Ronin in the Modern Age?

Commissioning 'foreign' combatants to fight on states’ behalf has existed for as long as warfare itself. Yet a failure to delineate between the Private Military Companies (PMCs) of today and the mercenaries of history has lead to synonymous conclusions which will continue to cloud and hinder the way society develops its relationship with these groups. Only by identifying inconsistent traits and dispelling myths can a less emotive and more rational dialogue involving PMCs ensue, resulting in a balanced appraisal of their worth.

On September 17th 2008, the Swiss government in cooperation with the ICRC produced perhaps one of the most significant texts in relation to the regulation of PMCs in the last 30 years. The Montreux Document’s self-stated purpose was to “highlight pertinent international legal obligations ...and good practices... during conflict.” ²² Crucially it was ratified by the US, UK and South Africa from where many of these firms originate, as well as 14 other signatory states all of whom agreed to heightened levels of accountability and regulation for the companies they employ.

Thus, the motion this article proposes is to countenance an outdated perception of what Shearer calls “rampaging Rambo’s” ¹⁸ to reveal a new epoch in the privatization of force by challenging moral concerns and common mistrust over the utility of PMCs, which are often based on anaemic preconceptions that cloud a more accurate process of analytical rigour. It does not proclaim that PMCs uniformly act with the stoicism one would hope, nor does it excuse the repugnant acts of past, but instead it seeks to indicate the potential worth of these groups under rectified conditions embodied by this new document.

This article ambitiously hopes to sway social awareness and engage in a more sensible dialogue over how best to make use of PMCs today and in the future by addressing four key areas:

• Identifying how the current incarnation of PMCs are a different breed than the renegade groups of history.

• Assessing why PMCs are so crucial today based upon our contemporary understanding of warfare.

• Addressing societal concerns by evaluating key implications of the inclusion of PMCs.
  

• Analysing and evaluating anticipated future anxieties concerned with PMC use.

PMCs... not mercenaries

Academics and professional soldiers alike draw diametrically distinct conclusions concerning the utility of PMCs in the twenty-first century. Commentators such as Ralph Peters as recently as December 2008 normatively dubbed them ‘misfits, thugs and outright psychotics who kill with impunity’ ¹⁵ yet PMCs today are in many crucial ways incongruent to our original understanding of the privatized nature of war, upon which Peters also bases his remarks. Instead, such conclusions are drawn from a former incarnation of PMCs, mercenaries, who as will be concluded in this section were in many ways distinct entities.

Structure:

Structural reorganisation has impacted significantly on the present-day conduct of PMCs making them notably dissimilar to their predecessors and more accountable for their actions. Today they are representative of a new paradigm in private military capability, based upon the characteristics of a conglomerate that is hierarchically organised with responsibilities to share-holders and board of directors. Whilst former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asserted that there is no ‘distinction between respectable mercenaries and non-respectable mercenaries’ ³ the contemporary and enduring organisational structure seen today stands in stark contrast to the closest identifiable corporations from history -the colonial charter trading companies of the 17th century- whose ad hoc approach meant that their military capability was never permanent nor legally contracted, resulting in endemic abuse. Yet unlike the charter companies, PMCs today are required to adopt a symbiotic relationship with state law, not evade it, in an attempt to make them more legitimate organizations than any of their antecedents.

The corporate model has thus provided PMCs with an openness and transparency that was lacking in the historically murky world of mercenarism. Through the open market they have become legal, public entities capable of offering a wider range of services to a more variable clientele whose motivation is driven by advancement of the business as a whole rather than merely individual profit, a trait typically indentified with mercenaries such as Frenchman Bob Denard who infamously lead a series of violent coups in Africa during the 1960s.

Morality and PMCs:

Autonomy can be seen as a feature intrinsic to morality for PMCs. Despite Bobbit’s assertion that the state should have ‘a variety of options when it comes to wielding force’ ⁹ unlike mercenaries, PMCs must remain aware of their moral position and avoid being a means through which governments can circumvent democracy and abridge human rights. ¹⁶ Despite their privatised nature, Singer seems prudent in confirming that the ‘rationale for many firms’ success may be their... remaining independent’ ²⁰ therefore just because a PMC is commissioned by a certain client, it need not stand that it becomes a part of their institution. Indeed, many larger PMCs have called for national and international regulation of their work as the executive vice-president of Aegis clarifies, the company is ‘eager to see the private security industry regulated.’ ¹⁰ Cynically, this may be seen as a means of attaining certification for any deed PMCs commit, however as Montreux indicates any party complicit in the illicit use of PMCs may be held to account.

PMCs are clearly not then, as Abdel-Fatau Musah claims, ‘the old poison of vagabond mercenaries in new designer bottles.’ ¹³ Instead it appears more useful, for the purpose of evaluation, not to make the individual within a PMC the sole unit of analysis as has thus far been the case, but to assess the greater structure of which they are a part; by virtue of its organisational composition the PMC attempts to act as a genuine mechanism through which acts of immorality are kept abated.

Why PMCs are crucial today

The West’s proclivity to employ technology as a force-multiplier beyond the initial stages of combat has failed in compensating for much needed “boots on the ground.” Eager to avoid the “body-bag” effect, Donald Rumsfeld speaking in 2001 described the advancement of technology in warfare as a ‘paradigm shift’ ¹⁷ yet as the Surge of 2007 demonstrated, nebulous concepts such as C4ISR or “strategic transformation” cannot replace the physical presence of soldiers. If mass-armies are to remain an aspect of a bygone era then PMCs would appear a socio-politically useful proxy, as Thomas More said of his idealistic, Utopian society ‘they’re much too fond of one another to be willing to sacrifice a single citizen... most of their fighting is done by mercenaries.’ ¹² Although PMCs today are not permitted to actively engage, their presence would release professional state soldiers who can affect more strategic rather than tactical objectives.

PMCs have often been able to achieve much greater success in warzones than many charities, NGOs or even sovereign states. Whilst previously they have successfully concluded civil stalemates by ‘bludgeoning the other side into accepting a peace agreement’ ¹⁹ as witnessed in Sierra Leone, Bosnia or Kosovo, today their remit is more refined and concerned with aiding development. As Tim Spicer’s corporation proudly boasts in relation to the Iraqi elections of 2005-06 ‘whatever had to be done... would be done... within the regulatory framework’ ¹ but such a change in tack has left human-rights groups confronting a moral paradox. Ruth Collins of the War on Want concedes that ‘government departments… couldn’t be in Iraq without them (PMCs)… and the same is true for many charities’, ⁴ yet however ethically questionable for human-rights groups, without PMCs there would be slower aid distribution, limited investment and little development; nevertheless PMCs invariably provide only a “quick-fix” or short-term solution meaning that the work undertaken by other groups remains essential for long-term sustainability.

Implications for Society

Historically, the West has been led to believe that the state is the only prism through which all functions associated with war must pass. Indeed, as the United Nations Working Group on the use of Mercenaries seeks to warn ‘since private guards are only accountable to their employing companies, immunity can turn easily into impunity’ ²⁴ corroborating why the utility of privatized force has always existed on the periphery of politicians recognition since the establishment of the modern nation-state. Yet in the recent era PMCs have attempted to become more palatable to their socio-political masters and senior officials are increasingly willing to accept their presence, as the then UK foreign secretary Jack Straw observed ‘today’s world is a far cry from the 1960s when private military activity usually meant mercenaries of the rather unsavoury kind’ ²¹ clearly signalling that the long-standing separation between public and private jurisdiction is slowly being bridged. Such steps have made the emergence of regulatory documents such as Montreux possible and enticed liberal societal commentators such as Michael Kinsley to conclude that politicians should ‘draft old men's money, not young men's bodies.’ ¹⁴

The emergence of NGOs such as BAPSC in the UK or the IPOA in the US substantiates indications that PMCs are establishing slow but stable foundations in civil society. Yet in some quarters this process is being hindered by PMCs themselves, for in its newsletter Blackwater Tactical Weekly, the company defended an indigestible claim that ‘it’s fun to kill people’ ⁷ and further champions machismo bumper-stickers such as ‘guns only have two enemies; rust and politicians’ ⁸ making any notion of the stringent standards of self-regulation that the company professes particularly incredible, resulting in a widening of the cleavage between all PMCs and public opinion. Hastings has claimed ‘only by formally accepting supervision can they (PMCs) break through the barrier of political and public scepticism’, ¹¹ confirming that the majority of PMCs who have supported measures for external scrutiny to guarantee accountability may benefit from deeper socio-political integration. Indeed, when Tarique Gaffur the then Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police addressed a BAPSC conference, he indicated a role for PMCs in the 2012 Olympic Games asserting ‘there’s a good opportunity for a legacy of public/private partnership’ ⁵ compounding the supposition that a liberal democratic state which opts to partially privatize its monopoly of force need not, as many assert, undermine the social contract between state and citizen over the issue of security, providing there are genuine measures for regulation.

Future-proofing PMCs

Although the reasoning outlined above represents the dawning of an era in accountability and creates certain obligations for PMCs that have not before existed, there are still crucial areas where further assurance is required.

Firstly, Amnesty International responded to Montreux by noting that the regulations fail to explicitly reference and ‘elaborate with enough detail and precision the applicable international law’ ² so limiting its value as a legal framework. Whilst this may be true, the very fact that governmental, military or civilian elites must ‘exercise control… in accordance with the rules of international law’ ²³ or be held liable means that such vagaries should ensure the highest standards of compliance by multiple parties, not solely PMCs. This leads to a rapid identification of groups who are not likely to put the reputation of a particular company, military or state at risk, whilst siphoning off those who fail to comply with irreversible, mandatory standards.

A second essential caveat for the partial privatization of force is for the state to ensure that security does not become a two tier commodity. In South Africa for example domestic firms are more interested in securing rich rather than the poor areas and as Dr Rita Abrahamsen of Aberystwyth University notes, illogically ‘the efficiency and success of the scheme might lead to social and economic exclusion’ ⁶ where not only the rule of law can become increasingly nebulous, but human rights disregarded also; thus, an effective social contract concerning security is pivotal to the effective functioning of PMCs and the state.

Conclusion

This article has shown that with a number of evolutionary modifications culminating in Montreux, the private military industry has extended beyond the fringe, outcast utility of the past and is motivated by a new moral legitimacy with global significance. Despite policymaker’s best attempts, such is the reliance on PMCs by the West that complacency over their conduct should no longer be an option for politicians; taxpayers subsidise their actions and they must be held to account. This notwithstanding, there are now significant glimpses of how a properly regulated industry might be put into effect, with humanitarian and aid organisations as well sovereign states requiring the services of these corporations, the national and ultimately international recognition being sought no longer makes it impossible to envisage a future where public and private spheres of force operate in effective synthesis with social endorsement.

References

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