Privatizing peace and security: A Hobbesian dilemma
By Peter Speetjens
Friday, February 27, 2004
A human being is by nature a wolf, British philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote, and therefore the state should have an absolute monopoly over the use of violence. If not, society may be ripped apart in “a war of all against all.” That’s why Hobbes would turn in his grave if he knew that since the fall of the Berlin Wall, private companies are playing an increasing role in the enforcement of peace and security.
According to Peter Singer, author of the book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, there are some 90 companies worldwide offering military services and expertise to an overall security market worth upward of $100 billion. The reasons for this spectacular expansion are, on the one hand, the post-Cold War trimming of national armies (as a consequence of which there are some 7 million fewer soldiers under arms today than in 1989); and on the other, the fact that the world seems far less of a safe place, particularly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The post-Cold War gap between supply and demand has been quickly filled by private military companies, most of which are based in the US, England, South Africa, Russia and the Ukraine, where laid-off soldiers are abundant. The firms operate anywhere in the world to secure people and assets. Yet by far their most lucrative market today is Iraq. According to Singer, 10 percent of US soldiers in Iraq are civilians, which is ten times more than during the Gulf war of 1991. This makes the invasion of Iraq, and its aftermath, the most privatized conflict in the last 250 years.
One of the leading companies working with the US Army is Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of oil giant Halliburton. It is said that wherever the US Army goes, KBR follows. After operations in Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Somalia and Afghanistan, the company today has some 7,000 employees in Iraq, who feed and transport soldiers, wash their clothes and build their barracks. So far eight of the company’s employees have been killed. Yet, because they are not officially soldiers, they are not included in the American military’s death toll.
Apart from offering military support services, thousands of civilians, most of whom have a military past, operate Predator spy planes, maintain B-2 Stealth bombers, de-mine, destroy enemy ammunition and, last but not least, protect individuals and companies active in the reconstruction of Iraq.
Most of them are former American and British soldiers, but there are also ex-French legionnaires, Nepali Ghurkas, Fijians and an estimated 1,500 South Africans. Even the US civilian representative in Iraq, Paul Bremer, is not protected by American soldiers, but by a contingent of Ghurkas and former SAS commandos working for the British firm Global Risk International.
Privatization advocates claim it’s cheaper and more efficient to outsource military tasks. This may be true in certain cases, especially when the UN is involved. Moreover, why would one need a trained soldier to cook or clean toilets when others can do such tasks? However, it remains to be seen whether privatization is invariably a cheaper option.
According to a report published last fall by the American Center for Public Integrity, in the last two years more than 70 American companies and individuals have won contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, for a total of some $8 billion. One-third of these have involved security and military assistance, while the remainder are for reconstruction. So far, KBR has been the primary beneficiary, with total contracts of $3.4 billion. In the last two months, however, KBR and Halliburton have been forced to pay back a total of $33 million for overcharging on oil and food supplies in Iraq and Kuwait, while KBR is still under investigation for a previous $1 billion operation in Kosovo.
Dyncorp, an American company founded by former Los Angeles police officers, won a contract worth $50 million to train the Iraqi police force. The company needs 1,500 former policemen to do the job and offers an average tax-free salary of $150,000 a year. Likewise, the British-American firm Armorgroup recently paid an ex-Special Forces soldier $150,000 a year to protect a senior member of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Compare this to the average salary of a regular American or British soldier.
The rationale behind the ongoing trimming of the US armed forces is to save taxpayers’ money. However, it’s the same taxpayers who are paying private security companies such as KBR, Dyncorp, Vinnell, Armorgroup and Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), which are all part of larger multinational conglomerates. On Feb. 4, the Washington Times reported that in the second round of Iraqi reconstruction bids worth $18 billion, an estimated $1 billion was earmarked for security.
Apart from the real costs of privatization, there are more fundamental issues that surface when considering privatized security. There is, for example, the matter of image. A soldier fighting for money evokes the negative memories of 1960s mercenaries like Bob Denard and “Mad” Mike Hoars, who would fight anywhere in post-colonial Africa as long as they got paid.
Most private military companies claim they are different. They insist they are not running mercenaries, but are professional corporate institutions that respect human rights and work in close cooperation with their (or other) national governments. Yet, who in the amoral global market of today is to verify if everyone plays according to such virtuous rules? And if military services are merely a product in a free global market, what is to prevent a company from signing a contract with, let’s say, a dictatorial regime?
The example is hardly far fetched. With the permission of the US government, MPRI, which claims to have more generals per square meter than the Pentagon (and is located but a stone’s throw away), signed a contract in 2000 to train the army of Equatorial Guinea, a country in which every gathering of more than 10 people is considered illegal.
The links between private military companies that benefit from insecurity, instability and warfare, and a political establishment tightly linked to the corporate world, can be disturbing. Take KBR: In 1992, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney commissioned the firm to research (at a cost of $3.9 million) the privatization of US Army logistics. KBR concluded that privatization would be much cheaper than allowing the armed forces to carry the task out themselves. Subsequently, Cheney granted the firm a contract to implement its own recommendations, mainly in overseas US operations.
As KBR followed the US Army around the world, Cheney became chief executive of Halliburton in 1995, remaining in the post until he became the US vice-president in 2000, when he was paid a bonus of $35 million. Cheney was one of the main advocates of war in Iraq and the fact that both KBR and Halliburton have profited hugely from its aftermath raises serious questions about the possible conflicts of interest involved.
As one surveys the close links between private military companies, the corporate world and political establishments, the image that comes to mind is not so much that of an individual gun-for-hire like Denard, but that of the British East India Company and its Dutch equivalent in Indonesia, both of which controlled large armies. Jan Coen, the former governing general of the Dutch colonial empire, put it succinctly: “There’s no trade without war; no war without trade.”
Peter Speetjens is a Dutch journalist living in Lebanon. He writes for the Brussels-based De Standaard and the Dutch NRC. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR
 More Opinion Articles
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
|
