That Western states should not use private military contractors in combat

Chasm (PRO)
Some definitions:
Western states: States consisting of North America, Northern Europe and Australasia. Generally rich, industrialised economies with developed democracies.
Private military contractors (PMCs): A private company providing armed combat or security services to a government for financial gain.

This debate needs to be framed with what makes a war just. A democracy, which values human life, can choose to go to war with another if it needs to: defend itself and its citizens, defend the citizens of an allied states, or needs to defend innocents around the world. World War 2, for example, fits all of these categories. In my arguments I will show how the use of PMCs undermine checks on if a war is just, encourages needless escalation of wars, risks creating more atrocities of war, and means that soldiers are unaccountable. Therefore, all Western states should not use private military contractors.
Control of the military is the most important power a state can give to somebody. It is vital then that scrutiny is given to that power. This can happen in two ways: investigations and oversight by a legislature or by public scrutiny and pressure. PMCs have dangerously expanded the executive’s ability to circumvent both of these checks. I will focus my analysis here on the use of PMC’s by the USA because they are the largest user of contractors and have the more familiar system of accountability, but the same arguments are true across all the western world.
In the United States Congress has many ways of scrutinising and limiting the US Army and security agencies. The Pentagon, Army, and CIA are all directly responsible to Congress. They must comply with freedom of information requests. They must appear before Congressional panels. This is not the case for PMCs. They are international companies frequently not operating out of the United States. They can hide behind trade secrets. There is very little reliable data about PMCs, they operate in the shadows. [1] If we go to war we should like to know about the safety of our soldiers, how many are dying, what equipment they have. PMCs hide this information, meaning scrutiny of the armed forces is reduced.
PMCs also allow the Executive to avoid measures introduced by Congress to attempt to limit wars. The Obama administration’s campaign in Iraq, sold to the public as a ‘light footprint’ campaign with remote airstrikes and few US soldiers on the ground, used PMCs to expand into a large-scale ground deployment. Congress set a cap on the numbers of troops sent to Iraq at 4,647, but because PMCs do not count as troops, they could be deployed in addition to that cap. The US campaign in Iraq became 4,647 US troop and 4,970 contractors. [2] Congress, the representatives of the people, can be circumvented by using PMCs. Using PMCs gives the President an unchecked power to wage wars on whatever scale they want.
Secondly, the use of PMCs stops voters from truly holding the President to account over their use of the army for foreign wars. Wars fought with the consent of the population evoke the spirt that ‘we are all in this together’. One need only look at the amazing sacrifices made by those volunteering and on the home front during the world wars to see this. If the leader is accountable in their use of the army, they must build this domestic support for a war, an excellent test of if the war is just. They are then further checked during the war, as the casualty lists rise. Solider killed in the service of their army are honoured and remembered. Newspapers put their pictures on the front page. Casualties are the grim reminder to the population that they are still at war. This is vital to prevent a war going on unnecessarily long or getting unnecessarily bloody. PMCs will always hide this accountability. Their casualties are hardly reported, certainly not headline news. They prevent the public holding their officials to account, undermining democratic accountability.

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2020-04-26 00:12:28

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