Reihan: Why Private Military Contractors Are A Good Thing

A debate has erupted over US reliance on private military contractors in Iraq and elsewhere. My sense is that the brilliant and decidedly uneven Robert Young Pelton, a staunch critic of PMCs, has set the tone for the debate. My own view is different. We do depend on PMCs, we're likely to depend on them even more over time, and this is a very good thing. Consider John Robb's thoughts on the subject.

The defining fact of our time, as John Mueller has argued, is the decline of war. This, of couse, contradicts the Colin Gray view and I can see how it might seem strange given the bloody conflicts that dominate the headlines. But this doesn't change the normative shift that has taken place over the last century, from a time when military aggression was seen as both inevitable and acceptable to the present, when it is seen as an offense against all things good and decent. A similar normative shift was behind the decline of enslavement in the West, which began long before the vile practice became economically impracticable. Ideology matters.

The kind of conflicts we're seeing and are likely to see are far more like crime, pervasive and opportunistic, than like conventional interstate warfare. The patriotic sentiments that motivated volunteer armies in the past are harder to apply to campaigns designed to strengthen vulnerable foreign states, or to limit the extent of bunkering and other criminal activities that have no obvious ideological valence. And so we will need to rely on skilled professionals to help police the world.

To be sure, there are legitimate concerns about abuses committed by PMCs. That is a failure of the US and Iraqi governments, but not of PMCs as a matter of principle.

Comments

What's the argument for _privacy_ here?

Posted by berger | September 28, 2007 4:17 PM

Yes, the US needs hundreds of thousands of armed thugs who answer to no law in order to, uh, save money. That this will encourage military aggression - like the invasion of Iraq - because of the "they're just mercenaries" argument which beats even "they all volunteered" on the pure selfishness scale is just part of the charm.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 28, 2007 4:25 PM

The Marine Corps "second motto" behind Semper Fidelis is "Every Marine a Rifleman". The result as I saw in Viet Nam was rear areas that required no assigned infantry for security, an on-demand ready reserve in place when a sudden change in local conditions required more troops, and truck drivers who could shoot their way out of an ambush. The current allocation of contrators, particularly as designated shooters, is a game played to juggle numbers for public relations. Combat troops who aren't counted in the troop totals, combat expenses buried in the logistics budget, etc. And no, I will not believe that war with a profit ever makes war cheaper. In addition, this isolates the citizen from the impact of war even more than a "professional" military made up of people from families the elite will never even meet.

Posted by Roger Tompkins | September 28, 2007 7:01 PM

Mercs? Are you kidding? Mercs cost a lot more than regular military. How are they gonna be held accountable? Do we want more situations like Iraq? A great way to win hearts and minds. Glad to see you support the road to fascism.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | September 28, 2007 11:54 PM

This seems to be a bizarre argument.

I understand the idea: the fact that people don't want to fight wars is a good thing. The problem lies in the fact that private contractors make people want to fight more wars.

Very few people claim that military contractors are used as a way of eliminating the military or war altogether. If anything these private corporations have increased interest in perpetually fighting wars by developing a permanent warrior class.

The availability of the Gurkhas increased the British interest in waging the Falkland Islands War. The availability of the French Foreign Legion allowed the French to start multiple poorly-considered conflicts in the Sahara and Middle East that overextended French imperial ability, increasing colonial dissatisfaction, and probably hastened the end of the French imperial adventure.

It would be one thing if private military contractors had shown themselves to be more capable than the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have not, and there is concern that outfits such as Blackwater have made fighting harder.

These military contractors suggest that the connection between public support for fighting war as soldiers, and the military capability to wage war has been severed. Without this connection, political leaders have historically pursued their interests in an irresponsible manner they can delay or distance themselves from the consequences.

Posted by Space Monkey | September 29, 2007 12:21 AM

Re: A similar normative shift was behind the decline of enslavement in the West, which began long before the vile practice became economically impracticable.

With this aside I disagree. Slavery lost out to free labor (in Europe at least) when the rigid horse collar was invented, early in the so-called Dark Ages (collared horses could do far more brute-force work than humans could, for less expense). And that of course is exactly the period when slavery declined precipitously in Europe.

Posted by JonF | September 29, 2007 1:23 AM

They're fucking mercenaries, man. You remember what Machiavelli said about mercenaries, right?

Posted by Immoralist | September 29, 2007 1:32 AM

This is a good argument for restructuring the armed forces toward small forces for special operations, toward peace-keeping and micro-diplomacy. It's a good argument for disbanding the Air Force.

It's a mind-bogglingly stupid argument for private contractors. Why, exactly, will private contractors, who will always have less oversight than a government military, be better at the delicate game of keeping peace in a hostile country, be better at the complicated alliances involved in taking down international criminal and non-state actors? The lesson of Blackwater seems obvious - they are harder to control, more likely to get trigger happy, less likely to be properly run even for military operations (see the investigation into Blackwater's guilt in the death of their own contractors in Fallujah).

Posted by DivGuy | September 29, 2007 8:39 AM

What I like about the PMC's is that they are a potential counterforce to government arrogance and oppression. Look at what our governmental police have been doing lately - caught on tape threatening people to make up charges against them, tasering a defenseless woman in handcuffs, another in a wheelchair, while they get their sadistic pleasure in doing it.

With today's high-powered weaponry, the citizens are outmatched by the government forces, and having a little wider balance in power is a good thing.

Posted by beneficial | September 29, 2007 9:31 AM

WTF??

Are you arguing that American citizens should hire mercenaries as a counterbalance against the government, army, and police forces? You're recommending private militias. That's freakin' insane.

I might remind you that the people who hire mercenaries are the government. They do not provide a counterbalance against anything - they're employees of the US government, but with far less oversight and no centralized training.

Posted by DivGuy | September 29, 2007 9:34 AM

Insane? I think not. What is needed is a militia of the citizenry to balance against the oppressive force that our central government is turning into. Not the religious fanatics of the Middle East, but a militia of the citizens that is not controlled by the government.

I know that there are quite a number of Big Government types that believe the guv should control everything. I happen to not believe in that. The people are provided with the power, but only if it can be used to counterbalance a dictatorial authority. A quick, easy example is to look at Burma today. The military junta in power came from the communist left, out of the highlands and the North and East of their country. They have oppressed the people so badly that they regularly go through spasms and end up killing thousands of their citizenry. If the monks weren't stuck in this 'no violence' dead end, they could be an organized force against them...i.e. a militia.

Let's take a quick inventory of what's happened in the US the last decade or so:

1. Lost property rights to the 'right' of the state to take it and give it to a donor to their campaign - a developer, so they can get more tax receipts.
2. 'Free Speech' is only free if you agree to support the agenda of those in power - Columbia Univeristy president saying the Minutemen don't have a 'right' to speak at the university unmolested, but the Butcher Ahmadinejad does.
3. The border is unprotected from invasion on the north and south. This is the most likely illegal entry of non-citizens, terrorists, drug runners, etc. into the US.
4. Suspension of habeas corpus for the citizens was made much easier by government fiat
5. Millions of acres of property was taken out of the potential private domain (for use in using teh natural resources for human betterment) by designating huge tracts of land into National Monuments in the waning weeks of the Clinton administration- this land boundary included private lands, which, over time, will become untenable for the property owners to continue living there.

There are many other restrictions put on us every year. Soon it will be another tax (or fee or something so the pols won't have to call it a tax) for the Green Revolution.

Posted by beneficial | September 29, 2007 12:05 PM

Nice to see you on the _Atlantic_, Reihan.

This argument is a bit bizarre in that it does seem to run counter to how in fact the military looks at the world. An interesting realization I'm being forced into here (and that the military was forced into by the Lynch fiasco) is, all military personnel are now riflemen -- all of 'em. That's why the damn uniforms no longer tell you what the hell we _do_: because we're all warfighters. And there's no front line anymore: the guys running convoys are as likely as anyone -- maybe more than some -- to take a hit. God help us, the biophysicists get M16 and land nav training. So this idea that the military can contract out those functions -- when in fact it's going crazy trying to _broaden_ training in them -- strikes me as a bit off-kilter.

Posted by Sanjay Krishnaswamy | September 29, 2007 12:57 PM

Well, if people go and fight for money, what happens if someone offers them more? We already know corruption in Blackwater, when Kenneth Wayne Cashwell and his team were smuggling weaponry to Iraq and selling it to PKK (!!) causing a severe US-Turkish rift. And PMC cause such a rage among local populace that it override any tactical gains. And PMCs are very expensive because it's a corporate interest to inflate profits. PMC looks good, but smells terrible.

Posted by Eric | September 30, 2007 10:36 PM