Political Science Discussions

The film “Shadow Company” attempts to highlight the complexities and the underlying factors of Private Military Companies (PMC’s). PMC’s function as additional but private forces that get hired to work for various wars. Employees (in this case mercenaries) are hired by these corporations just as they would for any other job. Resume’s and interviews help weed out the mercenaries and they are later deployed for their job. Overall after watching the film I felt that it did a very good job at giving an overview of PMC’s for a person who wasn’t really aware of their role and existence. After the film, I feel like Mr. Bell’s lecture did a great job in filling some of the gaps on areas that the film didn’t quite target.

From my understanding, the PMC’s are in a way competing against state/country militaries. As a result, they are also controversial due to many reasons, one being that they are not professional and accountable in the ways militaries could be. Though Mr. Bell and other PMC’s owners consider employee safety and company reputation as the biggest determinants of signing a contract rather than the money, one needs to remember that they are still private businesses in the end of the day. Moreover, in my opinion, they may take certain crimes committed by their employees less seriously then a military would as a company would not like to put its name in any sort of jeopardy. In addition, though safety of employees might be a big goal of PMC’s yet it still may not be equivalent to the standards of a military. This is because the military is accountable to the state directly. If any news of safety violations for military soldiers were to leak out, it would be a huge issue covered by international media. Similar incident under the PMC would be covered to a much lower standard in my opinion as it isn’t really accountable to a body similar to the state.

Mr. Bell also stated that his employees usually go through a training course where they can maybe learn the culture of their workplace. This might be a policy that Mr. Bell follows in his company, however there is no guarantee that other private security companies put a similar emphasis on this topic. As a result, the mercenaries being unaware of the culture in their workplace might seriously violate norms, resulting in trouble. Like the example Mr. Bell gave, in places like Iraq it is very important to not violate any traditions and rules in contacting women. If a soldier unknowingly does even greet a woman as he would in Canada, he would most probably get killed, without any fault as he wasn’t trained to such heights. So safety of soldiers can be put under risk without their full knowledge.

Another thing to take into consideration is that PMC’s tend to pay double the amount that militaries might pay. As stated in the film, soldiers apart of a military may get $70, 000, however mercenaries may make $140 000 for doing the exact same job. Though wages may be higher, I feel that the level of respect in a military is much higher for a solider than it is in a PMC. Just to take an example, as a military soldier dies, the entire state mourns, yet when a mercenary dies, they may not even get a flag on their body bag. Sacrifices made by mercenaries aren’t even known by the general public.

In the end of the day, when it comes to the question of morality and ethics, we need to realize that the people in fact make a decision to join a PMC. Sometimes they don’t know the full implications of what they may be getting themselves into, which should be dealt with more training in different areas. It is very hard to say whether PMC’s are right or wrong, but there is no doubt in the fact that they are getting a lot of business and interested people that want to work as employees. I however feel that when it comes to the level of respect, honor and safety working under a military seems more legitimate.