Privatizing war
How much of the war effort should we “contract out”?
In this third entry of what is becoming a series on the ethics of war (drones last week and R.O.T.C. recruiting the week before), I want to take a look at a controversial trend in American defense strategy. That trend is the rapidly increasing extent to which we outsource responsibilities normally handled by the military to private contractors.
I noted in last week’s post that drones are often flown by civilian contractors, thousands of miles away from the conflict. That’s just the proverbial iceberg’s tip. In mid-2007, the U.S. military had about 145,000 troops on the ground in Iraq, but most of us had no idea that 126,000 private personnel had accompanied them, almost doubling the total force. These contractors are often responsible for critical mission activities, such as guarding politicians and diplomats. General David Petraeus actually admitted to being accompanied by a private security firm, not the U.S. military, as he travels in Iraq.
Why should we think of this as a problem? The use of privately-operated forces in war raises a number of new dilemmas. To begin with, we have not yet figured out exactly how to classify contractors and their employees under U.S. and international law. Contractors such as Blackwater have been involved in a number of unfortunate mishaps, often involving the killing of civilians, yet very few have been court-marshaled. Without the regimented discipline of the military code, contractors are both prone to breaking more rules and further out of accountability’s reach. Rather than risk a PR nightmare, U.S. officials would rather downplay the role of security firms than open them up to investigations, military lawyers, and international criticism.
Then there’s the problem of waging war for profit. In my discussion of drones, I noted the criticism that using unmanned robots to fight in our place diminishes the human sacrifice of war, thereby reducing the moral check on escalating conflict or becoming “trigger-happy,” so to speak. The use of contractors poses a similar threat by hiding the real cost of war from taxpayers, dodging legal and ethical boundaries on the use of military force, and making it increasingly profitable to engage in combat. A declaration of war, rather than implying a national, collective sacrifice, now implies well-paying jobs for hundreds of thousands of employees who most of us aren’t even aware of.
Indeed, American soldiers themselves are sometimes disillusioned by the presence of better-equipped, higher-paid contractors fighting alongside them. We’re in danger of letting our “public force” fall far behind private armies in technology, efficiency, and even prestige.
This is simply the logical extension of the trend Dwight Eisenhower described half a century ago - the expanding impact of industry on defense policy. Our armaments are designed, built, shipped, and now even used by non-military contractors. Would we consider following the trend all the way - that is, simply having large defense firms bid for a “war contract” and hiring them to conduct the entire process? If hiring such “mercenary armies” is morally abhorrent, we need to have a clear explanation of why that is, and we ought to apply it to our current approach. As is so common with questionable policies, military outsourcing has been swept under the rug. Increased oversight and details about spending, conduct, and corruption are needed, but these are only preliminary steps in a serious debate about privatizing war.
-Colin
Photo from Wikimedia Commons used under CC attribution license.
Related posts:
- The drone dilemma
- Fighting on a virtual battlefield
- Just cyber war
- Ivy League vs. armed forces
- More on war games
Comments
Leave a Reply
-
Follow us on Twitter
