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ABSTRACT
The increasing use of private military and security companies (PMSCs) has attracted considerable scholarly attention due to its corrosive effects on US democracy. Drawing on neoclassical realism, this article provides a comparative dimension to the study of the political drivers of military privatisation by analysing contractor support to US and UK operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Domestic political constraints have shaped both US and UK response to the need for more boots on the ground, increasing the propensity to use contractors as a force multiplier in spite of their problematic impact on military effectiveness.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Deborah Avant, Christopher Kinsey, Yagil Levy, Pascal Vennesson and the two anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback.
Notes
1 Deborah D. Avant, The Market for Force (Cambridge: CUP 2005), 43.
2 Deborah D. Avant and Lee Sigelman, ‘Private Security and Democracy: Lessons from the US in Iraq’, Security Studies 19/2 (May 2010), 265.
3 Robert Mandel, Armies Without States: the Privatization of Security (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2002), 43; Allison Stanger, A Nation Under Contract (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 2009), 90.
4 Peter Singer, ‘Can’t Win with ‘Em, Can’t Go to War without ‘Em’ (Washington DC: Brookings Institute Policy Paper 4 Sept. 2007), 4.
5 Indeed, Avant and Sigelman suggest ‘the need for additional research into how the privatization of force affects democratic processes in other states’. See ‘Private Security and Democracy’, 265.
6 Steven Van Evera, Guide to the Methods in the Social Sciences (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1997), 86–7.
7 Kenneth N. Waltz, Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics: The American and British Experience (New York: Little, Brown 1967), 37; William P. Snyder, The Politics of British Defence Policy, 1945–1962 (Columbus: Ohio State UP 1964).
8 Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman, ‘Case Study Methods in the International Relations Subfield’, Comparative Political Studies 40/2 (Feb. 2007), 173.
9 Steven E. Lobell, Norrin M. Ripsman and Jeffrey W. Taliaferro (eds), Neoclassical Realism, the State and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: CUP 2009), 3–4; Gideon Rose, ‘Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy’, World Politics 51/1 (Oct. 1998), 146.
10 John Hobson, The State and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge CUP 2000), 5–6; Randall L. Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton UP 2006); Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, ‘State Building for Future Wars: Neoclassical Realism and the Resource-Extractive State’, Security Studies 15/3 (July–Sept. 2006), 486; Rose, ‘Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy’, 147.
11 Schweller, ‘Unanswered Threats’, 170–81; Taliaferro, ‘State Building for Future Wars’, 486–94.
12 Fareed Zarkaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role (Princeton UP 1998).
13 Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State (Princeton UP 2000).
14 Schweller, Unanswered Threats.
15 Thomas J. Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958 (Princeton UP 1996).
16 Taliaferro, ‘State Building for Future Wars’, 476–9.
17 Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars (New York: CUP 2003), 120–1.
18 Joseph Paul Vasquez III, ‘Shouldering the Soldiering: Democracy, Conscription, and Military Casualties’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 49/6 (2005), 849; Michael C. Horowitz and Michael S. Levendusky, ‘Drafting Support for War: Conscription and Mass Support for Warfare’, Journal of Politics 74/2 (2012), 323–38.
19 Avant and Sigelman, ‘Private Security and Democracy’, 243–9.
20 A similar argument is proposed by the scholars focusing on the use of technology as a substitute for military labour. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 250; Jonathan Caverley, ‘The Myth of Military Myopia: Democracy, Small Wars, and Vietnam’, International Security 34/3 (Winter 2009/10), 120.
21 Peter W. Singer, Corporate Warriors (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2003), 207.
22 Edward F. Bruner, Military Forces: What is the Appropriate Size for the United States? (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service Report to Congress, Jan. 2005).
23 Chris Summers, ‘The Time When the British Army Was Really Stretched’, 22 July 2011, <www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14218909>.
24 Dan Reiter and Alan Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton UP 2002), 144–93; Richard Sobel, The Impact of Public Opinion on US Foreign Policy. Constraining the Colossus (New York: OUP 2001), 49–212; Bruce Russett, Controlling the Sword. The Democratic Governance of National Security (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1990).
25 Edward Luttwak, ‘A Post-Heroic Military Policy’, Foreign Affairs 75/4 (July/Aug. 1996), 36.
26 Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver and Jason Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War. American Public Opinion & Casualties in Military Conflicts (Princeton UP 2009).
27 Eric Larson, Casualties and Consensus: The Historical Role of Casualties in Domestic Support for US Military Operations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 1996).
28 Bruce Jentleson and Rebecca Britton, ‘Still Pretty Prudent: Post-Cold War American Public Opinion on the Use of Military Force’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 42/4 (Aug. 1998), 395–417.
29 Gelpi, Reifler and Feaver, Paying the Human Costs of War, 1; Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, 164–93.
30 Avant and Sigelman, ‘Private Security and Democracy’, 261; Steven L. Schooner, ‘Why Contractor Fatalities Matter’, Parameters 38/3 (2008), 78–81.
31 Moshe Schwartz, Department of Defense Contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq: Background and Analysis (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service 2011), 28–9.
32 Eliot A. Cohen, Citizens and Soldiers: The Dilemmas of Military Service (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1990), 104.
33 Terrence J. Gough, US Army Mobilization and Logistics in the Korean War: A Research Approach (Washington, DC: Center of Military History 1987), 28.
34 Caverley, ‘The Myth of Military Myopia’; Harry G. Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (New York: Presidio Press 1982), 73.
35 According to Sorley, the calling of Reserves had ‘much greater political impact than draft calls affecting only those who couldn’t engineer a deferment’. Lewis Sorley, ‘Creighton Abrams and Active-Reserve Integration in Warfare’, Parameters 21 (Summer 1991), 37.
36 Carroll H. Dunn, Vietnam Studies: Base Development in South Vietnam, 1965–1970 (Washington DC: Department of the Army 1991), 42, <www.army.mil/cmh/books/vietnam/basedev/index.htm>.
37 Dunn, ‘Vietnam Studies’, 43.
38 United States General Accounting Office, ‘Report to the Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support, Committee on Armed Services, US Senate. Contractors Provide Vital Services to Deployed Forces but are Not Adequately Addressed in DOD Plans’ (Washington DC: June 2003), 8.
39 Schwartz, ‘Department of Defense Contractors’, 28.
40 Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Hard Lessons. The Iraq Reconstruction Experience (Washington DC: Government Printing Office 2013), 105–15. See also Bruneau, ‘Contracting out Security’, 645.
41 United States Congress, Commission on Wartime Contracting Final Report, Transforming Wartime Contracting. Controlling Costs, Reducing Risks (Washington DC: Aug. 2011), 39–78.
42 Interviews with Doug Brooks, then President of the International Stability Operation Association (Washington DC: 18 September 2009); Interview with Col. Christopher Mayer, Director for Private Security Contractor Policy and Programs at the Department of Defense (Brussels: 28 April 2011); Interview with Lawrence Peter, then Director of the Private Security Companies Association of Iraq (phone interview: 10 May 2008). See also Schwartz, The Department of Defense’s Use of Private Security Contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq, 6.
43 United States Department of Labor, Defense Base Act Case Summary by Nation (Washington DC: 31 March 2010), <http://www.dol.gov/owcp/dlhwc/dbaallnation.htm>.
44 Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, <http://icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx>.
45 United States Department of Labor, Defense Base Act Case Summary by Nation.
46 Schooner, ‘Why Contractor Fatalites Matter’, 86. A lower estimate is provided by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, SIGIR Special Report Number 2: the Human Toll of Reconstruction or Stabilization during Iraqi Freedom (Washington DC: Government Printing Office July 2012).
47 Molly Dunigan, Victory for Hire: Private Security Companies’ Impact on Military Effectiveness (Stanford UP 2011), 52–89. For a more positive assessment of PMSCs’ effectiveness see Ulrich Petersohn, ‘The Effectiveness of Contracted Coalitions. Private Security Contractors in Iraq’, Armed Forces and Society 39/3 (July 2013), 467–88.
48 Schwartz, ‘The Department of Defense’s Use of Private Security Contractors’, 28–9.
49 T.X. Hammes, Private Contractors in Conflict Zones: The Good, the Bad and the Strategic Impact (Washington DC: National Defense Univ. Strategic Forum 260 Nov. 2010), 6.
50 United States Senate Armed Forces Committee, Report of the Inquiry into the Role and Oversight of Private Security Contractors in Afghanistan (28 Sept. 2010).
51 Special Inspector General on Afghanistan Reconstruction, Quarterly Report to the United States Office (Washington DC: Government Printing Office 30 Oct. 2013).
52 Dunigan, Victory for Hire, 71–4. Kateri Carmola, ‘PMSCs and Risk in Counterinsurgency Warfare’, in Christopher Kinsey and Malcolm H. Patterson (eds), Contractors and War: The Transformation of United States’ Expeditionary Operations (Stanford UP 2012); Hammes, ‘Private Contractors in Conflict Zones’, 8–9.
53 Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin 2006), 64–-5. Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (New York: Times Books 2005), 285.
54 Ole R. Holsti, American Public Opinion on the War on Iraq (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press 2011), 142.
55 Thomas C. Bruneau, ‘Contracting Out Security’, Journal of Strategic Studies 36/5 (Oct. 2013), 646.
56 Nora Bensahel, ‘Mission Not Accomplished: What Went Wrong with Iraqi Reconstruction’, Journal of Strategic Studies 29/3 (June 2006), 453–73; Daniel Byman, ‘An Autopsy of the Iraq Debacle: Policy Failure or Bridge Too Far?’ Security Studies 17/4 (Dec. 2008), 599–643.
57 Byman, ‘An Autopsy of the Iraq Debacle’, 602.
58 Bruneau, ‘Contracting Out Security’, 646-7; Christopher Kinsey, Private Contractors and the Reconstruction of Iraq (New York: Routledge 2009), 46–7.
59 Schwartz, ‘The Department of Defense’s Use of Private Security Contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq’, 28-9.
60 Singer, ‘Can’t Win With ‘Em’, 2.
61 Seth G. Jones, ‘Averting Failure in Afghanistan’, Survival 48/1 (Spring 2006), 111–28.
62 Julian Barnes, ‘US to Boost Combat Force’, Los Angeles Times, 2 Sept. 2009.
63 Schwartz, ‘Department of Defense Contractors’, 29.
64 Avant and Sigelman, ‘Private Security and Democracy’, 255–62; David Isenberg, Private Military Contractors and US Grand Strategy (Oslo: Peace Research Institute 2009), 43-5; Stanger, A Nation Under Contract, 32–3.
65 US House of Representatives, Defense Authorization Bill H. R. 2647, Title F, Subtitle 5 (Washington DC: 2 June 2009), 12–16, <www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr2647ih/pdf/BILLS-111hr2647ih.pdf>.
66 Edward F. Bruner, Military Forces: What is the Appropriate Size for the United States? (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service Report for Congress 2005), 3–5.
67 Horowitz and Levendusky, ‘Drafting Support for War’, 523.
68 Singer, ‘Can’t Win with ‘Em’, 2–3.
69 Michael Waterhouse and JoAnne O’Bryant, ‘National Guard Personnel and Deployments: Fact Sheet’ (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service Report to Congress 2008), 2–5.
70 United States General Accounting Office, Contingency Operations. Opportunities to Improve the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (Washington DC: Feb. 1997), 6–7.
71 David Karol and Edward Miguel, ‘The Electoral Cost of War: Iraq Casualties and the 2004 US Presidential Election’, Journal of Politics 69/3 (Aug. 2007), 633–48; Richard C. Eichenberg, Richard J. Stoll and Matthew Lebo, ‘War President: The Approval Ratings of George W. Bush’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 50/6 (Dec. 2006), 783–808.
72 Avant and Sigelman, ‘Private Security and Democracy’, 260. While Avant and Sigelman note a ‘surprising absence of empathy between soldier and private soldiers’, Schooner, ‘Why Contractor Fatalities Matter’, 80, argues that the public is less sensitive to casualties among PMSCs’ personnel also because contractors are perceived as ‘expendable profiteers, adventure-seekers, cowboys, or rogue elements, not entitled to the same respect or value due the military’.
73 Hew Strachan, ‘The Civil-Military “Gap”’ in Britain’, Journal of Strategic Studies 26/2 (June 2003), 52. See also Jonathan Caverley, Democratic Militarism: Voting, Wealth, and War (Cambridge: CUP 2014).
74 United Kingdom Ministry of Defence, Tiger Team Final Report, Contractor Support to Operations (London 16 March 2010), 28.
75 United Kingdom Ministry of Defence, ‘Operations in Iraq’, <https://www.gov.uk/operations-in-iraq>; BBC News, ‘Iraq War in Figures’, 14 Dec. 2011, <www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11107739>.
76 Matthew Uttley, Contractors on Deployed Military Operations: United Kingdom Policy and Doctrine (Carlisle, PA: Army Strategic Studies Institute 2005), 10; Interview with UK Army Major 1 (3 Feb. 2011); interview with Royal Logistics Corps Lt. Col. (7 Feb. 2011).
77 Kinsey, Private Contractors and the Reconstruction of Iraq, 46–7.
78 James Ferguson, A Million Bullets: The Real Story of the British Army in Afghanistan (London: Bantam 2008).
79 Robert Egnell, ‘Lessons from Helmand, Afghanistan: What Now for British Counterinsurgency?’ International Affairs 87/2 (2011), 297.
80 Theo Farrell and Stuart Gordon, ‘COIN Machine’, RUSI Journal 154/3 (June 2009), 23; Ferguson, A Million Bullets, 118.
81 Egnell, ‘Lessons from Helmand’, 306.
82 Warren Chin, ‘Colonial Warfare in a Post-Colonial State: British Operations in Helmand Province in Afghanistan’, Defence Studies 10/1-2 (March–June 2010), 236.
83 Data drawn from ISAF operation’s website: <www.nato.int/isaf/docu/epub/pdf/placemat.html>.
84 Tiger Team Final Report, Contractor Support to Operations, 4.
85 Interview with consultant for the British Ministry of Defence (phone interview: 10 May 2011); Interview with UK Army Major 2 (Shrivenham: 2 Feb. 2011); Interview with UK Army Major 3 (Shrivenham: 3 Feb. 2011); Interview with Royal Logistics Corps Lt. Col.
86 Tiger Team Final Report, ‘Contractor Support to Operations’, 10.
87 Interview with Andrew Bearpark, Director of the British Association of Private Security Companies (London: 8 May 2010); interviews with MoD consultant; interviews with Royal Logistics Corp Lt. Col.
88 Andrew Higginson, ‘Contractor Support to Operations (CSO) – Proactive or Reactive Support?’, RUSI Defence Systems (Dec. 2010), 16.
89 See BBC News, ‘UK military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq’, <www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10637526>.
90 Interview with Royal Logistics Corps Lt. Col.; Interview with UK Army Lt. Col. (7 Feb. 2011). By contrast, the MoD consultant interviewed on 10 May 2011 had a much more positive view of the effectiveness and resilience of contractor support, and argued that UK military logisticians’ views were ‘biased by parochialism’.
91 Egnell, ‘Lessons from Helmand’, 303; Anthony King, ‘Understanding the Helmand Campaign: British Military Operations in Afghanistan’, International Affairs 86/2 (2010), 231.
92 Interview with UK Army Major 2, Interview with UK Army Major 3, Interview with UK Army Major 4 (Shrivenham: 7 Feb. 2011); Interview with UK Army Lt. Col.
93 Kenneth N. Waltz, Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics: The American and British Experience (New York: Little, Brown 1967), 37.
94 Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War: Risk-Transfer War and its Crisis in Iraq (Cambridge: Polity Press 2005); Paul Dixon, ‘Britain’s Vietnam Syndrome? Public Opinion and British Military Intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia’, Review of International Studies 26/1 (Sept. 2000), 99–121.
95 Harold D. Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart, and Paul Whiteley, Performance Politics and the British Voter (Cambridge: CUP 2009), 133–5; Jason Reifler, Thomas J. Scotto and Harold D. Clarke, ‘Foreign Policy Beliefs in Contemporary Britain: Structure and Relevance’, International Studies Quarterly 55/1 (March 2011), 245–66; Steve Chan and William Safran, ‘Public Opinion as a Constraint against War: Democracies’ Responses to Operation Iraqi Freedom’, Foreign Policy Analysis 2/2 (March 2006), 147.
96 Dan Keohane, ‘The United Kingdom’, in Alex Danchev and John MacMillan (eds), The Iraq War and Democratic Politics (London: Routledge 2005), 72.
97 BBC News, ‘Protesters Urge end to Afghan War’, 24 Oct. 2009.
98 Paul Cornish and Andrew Dorman, ‘Blair’s Wars and Brown’s Budgets: From Strategic Defence Review to Strategic decay in less than a Decade’, International Affairs 85/2 (2009), 261.
99 House of Lords Constitution Committee’s Fifteenth Report, Waging War: Parliament’s Role and Responsibility (London: The Stationery Office July 2006), para. 103.
100 Patrick Wintour, ‘Labour splits over Afghanistan war strategy’, The Guardian, 3 Nov. 2009.
101 BBC News, ‘UK Sends 500 More to Afghanistan’, 15 Oct. 2009, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8305922.stm>.
102 Interview with UK Army Major 2; Interview with UK Army Major 3; Interview with UK Army Lt. Col.
103 Michael Caldicott, To What Extent Should Contractors Contribute to Future British Military Contingencies Overseas? (Shrivenham: Joint Services Command and Staff College Defence Research Paper 2011), 6. Interview with Royal Logistics Corps Lt. Col.; Interview with UK Army Major 4.
104 Soldier, ‘Talkback: Chefs Carved out of Operational Cookhouses’ (June 2010), 59.
105 UK Reserve Forces Act 1996.
106 United Kingdom Ministry of Defence, Future Reserves 2020: The Independent Commission to Review the United Kingdom’s Reserve Forces (London: July 2011), 9–10; Interview with UK Army Lt. Col.
107 Strachan notes that the British public is capable of remarkable resilience to casualties. See ‘The Civil-Military ‘Gap’ in Britain’, 51. Dixon, by contrast, argues that British elites perceives casualties to ‘be a significant constraint in military interventions’. See ‘Britain’s ‘Vietnam Syndrome’, 101.
108 Data based on a search on LexisNexis UK.
109 Christopher Kinsey and Malcolm Hugh Patterson, ‘Introduction’, in Kinsey and Patterson, Contractors and War, 1-2; Schooner, ‘Why Contractor Fatalities Matter’, 83. Matthew R. Uttley, ‘Private Contractors on Deployed Operations: the United Kingdom Experience’, Defence Studies 4/2 (Summer 2004), 145–65.
110 David M. Walker, Defense Acquisitions: DOD’s Increased Reliance on Service Contractors Exacerbates Long-Standing Challenges (Washington DC: Government Accountability Office 23 Jan. 2008). No comprehensive publicly available studies have been conducted in the UK.
111 Robert Mandel, ‘Overview of American Government Expeditionary Operations Utilizing Private Contractors’, in Kinsey and Patterson, Contractors and War, 17–19.
112 Schwartz, ‘Department of Defense Contractors’, 27.
113 Stanger, A Nation Under Contract, 1–15 and 84–104; Anna Leander, ‘The Power to Construct International Security: On the Significance of Private Military Companies’, Millennium 33/3 (2005), 821; Singer, Corporate Warriors, 66–70.
114 Elke Krahmann, States, Citizens and the Privatisation of Security (Cambridge: CUP 2010).
115 Strachan, ‘The Civil-Military ‘Gap’ in Britain’, 51–2.
116 Dunigan, Victory for Hire, 52–89; Stanger, A Nation Under Contract, 84–94.
117 Avant and Sigelman, ‘Private Security and Democracy’, 264.
118 On the substantial lack of contractor support to Russian military operations see Ivan Pavlovich Konovalov and Oleg Vital’evich Valeckiy, Evoluciya Chastnyh Voennyh Kompaniy [The Development of Private Military Companies] (Pushkino, Russia: Centr Strategicheskoy Kon”yunktury 2013).
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Eugenio Cusumano
Eugenio Cusumano is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. His research explores the connection between democratic decision-making processes and military conduct, with a focus on the increasing use of private military and security companies. His work has been published in various journals such as International Relations, Armed Forces & Society, Ocean Development & International Law and International Peacekeeping.