Military privatisation and its impact on the nature of warfare.

Abstract

The rise and proliferation of private military companies (PMCs) came in response to the changing political, strategic and economic environment following the Cold War. Certain places more than others, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, have required the services of such external actors to maintain even a minimum level of order. PMCs however represent an uneasy dilemma insofar as our present understanding of international relations and international law is concerned, facilitating highly-sought on-call military capability on the one hand and creating immense ethical and even socioeconomic complications on the other. What is certain is that the privatisation of military affairs reflects, rather than merely accelerates, the changing nature of state-centric politics and of warfare, and is thus a fixture of the present era. Rather than categorically condemning them, a nuanced and balanced approach is required that takes into consideration potential benefits especially amid intractable conflicts.

Keywords: privatisation, military, companies, security, war, business

Introduction

If the conduct of war within the Westphalian state-centric framework ended the chaotic feudalisms of the preceding age, the unraveling of Cold War superpower patronage appears to have upset the peace-security equation in developing regions, normalising the increasing incidences of low-intensity warfare and attendant humanitarian crises. At the same time, the neoliberal superlogics of economic rationalisation and deregulation, compounded by professional military downsizing worldwide brought back to the fore what is now corporate mercenarism--private military companies (PMCs, the general term henceforth employed). (1) Against this backdrop, much of the standard Clausewitzian rules of engagement involving the trinity of government, military and citizenry and clear dichotomies 'between public and private, internal and external, economic and political, civil and military, combatant and non-combatant' have crumbled. (2) In its place, something arguably approximating Mary Kaldor's 'new wars' based on a 'globalised war economy' and ascribed identities have emerged. (3) With respect to the international community, intrastate repression is now the commonly invoked casus belli rather than traditional interstate aggression. Israeli military historian Van Creveld noted some fifteen years ago that the notion of the modern state, conventional warfare, as well as modern weapons systems, were already facing increasing irrelevance due to the haphazard character of low-intensity conflicts on the one hand and the unmistakable madness of the nuclear bomb on the other. (4)

Nowhere is the state more challenged today than in Sub-Saharan Africa, where organised violence has become a torridly privatised affair, an aggregated consequence of terminal corruption, economic cannibalisation, a disproportionate yield of natural resources in select parts and, worse, the virtual decomposition or non-existence of effective state governments and hence legitimacy. Lock noted nothing new about mammon-mesmerised mercenaries apart from their conjunction with weak states. (5) As we see further, many African dictatorships are forthwith plugged into the world economy through a variety of means including enterprising multinational companies (MNCs), through whose brokerage transnational flows of strategic resources from 'blood' or 'conflict' diamonds to hardwood timber permit the procurement of Cold War-era light weapons stockpiles--which in turn escalate local and regional conflicts. This brings to mind Jean-Francois Bayart's thesis that Africa is finally in the process of (re)shaping its own indigenous political economy and modes of political production. (6) Elsewhere, Ali Mazrui was incisive in his observation that 'ultimate power resides not in those who controlled the means of production, but in those who controlled the means of destruction'. (7)

While privatised violence encompasses other such diverse actors from warlord militias to child soldiers, the twilight and immensely ambiguous status of commercially registered and influential military businesses provides an interesting perspective from which to consider the changing nature of contemporary war. This essay does not adopt the moral and legal high ground vis-a-vis so-called mercenaries and their professional conduct, the literature being rife with animated debate as it stands. Instead it attempts to provide a balanced outline of their consequences on the nature of contemporary warfare from both the empirical and ethical perspectives. More significant is the core argument that military privatisation also reflects the presently evolving security order rather than simply throwing a spanner into the state-centric conduct of war as is traditionally understood, a perspective that if carefully considered fits in with the opportunistic individualism and (systemic) anarchy of the realist and neorealist worldviews.