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Outsourcing War ' Is it justified?
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E-mailMade Popular Oct 8 2007
# Besides the 145000 active duty troops in Iraq, there are as many as 126000 private personnel from varied nationalities deployed alongside the armed forces there.
# With the US Government having awarded a $ 3.6 billion contract for security services in Iraq to private military companies, war has become a profitable venture and a ten year old company like ‘Blackwater’ has become one of the largest such companies in the world.
# Contracting security and military services helps governments to reduce costs, in terms of funds, equipments and human lives. Moreover, governments benefit from incurring adverse public opinion and war liabilities.
# However, critics argue that private armies pose a serious threat to democracy and civil society at large.
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Harshpaul
Oct 8 2007
shimla,
India
Another term for the ’private military companies’ would be mercenaries. It is not a new concept and has been around since wars were first fought. There is nothing wrong with having mercenaries fight a war, what is wrong is the legalization of mercenaries as companies.
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In the modern era of globalization as well as privatization, where each and every work and job is outsourced across the world, then why so much fuss over the deployment of private security firms in war-zones, especially when the particular state isn’t too efficient and sturdy to cope up with the turbulent situation.
Every coin has two distinctive parts, and same is the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, where civil rights groups often come up with complaints of violation of human rights against the security companies even without giving a second thought to the sensitivity (rather flux) of the situation, the guards has to cope with.
However, private military forces are as old as warfare itself. The ancient Chinese, Greek, and Roman armies employed large numbers of mercenaries, and mercenaries comprised about half of William the Conqueror’s army in the eleventh century. During the fourteenth century, Italian city-states contracted private military forces, known as condott/er/, to protect themselves–an early acknowledgement that hiring mercenaries can often prove more cost-effective than maintaining standing armies. Private forces have also served states’ immediate strategic interests. The United Kingdom, for example, hired 30,000 Hessian soldiers to fight in the American War of Independence to avoid conscripting its own citizens. In the late eighteenth century, foreigners comprised half of the armed forces of Prussia and a third of the armies of France and the United Kingdom. Mercantile companies were licensed by the state to wage war to serve their countries’ economic interests. In 1815, the East India Company, which colonized India on behalf of the British government, boasted an army of 150,000 soldiers.
Therefore, one cannot merely thrust aside the deployment of the private security firms in the critical war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan on irrational grounds that these forces follow their mind and not the heart.
Every coin has two distinctive parts, and same is the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, where civil rights groups often come up with complaints of violation of human rights against the security companies even without giving a second thought to the sensitivity (rather flux) of the situation, the guards has to cope with.
However, private military forces are as old as warfare itself. The ancient Chinese, Greek, and Roman armies employed large numbers of mercenaries, and mercenaries comprised about half of William the Conqueror’s army in the eleventh century. During the fourteenth century, Italian city-states contracted private military forces, known as condott/er/, to protect themselves–an early acknowledgement that hiring mercenaries can often prove more cost-effective than maintaining standing armies. Private forces have also served states’ immediate strategic interests. The United Kingdom, for example, hired 30,000 Hessian soldiers to fight in the American War of Independence to avoid conscripting its own citizens. In the late eighteenth century, foreigners comprised half of the armed forces of Prussia and a third of the armies of France and the United Kingdom. Mercantile companies were licensed by the state to wage war to serve their countries’ economic interests. In 1815, the East India Company, which colonized India on behalf of the British government, boasted an army of 150,000 soldiers.
Therefore, one cannot merely thrust aside the deployment of the private security firms in the critical war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan on irrational grounds that these forces follow their mind and not the heart.
No sane person can or should justify drafting of mercenaries as private armies. Can they respect the human rights when the nations are at war or the states use force against their own population in the name of maintaining law and order or restoring peace. If such unethical practice is encouraged it may lead to our return to the uncivilized ages where the might would be right
First my apologies to Balbhadra for clicking without understanding what I was doing.
Reading about such things brings to mind movies and television shows where mercenaries often times are portrayed as money driven individuals who will do anything to get the job done or prolong the situation at hand by instigating confrontations between warring oppositions, staging fake attacks, supplying weapons, information and intelligence to both sides in the interest of making a quick buck at the expense of human life.
When you find yourself in the midst of this very situation will you still have the same opinion?
Reading about such things brings to mind movies and television shows where mercenaries often times are portrayed as money driven individuals who will do anything to get the job done or prolong the situation at hand by instigating confrontations between warring oppositions, staging fake attacks, supplying weapons, information and intelligence to both sides in the interest of making a quick buck at the expense of human life.
When you find yourself in the midst of this very situation will you still have the same opinion?
It’s not at all unethical – ethics and war do not go together – and as far as corporatization of wars is paying good enough, there is no point questioning whether it’s justified or not. Today, no nation can afford to invest a massive amount of budget to prepare/train/deploy/maintain armies – not even UN. Therefore, outsourcing seems the best available option. We can put more checks and controls, even though it should be clear here that these mercenaries are playing only supportive roles – providing cushion to the main battalions – rather than gunning around. It’s a big fat smart business, nothing else!
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