Corporate Warriors

The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, Updated Edition

P. W. Singer

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780801459603
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Some have claimed that "War is too important to be left to the generals, " but P. W. Singer asks "What about the business executives?" Breaking out of the guns-for-hire mold of traditional mercenaries, corporations now sell skills and services that until recently only state militaries possessed. Their products range from trained commando teams to strategic advice from generals. This new "Privatized Military Industry" encompasses hundreds of companies, thousands of employees, and billions of dollars in revenue. Whether as proxies or suppliers, such firms have participated in wars in Africa, Asia, the Balkans, and Latin America. More recently, they have become a key element in U.S. military operations. Private corporations working for profit now sway the course of national and international conflict, but the consequences have been little explored.

In this book, Singer provides the first account of the military services industry and its broader implications. Corporate Warriors includes a description of how the business works, as well as portraits of each of the basic types of companies: military providers that offer troops for tactical operations; military consultants that supply expert advice and training; and military support companies that sell logistics, intelligence, and engineering.

In an updated edition of P. W. Singer's classic account of the military services industry and its broader implications, the author describes the continuing importance of that industry in the Iraq War. This conflict has amply borne out Singer's argument that the privatization of warfare allows startling new capabilities and efficiencies in the ways that war is carried out. At the same time, however, Singer finds that the introduction of the profit motive onto the battlefield raises troubling questions—for democracy, for ethics, for management, for human rights, and for national security.

Notes

PREFACE

1. ABC, BBC, CNN, Fox News, Australian Broadcasting Company, Voice of America, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, National Post, Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Johannesburg Star, and CNSNews, are a smattering of media voices that have talked about privatized military firms.

2. From liberal pundit Michael Kinsley and columnist William Pfaff, to Ivan Eland, the director of defense policy studies at the conservative Cato Institute.

3. Jonathon Broder, “Mercenaries: The Future of U.N. Peacekeeping? Fox News (June 26, 2000). Transcript available at http://www.foxnews.com/world. See also HR 1591 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d107:3:./temp/~bdQ8UA:|/bss/d107query.html|

4. Global Coalition for Africa, African Social and Economic Trends, Annual Report 1999/2000. Available at: www.gca-cma.org; “Sierra Leone—Soldiers of Fortune,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation Documentary, Producer Mark Corcoran (August 2000). Transcript at: www.abc.net/foreign

5. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, “Dogs of War,” Lateline, Broadcast May 18, 2000. http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/archives/s128621.htm

6. More information on the IPOA is available at www.ipoaonline.org.

7. Examples include David Isenberg, Soldiers of Fortune Ltd.: A Profile of Today’s Private Sector Corporate Mercenary Firms, Center For Defense Information Monograph (November 1997); David Shearer, Private Armies and Military Intervention ( London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, Adelphi Paper no. 316, February 1998); Peter Lock, “Military Downsizing and Growth in the Security Industry in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Strategic Analysis 22, no. 9 (December 1998). Thomas Adams, “The New Mercenaries and the Privatization of Conflict,” Parameters (Summer 1999): 103–116. Available online at: http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/99summer/adams.htm

8. “Numerous articles on the new private security forces begin by noting how their corporate veneer and military professionalism differentiate them from the old dogs of war. However, little has been done to follow-up these observations by understanding the nature of private security forces as firms and analyzing the particular market they confront.” Jeffrey Herbst, “The Regulation of Private Security Forces” The Privatisation of Security in Africa, ed. Greg Mills and John Stremlau (Pretoria: South Africa Institute of International Affairs, 1999), p. 117.

9. Jackkie Cilliers, “Book review: Sean Dorney, The Sandline Affair—Politics and Mercenaries and the Bourgainville crisis. African Security Review 9, no. 1 (February 2000).

10. Doug Brooks and Hussein Solomon, “From the Editor’s Desk,” Conflict Trends 6 (July 2000). http://www.accord.org.za/publications/ct6/issue6.htm

11. Indeed, one author even compares the firms to “Messiahs.” Doug Brooks, “Messiahs or Mercenaries?” International Peacekeeping 7, no. 4 (2000): 129 –144. Other examples include Doug Brooks, “Write a Cheque, End a War Using Private Military Companies to End African Conflicts,” Conflict Trends no, 6 (July 2000). http://www.accord.org.za/publications/ct6/issue6.htm; William Hartung, “Mercenaries, Inc.,” discussion article, Committee Against Corruption in Saudi Arabia, 1996, available at: www.cdi.org; Ken Silverstein, “Privatizing War,” Nation (July 7, 1998); Abdel-Fatau Musah and Kayode Fayemi, Mercenaries: An African Security Dilemma (London: Pluto Press, 2000).

12. Peter Fabricus, “Private Security Firms Can End Africa’s Wars Cheaply,” Saturday Star (Johannesburg) ( September 23, 2000). Also see Sandline’s website www.sandline.com

13. Consequently, as the former head of U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency operations in Colombia notes, “To get somebody out there to do those operations, you almost have to have that shady past.” Ted Robberson, “U.S. Launches Covert Program to Aid Colombia,” Dallas Morning News (August 19, 1998).

14. As the firms grow more corporate and realize that their operations depend on a positive pubic opinion they are acting to reverse a negative public image with increased openness. Sandline and MPRI stand out as two of the most savvy at this public relations task, as their websites, listed in Appendix 1, reveal.

1. AN ERA OF CORPORATE WARRIORS?

1. James Traub, “The Worst Place on Earth,” New York Review of Books, June 29, 2000. http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWfeatdisplay.cgi?20000629061F; UN Development Programme, UN Human Development Index 2000. Available at http://www.undp.org/hdr2000/english/HDR2000.html

2. Laura Silber and Allan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 357; Samantha Knight et al., “The Croatian Army’s Friends.” U.S. News & World Report, August 21, 1995, p. 41.

3. Roger Cohen, “After Aiding Croatian Army, U.S. Now Seeks to Contain It,” New York Times, October 28, 1995, p. 5.

4. Charlotte Eager, “Invisible U.S. Army Defeats Serbs,” Observer, November 5, 1995.

5. Interviews with Croat Defense officials, Fall 1996; David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace (New York: Scribners, 2001), pp. 335–336.

6. Interview with member of U.S. Government negotiating team, Fall 1996.

7. For more see Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace; Michael O’Hanlon and Ivo Daalder, Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Press, 2000. “It’s Off to War Again for Big U.S. Contractor,” Wall Street Journal, April 14, 1999, A21.

8. As quoted on Halliburton website. http://www.halliburton.com/BRS/brsss/brsss_1199_balkansd.asp

9. Trevor Jones and Tim Newburn, Private Security and Public Policing (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 30; Elliott Sclar, Selling the Brooklyn Bridge: The Economics of Public Service Privatization (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1999).

10. Jones and Newburn, Private Security and Public Policing, p. 29.

11. Perhaps the best work on this was Coase’s study of the history of lighthouses. Lighthouses used to be cited by economists as one of the few clear-cut examples, outside of national defense, of public goods that required the involvement of government. It turned out, however, that they were wrong and that even lighthouses were operated by private firms at one time. Ronald Coase, “The Lighthouse in Economics” Journal of Law and Economics 17 (October 1974): 357–376.

12. Paul Taibel, “Outsourcing & Privatization of Defense Infrastructure.” A Business Executives for National Security Report, 1998. Available at http://www.bens.org/pubs/outsrce.html.

13. J. Michael Brower, “Outland: The Vogue of DOD Outsourcing and Privatization,” Acquisition Review Quarterly 4 (Fall 1997): 383–392; Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776. Available at http://www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/smith/wealth/wealbk05

14. Before the advent of the state in the 1600s, soldiers were privately equipped, being required to bring their own weapons and accoutrements to the battlefield. The universalizing effects of state bureaucracies quickly ended this practice, as uniform forces were mustered into the public service and states began to manufacture all their own weapons, from swords on up to battleships. Yet this was not to be a permanent arrangement. When it became obvious in the late nineteenth century that public arsenals could not keep up in cost and quality with private arms manufacturers (like Krupps and Vickers), this responsibili...