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During the 1991 Gulf War there was one private soldier (or "contractor") for every 100 regular soldiers. In contrast, in today’s occupied Iraq there is at least one private soldier for every ten regular soldiers—with 10,000–15,000 private soldiers deployed in that country alone. The United States is currently spending a gargantuan $400 billion a year on the military. Yet the market revenue of the private military industry has already risen to about a quarter of that total and is skyrocketing.
Behind the dramatic growth of these private military firms lies a vast shift in world power that began with the end of the Cold War. The demobilization that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall meant that states at the beginning of this century employed far fewer soldiers than in 1989. Over the same period, marked by the triumph of capitalism worldwide, the incidence of civil wars has doubled, while the total number of combat zones around the world has vastly increased.
From a market perspective this means that supply and demand forces are favorable to the growth of private industry in this sector. Propelling this tendency still further is the "privatization revolution." Thus in 2002 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared that the Pentagon would "pursue additional opportunities to outsource and privatize".
Right now the number of private military firms is multiplying rapidly. But in line with the normal pattern of capital accumulation there will eventually be a shakedown of firms leading to concentration and centralization, with a relatively small number of firms, such as Kellogg, Brown & Root (Halliburton), emerging as the dominant corporate entities. Such giant private military firms will no doubt engage in their own unique version of what Schumpeter called "creative destruction." We have no way of knowing what the actual result of all of this will be. But it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the privatization of war, if it continues to gather momentum, will contribute massively to the expansion of barbarism in the world as a whole.
Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)
by P. W. Singer >>>
A security analyst at the Brookings Institution, Singer raises disturbing new issues in this comprehensive analysis of a post-Cold War phenomenon: private companies offering specialized military services for hire. These organizations are nothing like the mercenary formations that flourished in post-independence Africa, whose behavior there earned them the nickname les affreux: "the frightful ones." Today's corporate war-making agencies are bought and sold by Fortune 500 firms. Even some UN peacekeeping experts, Singer reports, advocate their use on grounds of economy and efficiency. Governments see in them a means of saving money-and sometimes a way to use low-profile force to solve awkward, potentially embarrassing situations that develop on the fringes of policy. Singer describes three categories of privatized military systems. "Provider firms" (the best known being the now reorganized Executive Outcomes) offer direct, tactical military assistance ranging from training programs and staff services to front-line combat. "Consulting firms," like the U.S.-based Military Professional Resources Inc., draw primarily on retired senior officers to provide strategic and administrative expertise on a contract basis. The ties of such groups to their country of origin, Singer finds, can be expected to weaken as markets become more cosmopolitan. Finally, the overlooked "support firms," like Brown & Root, provide logistic and maintenance services to armed forces preferring (or constrained by budgetary factors) to concentrate their own energies on combat. Singer takes pains to establish the improvements in capability and effectiveness privatization allows, ranging from saving money to reducing human suffering by ending small-scale conflicts. He is, however, far more concerned with privatization's negative implications. Technical issues, like contract problems, may lead to an operation ending without regard to a military rationale. A much bigger problem is the risk of states losing control of military policy to militaries outside the state systems, responsible only to their clients, managers, and stockholders, Singer emphasizes. So far, private military organizations have behaved cautiously, but there is no guarantee will continue. Nor can the moralities of business firms be necessarily expected to accommodate such niceties as the laws of war. Singer recommends increased oversight as a first step in regulation, an eminently reasonable response to a still imperfectly understood development in war making.
Singer unveils so much that is unseen in a mere few hundred pages, the head spins.
Granted, this only is a first-pass analysis of Pentagon privatization. We need to understand what happened when NRO and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency turned over space imaging to the private sector. We need to know what Northrop-Grumman gained when it took over overseas-base construction and management for Eastern Europe and Central Asia in 2003-04. We need to grasp the changes in NSA and NRO that took place when most intelligence processing was outsourced to Raytheon, LockMart, etc.
Behind the dramatic growth of these private military firms lies a vast shift in world power that began with the end of the Cold War. The demobilization that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall meant that states at the beginning of this century employed far fewer soldiers than in 1989. Over the same period, marked by the triumph of capitalism worldwide, the incidence of civil wars has doubled, while the total number of combat zones around the world has vastly increased.
From a market perspective this means that supply and demand forces are favorable to the growth of private industry in this sector. Propelling this tendency still further is the "privatization revolution." Thus in 2002 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared that the Pentagon would "pursue additional opportunities to outsource and privatize".
Right now the number of private military firms is multiplying rapidly. But in line with the normal pattern of capital accumulation there will eventually be a shakedown of firms leading to concentration and centralization, with a relatively small number of firms, such as Kellogg, Brown & Root (Halliburton), emerging as the dominant corporate entities. Such giant private military firms will no doubt engage in their own unique version of what Schumpeter called "creative destruction." We have no way of knowing what the actual result of all of this will be. But it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the privatization of war, if it continues to gather momentum, will contribute massively to the expansion of barbarism in the world as a whole.
Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)
by P. W. Singer >>>
A security analyst at the Brookings Institution, Singer raises disturbing new issues in this comprehensive analysis of a post-Cold War phenomenon: private companies offering specialized military services for hire. These organizations are nothing like the mercenary formations that flourished in post-independence Africa, whose behavior there earned them the nickname les affreux: "the frightful ones." Today's corporate war-making agencies are bought and sold by Fortune 500 firms. Even some UN peacekeeping experts, Singer reports, advocate their use on grounds of economy and efficiency. Governments see in them a means of saving money-and sometimes a way to use low-profile force to solve awkward, potentially embarrassing situations that develop on the fringes of policy. Singer describes three categories of privatized military systems. "Provider firms" (the best known being the now reorganized Executive Outcomes) offer direct, tactical military assistance ranging from training programs and staff services to front-line combat. "Consulting firms," like the U.S.-based Military Professional Resources Inc., draw primarily on retired senior officers to provide strategic and administrative expertise on a contract basis. The ties of such groups to their country of origin, Singer finds, can be expected to weaken as markets become more cosmopolitan. Finally, the overlooked "support firms," like Brown & Root, provide logistic and maintenance services to armed forces preferring (or constrained by budgetary factors) to concentrate their own energies on combat. Singer takes pains to establish the improvements in capability and effectiveness privatization allows, ranging from saving money to reducing human suffering by ending small-scale conflicts. He is, however, far more concerned with privatization's negative implications. Technical issues, like contract problems, may lead to an operation ending without regard to a military rationale. A much bigger problem is the risk of states losing control of military policy to militaries outside the state systems, responsible only to their clients, managers, and stockholders, Singer emphasizes. So far, private military organizations have behaved cautiously, but there is no guarantee will continue. Nor can the moralities of business firms be necessarily expected to accommodate such niceties as the laws of war. Singer recommends increased oversight as a first step in regulation, an eminently reasonable response to a still imperfectly understood development in war making.
Singer unveils so much that is unseen in a mere few hundred pages, the head spins.
Granted, this only is a first-pass analysis of Pentagon privatization. We need to understand what happened when NRO and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency turned over space imaging to the private sector. We need to know what Northrop-Grumman gained when it took over overseas-base construction and management for Eastern Europe and Central Asia in 2003-04. We need to grasp the changes in NSA and NRO that took place when most intelligence processing was outsourced to Raytheon, LockMart, etc.
