- In The Prince, Machiavelli (May 1469 - June 1527) wrote:
-
- "The mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and
dangerous, and if anyone supports his state by the arms of mercenaries,
he will never stand firm or sure, as they are disunited, ambitious, without
discipline, faithless, bold amongst friends, cowardly amongst enemies,
they have no fear of God, and keep no faith with men."
-
- In an August 11, 2009 Global Research article titled,
"The Real Grand Chessboard and the Profiteers of War," Peter
Dale Scott called Private Military Contractors (PMCs) businesses "authorized
to commit violence in the name of their employers....predatory bandits
(transformed into) uncontrollable subordinates....representing....public
power in....remote places."
-
- True enough. Those performing security functions are
paramilitaries, hired guns, unprincipled, in it for the money, and might
easily switch sides if offered more. Though technically accountable under
international and domestic laws where they're assigned, they, in fact,
are unregulated, unchecked, free from criminal or civil accountability,
and are licensed to kill and get away with it. Political and institutional
expediency affords them immunity and impunity to pretty much do as they
please and be handsomely paid for it.
-
- So wherever they're deployed, they're menacing and feared
with good reason even though many of their member firms belong to associations
like the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA) and the British
Association of Private and Security Companies (BAPSC). Their conduct codes
are mere voluntary guidelines that at worst subject violators to expulsion.
-
- When IPOA wanted Blackwater USA investigated (later Blackwater
Worldwide, now Xe - pronounced Zee) for slaughtering 28 Iraqis in Al-Nisour
Square in central Baghdad and wounding dozens more on September 16, 2007,
the company left the association and set up its own, the Global Peace and
Security Operations Institute (GPSOI), with no conduct code besides saying:
-
- "Blackwater desires a safer world though practical
application of ideas that create solution making a genuine difference to
those in need (by) solving the seemingly impossible problems that threaten
global peace and stability."
-
- Blackwater, now Xe, makes them far worse as unchecked
hired guns. Wherever deployed, they operate as they wish, take full advantage,
and stay unaccountable for their worst crimes, the types that would subject
ordinary people to the severest punishments.
-
- In his book "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's
Most Powerful Mercenary Army," Jeremy Scahill described a:
-
- "shadowy mercenary company (employing) some of the
most feared professional killers in the world (accustomed) to operating
without worry or legal consequences....largely off the congressional radar.
(It has) remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus"
to practice violence with impunity, including cold-blooded murder of non-combatant
civilians.
-
- Employing Mercenaries - A Longstanding Practice
-
- Called various names, including mercenaries, soldiers
of fortune, dogs of war, and Condottieri for wealthy city states in Renaissance
Italy, employing them goes back centuries. In 13th century BC Egypt, Rameses
II used thousands of them in battle. Ancient Greeks and Romans also used
them. So didn't Alexander the Great, feudal lords in the Middle Ages, popes
since 1506, Napoleon, and George Washington against the British in America's
war of independence even though by the early 18th century western states
enacted laws prohibiting their citizens from bearing arms for other nations.
Although the practice continued sporadically, until more recently, private
armies fell out of favor.
-
- Defining a Mercenary
-
- Article 47 in the 1977 Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions
provides the most widely, though not universally, accepted definition,
based on six criteria, all of which must be met.
-
- "A mercenary is any person who:
-
- (a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order
to fight in an armed conflict;
-
- (b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities:
-
- (c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially
by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf
of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess
of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in
the armed forces of the Party;
-
- (d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict
nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
-
- (e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to
the conflict; and
-
- (f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party
to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces."
-
- This Article's Focus and Some Background
-
- This article covers the modern era of their resurgence,
specifically America's use of private military contractors (PMCs) during
the post-Cold War period. However, the roots of today's practice began
in 1941 in the UK under Captain David Stirling's Special Air Service (SAS),
hired to fight the Nazis in small hard-hitting groups. In 1967, he then
founded the 20th century's first private military company, WatchGuard International.
-
- Others followed, especially during the 1980s Reagan-Thatcher
era when privatizing government services began in earnest. As vice-president,
GHW Bush applied it to intelligence, and then defense secretary Dick Cheney
hired Brown and Root Services (now KBR, Inc., a former Halliburton subsidiary)
to devise how to integrate private companies effectively into warfare.
-
- The Current Proliferation of PMCs
-
- According to PW Singer, author of "Corporate Warriors:
The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry:"
-
- Included are companies offering "the functions of
warfare....spanning a wide range of activities. They perform everything
from tactical combat to consulting (to) mundane logistics....The result
is that (the industry) now offers every function that was once limited
to state militaries."
-
- Warfare, in part, has been privatized so that "any
actor in the global system can access these skills and functions simply
by writing a check."
-
- In the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon employed one PMC operative
per 50 troops. For the 1999 Yugoslavia conflict, it was one for every 10,
and by the 2003 Iraq War, PMCs comprised the second largest force after
the US military.
-
- They've also been used in numerous civil wars globally
in nations like Angola, Sierra Leone, the Balkans throughout the 1990s,
Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere. From 1990 - 2000, they participated in
80 conflicts, compared to 15 from 1950 - 1989.
-
- Singer cites three reasons why, combined into "one
dynamic:"
-
- 1. Supply and demand
-
- Since the Cold War ended in 1991, the US military downsized
to about two-thirds its former size, a process Dick Cheney, as defense
secretary, called BRAC - Base Realignment and Closure, followed by privatizing
military functions. But given America's permanent war agenda, the Pentagon
needed help, especially because of the proliferation of small arms, over
550 million globally or about one for every 12 human beings, and their
increased use in local conflicts.
-
- 2. Changes in the conduct of war
-
- Earlier distinctions between soldiers and civilians are
breaking down, the result of low-intensity conflicts against drug cartels,
warlords and persons or groups aggressor nations call "terrorists,"
the same ones they call "freedom fighters" when on their side
for imperial purposes.
-
- High-intensity warfare also changed, so sailors aboard
guided missile ships, for example, serve along side weapons and technology
company personal, needed for their specialized expertise.
-
- In addition, the combination of powerful weapons and
sophisticated information technology let the Pentagon topple Saddam with
one-fourth the number of forces for the Gulf War. This strategy can be
just as effective in other conventional warfare theaters, depending on
how formidable the adversary, but it doesn't work in guerrilla wars - the
dilemma America faces in Afghanistan, earlier in Iraq and still now as
violence there is increasing.
-
- 3. The "privatization revolution"
-
- Singer calls it a "change in mentality, a change
in political thinking, (a) new ideology that" whatever governments
can do, business can do better so let it. The transformation is pervasive
in public services, including more spent on private police than actual
ones in America. And the phenomenon is global. In China, for example, the
private security industry is one of its fastest growing.
-
- By privatizing the military, America pierced the last
frontier to let private mercenaries serve in place of conventional forces.
Singer defines three types of companies:
-
- 1. "Military provider firms"
-
- Whatever their functions, they're used tactically as
combatants with weapons performing services formerly done exclusively by
conventional or special forces.
-
- 2. Military consulting companies
-
- They train and advise, much the way management consulting
firms operate for business. They also provide personal security and bodyguard
services.
-
- 3. Military support firms
-
- They perform non-lethal services. They're "supply-chain
management firms....tak(ing) care of the back-end, (including) logistics
and technology assistance...." They also supply intelligence and analysis,
ordnance disposal, weapons maintenance and other non-combat functions.
-
- Overall, the industry is huge and growing, grossing over
$100 billion annually worldwide, operating in over 50 countries. By far,
the Pentagon is their biggest client, and in the decade leading up to the
Iraq War, it contracted with over 3,000 PMCs, and now many more spending
increasingly larger amounts.
-
- A single company, Halliburton and its divisions grossed
between $13 - $16 billion from the Iraq War, an amount 2.5 times America's
cost for the entire Gulf War. The company profits handsomely because of
America's commitment to privatized militarization. More about it below.
-
- Since 2003, Iraq alone represents the "single largest
commitment of US military forces in a generation (and) by far the largest
marketplace for the private military industry ever."
-
- In 2005, 80 PMCs operated there with over 20,000 personnel.
Today, in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, it's grown exponentially, according
to US Department of Defense figures - nearly 250,000 as of Q 3, 2009, mostly
in Iraq but rising in Afghanistan to support more troops.
-
- Not included are PMCs working for the State Department,
16 US intelligence agencies, Homeland Security, other branches and foreign
governments, commercial businesses, and individuals, so the true total
is much higher. In addition, as Iraq troops are drawn down, PMCs will replace
them, and in Afghanistan, they already exceed America's military force.
-
- According to a September 21, 2009 Congressional Research
Service (CRS) Report, as of June 2009, PMCs in Afghanistan numbered 73,968,
and a later year end 2009 US Central Command figure is over 104,000 and
rising. The expense is enormous and growing with CRS reporting that supporting
each soldier costs $1 million annually, in large part because of rampant
waste, fraud and abuse, unmonitored and unchecked.
-
- With America heading for 100,000 troops on the ground
and more likely coming, $100 billion will be spent annually supporting
them, then more billions as new forces arrive, and the Iraq amount is even
greater - much, or perhaps most, from supplemental funding for both theaters
on top of America's largest ever military budget at a time the country
has no enemies except for ones it makes by invading and occupying other
countries and waging global proxy wars.
-
- Regulating PMCs
-
- Efforts to do so have been fruitless despite the General
Assembly trying in 1989 through the International Convention against the
Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. It took over a
decade to get the required 22 signatories, but neither
- America or other major PMC users were included.
-
- An earlier effort also failed when in 1987 a special
UN rapporteur was established to examine "the use of mercenaries as
a means of impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination."
It was largely ignored, and a 2005 effort won't likely fare better under
a working group for the same purpose. Nor will industry associations functioning
more for show than a commitment to end bad practices that will always go
on as long as rogue firms like Xe and others like it are employed.
-
- Singer noted how PMCs have been involved in some of the
most controversial aspects of war - from over-billing to ritual slaughter
of unarmed civilians. Yet none of them have ever been prosecuted, convicted
or imprisoned, an issue Singer cites in listing five "dilemmas:"
-
- 1. Contractual ones - hiring PMCs for their skills, to
save money, or do jobs nations prefer to avoid. Yet unaccountability injects
a "worrisome layer of uncertainty" into military operations,
opening the door to unchecked abuses.
-
- 2. PMCs constitute an unregulated global business operating
for profit, not peace and security when skilled killers are hired - former
Green Berets, Delta Force soldiers, Navy Seals, and foreign ones like the
British SAS.
-
- 3. Conducting public policy as serious as war through
private means is worrisome, including covert operations to avoid official
oversight and legislative constraints.
-
- 4. Moving private companies into the military sphere
creates disturbing gray areas. PMCs can't be court martialed, and international
law doesn't cover them. Further, operating in war zones makes them even
less accountable as who can prove their actions weren't in self-defense,
even against unarmed civilians.
-
- 5. Increasing PMC use also "raises some deep questions
about the military itself." How do you retain the most talented combat
troops when they can sell their skills for far greater pay? Also consider
the uniqueness of the military.
-
- "It is the only profession that has its own court
system, its own laws; the only profession that has its own grocery stores
and separate bases;" its own pensions and other benefits for those
staying around long enough to qualify. So what happens when it's transformed
into a business with profit the prime motive? Simple - more wars, greater
profits. The same idea as privatizing prisons - more prisoners, fatter
bottom line.
-
- Another consideration is also worrisome. Given America's
imperial ambitions, global dominance, permanent war agenda, and virtual
disregard for the law, public distrust is growing for politicians who never
earned it in the first place.
-
- Given the Pentagon's transformation since 1991, the number
of services it privatized, and America's permanent war agenda, what will
conditions be in another decade or a few years? How much more prominent
will PMCs be? How much more insecurity will result? How soon will it be
before hordes of them are deployed throughout America as enforcers in civilian
communities outside of conflict zones, with as much unaccountability here
as abroad? What will the nation be like if it happens?
-
- Halliburton/KRB
-
- In his book, "Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected
Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War," Pratap
Chatterjee describes a company tainted by bribes, kickbacks, inefficiency,
corruption and fraud, exploitation of workers as near-slaves, and other
serious offenses, yet operates with impunity and sticks taxpayers with
many billions of dollars in charges.
-
- Before spun off in 2007, KBR won the bulk of Iraq contracts
as part of Halliburton, many of them no-bid. Earlier from 2002 to March
2003, it was involved with the Pentagon in planning the war and its role
once it ended - the one co-founder George Brown claimed Lyndon Johnson
described in the 1960s as a "joint venture (in which) I'm going to
take care of politics and you're going to take care of the business side
of it." Fast forward, and nothing's changed.
-
- In a February 19, 2009 article, titled "Inheriting
Halliburton's Army," Chatterjee writes how their employees are in
"every nook and cranny of US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan,"
yet stateside operations yield additional billions in revenue. He describes
their "shoddy electrical work, unchlorinated shower water, overcharges
for trucks sitting idle in the desert, deaths of KRB (its former subsidiary)
employees and affiliated soldiers in Iraq, alleged million-dollar bribes
accepted by KBR managers, and billions of dollars in missing receipts,
among the slew of other complaints" that got wide publicity since
the beginning of the Iraq war.
-
- He explains that since it got a 2001 contract to supply
US forces in combat theaters, KBR grossed over $25 billion. It then got
new contracts under Obama, leading Chatterjee to ask: "How did the
US military become this dependent on one giant company?"
-
- Tracing its history since the 1960s, he noted its connection
to Lyndon Johnson, its profiteering from the Vietnam War, again under Ronald
Reagan, then more under GHW Bush and Dick Cheney, his defense secretary
who accelerated the Pentagon's privatization agenda, then headed the company
as CEO. Bill Clinton continued it, hiring KBR in 1994 to build bases in
Bosnia, later Kosovo, and run their daily operations.
-
- Then under Bush/Cheney, outsourcing accelerated further,
so today there's one KBR worker for every three US soldiers in Iraq. They
build base infrastructure and maintain them by handling all their duties
- feeding soldiers, doing their laundry, performing maintenance, and virtually
all other non-combat functions.
-
- Despite its abusive practices, KBR is such an integral
part of the Pentagon that Chatterjee asks "could Obama dismiss (its)
army, even if he wanted to?" Not at all so expect KRB's $150 billion
10-year LOGCAP contract (the Army's Logistics Augmentation Program - beginning
September 20, 2008) to continue, and KBR's army to remain on the march
reaping billions from the public treasury as the nation's largest PMC war
profiteer.
-
- PMCs Under Obama
-
- In February 2007, Senator Obama introduced the Transparency
and Accountability in Military Security Contracting Act as an amendment
to the 2008 Defense Authorization Act, requiring federal agencies to report
to Congress on the numbers of security contractors employed, killed, wounded,
and disciplinary actions taken against them. Referred to the Senate Armed
Services Committee, it never passed.
-
- Then in February 2009 as president, Obama introduced
reforms to reduce PMC spending and shift outsourced work back to government.
He also promised to improve the quality of acquisition workers - government
employees involved in supervising and auditing billions of dollars spent
monthly on contracts. Even so, PMCs are fully integrated into national
security and other government functions, as evidenced by the massive numbers
in Iraq and Afghanistan alone.
-
- Earlier, PMCs were at times used in lieu of US forces.
As mentioned above, they helped General Washington win America's war of
independence. Later the war of 1812, and in WW II the Flying Tigers fought
the Japanese for China's Chiang Kai-Shek. In the 1960s and early 1970s,
they were prominent nation builders in South Vietnam. From 1947 through
1976, the CIA's Southern Air Transport performed paramilitary services,
including delivering weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
-
- In 1985, the Army's LOGCAP was a precursor for more extensive
civilian contractor use in wartime and for other purposes. It's involved
in pre-planned logistics and engineering or construction contracts, including
vehicle maintenance, warehousing, base building abroad, and a range of
non-combat functions on them.
-
- The Clinton administration's "Reinventing Government"
initiative promised to downsize it by shifting functions to contractors
as a way cut costs and improve efficiency. Later under George Bush, private
companies got to compete for 450,000 government jobs, and in 2001, the
Pentagon's contracted workforce exceeded civilian DOD employees for the
first time.
-
- In 2002, under Army Secretary Thomas White, the military
planned to increase its long-term reliance on contracted workers, a plan
known as the "Third Wave" after two earlier ones. Its purposes
were to free up military manpower for the global war on terror, get non-core
products and services from private sources so Army leaders could focus
on their core competencies, and support Bush's Management Agenda.
-
- In April 2003, the initiative stalled when White resigned,
among other reasons for a lack of basic information required to effectively
manage a growing PMC force, then estimated to be between 124,000 - 605,000
workers. Today, more precise figures are known and for what functions,
but a lack of transparency and oversight makes it impossible for the public,
Congress, the administration, or others in government to assess them with
regard to cost, effectiveness, their services, whether government or business
should perform them, and their effect on the nation for good or ill, with
strong evidence of the latter.
-
- The 2008 Montreux Document is an agreement obligating
signatories with regard to their PMCs in war zones. Seventeen nations ratified
it, including America, Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada and
China, pledging to promote responsible PMC conduct in armed conflicts.
Divided in two sections, its first one covers international laws binding
on private contractors, explains states can't circumvent their obligations
by using them, requires they take appropriate measures to prevent violations,
address them responsibly when they do, and take effective steps to prevent
future occurrences.
-
- The second section lists 70 practices for helping countries
fulfill their legal obligations, including not using PMCs for activities
requiring force, implementing effective control, using surveillance and
sanctions in case of breaches, and regulating and licensing contracted
companies, that in turn, must train their personnel to observe the rules
of law.
-
- Given the obvious conflicts of interest, self-regulation
won't work. Unchecked, combatant PMCs are accountable only to themselves,
operating secretly outside the law - for the Pentagon as an imperial tool.
-
- Given Obama's permanent war agenda and how entrenched
PMCs have become, expect little constructive change, save for tinkering
around the edges and regular rhetorical promises, followed by new fronts
in the war on terror and even greater numbers civilians and soldiers for
them.
-
- Then add hundreds more billions diverted from vital homeland
needs to enrich thousands of war profiteers, addicted to sure-fire blood
money, and expecting plenty more ahead. They'll get it unless enough public
outrage demands an end to this madness before it's too late to matter.
-
- Some Final Comments
-
- On January 13 (on antiwar.com), Jeremy Scahill reported
that Representative Jan Schakowsky (D. IL and House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence member):
-
- "is preparing to introduce legislation (Stop Outsourcing
Security Act - SOS) aimed at ending the US government's relationship with
Blackwater and other armed contracting companies."
-
- Originally introduced in 2007 but not passed, Schakowsky
says:
-
- "The legislation would prohibit the use of private
contractors for military, security, law enforcement, intelligence, and
armed rescue functions unless the President tells Congress why the military
is unable to perform those functions. It would also increase transparency
over any remaining security contracts by increasing reporting requirements
and giving Congress access to details about large contracts."
-
- Meanwhile on January 12, 2010, a coalition of groups
opposed to Blackwater called on Congress to investigate why criminal charges
against the company were dismissed on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct.
They also want to "pull the funding on war profiteers like Blackwater
(and) stop them for good."
-
- It's a tall order given how entrenched they are and expanding.
In Haiti, for example, reports say Blackwater is there providing security,
an indication perhaps of more contingents to follow, from them and other
armed contractors, "authorized to commit violence in the name of their
employers."
-
- Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre
for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at
<mailto:lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net>lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday
at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished
guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy
listening.
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