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Eroding State Authority? Private Military Companies and the Legitimate Use of Force

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Eroding State Authority? Private Military Companies and the Legitimate Use of Force Centro Militare di Studi Strategici - Roma Eroding State Authority? Private Military Companies and the Legitimate Use of Force Anna Leander (University of Minho Portugal) Rubbettino Copyright © by CeMiSS Centro Militare di Studi Strategici Piazza della Rovere, 83 - 00165 Roma (RM) e-mail: [email protected] © 2006 - Rubbettino Editore 88049 Soveria Mannelli - Viale Rosario Rubbettino, 10 -Tel. (0968) 6664201 www.rubbettino.it Contents Introduction p. 7 1. The context of the study: three debates about the state and the regulation of the use of force 8 2. Differentiating states: a focus on Western states 12 3. State regulation of the use of force: authority and control 14 4. State authority relations and Private Military Companies 19 5. The framework of analysis 21 6. Outline of the Study 24 I Contextualizing Private Military Companies 1. A Historical Perspective on Private Military Companies: Breaking the Privatisation and Nationalisation Trend 29 1. Private military companies more than a fashionable illusion 30 2. State authority and the trend towards centralisation and nationalization 35 2.1 Spatial control over the use of force 36 2.2 State control over production and allocation of force 39 2.3 State control over the military institution 40 3. Revisiting the importance of centralised national control for state authority 42 Conclusion 47 2. Private Military Companies Today: The Commodification of Military Services and its Limits 49 1. From the private military sector to the market for force 50 2. The firms’ activities: providers, consultants and support firms 55 3. The contracts and the clients 59 4. Official regulation 66 Conclusion 70 5 II The Impact of PMCs on State Authority 3. State Authority I: The Military and Private Military Companies p. 75 1. Contractors on the battlefield 76 2. The contract culture and public soldiers 84 3. Evaluating the past and planning for the future 90 Conclusion 94 4. State Authority II: Democratic Politics and Private Military Companies 97 1. Democratic control of privatisation 98 2. Cultivating Contacts 104 3. Prioritising private efficiency and technology 108 Conclusion 115 5. State Authority III: International Society and Private Military Companies 117 1. The direct international authority of private firms 118 2. Redefining interests in international society 123 3. The Standing of Non-State Actors 129 Conclusion 135 Conclusion 137 Annexe: A History of Regulation of Private Military Companies (PMCs) 145 References 153 6 Introduction This study probes the question of how the rise and development of pri- vate military companies (PMCs1) is affecting the authority of Western states to define and regulate the use of force. It is an inquiry into the extent to which private military companies are merely “tools” in the hands of the state, as of- ten assumed. It is an inquiry into the extent to which the delegation of tasks to private actors also entails a privatisation of authority. It is an attempt to think about a link whose existence is often denied. In a typical vein one ob- server writes: most would argue that the power to authorise and delegate the use of military force should remain with states, preferably at the level of the UN Security Council. But once agreed, exactly what or who is deployed is less important – the issue then is to find the most effective and least costly alternative (Shearer 2001: 30). This report asks whether cost effectiveness is really the issue at stake and whether who is deployed is of limited importance. The political intuition it departs from is that who “is deployed” matters a great deal. It is absolutely essential for governments, for armed forces and for citizens not only to ask “what is most effective and least costly” alternative. They also need to ask what consequences different alternatives have for the authority over the use of force (and more specifically the state monopoly on the legitimate use of force). The aim of this study is first and foremost to spell out the lines along which such questions have to be asked and discussed. It will rely extensive- 1 PMCs will be used in this report to include provider, consulting and logistics firms work- ing with military matters (borrowed from Singer 2003; also International Consortium of Inves- tigative Journalists 2002a). A more detailed discussion of this definition and of the substantive activities of present days PMCs is found in chapter 2. 7 ly on examples and empirical argumentation from real existing cases in or- der to do this. The aim is not to provide the answer to what kind of pub- lic/private division is best, and even less is it to say that state authority over the use of force in its present form is a value in itself to be safeguarded at any cost. These are profound political issues on which no agreement can rea- sonably be expected. The point is to show that “delegation” to private firms really does raise issues of state authority and to urge that this “privatisation of authority” receive more explicit attention and be subject to more con- scious debate at the level of the armed forces, governments and international institutions. This introduction will clarify precisely how and why the question about the relationship between delegation and privatisation of authority is raised and how the study will treat it. It has the dual aim of explaining the focus and the logic of the study to follow. The introduction will therefore first point out that the question draws its general relevance and interest from its framing within an ongoing discussion about eroding/evolving sovereignty, post-mod- ern wars, state authority, and new medievalism. It will then proceed to argue that to move forwards in this discussion, it is important to avoid a focus on states in general. This study will do this by focusing exclusively on Western states. Third, it will argue for the importance of disentangling questions sur- rounding authority and questions surrounding control when it comes to re- flecting on the legitimate use of force, and more specifically it will explain why the focus in this study is on authority and how it will be understood. Howev- er, forth it is obviously important to underline the scope and limits of a study of the impact of private military companies on state authority. While such a study is important in and of itself because of the intense current political dis- cussions about privatisation, it cannot explain changing state authority on its own. Keeping this general caveat in mind, it becomes possible to set up a framework of analysis and to explain the outline of the study to follow as the two last sections of the introduction do. 1. The context of the study: three debates about the state and the regulation of the use of force This study is inscribed in the overall discussion concerning the evolving nature of the state, and more particularly in the part of that debate which deals with the use of force. Over the past two decades the future (or end) of the state has become a central, if not the most central topic of discussion in political sci- 8 ence and International Relations (IR2), and it is to this discussion that the pres- ent study addresses3. Although the role of the state in relation to the legitimate use of force has been a stepchild in this overall debate, there is and has always been some interest in the issue. It is striking how little space is devoted to the question of the relationship between the state and the use of force in the otherwise very rich and varied lit- erature debating whether or not the state is at present retreating and – if yes – where we should look to explain and understand this retreat. The “globalisa- tion debate”, which has fuelled much of the current interest in the future of the state, has above all been skewed towards economic and sociological issues (Le- ander 2001a and b; Guillen 2001; Scholte 2000). Consequently, whereas dis- cussions about the future of the welfare state, the future of democracy, the fu- ture of economic and monetary policies or the future role of the state in the shaping judgements about identities and justice loom large in the literature, in- terest in the use of force is rather sparse. Most general surveys of the future of the state devote little or no space to the issue. Scholte’s introduction to Glob- alization spends a total of 2,5 pages on the question (pp. 208-211) as the bulk of the chapter on (In)Security is used to discuss the ecological, economic and identity related aspects of security. Those who do pay attention to the issue of- ten deal with one part of the issue such as arms trade (Held et al.) or treat it in- directly through e.g. the impact of identity politics (Castells) (Held, McGrew et al. 1999; Castells 1996b; Scholte 2000)4. Even if there are signs that the situ- ation might be evolving, as 9/11 and the growing emphasis on military affairs and violence are touching also the debate about the state and globalisation (e.g. Muthien and Taylor 2002; Pugh 2002). The issue of security is only emerging in a debate that is already mature in many other areas. To say that in the overall picture of the debate about the future of the state, the question about its relationship to the use of force plays a rather lim- ited role is not to claim that nothing is written on the issue. On the contrary there are at least three partly overlapping discussions about the evolving role of the state in regulating the use of force: the debate about the implications of “post-modern warfare”, the debate about “multilayered governance and 2 The standard practice of distinguishing between International Relations (IR) as an aca- demic discipline and international relations as a political practice will be followed in this report.
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