University of Miami Law School Institutional Repository University of Miami Inter-American Law Review 4-1-2005 War For Sale! Battlefieldon C tractors in Latin America & the 'Corporatization' of America's War on Drugs Kristen McCallion Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.law.miami.edu/umialr Part of the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Kristen McCallion, War For Sale! Battlefield Contractors in Latin America & the 'Corporatization' of America's War on Drugs, 36 U. Miami Inter-Am. L. Rev. 317 (2005) Available at: http://repository.law.miami.edu/umialr/vol36/iss2/8 This Comment is brought to you for free and open access by Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Miami Inter- American Law Review by an authorized administrator of Institutional Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 317 War For Sale! Battlefield Contractors in Latin America & the 'Corporatization' of America's War on Drugs Kristen McCallion* I. INTRODUCTION The Pentagon's efforts to increase efficiency by utilizing troops for purely military missions, combined with the incredible technological development in aircraft and military equipment, have resulted in a largely accepted, yet hardly understood phe- nomenon - the outsourcing of military work to private military companies. Private military companies ("PMCs") are business organizations which provide professional services inexorably linked to warfare.1 PMCs deliver military services, conduct mili- tary and combat training, provide security services, and supply technical expertise and intelligence to the United States govern- ment all over the world. The global business of PMCs is thriving, but to what extent we do not exactly know. What we do know however, is that today, privatized military contracting is indeed a lucrative business. It is estimated that PMCs generate at least $100 billion in revenue annually from the U.S. government. 2 In fact, many of these private military compa- * Juris Doctor Candidate, May 2005, University of Miami School of Law. I would like to thank my parents, Loretta and Joseph McCallion, for their endless support of all my endeavors, particularly, law school. I would also like to thank my advisor, Professor Ricardo J. Bascuas for his guidance, criticism and perspective regarding this comment, as well as former Senator Bob Barr, the Sundance Channel and lastly, Edwin Deneen, whose "guidelines" always keep me on the right track. This comment is dedicated to the families of the contractors held hostage in Colombia. May awareness create a path to reparation. 1. The companies that comprise the privatized military industry are referred to as private military companies ("PMCs") or private military firms ("PMFs"). Additionally, author and Brookings Institute scholar P.W. Singer organizes the privatized military industry into three sectors: "military provider firms, military consultant firms, and military support firms." PETER W. SINGER, CORPORATE WARRIORS: THE RISE OF THE PRIVATIZED MILITARY INDUSTRY 91 (2003). According to Singer, a military consulting firm "provide [s] advisory and training services integral to the operation and restructuring of a client's armed forces" by offering "strategic, operational, and/or organizational analysis." Id. at 95. For the purposes of this Comment, the term 'PMCs' encompasses all of these sectors. 2. See Interview by Multinational Monitor with Peter W. Singer, The Privatized Military: The Unmonitored, Unregulated and Unchecked Global Growth of Private 318 INTER-AMERICAN LAW REVIEW [Vol. 36:2 & 3 nies ranked in the 2004 Fortune Global 500 List.3 A leading con- tractor exemplifying the camaraderie between PMCs and the current Bush Administration is Kellogg Brown & Root, a unit of Vice President Richard Cheney's oil powerhouse Halliburton, which was awarded a $16 million contract for constructing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.4 Despite these high-priced contracts, government officials maintain that privatization saves taxpayers money, yet this claim is still up for debate.5 Addition- ally, the U.S. Department of State asserts that PMCs, such as Arlington-based Military Professional Resources Incorporated ("MPRI"), are capable of providing advanced training more effec- tively and at a lower cost than the United States Army. As a result, the Pentagon compensates PMCs with more than $4 billion a year for training American troops alone.6 In addition to training, civilian contractors, as PMC employ- ees, act as technical experts for sophisticated weaponry, and are stationed on or near battlefields to be available for emergency repairs and maintenance.7 In some instances, contractors identify potential enemy targets in a combat zone, as well as rescue and salvage downed aircraft. As a result, contractors have become heavily involved in overseas conflicts.' Today, civilian contractors battle Colombian guerilla rebel groups, man armed helicopters, and train the Colombian Army. Their employment, commenced as assistance to aid the United States in its 'War on Drugs,' has grown out of proportion to what their original contracts provided. As a result, critics have charac- Military Firms, MULTINATIONAL MONITOR, Mar. 1, 2004, available at 2004 WL 76991271. 3. Northrop Grumman ranked # 155, Halliburton ranked # 322 and Computer Sciences Corporation ("CSC") ranked # 366. The Fortune Global Five Hundred - World's Largest Corporations, FORTUNE, July 26, 2004, at 163. 4. See Carol Rosenberg, Building of Prison at Guantanamo Begins, MIAMI HERALD (Feb. 28, 2002), available at www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/ cuba/2760497.htm. 5. See Deborah Avant, Mercenaries, FOREIGN POL'Y, July 1, 2004, available at 2004 WL 63562921. 6. See SINGER, supra note 1, at 67. 7. See Earle Eldridge, Civilians Put Expertise on the Front Line; Thousands Serve Their Country in War on Terror, USA TODAY, Dec. 5, 2001, available at 2001 WL 5477882. 8. See id. A DynCorp employee, who oversaw aircraft maintenance in the Gulf War stated, "'We were well aware of the biological threat and the threat from Scud missiles . .. '[w]e were stationed about a mile from enemy lines, but sometimes we had to go in to retrieve downed aircraft. It was a little scary.'" Id. Additionally, a civilian worker admitted to signing "'paperwork saying they are emergency essential and that they may be subject to combat hostilities.'" Id. 20051 CONTRACTORS IN LATIN AMERICA 319 terized U.S. activity in Colombia "as a small, undeclared war[.]" 9 As civilian contractors perform virtually every function essen- tial to a successful military operation, it comes as no surprise that they have been characterized as modern day mercenaries. The overwhelming number of civilian contractors, ° combined with the sheer breadth of military operations in which they are engaged, results in a distortion of the boundary between military and civil- ian roles. Additionally, the employment of civilian contractors by the government raises issues regarding government liability, responsibility, and deniability for civilian action, as Congressional troop cap mandates are circumvented and profit maximizing pro- cedures are implemented to the detriment of these civilian warfighters. This Comment argues that the current status of government accountability is merely 'plausible deniability.' Plausible deniability has become an accepted stance as PMCs act as third parties whose presence justifies the government's denial of direct participation. Section II of this Comment explains the current war in Latin America and the United States' involvement under the Andean Regional Initiative. This section focuses on Colombia, where narcotics and guerilla organizations dominate the jungles in which civilian contractors are engaged in warfare. Section III of this Comment identifies the most active PMCs in Latin America. This section provides a description of PMC capabilities and examines a selection of the vast responsibilities PMCs have undertaken for the government in the United States and abroad. Section IV of this Comment describes Congressional budget approvals and corresponding mandates, like the military troop cap, which have been implemented in accord with the escalating privatized war in Latin America. This section depicts the tactics utilized to circumvent this troop cap, the resulting lack of public oversight over civilian contractors and the detrimental affects of PMC profit maximization. Section IV also illustrates the secrecy surrounding PMC contracts and provides an analysis of the conse- quences of plausible deniability and the diverging goals between the government and PMCs. Section V concludes. 9. Ian Traynor, The Privatizationof War, THE GUARDIAN, Dec. 10, 2003, available at 2003 WL 64378449. 10. It is estimated that the Pentagon employs over 700,000 private contractors stationed all over the globe. See Greg Guma, Outside View: PrivatizingWar, UNITED PRESS INT'L (July 7, 2004), available at http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Outside- view privatizing_070804.htm. 320 INTER-AMERICAN LAW REVIEW [Vol. 36:2 & 3 II. AMERICA'S WAR ON DRUGS - PLAN COLOMBIA AND THE ANDEAN REGIONAL INITIATIVE Both the Clinton and Bush Administrations have hired PMCs to diminish coca crops in Latin American countries, particularly in the Andean Region. PMCs such as DynCorp, MPRI, and Northrop Grumman receive over $1 billion a year to fly fumigation spray planes to eradicate coca fields in Colombia and monitor drug traf- fickers from remote radar sites.11 The United States