In the same, often opaque, manner that society delineates the terrorist from the freedom fighter, Jason Bourque and Nick Bicanic’s documentary film – The Shadow Company – and Alan Bell, the President of Global Risk International, discuss Western society’s blurring of the line between soldier and mercenary. Private military companies now compose a significant segment of the security community and these groups have come to appropriate many traditional military roles. Similar to that of less acceptable or conventional non-state combatants, these groups are not subject to neither the limitations nor the protections afforded to traditional armed forces. In this blog, I will briefly discuss what I believe to be the fundamental differences between traditional armed forces and private military companies (PMCs), as explained by the documentary. Furthermore, I will discuss the moral and economic rationales for employing PMCs through a market-centric understanding of the modern security environment.

To understand the key differences between traditional militaries and PMC’s we must first examine and compare a number of attributes that each of these entities possess as explained by Bell and the film. Historically, soldiers-for-hire outdate traditional armies. Ignoring earlier professional armies like Rome’s legions, The Shadow Company emphasizes this discrepancy as it explains that mercenary companies in Europe, formed at the end of The Hundred Years War, dominated the military ‘economy’ within Europe until the 18th century. Despite this film’s omission of characters like Xenophon in its historical locating of mercenaries, it does establish the advent of the French Revolution and the rise of nationalism as the starting point for when European states began employing professional and nationally maintained armies.

Moving to the present, The Shadow Company explains that the end of the Cold War saw an increase in the use of PMCs. Furthermore, the film describes the three ‘levels’ or areas in which the private sector has been used as a substitute for traditional military branches – non-lethal services (logistics), military consultants (trainers) and private military contractors (protection). From my own knowledge, traditional militaries from countries like the UK, US, and Canada do have the capacity to fill the above roles but traditional armies have since left some or all of these roles to private military companies, this change is highlighted by the proliferation of PMCs since 2001. Bell highlighted a key difference between the roles of these two groups. On the one hand, PMCs are charged with the protection of “nouns” – specific infrastructure, equipment, and people. Traditional militaries, in contrast, usually take on an offensive role as they tackle adversaries head-on (offensive operations) or manage key areas or territories. There is one possible rationale for this division of labor. I doubt that the public and the media would accept the use of aggressive force upon an enemy by a non-state actor and would prefer a nation-state’s military to shoulder this responsibility.

This division is distinct; conversely, there is still blurring between the traditional military and PMCs. Bell recounts his unofficial meeting with members of the Taliban’s leadership in an attempt to relay his companies’ apolitical position and positive developmental role. However, the Canadian government, who had zero contact with the Taliban leadership up until this point, was unhappy with this meeting and refused to utilize Bell’s contacts. Here, Bell attempted to use diplomacy to provide a safer work environment but, in fact, he subverted the traditional leadership-leadership dialogue. Without background knowledge and consideration, Bell took matters into his own hands and his actions could have caused damage or loss of life. Furthermore, this action shows that PMCs will attempt to take on a greater role in conflict, such as arbiter, if there is a diplomatic vacuum. In terms of roles, the traditional military and PMCs are distinct but do share some functions, such as training.

With the advent of neoliberalism in the West, we now live in an economic construct that aims to provide efficiencies and economies in every section of our economy, including our ability to project force. Neoliberalism, in short, is an economic philosophy that demands the removal of the government’s role in the market and it trusts that the market can regulate itself. Through this economic paradigm, one that stresses supply-and-demand or market forces to be the core of human economic interaction, we can understand the rationale behind, and the paradox in, the use of PMCs by Western governments in the marketplace of security. To understand this paradigm, we must view the international system as a marketplace where, on the one hand, there is a ‘demand’ for low cost-to-benefit outcomes and, on the other, an ample ‘supply’ of conflict in the world. But, as we will see, these two facets are inconsistent with each other. The first inconsistency is that there is a moral demand from the Western public to be furnished with palatable military outcomes and a demand for the projection of Western interests and policies. However, despite this noble moral imperative and belief in the universalism of Western values, there is an insufficient willingness on the part of the West’s public to accept the kinds of losses, be it human or treasure, which comes with these policies. For example, the military spending of the UK and US has been cut dramatically since 2008 and these states have proved themselves to far less willing to act in the name of their universal values – such as the British Parliament’s rejection of airstrikes against Syria’s Assad regime in 2013. So, while publics in North America and Europe wring their hands over the loss of life in the world and wonder why democracy cannot flourish, there is little inclination among these societies to foot the human and material ‘bill’ for the policies or these values. Yet, there is still a rising a ‘demand’ in the global security marketplace for military training, logistics and protection as conflict, in particular intrastate, has steadily increased since the end of the 1990s. Thus, we can see there is a niche for non-state parties, like NGOs and PMCs, to provide services that Western states’ and publics refuse to undertake themselves. As stated by the documentary, PMCs can provide services which are fiscally inexpensive, as the contracts for these actors are usually significantly shorter than those of traditional soldiers. Plus, as Alan Bell reported, those contractors who are killed or wounded in the workplace are rarely discussed by the media and, therefore, there is no loss of political capital or prestige for Western governments. Thus, in the same way as development charities like Oxfam provide cheaper development, PMCs deliver an inexpensive alternative as traditional soldiers are costly to maintain and the political costs are lower for the loss of these contractors. This is due, in part, to the economic and moral obstacles springing from the West’s public, as these roles in can be only be partially fulfilled by their expensive militaries and PMC’s, which are less affected by public opinion, and provide a cheaper alternative to traditional militaries.

In sum, there are key differences between the conventional military and PMC’s roles but many other, often subsidiary, roles have been appropriated by the private sector. Both the documentary film and Alan Bell show that there is a niche for PMC’s within the security marketplace for an increasingly unstable and conflicted world. While conflict has increased, the willingness of the West to intervene or respond has decreased. Financial and political pressures are taking a toll upon the West’s governments and publics. Personally, I am not totally convinced that PMC’s are a welcome addition to the management of security as there is no formal statute or agreement which defines and limits their conduct. However, I can see, though a market orientated perspective, that PMC’s provide a much needed service. It is interesting to note, that PMC’s may be better positioned to deal with intrastate conflicts than traditional militaries. PMCs are not subject to the same bureaucratic limitations that governments IGOs are afflicted by. Action in conflicts like Rwanda’s in the early 1990s, where the UN was restricted by rigid bureaucracy, could be better tackled by PMCs who are not inhibited by crippling red tape and can provide a cheaper, fiscally and politically, alternative to conventional forces. There are still strong ethical and moral considerations which need to be examined before PMCs take on greater roles in the marketplace of conflict.