Alex Kershaw – international and regional security blog

The government systems of the western world are designed to solve collective action problems – to protect their citizens and to ensure harmony and order. To protect its citizens, the state holds the legitimate control over force in order to ensure that crime does not affect its citizens and that they can live in a safe environment. National defence is one of the key pillars to this ideal of protecting citizens. However, since 9/11 and the call to arms of some of the West’s most powerful states, the state’s control over the military and use of force has gone through a process of redefinition in which many states are in part reliant on Private Military Companies (PMCs) to cover short comings that they face. States such as United States and the United Kingdom in seeking the aid of these PMCs has meant that these states have become   consumers of force and have given up, to a degree, their monopoly over force. This can be seen with the US government issuing huge contracts to entities such as Blackwater, Halliburton, Aegis and many more that have become necessary additions to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, these PMCs are not solely contracted by Western states but also by private interests and individuals who seek the services they provide. For example, many natural resource multinationals employ PMC’s to guard their property, equipment and personnel.

The documentary Shadow Company provides an insight into how PMC’s work and how complex the issues that surround private military companies. In this blog my aim is to highlight how the process of using PMCs that have the underlining goal of financial gain has some serious moral and ethical implications, and that global oversight is needed to curb the potential abusive  implicit in their roles.

Historically, mercenaries were employed by many groups to deliver further political goals and exert control over the others across Europe with the many city states and regional rulers seeking aid from private armies. Italy, a country that in the medieval ages was made up of city states, was the perfect market for mercenaries. City states that had grown rich from trade, such as Venice and Genoa, yet held small populations had small military capabilities that made them vulnerable.  This caused these states to hire foreign companies to help them protect themselves as well as attack other city states. Shadow Company provided a useful oversight of this and managed to integrate the fact that mercenaries and the renting out of force has been present during various historical eras.

Now, we see a similar emergence of mercenaries that protect those who can pay and can fill the many roles that the militaries of the West have abandoned. PMCs undertake a plethora of activities and can be divided into distinct categories, with some providing uncontroversial services such as cooking food, and building equipment;, others such as Black Water,  provide tactical support and the now defunct Executive Outcomes – a company which  acted as a military for hire  in Sierra Leone.

So what are the issues of PMCs? Firstly, the state, in contracting out military power, removes a crucial check to force. Essentially, force is no longer a monopoly of government and its use is not subject to civilian control via the government. This means that PMCs, when using force, are less accountable than state-run militaries. In Shadow Company, the various PMC heads discuss the morality behind their choices, and all implied that they are morally conscious whilst they were quick to deride certain figures in the PMC world such as Tim Spicer. Whilst it may be true that many of these people may have morals, I would argue that when money is a key motivator for action – the concept of morality becomes inherently looser. It could also be argued that governments actually seek out PMCs in part to remove their political accountability from nefarious activities that occur during war.

The second issue is that is that PMCs, in renting out their ability to use force to private individuals and companies, can become a tool of force that involves abusive use of that force. I would argue that when protecting projects such as mines or pipelines, PMCs are acting in a non-controversial way and are instead fulfilling a demand that governments, particularly since the demise in the west of mercantilism, have been unwilling to provide. Shadow Company provides an example of how some PMCs have been at the behest of the individual/company contracting them ended up working for a negative cause. The example, provided by the documentary is that of the hiring of a PMC, composed of former executive outcomes members, to lead a coup in Equatorial Guinea (2004). The figures such as Mark Thatcher who contracted the PMC out were promised mining concessions after the coup and whilst the coup failed, the PMC that was involved ended up having many of its members thrown in jail. This coup attempt was not based on protecting people or assets but, rather, based around self-interest. This ability of private entities to hire out PMCs to further self-interest is nothing new however it is a slippery slope and can lead to very harmful situations in which money and force combine to the demise of morality.

The documentary Shadow Company makes a valiant attempt at highlighting many of the issues surrounding the PMC world and brings to the viewer’s attention, the serious discrepancies in terms of oversight that PMCs face. Furthermore, it provides a foundation for building an understanding of this shadowy form of conflict that is based around PMC involvement. The only criticism I have is that it somewhat romanticises PMCs with the use of a Hollywood star to narrate key excerpts of the documentary and gives a platform for PMC involved individuals to show their morality and benefits they provide. Whilst they may provide benefits, the documentary could have focused on the need to increase oversight and standardisation of the PMC business that could be achieved through international organisations and charters the clearly set out how PMCs should behave.  This could be done with the emergence of a regulatory body. In the same way that states are subject to the Geneva Convention, PMCs should also have a similar article or charter that governs them. This would help control the PMCs potential to be brought by the ‘bad guys’, limit their ability to act with unnecessary force, and also give the PMCs clarity in terms of what is acceptable and unacceptable.