to its revival. Mercenarism’s resurgence had arguably more to do with changes in economics and the evolution of the state. Nevertheless, her general train of thought presaged shifts which have driven a revival exhibiting both old and new characteristics. Perhaps most surprising is that the authority transferred to privateers by European sovereigns in the seventeenth century has taken form in a new and unexpected avatar. This occurred when President Bush invited privateers to assist the US government in its war on terror. Here was a very public rejuvenation of an old form of non-state license in the use of violence. As Robert Mandel put it: “For the most militarily dominant nation in the world to seek the aid of private security providers in confronting a direct threat from abroad is truly noteworthy, reinforcing both the limits on state power and the potential potency of nonstate coercion.”

US HAS TAKEN THE LEAD IN PMSCs Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 94 Some of these changes account for those budget pressures Elke Krahmann identifies as one of the causes of the privatization of functions once considered the exclusive preserve of a state’s armed forces. Corporations were also changing. They became more mobile when no longer hindered by Cold War constraints and achieved greater efficiency through advances in commercial information technology. Most significantly, they discovered access to a pool of military labor supplied from literally around the world. The US became the preeminent outsourcer of military related functions and today it has never been militarily stronger. The Republicans’ deliberately structured their war and occupation of Iraq so that the American presence became heavily dependent on the entrenched use of private security and US logistics companies. Few modern militaries are unaffected to some degree by similar changes.

US RELIANCE ON PMSCs MODELED BY OTHER COUNTRIES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 95 American economic dominance carries other ramifications. In particular, US politico-economic movements tend to define the nature and extent of globalization elsewhere. One facet of this authority is the manner in which government choices are influenced by the agendas corporations wield. The big logistic support corporations in particular couch their aims in terms that emphasize the economic interests of those states likely to hire them. They have been effective. The UK government has retained billions of pounds through its “Public-Private Partnership Initiative” and “Private Finance Initiative.” These programs are intended to extend to a very wide range of capital items, which the private sector will own, leasing them or selling services to the government. They will include base construction, air-to-air refueling and even the procurement of fighting ships of the Royal Navy. This growth in influence also implies a retreat for other constituencies and their views. This in turn suggests there is some truth in Hall and Biersteker’s claim that these corporations seek legitimization from the public and they author norms and set boundaries for action. In doing so, corporations exercise that frequently convincing type of authority born of expertise. The result is a fresh blurring of a recurrent and amorphous distinction between the realms of public interest and the more private realm of business. For that matter, the larger privatized defense industry is itself a relatively internationalized example of global commerce. Nor could capitalism exercise these more recent encroachments without governments playing a compliant role in assisting their corporate expansion. And strong states have arguably been penetrated most thoroughly by globalization. The US has reduced its federal employees in recent years and greatly expanded contract work to the point that the number of contract employees working on federal projects is several times the number actually employed by civilian agencies. Ian Clark suggests that suffusion by the forces of globalization is a source of state strength rather than developing weakness. One can see this in the differing purposes of outsourced military services sold to imploding states as opposed to stable, affluent examples. The Angolan government’s contract with Executive Outcomes to train their troops and lead Planet Debate 149 PMCs – Sherry Hall them in combat operations was a third world outsourcing case. The US government outsourcing the maintenance of advanced military software is a first world example. Planet Debate 150 PMCs – Sherry Hall **Should Deploy PMSCs to UN Humanitarian Missions** Planet Debate 151 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Wants to Use PMSCs

UN INCREASINGLY RECEPTIVE TO PMSCs FOR HUMANITARIAN MISSIONS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 4-5 There are some other arguments. Persuasive reasons suggest that states have for some time collaborated in the creation of a marketplace in which PMSCs have grown and prospered. However, these companies face pressures – notably in the form of gradually declining opportunities in Iraq and the deepening global recession. This ebb in Iraq in particular has spurred corporate expansion elsewhere. For example, some belligerents today show less respect for the traditional impartiality attached to humanitarian NGOs and IGOs. Consequently, humanitarian workers suffer escalating violence. By contrast, states and PMSCs now cooperate in freshly politicized “hearts and minds” programs with armed security as part of the corporate package. Mr Prince and those occupying rival corporate positions realized some time ago that the UN is not immune to the effects of those changes that have assisted PMSC expansion over the last 20 years. The UN Organization has to an extent welcomed gradual encroachment by business in less sensitive areas – something readily demonstrable in various aspects of modern peace operations. And despite a publicly unreceptive posture towards the industry, the UN has already canvassed armed private security to escort its humanitarian convoys. That scenario occupies the less contentious end of a wide spectrum of operations.

UN RELIES ON CONTRACTORS FOR A VARIETY OF TASKS NOW Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 222 In one sense the UN already provides encouragement to cultivate better relations. Contractors today assist the UN in pursuits ranging from airports to agriculture and fisheries to forestry; from pipelines to ports and telecommunications to tourism. Literally hundreds of firms are registered with the UN and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations is an eager consumer of their services. For example, in 2006 millions of dollars worth of aviation support was supplied to the MONUC mission in the DRC. Fixed and rotary wing services provided half a dozen types of helicopters and jets of military and civilian origin. MONUC also budgeted for slightly fewer than 700 guards, including funds to pay for their weapons and ammunition. Nor have there been qualms over outsourcing where UN or regional forces acting under Security Council authority have lacked a necessary endogenous capacity. The Americans in particular have assisted several times. Commercially sourced US police served in the “International Police Task Force” in Bosnia and Herzegovina; while 150 American weapons inspectors, verifiers and observers were emplaced by DynCorp in the OSCE “Kosovo Verification Mission.” And US firm MPRI sent 45 border monitors to Serbia in order to prevent arms smuggling to Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Demining is another sizeable operation which is regularly outsourced to industry. More sensitive skills have also been sought in asset tracing, imaging and intelligence. An Engagement Group could begin in these areas, expanding existing opportunities while identifying particular DPKO and DFS weaknesses PMSCs could address. Planet Debate 152 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Lacks Capacity for Humanitarian Missions Now

RWANDAN GENOCIDE PROVES THE FAILURE OF RELYING ON UN FORCES— HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF LIVES COULD HAVE BEEN SAVED WITH DEPLOYMENT Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 17-8 It is therefore unsurprising that a similarly structured model for peacekeeping has been suggested from time to time, if in far smaller numbers. The problem for supporters is that there has been a similar model in recent memory and it proved unsuccessful. At a desperate point in 1994 Mr Boutros-Ghali sought to expand the UNAMIR force in Rwanda. Of the 19 states then participating in the UN “Standby Arrangements System” (or UNSAS) none would agree to contribute military forces at precisely that moment when the need for intervention was most dire. In other words, UN member disinclination to contribute has proved strongest when the need has been most urgent. This arrangement was mistakenly believed to be a means of delivering forces on the ground quickly. The UN Military Commander in Rwanda instead discovered that the approval process took months while military advisers in New York liaised with staffers in various donor governments’ agencies. Mr. Annan has since acknowledged the merit in General Dallaire’s belief that a single mobile brigade emplaced in theatre within a few weeks of the deaths of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Unfortunately, standby arrangements failed to supply even part of what the military commander required.

THERE IS SUPPORT FOR UN ACTION TO SUPPORT HUMANITARIAN GOALS – BUT LITTLE ACTION OF THIS KIND HAS BEEN TAKEN Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 5 International humanitarian intervention sits at the opposing pole. A capacity to assist in IHI is likely to be required of a future PMSC contractor for two reasons. First, the UN arguably requires this capability if it is to bear most of the organizational and legal justification in the service of a responsibility to protect. Second, few if any states are likely to provide generous armed resistance in the face of the next humanitarian disaster. Whether well-trained contractors might subdue by force those who inflict gross human rights abuses on others remains an adventurous proposition, certainly in legal terms. Even so, in light of UN experiments in Somalia and the ‘no-fly’ zones in Iraq, IHI readdresses the contentious role of coercion in meeting both Charter objectives and normative concepts of human rights. These were recently championed by UN advisers in A More Secure World; authoritatively if somewhat less persuasively by heads of state at the 2005 World summit; and international humanitarian intervention sits well with wide and enthusiastic support for the Canadian paper The Responsibility to Protect ; a document which embodied rhetorically popular if at present unconvincing principles. Much has been written about the expanding importance of duties to which these documents allude. Yet little has been done in the name of the UN to resist abuses where the application of force is manifestly necessary in order to extinguish human suffering of an extensive scale and intensity. Planet Debate 153 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Lacks Capacity for Humanitarian Missions Now

UN’S AD HOC APPROACH TO HUMANITARIAN MISSIONS FAILS –PMSCs CONTRACTED TO WORK FOR UN COULD HAVE PREVENTED MUCH OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 6 A claim to improve operations would seem worth exploring should it improve outcomes for the potential beneficiaries. The first are those civilians who will otherwise suffer more extensive and more acute harm, probably as a consequence of intrastate conflicts. The second is the UN membership. When a future Secretary- General appeals for troops to staff a mission, governments seeking benefits for themselves would no longer contemplate peacekeeping’s limited virtues while evaluating its considerable risks and uncertain costs. There would be other options. The third beneficiary is the UN Organization and the values it represents. Should the UN adopt more successful methods of peacekeeping and perhaps intervention, these would lessen the disapproval frequently aimed at both the Security Council and its Secretariat Criticism directed towards them has not always been reasonable. Both have struggled with a peacekeeping apparatus that neither was originally created to administer. At the same time, distrust amongst both weak and powerful members has worked to inhibit effective administration. The alternative is a continuation of those notorious and depressingly fragile states’ negotiations over peacekeeping responsibilities. These inevitably mix aversion to risk with a competitive desire to serve individual state interests. Both have proved corrosive to concepts of peacekeeping and prospective humanitarian intervention. Alternatives to ad hoc peacekeeping are far from new. What is new in this book is a claim of the merit in contract PMSC assistance within a system of governance given explicit form. In consultation with a preferred corporate provider, professional ex-soldiers possessing particular expertise in peacekeeping could be individually screened and selected by staff within a new UN Directorate of Military Contracting. Subject to objective criteria and chosen on merit, these troops would make up the peacekeeping component of a contract force. Where operations are likely to prove hazardous or where international humanitarian intervention requires skilled fighting troops, the likelihood of a UN response has proved correspondingly remote. Hence the requirement for a dedicated combat capability. The underlying premise is hardly novel. The rationale in hiring competent professionals to carry out both kinds of work lies in a modern execution of an ancient tradition adapted to UN circumstances. A contractor might begin its UN life as a modest asset – perhaps a single battalion containing a mix of skills in infantry, armor, signals and engineering—supported by air mobility and a robust logistical tail. And if UN members perceive the company as successful it is plausible to imagine that a contract force might grow to become a reinforced brigade of 5000. Several experts claim that the latter figure would have been sufficient to quell much of Rwanda’s genocidal turbulence in 1994.

UN FORCES NOT A WORKABLE ALTERNATIVE – STATES WON’T RELIABLY DONATE TROOPS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 17 Governments remain unlikely to donate battalions for rotation through an operational UN structure. The intractable problem is that no government will follow through on an undertaking perceived to conflict with evolving national interests. The most generous offer is likely to be a contingent pledge. A state might offer certain forces for a fixed time and perhaps meet part of the costs in the event of a crisis. An implicit condition for rendering assistance is likely to be emergence of no threat to the donor state’s interests (while the supply of some advantage would be an added persuasion). And, there is little doubt that donor state interests would be interpreted indulgently while the welfare of other would be viewed with corresponding parsimony. Planet Debate 154 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Lacks Capacity for Humanitarian Missions Now

UN TROOPS TOO INFLEXIBLE TO RESPOND TO SITUATIONS LIKE RWANDA Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 87 UN Troops have proven far too narrow-minded in their interpretation of their various mandates. Security conditions can change overnight, as in Rwanda, where an assumed peace was undercut by a swift act of genocide following the sudden death of the Hutu President, Juvenal Habaryamana, when his aircraft was shot down as it was returning from the Arusha peace negotiations. When such cases arise, ground troops maintain the integrity of the operation. Here, the problem lies less with the soldiers in the field than with the United Nations Executive, specifically the Security Council. In addition, peace enforcement has often failed because of a lack of adequate finances. In these circumstances, the question arises: can or should peace enforcement be privatized; and if so, to what degree? What are the benefits and risks in doing so? Can private peace enforcement be “regulated” like any other commercial enterprise? Planet Debate 155 PMCs – Sherry Hall Limitations on Traditional UN Action Justify PMSCs

PRIVATE MILITARY CONTRACTORS CAN OVERCOME LIMITATIONS OF AD HOC UN RESPONSES TO HUMANITARIAN CRISES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 29 In the absence of well-resourced peacekeeping on an ad hoc basis, states, IGOs and others exercise sporadic but continuing interest in rapid reaction forces, guards, security policy, volunteer reserves, standby and rotating troop formations and various modern legions. Nearly all have been lost to contradictions inherent in the international system. Governments today remain disinclined to subordinate their interests to an agenda determined by a supra-state body where violence is likely and on balance, their own interests are insufficiently served by risking participation in that violence. Even where governments agree to donate troop and equipment, they will not willingly provide these resources without a web of hindering qualifications. Alex Morrison put it simply: for many states, national interest and national control remain synonymous. None of this bodes well for future UN operations carried out by conventional ad hoc deployments. Yet demands rise for more and better equipment, more advanced military skills and larger numbers of personnel. The moment may be ripe to consider a case for today’s private military contractors. Planet Debate 156 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Good Response to Humanitarian Crises

PMSCs OFFER MANY ADVANTAGES TO UN PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 93-4 Once political consensus has been reached and once military objectives have been clearly identified, employing private security companies could have the following advantages: 1. Lower Costs: Specialized firms, with their own equipment, training, and common experience, can easily lower the costs of using military force. EO cost Sierra Leone’s government $35 million for the 22 months it worked there, compared to a planned UN operation budgeted at $47 million for eight months. Similar cost comparisons can be established for the costs or private security as contrasted with those of the UNAVEM operations in Angola. 2. Better Training : This includes not just the training in the security firm itself-which is likely to be superior to the training in other firm itself-which is likely to be superior to the training in other groups as security firms are specialists-but also includes the ability of the firm to train other firms. 3. Better Command and Control . A clear chain of command is set up: soldiers report directly to the firm, which then reports to the UN. This avoids the problems in the field where nationals would report to their domestic superiors first rather than to their UN field officers. The use of standardized state-of-the-art communications. 4. More Determined Forces . PSCs generally pay significantly more than what the UN offers its troops. Indeed, UN troops often have little stake in the conflicts or the lives of the people they are sent to protect. A private security firm, on the other hand, has a financial interest in achieving results, and thus is likely to be more determined to succeed in performing the task at hand to preserve its current contract and enhance its potential for future contracts with the UN. 5. Speedy Delivery : Fast action is a major UN challenge. It cannot summon troops until a resolution has passed the Security Council. Often this is long after a crisis has begun. This occurred in Rwanda, where genocide was carried out with blazing speed. The UN could have stepped in once word of the killings came out but the political process of moving resolutions through the Security Council made early intervention impossible. While the use of private security firms would not, in and of itself, reduce the political process, it could diminish the lag between the passage of a UN Security Council resolution and the deployment of troops. 6. Greater Willingness to Act . When all that is at issue is relatively small financial risk, a nation’s proclivity to act is enhanced, especially where the risk of casualties is severe. For example, in providing for the protection of humanitarian aid workers, or the monitoring of elections, only a small force may be necessary. But even here the mustering of a small number of soldiers can be difficult politically if the situation is still fraught with physical danger. By contrast, private security operations take advantage of the narrow gap between a nation’s willingness to spend lives and its willingness to spend money. Planet Debate 157 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Good Response to Humanitarian Crises

CONTRACTORS FURTHER HUMANITARIAN GOALS OF THE UN – NOT A THREAT TO NATION-STATES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 224-5 For the author, this research has frequently been an education in the durability of erroneous perceptions and the equally robust purposes their longevity serves. States’ governments commonly misinterpret PMSC purposes and some view the growing influence on the industry as an affront to sovereignty. This is misleading. To coin a second phrase from earlier in the text, armed conflicts amongst and within states have never involved a firm division between private and public resources. This truth stretches form ancient Greece to Iraq today. Nor is there a compelling reason why Charter purposes should not be furthered by sourcing UN needs from an international military market offering a widening range of labor, goods and services. There is no insuperable reason why modern contractual relations could not evolve from historically ubiquitous arrangements amongst UN members and their more ancient predecessors. For UN members to adopt these measures implies an acceptance of dissenting ideas. This would seem desirable if there is to be more than sluggish progress in achieving Charter objectives concerning the maintenance of international peace and security. A corporate agent will never be a panacea for the entirety of that human misery laid at the door of the Security Council. Nevertheless, the deployment of disciplined, professional contractors under rigorous conditions may offer improvements on those currently mixed standards of peacekeeping that prevail today. International humanitarian intervention would also become a less remote aspiration in terms of the means by which unconventional legal doctrines might be given practical form. Both would enable the Security Council to better address its Charter responsibilities and in particular the Preamble and its admonition on war.

PMCS CAN PROVIDE CRITICAL SUPPORT IN FIGHTING GENOCIDE Tony Geraghty, (British War Correspondent), SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE, 2009, 17 The case for the freelance soldier was put shortly before the Iraq war by Doug Brooks, president of the International Peace Operations Association, in response to a re-examination of their role by the British Foreign Office. In this version the agenda is also changing from aggressive military interventionism to the defensive role of protector. Brooks claimed, "PMCs offer the only military forces both willing and capable of providing rapid and effective military services in most Third World conflicts. Their operations have saved tens of thousands of lives but their potential is even greater. Working as 'force multipliers' -- that is, training indigenous armies -- PMCs can provide the competent military backbone to ensure the success of UN or regional multinational peacekeeping or peace enforcement operations..." More critically, given an international mandate, PMCs can decisively intervene in instances of genocide, as in Rwanda. Executive Outcomes' offer to the UN of a rapid intervention force during the Rwanda genocide was declined at a time when member states were callously turning their backs to UN pleas for military support.

PMSCs DIVERT POTENTIALLY THREATENING EX-MILITARY PERSONNEL INTO PRODUCTIVE FORCES TO RESPOND TO HUMANITARIAN CRISES Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 44 Nevertheless, the idea that PMSCs can provide work for potentially destabilizing veterans in need of employment is a powerful one with historical force. Complex humanitarian emergencies, including genocide, and increasingly strong insurgencies in places like Sierra Leone, the Congo, Rwanda, Liberia, and Angola, created a great demand for well-trained and equipped forces. This demand for military power against internal insurgents, as in the well-documented cases of Executive Outcome’s contracts in Angola and Sierra Leone, was readily supplied by ex-combatants and officers from a newly downsized and reconstitute South African military. Planet Debate 158 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Good Response to Humanitarian Crises

PMSCs COULD HAVE PREVENTED GENOCIDE IN RWANDA Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 53 Memory of those times carries lasting consequences which resonate in the tone and purpose of more recent UN policy. In 1995 Mr. Annan had a chance to engage an effective private military company to separate murderous Hutu executioners from those refugees who had escaped slaughter in Rwanda by fleeing west to camps just inside the DRC border at Goma. He appeared to dally with the idea of hiring the notably effective firm “Executive Outcomes.” Unfortunately for the refugees he chose not to go ahead. The PMC option would almost certainly have been more effective than his ill-fated reliance on a Zairian police contingent. In recalling this moment three years later Mr. Annan conceded no failure on his part. He instead responded by dryly suggesting that “…the world may not be ready to privatize what had been possible at the time.” To others it suggested unsettling indifference to a lost opportunity for better leadership. This was not the only example. In 1996 EO was again considered for the creation of a secure humanitarian corridor as Rwanda’s refugee crisis escalated. No state would consider paying for it and the consequences of inaction was thousands of Hutu deaths.

PMSCs IMPROVING THEIR CAPACITY FOR HUMANITARIAN MISSIONS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 73 The industry is in turn becoming more efficiently organized and structured. Some firms have humanitarian divisions which tailor packages to aid organizations and their objectives. One company has proposed a comprehensive package for a consortium of relief groups in Aceh. Another created humanitarian packages on a not-for-profit basis while shrewdly emphasizing the firms’ ethical conduct. A third supported an entire voter registration and poll exercise in Afghanistan. A fourth has a philanthropic arm. A fifth secured sympathetic coverage in right-wing American press for work with humanitarian clients. The humanitarian field is also sufficiently lucrative to sustain the risk-advisory segment of the industry as well as security providers. In other words, there have been advances in crafting a security “product” more adapted to UN and NGO clients. Although loathe to be identified, UN interviewees have responded positively to the very conventional appeal of flexibility, efficiency, reliability and competitive costs. The steady expansion of this commerce seems likely to encroach further into UN logistics and security roles. On the other hand, UN and NGO staffs tend to emphasize a clash of cultures even when it is in their interests to foster improved relations with an industry upon which they increasingly rely. The result is policy which leaves the UN open to negative publicity and what Cockayne terms “strategic incoherence.”

PMSCs HIRED FOR JUST REASONS – TO PROMOTE PEACE AND RESPOND TO HUMANITARIAN CRISES Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 148 Here it might help to bring in the just-war categories for soldiers that for over a thousand years have served to divide conduct in battle into two categories: the justice of the war itself (jus ad bellum), and the justice of the conduct in the war (jus in bello). Private military firms, like Blue Sky, ArmoGroup, or any number of others, could be hired for just reasons: private security in general is an ethical alternative to global risks. They could provide “human security” for clients, they support humanitarian missions, including de-mining missions, or guarding humanitarian convoys or refugee camps. Like the contracted bouncer-cum-bodyguard, private security contractors provide zones of safety in a highly dangerous, untrustworthy world. And at the extreme end of the scale, as Walzer reluctantly admits, they could also offer hope of real “robust” peacemaking, in the face of rampant failures by nation states, international organizations like the UN, or regional coalitions. They are as moral or ethical as any multinational corporation, and they should be judged fairly by the rules of the market. In sum, they pull together some of the highest commitments we have in the West: they protect people, provide “defensive” security, and they are based on the individual freedom to contract, and the discipline of the market. They are the ultimate late-modern social entrepreneurs, doing good while making money. This is repeatedly, how they are stressed: as realistic peace operators for profit. Planet Debate 159 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Good Response to Humanitarian Crises

PMSCs LIKE BLACKWATER CAN ASSIST THE UN IN HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS IN PLACES LIKE DARFUR Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 3-4 Mr. Prince has also demonstrated considerable entrepreneurial flair. For example, he proposed sending 250 of his contractors to Darfur in order to train 1000 local soldiers in the effective defense of internally displaced refugees. Putting foreseeable constraints to one side and even if this exercise was to achieve measurable success, critics will correctly observe that the positive effect would be tiny in a region as vast as the south and west of Sudan. However, Mr. Prince’s intentions may not have been entirely plain. His suggestion seems to have been an act of political assertiveness rather than a literal claim. If so, his more genuine purposes lie elsewhere. He knows that contractors are not likely to replace sizeable formations of insurgent or state forces. As he suggested, contractors can and do supply ‘force multipliers’ to others. It would seem likely that future profits will be earned from continuing to provide instruction in both basic and more specialized military skills. However, the choice of Darfur was manifestly untenable in diplomatic and probably military terms as well. One can nonetheless imagine another client. Skilled assistance in various forms also seem likely to enhance the effectiveness of UN operations. And should this firm deliver success in places other than Darfur through either more competent UN troops or more proficiently trained host forces, he will be able to point to ‘proof of concept’ – which could be profitably repeated.

FAILURE TO UTILIZE PMSCs FOR HUMANITARIAN MISSIONS COULD RESULT IN GROSS HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 4 The prospect of Blackwater securing a peace operations contract with the UN may seem improbable for ideological, ethical or perhaps more practical reasons. Some may be ingrained. In particular, the ordure attached to twentieth century mercenaries tend to cloud informed examination of today’s military and security services industries. This is noticeable amongst certain UN organs and states. Defenders of the status quo will inevitably emphasize peacekeeping successes achieved with more conventional forms of mission support. Examples might include operations in Namibia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mozambique and to a lesser degree, East Timor and Cambodia. Even so, it would appear imprudent to reject the rich possibilities that Blackwater’s less tainted competitors could offer the UN. This seems especially pointed where ineffective Security Council responses to future armed conflicts are likely to result in gross human rights abuses.

PMSCs ARE PREPARED TO MEET UN NEEDS FOR A RAPIDLY DEPLOYABLE FORCE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 39 Until the UN establishes the concept of rapidly deployable forces, or as a minimum a rapidly deployable headquarters element to fill that initial vacuum, UN PSOs [peace support operations] will deploy against a strong counter current. PMCs are formed entities—they are responsive. Their force structures are already identified, their logistical and administrative tails organized. They have a leadership cadre ready to deploy. This is their core business rationale. They have personnel who are motivated to serve; they have personnel who are experienced, who are trained, who are physically equipped, and who are disciplined. J.D. Jefferies. Planet Debate 160 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Good for Peacekeeping Operations

GROWING PRIVATIZATION TREND IMPROVES PROSPECTS FOR PEACEKEEPING Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. xi-xii Globalization can be a force for peace, not merely for enhanced commerce. Success hinges on whether a new architecture can be developed for not allowing the new energy it unleashes to be harnessed rather than allowed to dissipate. Privatization of many peace-related functions carried out in union with civil society and the public sector, both national and supranational, can be its fundamental building block. With commitment to such an undertaking, the gnawing sense of futility that underlies so much of today’s armed conflicts can give way to the promise of a better tomorrow. The idea that governments and multilateral institutions are alone capable of peacemaking and peacebuilding is already recognized as an anachronism. In the age of globalization the open dissemination of knowledge, information and culture goes hand in hand with openness of markets and the enterprise of producers, rewarding whomever can deliver goods or services more efficiently.

PARTNERSHIPS GOOD WAY TO MEET PEACEKEEPING NEEDS Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 5 The problem begins with fragmentation. Many state systems that bear responsibility for providing security for their populations have fallen apart. So too, to a lesser degree, have the systems intended to provide solace and relief. Compounding the problem is the fragmentation of the overarching political systems intended to serve as peacemakers and peace-builders. In this context, the idea of partnering has emerged, offering enhanced cooperation and coordination among all the relevant players and the promise of cohesiveness rather than fragmentation. Planet Debate 161 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN More Likely to Respond with a Force of Contractors than Regular Service Personnel

DEATHS OF CONTRACTORS LESS POLITICALLY SENSITIVE FOR COUNTRIES THAN SERVICE-PERSONNEL Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 20 A capacity to absorb casualties and those advantages in the paragraph above would also apply to contractors. However, on the question of casualties a contract force would again be more attractive than a legion because its members would be another step removed from the UN Organization. When a handful of UN employees are killed or injured, their home states and the Security Council sometimes withdraw. This was the case when the UN Headquarters in Iraq was largely destroyed in August 2003 due to poor security. Twenty-two staff died, resulting in a prompt decision to pull out most other UN employees. The point is that the value of human life in international affairs is a political matter. Management of disruption caused by unexpected losses could be dealt with more expeditiously when counting contract casualties rather than in-house losses. Consider an existing analogy. In Iraq and Afghanistan today the deaths of Western service personnel are sensitive matters. Nevertheless, to establish how many security contractors of mixed nationality have been maimed or killed is quite difficult. To the US led invasion force, contractor lives are politically less important than those of their own troops. And because the war in Iraq has been unpopular in America for some time, the US government holds a keen political interest in obscuring truths that undermine its objectives. Hence the limited figures it releases.

CONTRACTORS SHIELD STATES FROM POLITICAL BACKLASH AGAINST GETTING INVOLVED Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 64-5 A second argument is that few governments wish to risk the lives of their military forces where national interests are not directly at issue. Contractors’ lives could be risked where the consequences would be less politically sensitive. No state would have sent them (although states could in theory covertly do so for uncertain purposes.) Voluntary enlistment is a considerable advantage, especially where the risk of casualties grows in dangerous operations, those that unexpectedly become hazardous and certainly during any humanitarian intervention. The nationality of soldiers in a corporate unit would remain more or less anonymous, much like those in the French Foreign Legion. For the same reason, those awaiting deployment would promote no state’s interest apart from the collective interests embodied in a Security Council mandate. This is something likely to ease the path to authorization. Political leaders are likely to welcome reduced risks to their more personal interests. They wish to avoid unfavorable media coverage of their nationals and particularly those engaged in unsavory violence or sexual misconduct. This is a concern not because it is tawdry, but because peacekeeping is electorally sensitive. Any Prime Minister or President would be embarrassed by a mission in which their citizens are repeatedly portrayed by an unsympathetic media as thugs and sexual deviants; or where their nationals might be identified during warfare’s more grisly moments. But through the partisan eye of a journalist’s camera, no contractor would be indentified by nationality. A contract employee may well be photographed misbehaving or for that matter, in distress, wounded or deceased. But an electorate is less likely to blame its elected representatives for financing a peacekeeping operation where violence affects personnel or uncertain and mostly foreign origin. Corporate soldiers may or may not be fellow nationals. For a politician this is preferable to contemplating the degree of unstable public approval necessary to sustain an ad hoc deployment. Planet Debate 162 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN More Likely to Respond with a Force of Contractors than Regular Service Personnel

CONTRACTORS LESS POLITICALLY SENSITIVE WAY FOR THE US TO SUPPORT UN MISSIONS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 65 Contractors could also bring fresh strengths to international diplomacy when an operation is in trouble. Ad hoc troops donated from past colonial masters may arouse indigenous hostility. Contract troops of mixed origin are less likely to have this effect. Moreover, by paying for contractors, states would purchase a pleasing sense of distance from an unexpectedly unstable or escalating conflict. They could not benefit form this if their own troops were involved. There could also be more freedom for a state to consider a Security Council mandate on its merits, unencumbered by the requirement to weigh risks in sending its own troops to volatile regions. Politicians could then more objectively face the two problems which a deteriorating situation is likely to present: revising a fragile and precariously dated UN mandate; and/or making practical decisions as to what to do in the face of unanticipated violence. Many politicians will recall unpleasant consequences arising from an imprudently ambitious mandate for UNOSOM II in an already hazardous situation. Pulling out a contractor would at least carry fewer diplomatic consequences than removing multiple states’ contingents along with their bruised prestige.

COUNTRIES MORE LIKELY TO SUPPORT INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN MISSIONS TO HALT GENOCIDE WITH CONTRACTORS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 68-9 Another argument for contractors is the appeal in requesting governments to contribute taxpayers’ treasure rather than their blood. A business solution will be a more attractive impost on UN members where they are asked to contribute money and not lives which might be lost or shattered and thereby a political liability at home. A business solution for this reason may have a better chance of overcoming domestic disapproval of intervention in a conspicuously vicious struggle. Where the need for help is most dire, history’s lesson is that the will to assist will probably be at its weakest. Consider the reference in the Introduction to Rwanda in 1994. UN Members could probably have stopped much of the mayhem by paying for assistance from a contract brigade. But no state would countenance losing even a few lives to preserve 800,000 strangers. To engage contractors is to limit those risks to national prestige and citizens’ lives which accompany the dispatch of sovereign troops. Considerable political and diplomatic capital could also be reaped from a financial contribution to a successful mission.

CONTRACTORS MORE ATTRACTIVE WAY FOR US TO FULFILL HUMANITARIAN OBLIGATIONS TO UN Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 65 Another reason is the assistance the United States may be encouraged to contribute. Since the Clinton Administration and the unhappy results of UNOSOM II, the US has been wary of UN operations, particularly where American casualties are likely. Even so, a decade ago military researchers in the US canvassed the possibility of conducting operations with friendly PMCs. The climate has since altered dramatically and the US agenda is now dominated by terrorism and two wars. But this does not necessarily spell the indefinite cessation of US support for UN peace operations. US warfighting doctrine altered fundamentally during the Iraq campaign and eventually elevated reconstruction operations to be a core part of US military doctrine. Leading American strategists now believe that a strong peacekeeping capability would “… buy more time to address the underlying causes of that instability: [upon which terrorism thrives]. This argument enjoys currency among those who believe that terrorist threats to the US will be diminished if the Americans assist “full spectrum” operations which advance post-conflict public security. It seems reasonable to suggest that the US may become sympathetic to a UN contractor should the Americans believe that more effective deployments would serve US interests at least as much as those of the collective UN membership. Planet Debate 163 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Empirically Relied on Contractors

UN USED CONTRACTORS FOR PROTECTION IN SIERRA LEONE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 55 An uneasy UN duality over mercenaries, contractors and private security is noticeable elsewhere. In the 1990s the UN hired “Lifeguard Security” to protect its premises in Freetown during instability in Sierra Leone. It was well known that Lifeguard was staffed with former Executive Outcomes personnel, one of Mr. Ballesteros’s recurring targets. Yet they protected UN officials’ homes and offices and apparently provided UN staff with use of a military transport helicopter. An ex-military pilot has described how UNAMSIL in May 2000 also supplied rockets and fuel to pilots of “HESA Air West Africa.” It appears company aircrew undertook military operations using Sierra Leonean helicopters in accordance with authorization provided by the UNAMSIL Force Commander. The same personnel apparently rescued embattled UNAMSIL peacekeepers on several occasions while other PMC employees also assisted ECOMOG in Sierra Leone. Contract aviators from Sandline transported UN officials and are alleged to have rescued various expatriates who would have been killed if captured b y the RUF. Planet Debate 164 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Command More Effective with Contractors

CONTRACT FORCE BETTER FOR UN MISSIONS THAN AD HOC – EASIER TO COMMAND Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 63-4 The case for a privatized adjunct in support of peacekeeping operations may be summarized in a dozen reasons. Some directly address those arguments for states’ resistance to ad hoc donation listed in the Introduction. First, states tend to inhibit the vigor of even the most disciplined and well-equipped peacekeeping contingents through the attachment of operational directives. These directives enable governments to retain a measure of control, limiting the tasks which troops may carry out consistent with the aims and interests of the sending state. Whether overt or covert, these are potentially obstructive. This is why commanders of peacekeeping operations face notoriously difficult negotiations with subordinate contingent commanders. It follows that a UN commander does not issue an order in the conventional military sense. A contentious request is likely to be sent to a foreign capital for evaluation (consistent with operational directives) before a contingent commander either consents or declines to follow it. This is damaging to unity of command and demonstrates a fractured of unity of purpose as a military commander has to first ascertain what a contingent commander is prepared to do before asking for a particular task to be carried out. But a contract force would be much less likely to face manipulations as a result of this type of interstate competition. In a contract unit the troops would be entirely volunteers subject to unified command. Moreover, they would be motivated to attempt to fulfill their mandate in order to receive bonuses or other incentives.

CONTRACTORS WOULD BE MORE EFFECTIVE AT CARRYING OUT UN HUMANITARIAN MISSIONS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 66 Another strength would be multiple organizational improvements. There would be a single doctrine, language and training, the latter specialized for the work that peacekeepers and intervention troops would carry out. Simulation and scenario planning could be devised for the kind of environments in which the troops would be likely to find themselves. Contractors would consequently be more familiar with the nature of their missions than those troops who presently make up the bulk of peacekeepers. Standardized systems of supply and maintenance could end variations in logistic capability. Uniform types of armor, artillery and infantry equipment would remove many of the problems of current incompatibility. In particular, uniform signaling equipment throughout the unit would ensure that command, control, communications, and intelligence would be conveyed more effectively than has sometimes been the case in the past. A tender would specify the type and nature of capabilities sought, a tenderer’s response subsequently evaluated by a new entity titled the “UN Directorate for Military Contracting.” To be classified as competent to undertake tasks matching purported capabilities, contractors would meet industry best practice standards as far as possible. If successful, an applicant would be licensed and subsequently sent on those operations in which it would be expected to prove proficient. Meeting rigorous criteria prior to participation in some missions—and particularly hazardous operations – would seem highly desirable. Somewhat similar concepts are aired elsewhere from time to time. A past director of the Australian “Army Land Warfare Studies Center” in Canberra supported the idea of an international register of accredited private military and security providers for UN service. UNTAC Commander General Sanderson suggested to the author that standardized procedures and a UN Inspector-General would be desirable, even under the present ad hoc regime. The UN does not at present appear receptive. The general nonetheless thought it likely that a UN legion or private military company would serve the UN at some point in the future. Planet Debate 165 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Command More Effective with Contractors

CONTRATORS BETTER: LESS LIKELY TO BE HAMPERED BY RELIGIOUS AND ETHNIC PROBLEMS, MORE LIKELY TO TARGET EXPERTISE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 66-7 Another virtue of the privatized adjunct is that unlike a permanent legion vulnerable to greater manipulation, contractor management would not conform to pressure for ethnic or nationality quotas. In liaison with the UN Directorate for Military Contracting, contractor management would exercise freedom to make discriminating choices when evaluating individual candidates. This will be helpful for two reasons. First, particularly religio-ethnic influences have on occasion exerted unhealthy pressures amongst UN peacekeepers and some of these could be avoided. In early 1994 Mr. Boutros-Ghali made it clear how troops holding a political objective and/or from a state that bordered on Yugoslavia would not be accepted in Bosnia. Unfortunately, this kind of foresight was not applied to the emplacement of a Moslem Jordanian battalion on the Oecussi enclave during UNTAET’s East Timor operations. The population there was largely Roman Catholic and grave consequences were probably predictable. In the future contract troops could be drawn from wherever the most suitable sources are thought to exist for the job at hand, while acknowledging that religio-ethnic issues will never be eliminated altogether. As each mission is likely to dictate requirements for particular forms of knowledge, troops could also be selected because they hold various forms of expertise. For example, some will be proficient in the conduct of operations in jungles, deserts, mountains or very cold environments. Others will be skilled in amphibious or airborne operations. There will be certain medical officers experienced in the prophylaxis and treatment of particular diseases and surgical techniques in the field. Other candidates will hold invaluable familiarity with particular languages, customs, cultures and likely indigenous reaction to foreign intervention. It is noteworthy that this knowledge is increasingly valued in today’s American military doctrine, in which “human terrain specialists” assist in reconstruction operations.

RELIANCE ON PMSCs INCREASES FLEXIBILITY FOR UN MISSIONS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 71-2 So long as states’ troops are involved in peacekeeping, mandate formation will be bedeviled by the counterproductive machinations of states constantly seeking avoidance of risk. Should a contract force be deployed, some anxieties will remain and in particular, the risk of unexpected changes to mandates. But in peacekeeping and especially hazardous peacekeeping, state responsibility would no longer be directly attached to operational risk. Tasks would be approached with greater clarity and practicality in mandate formation, impartiality (but not neutrality), interposition, rules of engagement and the role of violence more generally. All contract missions would be created under Chapter VII of the Charter. In intrastate conflicts in particular, hindsight has demonstrated the need to provide a future corporate commander with a wide range of options regarding the use of force. Planet Debate 166 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Command More Effective with Contractors

MANY SPECIFIC AREAS WHERE CONTRACTORS WOULD IMPROVE EFFECTIVENESS OF UN MISSIONS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 70 Another strength is contractor versatility. Specialist airlift, sealift and land transport companies could assist the DPKO more thoroughly in its logistic tail. Construction is another area where there could be expansion: temporary or more robust roads and bridges, airstrips and hangars, jetties, accommodation, warehouses and ordnance dumps. Catering, rubbish removal and cleaning, postal services, perimeter defense, medical support and evacuation are other candidates. Inroads could also be made in outsourced computer support, document management and record keeping. A politically sensitive area in which UN contractors might also encroach is work which NGO and humanitarian groups presently perform. The considerable advantage would be an absence of NGO insistence on freedom from institutional control, maintenance of political neutrality and stoutly independent management. Many NGOs are suspicious of attempts to drive them in a particular direction which might compromise their neutrality in the eyes of others. A UN agent would instead be bound by explicit contractual obligations and the mandate under which it would operate. This would bind it to effective UN planning so the company could get on with its tasks while tied to clear lines of principal/agent authority. Medical aid is one example. The British Director-General of Army Medical Services in 2006 told the author he saw the age of the corporate humanitarian actor fast approaching. General Hawley believes contractual obligations held by a sending government and a company will appeal to government ministers because of the accountability and control they offer. The UN position is not necessarily different. Instead of negotiating with states or NGOs over these resources, the UN could purchase similar services with superior control and accountability built into the bargain. Militarized medical support would in any case be an integral facet of a contractor legion. An expanded humanitarian relief role for contract medical services could take form in manmade or naturally occurring disasters. Related aspects like power generation, communications, food and water supplies could also be delivered with security built into a task order.

CONTRACTORS BETTER PERFORM DISARMAMENT AND DEMOBILIZATION PROGRAMS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 70-1 Another promising area is expansion in the collection of small arms and light weapons (SALW). This is one element of “disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration” programs (DDR) which are in turn a part of “security sector reform” (SSR). When advanced states’ national capacities are insufficient or unavailable, this is another task the UN could countenance for corporate contractors. To first-world troops this assistance is frequently unwelcome as they consider it peripheral to their key purposes. Time spent on rotations by soldiers unfamiliar with a region is also likely to be unhelpfully brief—perhaps six months or so. This is understandable as states are wary of lengthy encumbrances. By contrast, companies would welcome the steady revenue that longer term contracts provide. Their employees could be stationed in-country for lengthy periods as part of an overall plan lasting years. For this reason, company ex-soldiers could be deployed because they hold prior military experience with a particular people and their culture. For example, suitable ex-NATO military could carry out these tasks while an absence of foreign uniforms would be politically desirable. Other SSR programs could be undertaken by contractors competent to retrain personnel from various occupations: police and prison administrators; customs officials; armed forces and coast guards. Nor should transfers stop at skills. There is a case for military technology transfer carried out by corporations rather than governments. Planet Debate 167 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs More Efficient Use of Resources

PMSCs ALLOW MORE EFFICIENT USE OF UN RESOURCES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 69 The cost of a PMSC contract should be keenly scrutinized. Logically enough, UN members’ money should be spent in a business-like fashion according to the completion of agreed contractual criteria. Examples arising in a contested humanitarian intervention could include strategically important infrastructure and utilities taken and held; enemy materiel destroyed; particular military commanders or political leaders captured; villages or town liberated; or completion of other specified tasks within time and on budget. Each of these could trigger performance incentives for soldiers and management. The corollary is that failure would attract specified financial or other penalties through a structure of payment suspension according to a schedule agreed between the parties.

COSTS OF PMSCs JUSTIFIED EVEN IF THEY GO OVER BUDGET Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 69-70 In the wake of poor standards of American contracting evident during the recent Iraq invasion and occupation, some of these suggestions may remind the skeptical reader of inflated and unmet corporate claims. War is a notoriously uncertain business and any military unit involves formidable fixed costs which would have to be paid for the life of a contract; although the cost of a contract legion could be to some degree balanced against what they actually deliver. Critics will suggest that it is always possible for the costs of a commercial operation to exceed the sums expected. This is of course true. And militaries notoriously exceed their budgets. Yet if what is paid delivers mandate objectives because troops and support staff are skillfully led, reliable and not risk-averse, then up to a point the outcome will have been worth the expenditure. Cost in a military context is not necessarily the primary criterion in any case. Deborah Avant observed that in the Iraq campaign genuinely competitive markets and contractor flexibility were sacrificed by the US government in order to preserve reliability and continuity of service. There is a balance to be struck. In the alternative it is possible that states’ troops may be found in time to justify a mission’s purposes. But if their deployment does not prove effective for familiar reasons, they will not have been worth the money and effort whatever the figure involved. And the chances of success for an ad hoc deployment would seem relatively higher if supported by a professional military contractor. Planet Debate 168 PMCs – Sherry Hall PMSCs Less Likely to Pull Out of UN Missions

PMSCs MORE LIKELY TO FULFILL THEIR MISSIONS – NOT CUT AND RUN Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 89 Private security companies (PSCs) are less likely to defect. First, every member of the company, from commanders to soldiers, has a financial incentive to complete his tour of duty. It is, after all, a contractual obligation. As a result, soldiers are less likely to desert as they have a stake in “seeing it through.” In m any instance where remuneration is tied to shared profits from a mineral resource such as the diamond mines in Sierra Leone and Angola withdrawal is tantamount to foregoing payment as well as a breach of contract. Secondly, the security company has an incentive to complete its objectives. As a private company it has a reputation to protect, and a failure in one campaign could easily adversely affect the prospect of future contracts. Planet Debate 169 PMCs – Sherry Hall Should Increase Role of PMSCs in UN Missions

SHOULD INCREASE ROLE OF PMSCs IN UN PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 34 In speaking of privatizing peace, we suggest injecting the private sector in all UN and other multilateral peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace-enforcement, and peacebuilding efforts. The anticipated result is greater clarity of mission, better articulation of performance objectives, and the delineation of measures for judging results in an open, transparent and accountable framework. Planet Debate 170 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Can Hold PMSCs it Contracts with Accountable

UN SHOULD DEVELOP A CRIMINAL JUSTICE REGIME TO HOLD THE PMSCs THEY CONTRACT WITH ACCOUNTABLE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 5-6 Before a contract deployment might occur, the interests of the UN and PMSCs dictate settling one matter in particular. Over the last five years journalists, lawyers and human rights groups have justifiably criticized the conduct of armed contractors in Iraq (and to some extent Afghanistan) in the absence of a functional criminal justice regime. By contrast, UN agents of tomorrow should contemplate a criminal justice system that provides both clarity of obligation and reliable enforcement. This is possible. UN organs hold the authority to create an endogenous criminal justice system that meets international legal standards, yet is not inimical to either legitimate corporate purpose of limits to UN Charter authority. This apparatus should also improve on those inconsistent and unreliable criminal processes presently applied to states’ troops who serve in and sometimes weaken UN operations. Such a structure is described in Chapter 6 and in diagrammatic form in Appendix I. The goal of this approach is to build on the UN strength in multilateral legitimacy and avoid the inherent UN weakness in ad hoc recruitment.

UN HAS SUFFICIENT AUTHORITY TO CREATE AND REGULATE CONTRACTOR FORCES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 196-7 Helpfully, the Security Council’s competence to establish an international criminal tribunal to serve the Council’s principal function of the maintenance of international peace and security was affirmed in the ICTY Tadic case. As the UN criminal tribunal would be limited to matters arising from deployments concerning threats to the peace, the Security Council’s intention would not fall before a Charter separation of powers and the limited scope of Article 42. The Tadic decision is consistent with Bowett’s explanation that the constitutional basis supporting subsidiary organs with given functions lies in articles justifying those functions and not in the Article 29 general power to establish those organs. Article 29 is concerned with procedure rather than limits to substantive authority. The criminal court would be competent to prosecute corporate as well as human persons, whether uniformed or otherwise. These would include directors and management of a UN contractor. One is aware that the trial of a civilian rather than military contractor within a court having military attributes will arouse familiar criticisms attached to trial rights of civilians. In the corporate context, civilian consent to be bound by UN military law would serve three purposes. The first would be prompt location on a suitable judicial forum for criminal trials. Second, UN military law could proscribe with some precision at least most of those moral hazards which are likely to tempt white collar management and directors. Third, uniformed commanders in the field would hold authority to direct civilians accompanying the force consistent with the good order and discipline of the unit. The latter is not new. The Australians have in place a system which controls consenting civilians in identified theaters, an arrangement that appears to provide operational cohesion. The new court would observe internationally recognized principles of criminal justice identified in international treaties to which the majority of states have bound themselves; along with adherence to international customary law and desirable principles of civilized conduct as recognized by most states. These attributes would be assisted by another court characteristic: mobility. The court would shift about to whatever its presence would be required. This benefit would provide palpable advantages in witness accessibility and other evidentiary matters. And should there be a conviction, the court would also exercise competence to compel the transfer of sums in compensation from a guilty person or a company to a person or other entity harmed or who had suffered loss at the hands of criminal or negligent UN corporate forces. Supplying a measure of material justice would be an integral part of the court’s purposes. UN responsibility for effecting material remedies is not new, as the proposed court revives aspects of a compensation process stretching back to the 1950s. Planet Debate 171 PMCs – Sherry Hall UN Can Hold PMSCs it Contracts with Accountable

UN CAN MAINTAIN CONTROL OVER PMSCs Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 88 By privatizing peace enforcement, many of the problems of PSCs can be addressed. In a private company the chain of command is clear. One end of the chain—the United Nations or another international organization or government deals with how its mandates will be implemented, while the other end of the chain—the ground troops – knows precisely where it receives its commands. Few better examples of this understanding exist than the Sierra Leone experience. When the Kabbah government had Executive Outcomes under its employ in Sierra Leone, the RUF were brought to the bargaining table, where the rebels made the withdrawal of EO from the country a key condition of a cease fire. Kabbah reluctantly agreed, under pressure from the international community. Unfortunately, Freetown and its defending ECOMOG forces were subsequently overrun by the unforeseen combination of rebelling government soldiers and the RUF. Kabbah was only returned to power when Sandline joined forces with ECOMOG. Planet Debate 172 PMCs – Sherry Hall US Action Critical to UN Employment of PMSCs

UN CAN’T REALLY EMPLOY CONTRACTORS WITHOUT US APPROVAL Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 104 To engage contractors successfully the UN will need to resolve some divisive matters. One is attainment of P5 consensus on deployments in the Security Council at a time of strong Anglo-American bloc influence. There are perhaps four reasons for this drift; the US and UK governments exercise considerable influence over the leading PMSCs; management and sometimes the workforce and shareholders of these companies are frequently British or American; both states exercise a veto power on mandate formation in the Security Council; and the US exercises such a preponderance of individual influence that no decision to engage contract peacekeepers could succeed without approval from the US government, quite apart from its P5 privileges. In that context, rotating states on the Security Council are very likely to register the existence of both American and UN incentives. Recent work by Harvard economists Kuziemko and Werker suggests that developing states extract rents during the two years in which these poorer rotating members sit on the Security Council. This rent takes the form of US aid inflated by an average of 59 percent and UN aid inflated by an average of 8 percent. That is powerful encouragement (or bribery, depending on one’s view.) The risk of withholding it implies correspondingly potent coercion.

US SUPPORT FOR UN CONTRACTOR MISSIONS IMPORTANT Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 223 Any transformation would require favorable US views. Within the UN the Americans exercise formidable financial authority coupled with an earnest pre-occupation with their “long war.” US national security policy has evolved greatly in light of recent mistakes; to the point where acceptance of a growing sophistication in counter-insurgency campaigns suggests an understanding of the value that complex interventions hold in promoting American security. For this reason, the Obama Administration may be persuaded that US interests are served through support for enhanced UN peacekeeping operations which may extend to armed intervention and state stabilization. American support seems plausible where US responsibilities are manageable. In this event Washington seems likely to encourage these deployments. Re-kindling pro-UN policy in America coupled with the emergence of enlightened self-interest by other states would bolster the case for an experiment in adjunct forces. Planet Debate 173 PMCs – Sherry Hall Proposal for Using Contractors

PRACTICAL MODEL FOR UN USING CONTRACTORS TO HELP WITH HUMANITARIAN AND PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 9 The sixth chapter is titled “A Modest Proposal” and depicts a fresh governance model suited to a corporate peacekeeping and intervention force. Early observation on UN/donor criminal justice shed light on chronic shortcomings arising from sovereign deployments. Curiously, these tend to receive limited and fleeting public attention. The new structure is intended to harness contractor strengths while addressing hazards identified in the prior two chapters. This include means to measure contractor capability and standards of competence on which the UN could rely; a fair criminal justice system; and inculcation of a normative attachment to t he rule of law. The proposal lies in five parts: a constitutional basis; a new disciplinary structure; performance measurement; a hypothetical deployment in support of UN and NGO agencies in a revived form of UN trusteeship; and a summary of those elements that constitute one view of a practical model.

UN MODEL FOR UTILIZING CONRACTORS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN AD HOC FORCES TO RESPOND TO HUMANITARIAN CRISES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 223-4 The first chapter began with the sub-heading ‘An Intractable Problem,” a title prompted by the panoply of difficulties evident in UN peacekeeping today. Ad hoc forces have not delivered the promise they once seemed to hold. And conventional alternatives have never been sufficiently acceptable to states’ governments. This has been the case regardless of various permutations arising from the three variations identified in the second chapter, along with a wave of other proposals. The third chapter canvassed widely misperceived aspects of mercenarism, organized violence and legitimacy. The taxonomy was intended to add clarity to contemporary firms’ roles; and the advocate’s case asserted a view conspicuously at odds with accepted wisdom in UN circles. The fourth and fifth chapters investigated some of the tensions which ebb and flow between states and non-state actors in the organization of violence. Some of these tensions take the form of risks common to any business. Others are peculiar to the commerce of war. A third category attaches to the United Nations Organization, its Charter and a membership characterized by diverse and competing agendas. Heedful Security Council members might ponder these risks at length. One should in particular remain aware that PMSCs may remain instruments of individual state power projection, whether this be overt or covert; and whether for publicly defensible goals or more squalid purposes. These are some of the influences which provide the impetus for the new model in the sixth chapter. Through this UN creation, the Security Council might form agency agreements and conduct business with a contract companies while acting within Charter powers. To repeat a remark from the Introduction, this scheme builds on the UN strength in multilateral legitimacy and avoids the inherent UN weakness in ad hoc recruitment. Planet Debate 174 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: Should Not Replace UN Forces with PMSCs

PMSCs ASSIST – DO NOT REPLACE – UN FORCES Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 31 The fear of privatization of peace-related functions arises out of a series of misconceptions about the meaning of privatization that tends to cloud thinking on the subject. Perhaps the biggest misconception can be cleared up with a single statement: Privatization is not replacement. Even the most ardent supporters of privatizing peace functions do not expect the private sector to supersede the public sectors. The private sector is surely no substitute for the United Nations and other international organizations, but it can proceed on parallel tracks, with adequate supervision, toward a common objective. Planet Debate 175 PMCs – Sherry Hall *Answers to Arguments Against PMSCs* Planet Debate 176 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Dangerous and Unaccountable

MUCH OF THE DISTRUST OF PMSCs FLOWS FROM THEIR PROTEAN, HARD TO CATEGORIZE AND UNDERSTAND, NATURE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 12 For the sake of both accuracy and consistency, I will use the term “protean” to refer to PMSCs: they are more than just hybrids, since they combine more than two organizational types. “Protean” suggests a flexible, changing, and multifaceted organization – but one that also has underlying ominous powers: after being captured, Proteus the sea god changed into a lion, a serpent, and a leopard, before he could be subdued. One way to understand the conceptual (and normative) confusion that surrounds PMSCs is to see it as a direct result of their protean character. We do not know how to judge what we cannot understand, and existing categories of classification and judgment fall short. The fault here is with us, not them; we are stuck with outdated ways of seeing, and need to adapt. And in the meantime, we greet unfamiliar categories with a mixture of paranoia and suspicion. The anthropologist Mary Douglas argued famously that “dirt is just matter that is out of place”: shoes on the kitchen table are much harder to tolerate than shoes on the floor; trash at the dump is not as offensive as trash by the side of the road. Cultures invent complex rules to assign places to things, and to order and make sense of the world. Objects “out of place” then come to inspire varying amounts of animosity and anxiety, as well as a desire to clean them up and put them into place. They are described as “dirty,” but that is only because they are out of place, not because they actually are dangerous. Ambiguous and hard-to-place entities also inspire fascination and wonder. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates tells his interlocutors that philosophy begins in questioning, and questioning begins with a puzzle, and ambiguous entities are always puzzling. These ambiguous things “roll around” between categories and appear to be more than one thing at the same time (Plato 1991). The fascination that PMSCs hold for scholars is partly due to this ambiguous character.

PMSC REGULATION COULD BE BETTER – BUT CRITICISMS ARE OVERSTATED Simon Chesterman & Chia Lehnardt, Professor and Researcher – NYU School of Law, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 5 One of the reasons why international law is repeatedly dismissed as irrelevant in the discussion of governance of PMCs is the fact that it largely focuses on states. As a result, despite the fact that governments constitute one of the major clients of PMCs or authorize their operations in foreign states, the question of under what circumstances the misconduct of PMCs engages the responsibility of states has received surprisingly little attention. Chia Lehnardt addresses this issue in chapter eight. She argues that the fact that PMCs might be used by Western governments to conduct “foreign policy by proxy” is only partially warranted: from an international law perspective, states cannot evade responsibility merely by hiring a private actor to carry out certain functions. The conduct of PMCs is under certain circumstances attributed to the state, making that state responsible for any violation of international law committed by PMC personnel. Even where no such attribution exists, the state might still be responsible for lack of due diligence to adequately regulate and control PMC conduct. Like Doswald-Beck, Lehnardt concludes that claims of a “vacuum” in international law are overstate, although factual power relationships between the PMC, the host state, and the exporting state remain unaddressed on the international level.

REGULATIONS CAN ADDRESS MORAL CONCERNS Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 27 Although it is not difficult to overcome moral objections based on status with regulation, it is not impossible to devise regulation that takes moral concerns seriously. The second implication of moral concerns for regulation is that regulation should strictly hold PMCs to their promise of avoiding combat and try to shrink the “grey area” between combat and non-combat operations as much as possible. Such regulation would go an extremely long way to eliminating the objection that private force is problematic because private fighters kill for money. This objection, as noted above, is already difficult to apply to today’s PMCs; making it more difficult still would be a worthwhile goal of regulation. Planet Debate 177 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Dangerous and Unaccountable

SHOULD UTILIZE CONTRACT LAW TO MAKE PMSCs ACCOUNTABLE FOR ACTIONS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 129 One way of understanding contracts is to see them squarely within a continuum of organizational relationships, somewhere between a hypothetically pure market mechanism and an equally hypothetically pure hierarchical organization. Contracts are ways of ensuring some degree of control and predictability between entities that are often antagonistic, or competitive. Well-written contracts try to minimize the natural uncertainty of this relationship: how else does the principal makes sure that the “agent” keeps the promises made? Organizational and economic theory has much to say about the so-called transaction costs of this arrangement: chief among them being the lack of real knowledge about the agent’s aims. The risk of non- compliance, or of misuse of the power conveyed by the contract, is an ever-present one, and the nuances of contract theory are an attempt to minimize it. Laura Dickinson has argued that contract law can be one of the most effective legal tools to regulate PMSCs. Contracts could be made to include mechanisms to require “public law values”: they could mandate specific training in human rights law, or use of force rules. They could include clauses that would require monitoring and certification by independent NGOs, or military lawyers. This would require a shift in organizational culture to protect these new public values, but those values could be reflected in oaths required by contract. With better written contracts, the only impediment would be the will to enforce them. This might require investigatory organizations that could act quickly, and judges willing to make criminal acts a form of breach of contract, and hold companies accountable.

PRIVATE CONTRACTORS HAVE BEEN HELD CRIMINALLY LIABLE FOR WRONGDOING Suzanne Simons, CNN Executive Producer, 2009, Master of War: Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince and the Business of War, p. 151 If members of Congress were looking for accountability for private contractors, they began to see signs of it in August 2006. David Passaro, a contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency, was found guilty of assaulting a detainee he interrogated at a military base in Afghanistan three years earlier. He was the first civilian contractor convicted of any wrongdoing in the twenty-first century. Though he didn’t work for Blackwater, his case was a harbinger of trouble for the industry. The detainee Passaro had questioned later died of his injuries. Passaro wasn’t convicted for the death, because there was no direct evidence that beating the man—with a flashlight – caused his death. Instead, Passaro was convicted of assault in connection with the death, news that didn’t sit well with CIA Director Michael Hayden. Planet Debate 178 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Dangerous and Unaccountable

IRREGULAR NATURE OF CONFLICTS CREATES IMPRESSION THAT PMSCs ARE UNREGULATED Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 102 This chapter has two central arguments. First, I maintain that behavior in wartime operates on a two-track system, with central, regular combatants held under strict command and control, and more peripheral, irregular combatants held at arm’s length and less-strictly controlled. The spatial metaphor of center and periphery can help to explain the different ways in which law operates close to, and further out from, law-makers and those charged with oversight. Here “peripheral” means three types of war: wars fought at a geographical distance from the nation’s capital— wars at the frontiers of what we think of as civilization; wars peripheral to our consciousness (covert wars, even if fought close by); and wars using paramilitary proxy forces. International humanitarian law, which includes the law of armed combat (and which in turn gets combined with domestic military law) includes processes that attempt to fill in the spaces and extend the power of law from the center out to the periphery. Partially this is intentional – it comes with the territory of mercenaries and covert operators, for better or worse. But, until it is understood how legal doctrines show up in this hazy peripheral realm, any attempt to bring contractors back into the fold, so to speak, will fail. This is why contractors are – or appear to be – unregulated.

CURRENT REGULATION ATTEMPTS FAIL BECAUSE THERE IS NOT A COHERENT AND DEDICATED BODY OF LAW GOVERNING PMSCs Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 102-3 Second, I argue that the attempt to regulate PMSCs is stymied by a clash of legal cultures. As the legal world attempts to control these forces—or at bare minimum bring them under some workable legal clarification—it creates dissonance between international humanitarian law, military law, and regulatory and contract law. The clash of these three legal cultures and the assumptions that go with them treats PMSCs as three different legal persons – soldiers, businessmen, and disaster zone NGO workers – each unrecognizable within the legal culture of the other two. This leaves those who seek to understand these contractors through law in a world that is legally obscure and hard to navigate. In this clash of legal cultures, the worlds of IHL, military law, and contract law all combine to form a novel and perhaps unworkable mix. In the same ways in which PMSCs combine three different “persons” and ways of life, the legal remedies offered to govern their conduct take bits and pieces form various legal frameworks that have very different orientations, goals, and histories. These types of laws have historical “genealogies,” so to speak, wherein various assumptions and ways of doing things are inherited by those who operate under, or within, them. There is a lot of crossover in these genealogies: military law may bear a certain “family resemblance” to human rights law; contract law may contain some precursors of human rights law. The genealogies are intermixed for sure, but in their extreme forms, each form of law analyzed here requires a different legal structure or process to adjudicate. Planet Debate 179 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Dangerous and Unaccountable

PMSCs SHOULD BE REGULATED AND SUBJECT TO OVERSIGHT Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 158-9 If it turns out that PMSCs are here to stay, and governments will continue to use them, there still must be a strict licensing regime for both the firm and private security contractor. Individual contractors would have to become part of a profession, like a plumber, a securities trader, a doctor, or an engineer. Individual contractors would get relicensed every year, in order to be allowed to work as international security guards. There would have to be reporting mechanisms available for watchdog groups (many of whom, like Human Rights First, already track contractor activity), and a citizens’ rights group. In the same way that police forces are policed by citizens as well as the state, citizens in the states where contractors were deployed would have to have access to ombudsmen, complaint bureaus, or even just video cameras (the NGO Witness.org provides cameras to people and helps them download footage of abuse). The actions of individual contractors would be compiled and would affect the rating of the PMSC as a whole, which would also have to have yearly license renewals. In other words, there would need to be a strict oversight apparatus available on the ground (not back in Washington) in order to receive accurate information from frontier-like environments. The creation of a specific profession of “international security guard” would re-embed the PMSC world back in the domestic private security world, rather than forward into a military operations world. Anyone who worked abroad as an armed security provider would be characterized as a bodyguard, rather than a military auxiliary. Hopefully this would be combined with a reassertion of military forces (including National Guard) in the tasks like convoy security that are sometimes subcontracted to a PMSC. This pragmatic solution would attempt to re-brand PMSCs as a more global version of the domestic security guard, and embed the contractors themselves in a new international profession. The caveat would be the need for strict, regular licensing requirements, including perhaps continuing education credits, licensing exams, memberships in professional organizations, and other badges of a recognized profession. The most professional force with the best ratings would also, it is assumed, get the best contracts.

REGULATION CAN ELIMINATE MANY OBJECTIONS TO PMSCs Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 27 Thirdly, regulation that forges clear links between home states and PMCs will help eliminate some of the objections about activities alluded to above. In particular regulation could reduce fears about accountability and human rights abuses. It is hard to argue that a PMC that only works for the state in which it is based undermines the sovereignty of that state. However, creating tight links between the state and PMCs will not address the concern that using private force undermines control over force, and in fact, might heighten these concerns. Unless a regulatory framework places home state PMCs under the same level of scrutiny—both in the public eye and in government – as national soldiers, then those companies can still be criticized for threatening citizens’ control over the use of force. The state bears the lion’s share of responsibility for ensuring that regulation, if it exists, is improved so that oversight mechanisms are enhanced, and for treating regulation where it does not exist. PMCs themselves cannot be accused of immorality on their own; they exist because of demand from states. Regulatory mechanisms are also only as weak as states wish them to be, and it remains to be seen whether or not states choose to make the use of private force more difficult.

RAISING MORAL CONCERNS LEADS TO BETTER REGULATORY REGIME Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 27-8 Fifthly, a different way to deal with the role of moral objections in creating a regulatory regime is to let the objections persist. Moral objections, especially as expressed by individuals in blogs, by the press, and by human rights organizations, are in a sense the reassertion of democratic controls over the use of force. A lively public debate about the morality of PMCs can serve an informal but effective oversight role. The industry can be “regulated” through criticism designed to hold the private military industry to high moral standards, even in the absence of formal legal standards. Making sure ethical questions continue will also ensure that regulation does not become simply a way to facilitate the profitability of companies without considering the broader impact of privatizing security. While this informal role could not and should not replace more concrete regulation, it might be important not to quash moral concerns. Planet Debate 180 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Dangerous and Unaccountable

MORAL OBJECTIONS DRIVE REGULATION OF PMSCs Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 28 The industry works actively to demonstrate that it is not “mercenary” and seeks to distance itself from its more unsavory ancestors. The difficulty is that moral objections to private force reveal there are very clear lines of descent form mercenaries through the PMCs and to the private security companies of today. While PMCs can, and have, worked hard to avoid the ethical objections regarding killing for money, they run into the same objections about tyranny as their predecessors. The disruption of the military relationship between citizen and state, in particular the removal of structures traditionally used to limit the use of force and the reduced influence of public opinion, could be leading states which use PMCs don a path that Rousseau and Machiavelli would have recognized and criticized. The obstacles created by ethical objections to the use of private force may be the only real obstacles in the way of the industry’s route to genuine public acceptance. It may not be possible to remove these obstacles. As it might require significant changes in both the industry and the way we regulate it; even so, latent ethic al worries may not go away. This is as it should be. If moral concerns continue to serve as a check on the state’s ability to use force, and the state must work harder to start and to sustain wars, then moral objections might serve an important purpose alongside regulation.

STATES ARE RESPONSIBLE AND ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE ACTIONS OF PMSCs Chia Lehnardt, NYU School of Law - Researcher, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 155-6 The above analysis demonstrates that there is no legal vacuum in which PMCs operate. States are internationally responsible where PMCs engage in law enforcement or interrogation of prisoners, or where their conduct is controlled by a state. Where states do not directly control PMCs, but rather give a quiet nod to risk prone or abusive conduct, the same reasons why their conduct is not attributed to the state for lack of control can generate state responsibility for lack of due diligence shown with regard to PMCs in conflict zones falls significantly short of what is required under international law. It is open to question whether states are willing to implement an effective oversight and monitoring system: costs are considerable and might raise the costs for retaining PMCs to such an extent that the economic rationale for retaining PMCs’ services is called into question. The fact that the US government responded to the communications and co-ordination problems in Iraq between PMCs on the one hand and between PMCs and the Coalition Force on the other by hiring yet another PMC suggests that prospects are rather bleak. Planet Debate 181 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Violate International Law

INTERNATIONAL LAWS AGAINST MERCENARIES DON’T APPLY TO PMSCs Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 95 Regulating the use of private security has become a necessity. This involves setting clear standards to guard against conflict of interest, govern entry and exist, establish human rights criteria, and provide guidelines for costs and pricing of the services. Pre-certification and/or licensing of private security firms would be required condition for every. While the UN has acted to ban mercenaries – as early as 1968, Resolution 2465 condemned the use of mercenaries; international humanitarian law reinforced this man with the adoption of Article 47 to the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Convention of 1977 and, more recently, with the 1989 International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. It is, at best, questionable that these measures were meant to apply in the context of a regulatory framework for the certification and governance of private security firms.

UN LIKELY TO INCREASE RELIANCE ON PMSCs – CONSISTENT WITH INTERNATIONAL LAW Allan Gerson & Nat J. Colletta, International Relations Professors at George Washington University, 2002, Privatizing Peace; From Conflict to Security, p. 95-6 With post-Cold War downsizing there is an abundance of inexpensive military hardware on the international market, and numerous well-trained military personnel. In weak states, possessing less than effective and loyal armies, private security firms are in demand. This combination of global market supply and State failure has led private security firms to become more active on several fronts; protecting assets of multinationals; protecting humanitarian workers, and assisting, sometimes even supplanting, state security forces. Given this global dynamic, it is increasingly likely that the United Nations will choose to expand its capability in peacekeeping and peace enforcement by acknowledging and properly regulating private security. International law permits states to employ necessary measures to maintain effective control over their territory, and as recently affirmed by the Organization of African Unity thus includes necessary measures to “respect the frontiers existing on their achievement of national independence.” Planet Debate 182 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs are Mercenaries

PMSCs SERVE A LEGITIMATE ROLE – DISTINCT FROM MERCENARIES Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 15 Another line of defense is to show that defining a mercenary by “intent” to profit from military service will include practically any serviceman or woman. Defenders may offer a long list of reasons why they believe these companies are nothing like the feared mercenaries of the past: they are under corporate control; they are contracted by legitimate entities; they are transparent and well-regulated (whatever others may think); and they are accountable on all kinds of levels. Defenders note that PMSCs are legitimate businesses filling a necessary niche in a service industry that has long operated in and around the military. And their actions are undergirded by a fundamental right to contract. Optimists paint a picture of an adaptive and responsive industry that has freed up businesses and governments to pursue legitimate goals with maximum flexibility and responsiveness. Defenders argue that PMSCs do not operate in shadowy illegitimate ways; they are licit, transparent, and organized. PMSCs are “lawful, profit-seeking international companies” that operate “under normal legal and financial constraints. They have little in common with the infamous ‘mercenaries’ of the past that thrived on anonymity and individual gain. PMSCs are legal, visible, and accountable” (Doug Brooks at State Department Forum, quoted in Fisher-Thompson 2003).

MORAL OBJECTIONS TO MERCENARIES DON’T APPLY TO PMSCs Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 23 However, the link provided by shared criticism is the only link between these different types of private force. Objections that center around the idea that it is morally problematic to kill for money rather than cause do not apply as obviously to non-combat PMCs because these companies make a point of avoiding active combat where killing is likely, and indeed supply some services where the potential to use force is not part of the contracts, such as translation. One of the reasons that PMCs have become more internationally acceptable is that they can avoid one of the primary criticisms leveled at mercenaries.

PMSCs CAN REDUCE MERCENARY VIOLENCE – LARGE POTENTIAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AND PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 15-6 But even if they are mercenary-like, defenders argue that it might be possible to admit them back into the coalition of forces working in Iraq or Afghanistan under certain new rules. The feared dangers might be diminished by the very fact that they are “only” motivated by money and “only” restrained by contracts, so they can be fired if anything goes wrong. Moreover, given the large number of potential mercenaries out there, it is better to give them some organized cover of legitimacy, and put them to some good use, lest they come back to haunt us. According to Doug Brooks: “However, widespread international bias against these companies means that their potential for peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and humanitarian rescue missions could very well remain tragically untapped. Ironically, not using legitimate private firms will probably lead to a resurgence of uncontrollable individual freelance mercenaries who will flock to satisfy the profitable demand for military expertise, but who have far less regard for the legitimacy of their clients.” (Brooks 2000) Among these optimists are those who see humanitarian use of these forces augmenting United Nations or NATO missions or even replacing them altogether (see the IPOA Concept Paper in Brooks and Wright 2007; Newton 2008). Planet Debate 183 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs are Mercenaries

MORE ACCURATE TO CATEGORIZE PMSCs AS “AUXILIARY FORCES” THAN “MERCENARIES” Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 17 Some contemporary scholars recognize the various and distinct eras of Roman auxiliary forces, and agree with Machiavelli’s general assessment that, eventually, their skill and organization made them a danger to the overburdened Roman army. One even likens Roman Auxiliary forces to modern-day PMSCs. And while the concept of “auxiliary forces” is less well-known than “mercenary,” it does fit the industry’s own self-definition, offered in defense of the accusation that they are mercenary-like. PMSCs are proxy forces , they work alongside a wholly state-based military, but do not meet the strict definition of national force. Proxy forces come in many shapes and sizes (for an excellent summary of the subject see Davis and Pereira 2003). Sometimes they are indigenous forces, such as Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, which in late 2001 helped the US military oust the Taliban from Afghanistan. Sometimes they are indigenous forces trained by external militaries, such as the Sunni militias that were coopted, armed, and trained as part of the Iraqi counter-insurgency strategy initiated in 2007. In all of these cases, as with the Roman auxiliary forces, rewards have been given for those who align their own strategic goals to those of the central power that provides them logistical support. And in all of them, citizenship is not assumed, and loyalty is in some sense problematic, or based on a different set of incentives than that of a regular military force. Treating PMSCs as proxy forces, rather than mercenaries, allows for a more nuanced and accurate understanding of their activities and functions. It also helps to clarify the dangers of these types of forces, which –as Machiavelli points out—are dangerous precisely because their organizational loyalty, unity, and spirit. But how can we begin to characterize these new proxy forces more precisely? How are they distinct from their predecessors?

“MERCENARY” HAS HISTORICALLY BEEN A DEROGATORY TERM Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 40 In mixed company the term “mercenary” carries a reliably disquieting if wholly explicable connotation. Whether dependent on conscripts or volunteers, the modern army relies implicitly on loyalty to the state. As Anthony Mockler put it, the mercenary has no place here because s/he scandalizes a fundamental myth of the nation-state: that patriotism sustained by a wider ignorance of military history. Nor is the stigma attached to the mercenary label an historical oddity. The mercenary ordure has been actively inflated, sustained and promoted for rational political purposes. Ideological opponents labor diligently to successfully transfer to the present the semantics and imagery attached to undesirables of another era.

PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS JUST AS LIKELY TO ACT ON UNSAVORY MOTIVES AS MERCENARIES – PMSCs INCREASES PROFESSIONALISM Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 45-6 If some of the mercenaries of the 1960s held motives that may have been unhealthy, one should acknowledge that it is equally possible for states’ soldiers to be driven by violent or morbid pathologies of one form or another. These could afflict the recruits of most states’ armies and one might expect the poorer militaries to be more vulnerable. It is prudent forms of discrimination are likely to be primitive in these less advanced. (Bear in mind that poorer states fill the ranks of major UN donors today.) Perhaps surprisingly, this is not so. The most advanced military in the world has recently lowered standards on have done so in the face of falling supply as the war in Iraq becomes increasingly unpopular at home. The decline has reached a point where conservative commentators have suggested that recruiting healthy foreigners with the enticement of US citizenship is better than the preferred option of recruiting Americans with criminal convictions, incomplete high school education and poor cognitive aptitude. In this climate it is not surprising that the US Defense Department seeks changes to legislation which will make it easier to re-classify civilian jobs so that occupants may be sent overseas. More perplexing is the growing gap between the demographic cohort recruited to the armed forces and the US population as a whole. This is manifest in what David Kennedy terms the modern military’s “disjunction” from American society. Perhaps American elites have more in common with privileged medieval Europeans than they care to admit. Both sought (or seek) to avoid ending a relatively pleasant life on a squalid battlefield. Planet Debate 184 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs are Mercenaries

STATES ENGAGE IN MERCENARY BEHAVIOR AS WELL – NOT LIMITED TO INDIVIDUALS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 50 A different and very old kind of state mercenarism occurs when strong states go to war while paying weaker allies to support them. The governments of Thailand, South Korea and the Philippines were paid by the US (or bribed, depending on one’s view) to send soldiers to aid the Americans in their misadventure in Vietnam. The usual retort is that these states held a strategic interest in supporting the anti-communist campaign in Indo-China. This may have been so. But one wonders how enthusiastic the Thai, South Korean and Filipino governments would have remained if each had been required to pay the entire cost of their deployments. Some were sizeable and lengthy. Mercenary states seeking political and financial advantage also send their troops to train and sometimes fight within the armies of other states in unstable parts of the world. Past colonial masters routinely dispatch trainers, advisers and military technical experts to former colonies to serve various purposes arising from self-interest: to secure sales of armaments which benefit home-state corporations; to exercise influence over choices of military and strategic policies as these evolve in newly independent states; to identify sympathetic or subversive elites and maneuver them as interests dictate; and to retain intelligence collection assets and exercise a valuable strategic presence in the region in an apparently benign form. For their part elites within ex-colonial states have been pleased to benefit from this form of state mercenarism. Some use their new skills to put down rebellions by those ethnically distinct citizens who might inconveniently seek their own self- determination.

PMSCs ARE DISTINCT FROM MERCENARIES Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 12-3 There are three main variants of private force in the international system: mercenaries; combat PMCs; and security or non-combat PMCs. A mercenary can be defined as an individual soldier who fights for a state other than his own or for a non-state entity to which he has no direct tie, in exchange for financial gain. The two main instruments of international law dealing with mercenaries, Article 47 of Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries, both highlight the idea that mercenaries are defined by profit-seeking motivations and the fact that they are foreign. Mercenaries will sell their services to the highest bidder and are usually unconcerned about the nature of their clientele. Mercenaries were once common actors on the international stage. Until the sixteenth century, the practice of individual mercenaries organizing bands and selling their services to the highest bidder was widespread; by the seventeenth century, it had largely disappeared. The mercenary trade continued in the sale of entire regiments by one state to another, and by states selling licenses to other states that would allow the recruitment of private citizens. The state-to-state trade in mercenaries ended by the mid- nineteenth century. Mercenaries, again in the form of individual contractors reappeared on the international stage in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, fighting in the wars of decolonization in Africa.’ Combat PMCs are tightly organized companies with a clear corporate structure that provide military services, including offensive combat, in exchange for payment, for states or other actors. Examples include the now-defunct companies Executive Outcomes (EO) and Sandline. Both of these companies insisted that they would only fight for sovereign states and would be selective about their clients. There are currently no companies of this type operating openly in the international system. Non-combat PMCs are similarly organized companies that exchange military services stopping short of combat for payment. These services include translation, close protection, interrogation, logistics, and training, as well as security services for states, NGOs, and corporations. These companies may claim to use force only in self-defense; however, the majority of these services are provided in a military context, and the line between self-defense and combat might be blurred. Nonetheless, it is important to differentiate between the kinds of services provided by EO and Sandline and the type of services offered today. PMCs are no longer in the business of replacing the combat functions of state militaries. PMCs seeking to maintain a legitimate market presence today must be selective about those to whom they offer their services. They are similar to combat companies in that they will work for a variety of states, including, in some cases, the state in which they are based. PMCs also differ in the degree to which they are tied to their home states. American PMCs maintain closer ties with the US government, and do not undertake projects without the government’s explicit approval of that state, granted through the Arms Export Control Act (ACEA). In other states, such as Britain, PMCs are free to choose their own clients, although the state often grants implicit or informal consent. Planet Debate 185 PMCs – Sherry Hall Planet Debate 186 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Bad – Motivated by Profit

PROFIT MOTIVE IS NOT A UNIQUE CRITICISM OF PMSCs Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 14-5 The private military industry has been criticized because of the idea that fighting for financial gain is morally problematic. More specifically, killing in warfare is usually justified by some sort of attachment to an appropriate cause, which has differed throughout history. Causes that have been deemed by society to justify war have varied over time; they include the pursuit or defense of religious or national interests, or the pursuit or defense of the interests of the sovereign state. Mercenaries have been defined as actors who do not share this cause. This objection is not necessarily fair, in that is not inconceivable that some mercenaries or PMCs might adopt the cause of those for whom they fight. Soldiers might also be financially motivated, and not motivated by attachment to a cause. However, as we will see, there have been persistent objections to mercenaries, private military, and private security companies on the grounds that fighting for financial gain rather than for a cause is problematic. Indeed, international law relating to mercenaries makes specific reference to financial gain. In the Diplomatic Conference that led to the creation of the Geneva Conventions, state negotiators defined a mercenary as a “person who is motivated to fight essentially or primarily by the desire for… “hard cash.” Article 47(2)(c) of Protocol I states that a mercenary “is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain” and this language was adopted wholesale in the UN Convention.

PROFIT MOTIVE DOESN’T MORALLY CONDEMN PMSCs Sarah Percy, Research Fellow -Oxford, 2007, From Mercenaries to Market: the rise and regulation of private military companies, eds. S. Chesterman & C. Lehnardt, p. 27 Although it is difficult to overcome moral objections based on status with regulation, it is not impossible to devise regulation that takes moral concerns seriously. The second implication of moral concerns for regulation is that regulation should strictly hold PMCs to their promise of avoiding combat and try to shrink the “grey area” between combat and non-combat operations as much as possible. Such regulation would go an extremely long way to eliminating the objection that private force is problematic because private fighters kill for money. This objection, as noted above, is already difficult to apply to today’s PMCs; making it more difficult still would be a worthwhile goal of regulation. Planet Debate 187 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: Mercenaries are Bad

PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS MOTIVATED BY MONEY AS WELL – NOT A DISTINCTION WITH MERCENARIES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 43-4 A modern definition of the term “mercenary” would be helpful in order to avoid confusion over several types of related but quite different employment. Yet the question of definition is surprisingly difficult. If most mercenaries are professional soldiers but all professional soldiers are not thought to be mercenaries, what is the difference? Contrary to popular belief, this is not a question that revolves around money or nationality and little else. After all, no state’s soldier can carry out his or her task entirely on a diet of patriotism and taxpayer-funded board. At some point they have to be paid. There is simply no means of being certain that money is not a primary motivation for many states’ soldiers. This is particularly the case in armies where volunteers rather than conscripts fill the ranks. In both poor and wealthy states, money will at least be a consideration and one not necessarily tied to patriotism. It would seem ignorant to assert that a state recruit’s motivations do not spring form social forces like ethnic and racial exclusion, limited vocational opportunities and poverty. Professor Detter goes further, suggesting that the sort of trained person who would have sought personal gain as a mercenary in the past may now be a typical volunteer with UN peacekeeping forces. This person might also work in private security. Fijians in Iraq have been employed by both the British Army as well as UK security companies. Employees of both send home remittances which in 2006 represented one of the country’s highest exports earners. Why should one group face discriminatory judgment when both sell their skills to foreigners on the same belligerent side?

MERCENARIES MOTIVATED BY PLEASURE IN THE MILITARY LIFE Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 45 At a base level some mercenary recruits are doubtless attracted by what might be considered exciting or gratifying. The notorious mercenaries who fought in the Congo in the 1960s were there for money to some extent. But they probably held other, less easily defined motives about which it is not easy to generalize. And these may not have been reprehensible. In the West there is much euphemistic cant about “the military life.” Romantic sophistry to one side, military life is largely concerned with the repetitive rigors of training in efficient forms of multiple homicide. There is nothing wrong in principle in many thousands finding this a satisfying life, even if smaller numbers actually enjoy fighting. But for those who do, Mockler suggests society demands that pleasures in war “…should be masked, often hypocritically, under the pretence of devotion to duty.” He points out how in some places a culture of fighting has been historically free from these constraints. Japan is one example. Planet Debate 188 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Unethical

“DIRTY HANDS” CONCEPT DEMONSTRATES ETHICAL JUSTIFICATION OF PMSCs Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 137 Any discussion of the idea of ethics in political life has to confront the problem of “dirty hands.” The phrase comes from the title of a play by Jean Paul Sartre, in which an assassin tries to justify his actions by arguing that politics may sometimes require dirty but necessary acts, and those who care not to dirty themselves should stay away from it. This idea was around long before the twentieth century. Many have thought that politics requires constant moral compromise, necessary evils—and that anyone who thought any different was deluding themselves. An ethical person engaged in politics would have to make this compromise. Walzer addressed the problem in his now-famous essay, “The Problem of Dirty Hands.” PMSCs can easily be seen as an instance of the problem of dirty hands (especially since, as noted in earlier chapters, they are organizations whose protean nature is easily characterized as “dirty”). Those who defend PMCs in the light of the “dirty hands” problem characterize their use as an unfortunate necessity, dictated by uncontrollable circumstance. They claim that the problems caused by their use are minimal compared to the problems caused by their unavailability, and that they are a consequence of the situation: a shortage of military resources, the lack of political will for conflicts, the necessity of doing business in hostile environments. They are the lesser evil, so to speak, and though our use of them is regrettable, it is necessary given the greater good accomplished. Walzer, and Max Weber before him, referred to his problem using a language of tragedy: the policy-maker would rather do something else, but this is all that can be done under the circumstances. Many of the problems associated with the ethics of violence contain this element of tragedy. More often, defenders of the “dirty” aspects of political choices avoid the language of tragedy, and instead employ the language of utility and necessity. In the end, a greater good is accomplished when one makes certain choices; PMSCs are in the businesses of “saving lives” even if they do have bad aspects. The dirty hands are dirty for a clean reason. And there is no tragedy here, only cold, hard, necessary choices, rationally undertaken. They claim that only the politically naïve would imagine that anyone could provide purely ethical security – the real world requires compromises and choices, and the variety of particular situations and problems often justify these “dirty hands.” A realistic justification of PMSCs simply accepts the full consequences of the political choices to fight wars in the way they are not being fought: with an over-stretched military; and in the midst of civil and infrastructure reconstruction goals that require businesses to operate with their own security on the ground.

CONTRACTORS CAN BE MOTIVATED BY EQUALLY GOOD AND SELFLESS MOTIVES AS THE PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER MOTIVATED BY PATRIOTISM Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 47 If one persists in attempts to divide soldiers into those who fight for patriotic nationalism and those who do not, there exist further inconvenient facts which defeat that intention. For example, to suggest that a mercenary fights for both money and in the service of a foreign power is historically unsatisfactory. Hessian conscripts were involuntarily sent to fight by their German superiors who hired them out to George III and the English in their war against the Americans during the 1770s. They in turn fought other German mercenaries who were hired by George Washington to lead and train the army upon which the Americans relied. Motives for mercenarism have varied over the centuries. But military labor forces seem to have been consistently mobile. Urquhart suggests that service to a UN legion would carry a noble cachet in the minds of recruits. This may be true, but why should it be any different if these recruits were members of a contract legion? If one looks further than conventional prejudice there is no reason to think pure motives might not inform the purposes of an upright contract soldier. Why shouldn’t s/he believe that his or her service would make the world a better place in some small but tangible degree? This is why the case that Lynch and Walsh argue is one not easily dismissed: that a mercenary might take up arms for the UN solely in the name of what s/he considers a just cause while rejecting all others. This appears at least an intuitively reasonable premise. The distinction between a mercenary available to oppose internationally legitimized conduct and one willing to carry out that same conduct is one never drawn by those who oppose the use of mercenaries. One could put the point more dramatically: what soldier could be more selfless than an individually recruited contractor who effects a contested entry in a collapsed state as part of an humanitarian intervention? Here is a modern military exemplar waiting to take form. Planet Debate 189 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Unethical

ARGUMENT THAT MILITARY PERSONNEL ACT IN A MORE PROFESSIONAL AND ETHICAL MANNER NOT SUPPORTED Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 67-8 A related issue is the vexed one of the “military ethic.” It is sometimes suggested by defenders of sovereign forces that suitable ethical convictions are the product of constancy in national military training. The argument holds that lateral recruitment into a small military organization with short career paths and an uncertain turnover does not provide the constancy required to inculcate principled beliefs. This view is unconvincing. Contractors chosen in a discriminating fashion may possess principled beliefs learned from earlier and lengthy experience in first world armies. On the other hand, the military ethic possessed by states’ troops from Canada, Italy and Belgium did not inhibit them from torturing, raping, and killing civilians in Somalia in the early 1990s. There seems little or no reason why fruitful indoctrination could not be inculcated in talented candidates. The alternative is a mix of sovereign troops holding uncertain convictions and deployed through more arbitrary means. The point may be illustrated through example.

EMPIRICALLY PMSCs BEHAVED IN A MORE ETHICAL AND DISCIPLINED MANNER THAN UN PEACEKEEPING FORCES Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 68 The ECOMOG force in Sierra Leone was well known for its ill discipline and criminality. The Nigerians in particular were noted for their vicious retaliation towards suspected RUF members and sympathizers. In contrast, an adviser to both EO and Sandline has emphasized that the EO force was disciplined and well-behaved. Others in the industry stress the absence of delinquent conduct by EO towards civilians, something which critics seemed to fear. Some academic opinions corroborated EO’s restraint in relations with the populace, while elements of the citizenry expressed respect for the effectiveness of the company. EO’s corporate intervention enabled thousands of displaced persons to re-settle in the Kono region, although this may have been an incidental consequence of an extractive agenda. It seems that EO also assisted civilian re-settlement while providing security, logistics and intelligence to humanitarian groups. One might speculate as to why the company apparently devoted some effort to humanitarian support which was not strictly a military necessity. Zarate suggests this was undertaken with an eye to future legitimacy, something necessary in order to engage new clients and address broader international politics. This makes some sense. The British Special Representative to Sierra Leone also suggested to the author that by the 1990s the South Africans saw it in their commercial interests to improve their battlefield adherence to international humanitarian norms.

PMSC CONTRACTORS LESS LIKELY TO ENGAGE IN TRAFFICKING Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 71 The corporate approach may also result in a decrease in trafficking of goods and persons: fuel, ammunition, cigarettes, prostitutes, and amongst certain UN troops. Many of those responsible are also subject to unsatisfactory criminal law regimes. By contrast, future crime control over contractors could be assisted by a new UN criminal justice regime, perhaps resembling the model described in Chapter Six and supported by a culture of rigorous behavior towards internal discipline, treatment of civilians, property, juveniles, and proscribed drugs. To that end management would find it in its interests to hire personnel from the better armed forces and to exclude those from the more disreputable militaries. One might consider candidates from units where both morale and military professionalism spring not from unreliable patriotism, but a distinctive espirit de corps. Candidates might include veterans of established mercenary units like the Nepalese Gurkhas or the French Foreign Legion. Planet Debate 190 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Undermine Democracy

PMSCs MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR DEMOCRACIES TO TAKE NECESSARY BUT UNPOPULAR ACTIONS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 138-9 Legal scholar Floyd Abrams goes even further: democracies, and especially democracies during wartime, need the ability “to do things off the books and below the radar screen.” Without the ability for the right to “not know” what the left hand is doing, no democracy can survive. This is a version of the “dirty hands’ problem, but one in which the pure and clean right hand remains oblivious to the nefarious but effective left hand. Given the propensity of PMSCs for fraud and their ability to pursue policies that are beyond the reach of democratic control, any attempt to establish some kind of reasonable command and control seems insincere and half-hearted. Sometimes the right hand wants to allow the left hand to get away with certain behaviors even as it scrambles for the image of doing the right thing. Planet Debate 191 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Undermine Security Goals

MODERN SECURITY NEEDS BETTER MET BY BUSINESS MODEL THAN TRADITIONAL HIERARCHICAL ONES Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 33 The military is under pressure from three fronts: from the changing realities of new wars, from the political requirement of low-risk wars, and from their distance from the surrounding civilian culture. As Martin van Creveld noted, “the most powerful modern armed forces are largely irrelevant to modern war—indeed their relevance stands in inverse proportion to their modernity.” By contrast, the civilian world in the age of rapid globalization has moved away from strict hierarchy, vertically integrated structures and formal rules toward businesses and organizations run by much looser and informal models, watched and monitored by the regulatory state. Large bureaucratic organizations with hierachically based notions of authority that privilege the group over the individual and a way of life over a short-term contract, are out of step with the late-modern world, for better or worse. As Christopher Coker noted to a sober group of military officers at a conference, “’Sorry guys, it’s all contracts now.’ They didn’t want to believe me,” he admitted.

PMSCs WILL SUPPORT THE INTERESTS OF THE STATES THAT HIRE THEM Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 96-7 Unlike train-and-equip corporations based in the United States, Sandline management did not appear to promote British foreign policy in the same prescriptive sense in which American PMSC directors seem to view the world on behalf of US Administrations. This is a matter hinging on differing political history and military cultures on either side of the Atlantic. Clive Jones has argued that British history bequeathed a more tolerant legacy for UK-controlled PMSCs. The candidly titled “British Mercenary Organization” operated in Yemen on the side of the Royalist forces during the 1962- 65 hostilities. Jones contends that this entity was the historical antecedent to modern PMCs which took form 30 or more years later. Of course, Sandline’s Western-oriented interests dictated an expedient and understandably businesslike view of politics. Keeping on positive terms with Washington and London in order to avoid being identified as an irritant to the hegemonic order was a different obligation, if at times a no less onerous one. It is sometimes said that modern PMSCs are unlikely to subvert the policies of those states in which they are based. This argument appears strongest where companies are registered or have head offices in powerful states with global interests and complex responsibilities. Likewise, the implications of an absence of patronage can be crucial. One reason for EO’s decline was that it did not enjoy the support of the (then) new South African regime. The company instead attracted ideological hostility, suspicion and eventually restrictive legislation.

PROTEAN ORGANIZATIONS LIKE PMSCs BEST ABLE TO RESPOND TO CONTEMPORARY SECURITY ISSUES Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 38-9 These protean organizations are also operating in complex environments, and dealing with what have been called “wicked” public policy issues – that is, hard to solve problems like urban crime or healthcare. “Wicked” issues require networks of many different types of organizations working alongside each other in various partnership arrangements (see especially Lowndes and Skelcher 1998). Complex emergencies wherein military, humanitarian, intelligence, diplomatic, and reconstruction activities exist simultaneously, like in Iraq or Afghanistan, could easily be seen as one of these “wicked issues” requiring just these kinds of complex organizational arrangements, and shape-shifting agencies. The protean quality of PMSCs must be put front and center as an object of analysis. Any calls for better regulation, oversight, and transparency are only possible when the phenomenon to be regulated is better understood. PMSCs combine aspects from very different cultures, or ways of life: the business world, the world of the military, and the world of non- governmental humanitarian organizations. This is not a benign clash of cultures. Since the work of these firms takes place in “hostile environments” and “complex emergencies” amidst “wicked issues,” and involves men who are more often than not heavily armed, the stakes are much higher. Planet Debate 192 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Undermine Security Goals

NATURE OF WARFARE IS SHIFTING AWAY FROM THE NEED FOR STRICT HIERARCHICAL MILITARY ORGANIZATIONS Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 54-5 Former President George W. Bush repeatedly reminded the world after the attacks of September 11, 2001 that “we are fighting a new war, against a new enemy.” This new war would require new types of weaponry, anew array of forces on the ground, and new strategies for combat. In fact, his announcement of a new enemy and a new way of war was old news. Throughout the previous decade, scholars and military analysts had been united in describing the types of conflicts as new, even if they were divided on exactly what these new wars actually were. Most famously, Israeli military scholar Martin van Creveld announced a fundamental “transformation of war.” Classic state-based war was being eroded; and current strategies were “either wrong or obsolete…today the most powerful modern armed forces are largely irrelevant to modern war – indeed that their relevancy stands in inverse proportion to their modernity.” In order to understand these new wars, it is necessary to first understand what is being overturned; or perhaps more appropriately, defeated. There are many ways to describe what has been left behind. Van Crevald referred to it as “trinitarian warfare,” after Clausewitz’s oft-repeated thesis that wars are the result of a “remarkable trinity” of forces: the irrational passions of a people, the rational calculations of a government’s policy, and the ‘probability and chance’ that the army and its commanders try to bend to their will. War is suspended between these three forces, “like an object suspended between three magnets.” Warfare now is distinctly “non-trinitarian”; the state, army and people are often disconnected; the forces that once might have balanced a magnet are more chaotic than ever. Some modern military strategies now refer to various ‘generations” of warfare: we have now passed into the fourth generation since the beginning of the modern nation state in 1648. Earlier generations stressed order above all: war was state-directed, commands were to be obeyed, soldiers were to fight in ordered columns. Gradually more and more decentralization began to occur: initiative in achieving goals rather than obeying orders was accepted, strategy began to stress maneuver and “non-linear” battles. Fourth generation warfare is more chaotic and decentralized than ever: we now fight non-state actors who are more protean than anything, and we fight with an array of protean forces ourselves. In general, then, old wars were inter-state conflicts, where massive firepower was brought to bear, often requiring a total-war economy in order to produce and sustain the necessary military might.

GROWTH OF PMSCs PART OF THE TREND TOWARD THE CHANGING NATURE OF WESTERN WARFARE Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 59 These essential features of warfare have supplied a foundation for military transformation: only those changes which do not challenge these genetic features will be easily accepted. How does contemporary conflict comply with these features? On the one hand, the military’s use of technological solutions has not changed; new uses of unmanned aerial vehicles are only the tip of the robot-warrior iceberg. But on the other three fronts, new wars present significant challenges for the contemporary military. The new battlefield is populated by mostly unseen, hidden, enemies, who if they are seen at all, are often seen in the act of blowing themselves up. The regular army is being augmented by contractors, many of them non-citizens. The ideas which are fought for, as van Creveld notes, are either so broad as to be meaningless (“humanity, freedom for all”) , or too suspect to be workable (“to make the world safe for business”). The political ideologies which substituted for religious holy wars have devolved (or evolved) into vague humanitarian ideals. The culture of Western war, in other words, is undergoing a massive shift, for better or worse. Despite the proliferation of violence, especially violence to civilians, some scholars argue that these wars are not wars at all: they are remnants of a type of war that has slowly been delegitimized in the last half of the twentieth century. John Mueller compares “old” warfare with slavery, which has occurred in some horrific form or another for thousands of years, only to be gradually delegitimized and eventually outlawed. Warfare itself could be undergoing a similar slow demise. Instead, warfare is being replaced with the violence of criminality on the one hand, and law enforcement (often by state-based militaries) on the other (Mueller 2004). Planet Debate 193 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Undermine Security Goals

PMSCs RISE ARE A NATURAL RESPONSE TO CHANGING NATURE OF WARFARE – OBJECTIONS ARE REALLY TO THE SHIFT NOT THE PMSCs Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 59-60 Mueller argues that war has not been transformed into something new, but is slowly disappearing altogether. In its place is the kind of indiscriminate violence that targets civilians, sometimes in genocidal numbers, and for the purpose of mass terror. Meuller is not arguing that violence has abated at all: but the shape of violence is markedly different, and even more importantly, the way in which it is judged, culturally and politically, has been transformed. The cultural idea of warfare is the big shift and transformation, and only by fully understanding this cultural shift can we see how private military firms have begun to flourish as defensive security actors, doing a form of policing in an insecure world. Much of the outcry over private military firms, I maintain, has to do with these underlying transformations, themselves aspects of late-modern warfare, all of which present fundamental challenges to centuries-old ideas about how warfare should be conducted. First and foremost is the bifurcation of the battlefield into legitimate, regular, state- supported, soldiers, and illegitimate, irregular enemy combatants. But the cultural ideals of the military are often years behind the reality of its composition, and the popular imagination of the battles it fights rarely bear resemblance to their reality.

“HIDDEN” NATURE OF PMSC CASUALTIES ALLOWS MILITARY OPERATION THAT WOULD OTHERWISE BE PUBLICLY OBJECTED TO Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 89 Analysts of the PMSC industry have long noted that one of the perceived benefits of the use of contractors is that their casualties (and risks) go unrecognized or under-reported. Awareness of contractor deaths is hampered by two things: there is no centralized means of reporting them, and many of the contractors, including security forces, are hired from other countries, and so their deaths go unnoticed by the American press. There is no question that contractor casualties are generally under- reported, and that the public display of mourning or acknowledgement of heroism is muted in contrast to the treatment of the deaths of soldiers. Debates have arisen about whether or not to add the names of contractors to war memorials, and on the proper ritual for an honorable burial. The use of contractors is thus the result of a political risk calculation: how much loss can be openly sustained, or risked, in any current use of the military? How much of that loss could be minimized through the use of contractors, whose actions will be understood and calculated on a different “risk/return” rubric? Again the point here is not the search for an actual cost, or the actual risk. These assessments are qualitative, not quantitative in nature. The costs and benefits of any given policy choice will be different depending on how the risks are characterized. Much of the social science and economic research on the problem of rational risk assessment involves trying to ascribe meaning to the hidden costs of any policy choice, costs that may not figure in the initial risk assessment, but which show up as unintended consequences, or as costs of the simple act of choosing one strategy over another. As the mission changes, the costs of one choice over another may grow.

PMSCs ARE A RESPONSE TO GROWING RISK-AVERSION BY THE MILITARY Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 66 At the same time, the military has been criticized in recent decade as too risk-averse to fight wars properly. They have been accused of flying too high to bomb accurately, or of avoiding the political cost of casualties by outsourcing jobs to contractors or other proxy forces, and in general putting more of a premium on the lives of its soldiers than on the lives of those they are sent to protect. The last part of this chapter will address the ways in which the military has adapted to the new risk environment of what Edward Luttwak called “post-heroic warfare,” and the role of PMSCs in this shift. Later in this chapter, I will analyze these two different risk cultures or postures in order to explain the expanding role of PMSCs in military operations. Planet Debate 194 PMCs – Sherry Hall AT: PMSCs Undermine Security Goals

PMSCs WILLING TO TAKE ON RISKS THAT THE “CASUALTY-AVERSE” MILITARY WILL NOT Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 90-1 Around the same time that the insurance industry was stepping in to underwrite political risks no longer seemingly secured by the state, the US military seemed to become, for a variety of reasons, wary of taking military risks. For it seemed as if the Untied States especially had entered an era in which foreign policy and military engagements had to be done light-handedly, with technology doing the most of the work, and civilians taking most of the hits. In the midst of this debate about how much risk could be justified by regular military forces, the private military industry offered itself as a “risk-free” alternative to exposing expensive troops to anything but their “core mission.” “Acting as if these guys are only risking their lives for money is false. In fact, it may be that this is a kind of risk acceptability they can stomach. The conventional military may be too risk averse, too sclerotic, to compete.” (Mandel 2002) The term “casualty phobia” – sometimes referred to as “casualty aversion” or “force protection fetishism” – has come to describe the reluctance of military commanders to risk the lives of ground troops, and the corresponding overuse of air power and “overwhelming force.” As the use of psychoanalytic terms suggests, this phobia or fetish is somewhat irrational and unreal: it denied the reality of what is required on the ground, and perhaps even the moral status of the endeavor. In fact, as with the debate about what a true “risk” actually is, the debate about casualties is often based on a strange combination of assigning a certain value to casualties – a body count – and then predicting when the political will for a certain mission will be lost. The language of risk and return is wrapped up in the debate about how casualties literally “count” and what proportionate value should be placed on measures which may complete a mission but expose more soldiers to threats.

PMSCs INCREASE STATE FLEXIBILITY IN MEETING SECURITY GOALS Malcolm Hugh Patterson, International Law & Relations Professor – University of New South Wales, 2009, Privatizing Peace: A corporate adjunct to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, p. 167-8 The incident was foreseeable. It arose form the fact that those attributes which states value when deploying contract personnel in violent circumstances are exactly the same traits which create various moral and other hazards. To reiterate some of the material in Chapter 3, contractors are sufficiently detached to deliver to states a degree of political convenience where a military uniform may prove unpopular in theater; they supply greater expendability where the political consequences of injured or deceased military personnel may otherwise give pause to political decision makers; or where the costs to the state of those injured or ill are likely to be less than soldiers who may enjoy more generous benefits for a longer period; and PMSCs sometimes lower the costs of state association where contractors (rather than troops) conduct themselves in an unsavory fashion. Modern governments continue to balance what they see as desirable features of armed agents against the risks and consequences of losing an uncertain degree of control – choice of weaponry being one example. Planet Debate 195 PMCs – Sherry Hall Impact of PMSCs on Stability Unclear

UNCLEAR IF RISE OF PMSCs WILL INCREASE OR DECREASE STABILITY Kateri Carmola, Political Philosophy Professor Middlebury College, 2010, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, risk, law and ethics, p. 60 I have to admit to a certain amount of ambivalence about the waning of state power in the arena of war and combat. On the one hand, one of the primary purposes of state creation was to rein in disparate violent groups of people. On the other hand, in so doing the nation-state created an abstract reason for violence; defense of the abstract entity known as “the state” and, along with it, inaugurated an era of total warfare, from the French Revolution to nuclear war. The apparent weakening of the state, evidenced in part by the rise of private security forces, may herald an age of not only mercenaries, but limited wars, in the best of circumstances, “policing wars” in areas of instability, and in the worst case a return to the endemic instability and disorder of the early- modern age.

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