Deeper Objections to the Privatisation of Military Force

Journal of Political Philosophy

Volumn 18, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 425-447

  Pattison, James ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 78751535801     PISSN: 09638016     EISSN: 14679760     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2009.00356.x     Document Type: Article

References (98)

1. Peter W. Singer's excellent Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry |For documentation of this rise, see (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 2003.
2. Doug Brooks and Matan Chorev, 'Ruthless humanitarianism: why marginalizing private peacekeeping kills people', Private Military and Security Companies: Ethics, Policies and Civil-Military Relations, ed. Andrew Alexandra, Deane-Peter Baker, and Marina Caparini (New York: Routledge), 2008, 116-30.
3. Sam Perlo-Freeman and Elisabeth Sköns, 'The private military services industry', SIPRI Insights on Peace and Security, For a detailed analysis of the size of the industry, see No. 2008/1.
4. Elke Krahmann, 'The new model soldier and civil-military relations', Private Military and Security Companies, ed. Alexandra, Baker, and Caparini, at p. 254 247-65.
5. Filiz Zabci, 'Private military companies: "shadow soldiers" of neo-colonialism', Capital and Class, 92 (2007), 1-10 See, for instance, and War on Want, 'Corporate Mercenaries', posted November, 2006.
6. Andrew Alexandra, 'Mars meets mammon', Private Military and Security Companies, Notable exceptions include , ed. Alexandra, Baker, and Caparini, 89-101
7. Deane-Peter Baker, 'Of "mercenaries" and prostitutes: can private warriors be ethical?'Private Military and Security Companies, ed. Alexandra, Baker, and Caparini, 30-42
8. Kateri Carmola, 'It's all contracts now: private military firms and a clash of legal culture', Brown Journal of World Affairs, 8 (2006), 161-73
9. C. A. J. Coady, Morality and Political Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2007, 205-27
10. Cécile Fabre, 'In defence of mercenarism', British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
11. Mervyn Frost, 'Regulating anarchy: the ethics of PMCs in global society', Private Military and Security Companies, ed. Alexandra, Baker, and Caparini, 43-55
12. Marcus Hedahl, 'Blood and Blackwaters: a call to arms for the profession of arms', Journal of Military Ethics, 8 (2009), 19-33
13. George R. Lucas Jr., 'Pirates and PMCs: internationalism and military interoperability', International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 23 (2009), 87-94
14. Tony Lynch and A. J. Walsh, 'The good mercenary?'Journal of Political Philosophy, 8 (2000), 133-53
15. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 216-29.
16. 'Mercenary impulse: is there an ethics that justifies Blackwater?'New Republic, Michael Walzer has also recently offers some remarks on PMSCs in 12 March 2008.
17. Carmola, 'It's all contracts now'; James Pattison, 'Just war theory and the privatization of military force', Ethics & International Affairs, 22 (2008), 143-62 See, for example.
18. James Pattison, 'Outsourcing the responsibility to protect: humanitarian intervention and private military and security companies', International Theory, forthcoming
19. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 216-29.
20. Lindsey Cameron, 'Private military companies: their status under international humanitarian law and its impact on their regulation', International Review of the Red Cross 88 (2006), 573-98 For analysis of PMSCs' lack of effective legal accountability, see
21. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Private Military Companies (London: The Stationery Office), 2002
22. Caroline Holmqvist, Private Security Companies: The Case for Regulation, SIPRI Policy Paper No. 9 (Stockholm: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), 2005
23. generally, Simon Chesterman and Chia Lehnardt, eds, From Mercenaries to Market: The Rise and Regulation of Private Military Companies (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2007.
24. The document's full title is the 'Montreux Document on Pertinent International Legal Obligations and Good Practices for States Related to Operations of Private Military and Security Companies During Armed Conflict'. It is available at
25. Baker, 'Of "mercenaries"'
26. Fabre, 'In defence of mercenarism'
27. Frost, 'Regulating anarchy'.
28. 'The good mercenary?' Likewise, Lynch and Walsh are eager to show the failings in Machiavelli's infamous denunciation of mercenaries as 'useless and dangerous. disunited, thirsty for power, undisciplined, and disloyal'.
29. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull (London: Penguin, [1515]) 1961, 38.
30. Malcolm Patterson, 'A corporate alternative to United Nations ad hoc military deployments', Journal of Conflict & Security Law, 13 (2008), 215-32, argues that if PMSCs were very heavily regulated, they could be used instead of state-based forces for UN peacekeeping.
31. See my 'Outsourcing the responsibility to protect' for a detailed discussion of this possibility.
32. Fabre, 'In defence of mercenarism', See, further, who has a thoughtful discussion of the relationship between the objections to employers of PMSCs, the firms themselves, and private soldiers.
33. The third set of objections differs from the previous two in that it is not agent specific and, as such, is more general. The primary focus of the first set of two objections is wrongdoing committed by the employees and employers, although others may be implicated. By contrast, the third set of objections does not focus on wrongdoing committed by any particular agent.
34. Fred Schreier and Marina Caparini, Privatising Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security Companies, See, Occasional Paper No. 6 (Geneva: Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces), 2005
35. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 41-8.
36. Simon Chesterman and Chia Lehnardt, 'Introduction', From Mercenaries to Market, ed. Chesterman and Lehnardt, at p. 3. Note that their definition is of private military companies, rather than PMSCs 1-10.
37. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars The classic statement is, 4th edn (New York: Basic Books), 127-59, 2006, 34-50.
38. This is the position essentially adopted by Walzer, ibid.
39. Jeff McMahan, 'The ethics of killing in war', Ethics, 114 (2004), 693-733 See, for example
40. 'The morality of war and the law of war', Just and Unjust Warriors, ed. David Rodin and Henry Shue (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 2008, 19-43.
41. McMahan has recently developed his theory of warfare more systematically in Killing in War (Oxford: Clarendon Press). (His book was published after this article was written.), 2009
42. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 145.
43. McMahan, 'Ethics of killing'.
44. McMahan, 'The Morality of war and the law of war', 22.
45. That said, sometimes it can be justifiable for unjust combatants to use force against those conducting a just war: namely, when the just forces themselves violate jus in bello. McMahan, 'Ethics of killing', p. 710, gives the example of an unjust combatant discovering a just combatant who is preparing to rape a woman in an occupied village.
46. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 39-40.
47. McMahan, 'Ethics of killing'.
48. The focus here is on jus ad bellum: even on conventional accounts of just war, soldiers are sometimes required to disobey their commander's orders if, for instance, the orders would result in war crimes.
49. David Estlund, 'On following orders in an unjust war', Journal of Political Philosophy, 15 (2007), 213-34. For a detailed analysis of this issue for regular soldiers, see
50. Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom For more on the importance of pre-emption and content-independence for authority, see (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 1986.
51. McMahan, 'Ethics of killing', 704-5.
52. Note that McMahan (p. 708) thinks that these institutional obligations are, in practice, unlikely to be sufficiently weighty to override the duty not to kill just combatants.
53. Lucas, 'Pirates and PMCs', 90. It is often said that the UK and US cannot wage war effectively now without employing the services of PMSCs. See, for instance
54. However, this does not necessarily mean that any particular set of private contractors are obliged to obey the commands of their home state, given that there are a number of firms that could help the state to wage war.
55. Estlund, 'On following orders', 216.
56. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 225.
57. Jeff McMahan, 'The sources and status of just war principles', Journal of Military Ethics, 6 (2007), 91-106 In addition, as part of the deep morality of war, these restrictions should ultimately, if not immediately, guide the design of our political institutions and legal norms governing the use of private force. For more on the relevance of the deep morality of warfare, see.
58. Similarly, McMahan, 'The morality of war and the law of war', argues that, although we should reject the moral equality of soldiers, we should eschew (at least for now) amendments to the legal equality of soldiers, until we can develop institutions, such as an impartial international court, to judge jus ad bellum.
59. C. A. J. Coady, 'Mercenary morality', International Law and Armed Conflict, ed. A. G. D. Bradney (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag) at p. 63, 1992 55-69.
60. Pattison, 'Just war theory and the privatization of military force', 144-9 I discuss this objection in more detail in.
61. Baker, 'Of "Mercenaries"' On the issue of 'mercenary motives', also see
62. Lynch and Walsh, 'The good mercenary?'
63. Iain Scobbie, 'Mercenary morality: a reply to Professor Coady', International Law and Armed Conflict, 71-91 ed. Bradney
64. Jessica Wolfendale, 'The military and the community: comparing national military forces and private military companies', Private Military and Security Companies, ed. Alexandra, Baker, and Caparini, 217-34.
65. 'Just war theory and the privatization of military force', 148-9.
66. Terry Nardin, 'Introduction', NOMOS XLVII: Humanitarian Intervention, ed. Terry Nardin and Melissa S. Williams (New York: New York University Press) at p. 10, 2006, 1-28.
67. There are two reasons in particular why a financial motive in general may seem troublesome. First, the financial motive is individualistic (at best it includes family members). It aims to benefit the individual concerned rather than a wider group (and so differs from patriotism in this respect). Second, in extreme cases, it suggests an amoral approach and, in particular, indicates few limits on what will be done for personal gain. See, further, A. J. Walsh, 'Commercial medicine and the ethics of the profit motive', Journal of Value Inquiry, 40 (2006), 341-57. To be sure, I am not claiming that all PMSC personnel are self-interested and amoral. The point is simply to indicate why a financial motive may be problematic.
68. Lynch and Walsh, 'The good mercenary?' See, for example.
69. Krahmann, 'The new model soldier', 255.
70. See, further, my Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Who Should Intervene? (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2010.
71. This second reason may have less force in the context of private force, given that private contractors do not rely on state leaders to decide which wars to fight-contractors' motives are relevant to this decision.
72. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 226.
73. Peter Singer 'Arguments against markets: two cases from the health field', Medical Care and Markets: Conflicts Between Efficiency and Justice, ed. C. L. Buchanan and E. W. Prior (Sydney: Allen & Unwin) at pp. 5-11, 1985, 2-19.
74. Singer also notes that introducing the market into blood donations can decrease the willingness of donors. Voluntary donors become discouraged as the 'gift' of blood that was previously invaluable-something that the recipients could not buy and without which they might die-is now a commodity with a cash value of a certain number of dollars. Likewise, the privatising of military force means that the 'gift' of military service to the state is no longer invaluable, but a commodity to be bought and sold. This could affect recruitment to the regular army since new potential recruits will not see soldering an honourable, patriotic, and valiant career, but something for which they should receive substantial financial remuneration.
75. Wolfendale, 'The military and the community' See, further.
76. In this context, Doug Brooks and Matan Chorev, 'Ruthless humanitarianism', p. 119, claim that, whenever possible, the foreign private security industry uses local personnel, since this reduces costs and legal complications. For instance, 113,000 of the 180,000 estimated contractors in Iraq are Iraqis.
77. Lynch and Walsh, 'The good mercenary?' 149.
78. Schreier and Caparini, Privatising Security, 65.
79. Of course, state armies can also undermine communal autonomy in these ways. My point is simply that private force can often harm communal bonds, not that the harming of communal autonomy is unique to private force.
80. Thomas More, Utopia, rev. edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2002, 88-9.
81. Baker, 'Of "mercenaries"' Also see, 40.
82. The British Army, 'The Military Covenant'
83. This is not simply a theoretical problem. For instance, Singer asserts that a common complaint with PMSCs' mine clearance operations is that they clear only major roads rather than the more risky, but equally vital, areas, such as rural footpaths.
84. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 157.
85. Deane-Peter Baker, 'To whom does a private military commander owe a moral duty? Reflections on the trustworthiness of private warriors', New Wars and New Soldiers, ed. Paolo Tripodi and Jessica Wolfendale (London: Ashgate, forthcoming).
86. I have focused thus far on the professional army. It can also be demanded of the citizen-soldier that they take the ultimate sacrifice. In this case, it is not the implicit soldier-state contract, but these individuals' citizenship that identifies them as those to be sacrificed. Admittedly, citizenship is a weaker reason than the soldier-state contract to demand sacrifice, and some may hold that it is not sufficient for this purpose.
87. Hedahl, 'Blood and Blackwaters', 29-30 See on this point (Hedahl thinks that this is a major problem with private force).
88. In practice, the reasons for the privatisation of military force may be more pragmatic than principled. These include short-term political requirements for extra military resources and party links with PMSCs. I shall assume that such a short-term perspective is deeply problematic and not sufficient justification for the privatisation of military force. I concentrate on the seemingly more tenable consequentialist and libertarian arguments.
89. One example is Brooks and Chorev, 'Ruthless humanitarianism'. See Anna Leander and Rens van Munster, 'Private security contractors in the debate about Darfur: reflecting and reinforcing neo-liberal governmentality', International Relations, 21 (2007), 201-16, for how this discourse is constructed.
90. Brooks and Chorev, 'Ruthless humanitarianism', 120.
91. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 151-68. For a more detailed discussion of these contractual dilemmas, see
92. For example, despite numerous reports of wrongdoing and much controversy, Blackwater's contract in Iraq was renewed by the US State Department, largely because there was no other firm that could fill their role. BBC, 'Blackwater Iraq contract renewed', BBC News Online, posted 5 April, 2008.
93. Alexandra, 'Mars meets mammon', 97.
94. Murray Rothbard, 'Society without a state', NOMOS XIX: Anarchism, ed. J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York: New York University Press), 1978, 191-207.
95. Ian Loader, 'Thinking normatively about private security', Journal of Law and Society, 24 (1997), 377-94 at p. 380.
96. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia For instance, (Oxford: Blackwell) admits that public control of law enforcement is justified because of the problems with the market provision of private protection, 1974.
97. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 227.
98. Oldrich Bures, 'Private military companies: a second best peacekeeping option?'International Peacekeeping, 12 (2005), 533-46 at p. 542.