Military Contractors Research Articles

Altered states: the globalization of accountability

Is globalization good for democracy? Or has it made our governing institutions less accountable to citizens? Located at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics, this book explores the effects of globalization on national governance. Under what circumstances do the transnational forces that embody globalization encourage or discourage political accountability? Among the transnational forces discussed in the book are the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, multinational corporations, the United Nations, private military contractors, peacekeepers, the European Court of Human Rights, and several transnational social movements. Using in-depth case studies of situations in which these transnational institutions interact with national governments and citizens, Valerie Sperling traces the impact of economic, political, military, judicial, and civic globalization on state accountability and investigates the degree to which transnational institutions are themselves responsible to the people whose lives they alter.

“Taking a Nickel Out of the Cash Register”: Statutory Renegotiation of Military Contracts and the Politics of Profit Control in the United States during World War II

At 10:00 AM on September 24, 1943, James F. Lincoln, the sixty-year-old president and owner of the Lincoln Electric Company of Cleveland, Ohio, entered a meeting with U.S. Navy officials who wanted to discuss his company's recent earnings. A former Ohio State University football team captain and active supporter of the Republican Party, the outspoken Lincoln had already made it clear that he objected to the whole proceeding. One of the nation's leading suppliers of welding equipment, Lincoln's company had seen its sales boom since the beginning of World War II, as shipbuilders, aircraft producers, and other prime contractors demanded more welding machines and electrodes. Now, after a year of correspondence and preparations, the U.S. Navy had asked Lincoln to come to Washington to discuss how much of the company's 1942 profits were fair, and how much should be returned to the United States.

The Second Largest Force: Private Military Contractors & State Responsibility

The paper is concerned with private military contractors, their expanding use and the challenges this poses to a system in which private actors – at least so far – have been considered to be acting outside of existing international accountability structures. The paper proceeds from a brief historical overview of the use of non-state military forces to a delineation of what private military forces are (and what they are not), what distinguishes them from mercenaries (and what does not). This is followed by an analysis of how private military forces’ conduct can be attributed to the states employing them, thereby contributing to the debate over the advantages and disadvantages of their proliferating use in recent conflicts. The article proposes a range of legal and policy rationales to reassess the arguments that are being advanced for the use of private military forces in today’s conflicts – with respect to their legal status, their political utility and their impact on democratic accountability mechanisms.

From Nationalization to Privatization: The Case of the IDF

In recent years the use of private military contractors to execute national security tasks in the U.S. military has finally come under public scrutiny. The main policy question is in three parts: What is the proper division of labor between the public and private sectors? Who decides which sector performs a specific task? If private operatives perform tasks that typically fall on the public side (combat, interrogation), what is the public oversight over the private actors, and how can they be held accountable for wrongdoings? In this article these questions are addressed in relation to the privatization process in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The article has four parts: the first suggests that the Israeli baseline is unique as the IDF has historically been entrusted with a wide array of national-civilian missions; the second explains the economic realities that probably lie behind the privatization efforts; the third describes the slow and cautious privatization process currently under way; the fourth suggests that while there is little public debate, there is civilian oversight, there are some publicly exposed rationales, and there is public support in letting the IDF, the most trusted part of the executive branch, control the process.

Deeper Objections to the Privatisation of Military Force

THE private military industry has been growing rapidly since the end of the Cold War. Private military and security companies (PMSCs) provide a myriad of services, including the training of troops and security services, the provision of transportation and logistics, and a number of roles more likely to involve direct combat, such as the protection of state officials. The estimates of the size of the industry vary, but most accounts value it at between $20 billion to $200 billion annually per year. The US Department of Defence alone employs 170,000 military contractors, 25,000 of which provide armed services such as personnel, transport and site protection. Given its extent, the increased reliance on PMSCs is often claimed to be one the most significant changes in the military profession over the past three decades.jopp_356 425..447 This privatisation of military force has led to a range of reactions. Some perceive PMSCs to be vital actors in promoting not only states’ interests, but also humanitarianism worldwide. Others view them as part of a ‘dark and distasteful’ industry that enables new opportunities for western colonialist projects. Whilst the potential benefits and disadvantages of using PMSCs are often discussed, the

The shows and the flows: materials, markets, and innovation in the US machine tool industry, 1945–1965

Machine tools may be fundamental to metalworking industrial economies, but their Cold War era history in the US has rarely been assessed over the last generation. A quarter century after David Noble's crucial and critical Forces of Production, perhaps a broad‐gauged assessment may be timely. This essay aims to offer two theses for discussion. First, it seems that a sector whose enterprises once specialized in one or more tool types reconfigured itself into clusters of firms servicing automotive‐based automation demands, aeronautical/aerospace precision and flexibility needs, or providing specialized auxiliary components, especially instrumentation and controls. Second, cascades of new industrial materials and processes generated both opportunities for and constraints on tool firms, as innovations facilitated users' substituting, for example, plastics for metals or material‐forming for metal‐cutting, quietly shifting the technical and market foundations. Such dynamics set the stage for US machine tool enterprises' decline as the Cold War ebbed, but they did not chiefly derive from technological deflections deriving from military contracting.

Private Military Contractors, Crime, and the Terrain of Unaccountability

Criminological research has traditionally attempted to explain the etiological factors of crime and then suggest appropriate controls. More often than not, the foci of this kind of work have remained on “street crime.” Since the 1990s, however, some scholars have turned their attention to the causal factors of corporate crime, state crime, crimes of globalization, supranational crimes, and their various permutations and interconnections. Clearly missing from this literature is the growing phenomenon of private military contractors (PMCs) and the crimogenic culture of and atmosphere within which they operate. Specifically, while the use of PMCs is rapidly growing, the increasing propensity for PMC's crimogenic culture and the unregulated nature of what has become a global industry is rarely studied by social scientists. Further, few criminologists have examined this area of research by applying criminological theory to explain the growth and emergence of PMCs. Our goal is to help fill this gap. Through the process of theory building and refinement we identify factors that facilitate the criminogenic environment within which PMCs operate. Additionally, without attempting to expand explanatory and causal mechanisms, policies aimed at reducing PMC criminality and social justice for their victims cannot be developed. As such, we draw from theoretical developments in state and state‐corporate crime, social disorganization, and anomie literature to shed light on key factors associated with PMCs, namely, the crimogenic atmosphere within which they operate.

Legal and Ethical Perspectives on Industry Support to Air Operations

This presentation offers a legal and ethical framework for evaluating industry support to air operations. Such support needs to be viewed in the context of larger debates about the relationship between the military and private contractors more generally. Reasons for turning to the private sector include considerations of cost and flexibility; reasons for being wary of outsourcing include problems of accountability and diverging incentives. Where industry support is sought, lessons from past experience can assist in maximizing the benefits and minimizing the risks through ensuring transparency, participation, and review.

Who Benefits from Increased Government Spending? A State-Level Analysis

We simultaneously identify two government spending shocks: military spending shocks as defined by Ramey (2008) and federal spending shocks as defined by Perotti (2008). We analyze the effect of these shocks on state-level personal income and employment. We find regional patterns in the manner in which both shocks affect state-level variables. Moreover, we find differences in the propagation mechanisms for military versus nonmilitary spending shocks. The former benefits economies with larger manufacturing and retail sectors and states that receive military contracts. While non-military shocks also benefit states with the proper industrial mix, they appear to stimulate economic activity in lower-income states.

Security Beyond the State: Global Security Assemblages in International Politics

To date, most discussion of security privatization in international politics has been focused on the role of private military companies and mercenaries. This article seeks to shift the focus away from the battlefields and toward the less spectacular privatization and globalization of commercial private security. Drawing on Saskia Sassen’s notion of state ‘‘disassembly,’’ we situate the growth of private security within broader shifts in global governance. Pointing to the weakness of seeing the rise of private security as an erosion of state power and authority, we show instead a re-articulation of the public ⁄private and global ⁄local distinctions and relationships into what we term ‘‘global security assemblages.’’ Analyzing the role of private security in two such assemblages in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, we show how a range of different security agents and normativities interact, cooperate and compete, to produce new institutions, practices and forms of security governance. Global security assemblages thus mark important developments in the relationship between security and the sovereign state, structures of political power and authority, and the operations of global capital. Spurred by the apparent return of mercenary activities in Africa at the end of the Cold War, and given further impetus and urgency by the substantial involvement of private military contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq, the privatization of security has become one of the most controversial issues in contemporary international politics. Once obscure companies such as Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and Erinys have joined with tales of ‘‘neo-mercenaries’’ like Executive Outcomes in Sierra Leone and Simon Mann’s attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea in 2004, to become the focus of widespread journalistic coverage, increasingly sophisticated scholarly analysis, as well as popular books, entertainment and Hollywood films. Yet the privatization of security and its consequences go well beyond the activities of the private soldier. Away from the battlefields, in the day-to-day activities of ordinary life, private security has also become ubiquitous. Less spectacular than the ‘‘return of the dogs of war,’’ commercial private security activities, ranging from manned guarding and alarm installation, to risk analysis and surveillance, have expanded at a phenomenal rate. Worldwide, the commercial private security market is now valued at $165 billion, and its growth is forecast to continue at an annual rate of 8% for the foreseeable future (Securitas 2007). Indeed, what was once described as a ‘‘quiet revolution’’ in security provision has become global in scope (Shearing and Stenning 1981).

Blood and Blackwaters: A Call to Arms for the Profession of Arms

One out of every five combatants carrying a machine gun in Iraq is not a soldier, but an employee. Many, particular those in military service, may consider the men and women working for private military firms to be performing a radically different function than their military counterparts, but, ‘Iraqi citizens do not distinguish between employees of Blackwater and the U.S. military. All they see is Americans with guns.’ In this article, I will investigate the normative and economic implications of using these private security personnel in contingency operations such as the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In order to accomplish this task, I will investigate the frequently mentioned economic justifications in favor of outsourcing as well as the less frequently investigated normative considerations against particular acts of outsourcing. This analysis will be used to defend a normative principle that can help determine if a particular act of outsourcing is morally problematic. Finally, I will argue that the continued use of mercenaries harms the professional soldiers fighting along side them by undermining the profession of arms. The continued use of private military contractors will turn all those who fight, even professional soldiers, into mercenaries.

Pirates and PMCs

Originally presented at a forum sponsored by Concerned Philosophers for Peace at the Eastern Division annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Philadelphia, PA: 29 December 2008), this essay discusses two challenges in foreign policy likely to be confronted by the new U.S. presidential administration. The increased reliance on private military contractors, including security contractors, poses a number of difficulties, the most troubling of which is the erosion of civil-military relations. Modern military campaigns cannot be waged without some degree of reliance on the logistical support such contractors provide, but their use makes it easier for governments to hide the true risks and costs of modern from the electorate, serving to undermine key conceptions of Just war principles like legitimate authority and declaration of war. On the other hand, the dramatic increase in maritime piracy forces an unpleasant choice between either increasing defense spending on appropriate weapons systems and personnel during a global economic crises in order to provide enhanced maritime security, or else, ironically, relying even more on private security contractors to protect global shipping and transportation. Both these and similar foreign policy challenges focus attention on the need for ethical interoperability, the ability to share common notions of military ethics, public service, and professional responsibility among coalition military forces otherwise drawn from a variety of disparate national, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds.

Cavalieri e popoli in armi: le instituzioni nell'Italia medievale (review)

Reviewed by: Cavalieri e popoli in armi: le instituzioni nell'Italia medievale William Caferro Cavalieri e popoli in armi: le instituzioni nell'Italia medievale. By Paolo Grilli. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2008. ISBN 978-88-420-8649-9. Notes. Bibliography. Indexes. Pp. xviii, 221. €20.00. Paolo Grilli's Cavalieri e popoli in armi offers a much-needed, clearly constructed synthesis of military developments in Italy during the Middle Ages. The literature on the subject is, as Grilli notes from the outset, vexingly sparse. The little that exists is characterized by broad assumption and nationalistic bias. Nineteenth-century Italian writers of the Risorgimento viewed medieval Italian warfare in much the same terms as those laid out by Machiavelli. They emphasized the abandonment of the use of native forces during the communal period, the reliance on mercenaries and the resulting subjugation of Italy by foreign powers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries--a "distant mirror" of events in their own era. Grilli, by contrast, takes as his point of departure the division of the ages of war posited by Philippe Contamine and situates his findings in terms of current theories of the Military Revolution. He draws on the important recent work of scholars such as Aldo Settia, Franco Cardini, Nadia Covini, Patrizia Mainoni, [End Page 261] and others. Rather than compare the past to the present, Grilli makes clear, in his succinct and well-written introduction, that he will deal with medieval Italian warfare in context, on its own terms, as a phenomenon or "institution" distinct from modern counterparts. To this end he stresses the close connection between the military and pacific spheres. There did not exist, as today, a clear separation between war-related institutions and civic ones, nor, more generally, were the private and public realms distinct. Italian states did possess a monopoly on coercion, and therefore violence and warfare were more diffuse and persistent. The point is an important one, and is effectively stated by the author. The book consists of eleven chapters, beginning with the fall of Rome in the fifth century and continuing on to the initiation of standing forces and the military revolution in the fifteenth century. The author therefore deals with approximately one thousand years of history. He deserves much credit for rendering this mass of material in a clear and incisive form. Grilli does especially well drawing from current Italian historiography. He provides each chapter with useful bibliographies. The long view of events allows him to bring together interesting broader trends, including continuities in military practice from the Late Roman period to early medieval period, and from the Lombard and Norman eras of the early Middle Ages to that of the independent communes of the Central Middle Ages. The strongest section of the book is the discussion in chapter seven of the communal period, the rise of so-called "native" forces and the Guelf-Ghibelline rivalries. The author effectively integrates into the discussion the new revisionist scholarship, including his own fine work. Overall, the book is more descriptive than analytical, despite promises in the introduction to the contrary. Although Grilli carefully distances himself from the old scholarship, he does in fact occasionally restate well-worn and outdated positions. The problem is largely historiographical. Grilli is at his best with Italian scholarship, paying careful homage, sometimes excessively so, to current colleagues and teachers in the academy there. His use of the work of other scholars, notably of the Anglophone and German tradition, is decidedly uneven. He makes little practical use of the important work of Molho, Bayley, Becker, Hanlon and Blastenbrei (or myself for that matter). In the few places cited, the information is not always accurate. The discussion of the età delle compagnie di ventura (era of the mercenary companies) in chapter nine, for example, is colorful cliché, overstating the importance of the companies, a view long ago challenged by Michael Mallett. The description of military contracts (condotte) needs revision, as does that of the lance, the basic cavalry unit in the fourteenth and fifteenth-century armies. The depiction of the White Company and John Hawkwood was unrecognizable, though my work was cited in that instance. In a sense—a bibliographic sense- the book...

Can American Studies Do Economics?

The international financial crisis that surfaced in August 2007 has done the impossible convinced large portions of the U.S. public and the media that U.S. economic policy has major flaws. It is now a little easier than it was in 2006 or 1996 to find mainstream criticism of Wall Streets impact on the economy, of wage stagnation and job insecurity, of very high levels of economic inequality, and of glaring racial disparities in measures such as family assets and mortgage defaults. At the same time, the critics do not generally believe that flawed U.S. economic policies indicate a flawed U.S. economic model. Most of them attribute various crises to excessive Bush II pandering to its favored special interests big pharmaceutical companies, military contractors, oil corporations, the wealthiest 1 percent, among others. Tax cuts for the rich, installment of the Medicare prescription plan, inadequate support for renewable energy research these are discrete policy mistakes that could, in most accounts, be redressed by Democratic-party-style reforms on topics where polls indicate that solid majorities are fed up with Republican positions. Little of the commentary is suggesting the need for a structural redesign of American capitalism, or is criticizing capitalism as such. Even Naomi Kleins The Shock Doctrine, the most widely circulated recent left-wing critique of U.S. economic policy, attacks extreme capitalism rather than capitalism itself.

Litigating Abuses Committed by Private Military Companies

One of the main tools for �socializing� private military contractors (PMCs) is litigation. The threat of litigation may encourage contractors to set up their own corporate social responsibility and accountability mechanisms with a view to preventing them being hauled before courts. The article identifies the jurisdictional opportunities and pitfalls of criminal (public law) and civil/tort (private law) litigation against PMCs in domestic courts. The focus lies on litigation for human rights abuses, with special emphasis on US proceedings, the US being the home and hiring state of the majority of PMCs active in overseas conflict zones. It is argued that, because the chances of success of tort litigation are, in fact, rather limited in the US, given the many procedural obstacles, the criminal law avenue may prove to be more promising, if at least prosecutors show more leadership in bringing cases. Also at a deeper accountability level, criminal litigation may be preferable on the ground that criminal punishment sends a stronger accountability and deterrence signal than a mere money judgment.

Private Military Contractors and International Law: An Introduction

A recent survey of young Europeans ’ opinions of national institutions has revealed, quite surprisingly, that armed forces enjoy the highest level of trust and prestige in a number of major European countries, well above parliaments, the judiciary, the church, political parties and business enterprises. 1 The profound motivations underlying this assessment remain unknown – one can only conjecture that they are related to the increasing sense of insecurity among young generations and perhaps with the politics of fear – fear of terrorism, of immigrants, environmental disasters, of fi nancial doom, and of the unknown – that have become widespread at the beginning of the 21st century. What is clear, however, is that in the perception of young generations, the armed forces still embody the core function of the state as guarantor of the security of citizens within the national territory. In contrast with this opinion, the trend in recent years has been progressively to privatize important sectors of governmental functions through the outsourcing of security and military services to private actors. Private military and security companies or ‘ contractors ’ thus replace soldiers and members of the armed forces in a variety of situations that include armed confl ict, prolonged military occupation, peacekeeping, and territorial administration in post-confl ict institutional building and intelligence gathering. This phenomenon, of course, has not led to the total privatization of armed forces. It remains rather limited in scope as compared to the operations of national militaries around the globe. Nevertheless, it has intensifi ed with the wars that have inaugurated the 21st century – Afghanistan and Iraq, led by the United States in particular – and it is being further fed by the increased activism of the European Union in international administration of critical territorial situations and peacekeeping operations, from

EU Operations and Private Military Contractors: Issues of Corporate and Institutional Responsibility

The European Union has developed its security competence since 1992, thus putting pressure on its Member States to provide troops for the increasing number of EU peace operations being deployed to different areas of the globe. But with national militaries being rationalized and contracted the EU will inevitably follow the lead of the US, the UK, and the UN and start to use Private Military Contractors to undertake some of the functions of peace operations. This article explores the consequences of this trend from the perspective of the accountability and responsibility of both the corporation and the institution when the employees of PMCs commit violations of human rights law and, if applicable, international humanitarian law.

Flora Cooke versus Theodore Bilbo

Abstract The end of World War II was imminent by July of 1945 when 80‐year‐old progressive educator Flora Cooke of Chicago criticized Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi for filibustering a bill that provided oversight in the government’s awarding of military contracts and in its hiring practices. He interpreted the bill as a threat to the South’s continuing to practice discrimination against African Americans. Bilbo answered Cooke’s criticism with harsh comments and drew more response from her. This research illuminates their clash. Cooke’s exchange with Bilbo offers a rare case study of a progressive educator who challenged the assumptions of a white supremacist senator and thus advanced progressive precepts into race issues where they had been lacking.

A Corporate Alternative to United Nations ad hoc Military Deployments

The history of United Nations peacekeeping is frequently one of failure. The causes are endemic, persistent and unlikely to be remedied. It seems reasonable to consider two ideas in response: whether ad hoc peacekeepers might be augmented or even replaced by competent contract labour; and whether well-trained contractors might in future subdue by force those who inflict gross human rights abuses on others. Alternatives to ad hoc forces are not new. Nevertheless, theoretical or practical substitutes have not been evaluated alongside the merits of a private corporation supported by a business model. Military contractors are frequently represented as an affront to states’ authority. This is misleading. There has never been a clear divide between public and private resources in armed conflict and states have always employed both. There exists no compelling reason in law why the UN should not devise modern contracts that evolve from historically ubiquitous arrangements amongst its members and their more ancient predecessors. Formidable hurdles remain. Nonetheless, the deployment of disciplined, professional contractors under rigorous conditions may offer improvements on present standards of peacekeeping. This would enable the Security Council to better address its Charter responsibilities and, in particular, the Preamble and its admonition on war.

Revolving Doors?

This article analyzes the movement of personnel among elite positions in business and government, contrasting the staffing patterns at higher rungs of the executive branch during the Clinton and G. W. Bush administrations. We find that the Bush administration recruited far more heavily from among corporate officers and directors than did the Clinton administration, particularly when staffing ambassadorships. We also find that both administrations served as springboards for subsequent corporate board appointments. There were relatively few patterns with respect to industry or geography, with the exception of the military: All but one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the turn of the millennium ended up serving on the board of a military contractor after completing their government service.