The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order (29 page)

1
. Greystone Ltd. website,
http://www.greystone-ltd.com/index.html
, accessed April 11, 2009.

1
. David Isenberg, “Dogs of War: From Mercenary to Security Contractor and Back Again,” United Press International, September 12, 2008; International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, “Making a Killing: The Business of War” (Center for Public Integrity, Fall 2002); James Glanz, “Modern Mercenaries on the Iraqi Frontier,”
New York Times
, April 4, 2004.

2
. Jeremy Scahill,
Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
(New York: Perseus, 2008), xxi.

3
. Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Transforming Wartime Contracting Controlling Costs, Reducing Risks
(Washington, DC: US Congress, 2011), 45–46.

4
. Jennifer Elsea,
Private Security Contractors in Iraq: Background, Legal Status, and Other Issues
(Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2008), 2; P.L.110-181 Sec. 864.

5
. Peter W. Singer,
Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 8.

6
. Deborah Avant,
The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 15–16.

7
. David Shearer, “Outsourcing War,”
Foreign Policy
, no. 112 (1998): 73. See also Christopher Coker, “Outsourcing War,”
Cambridge Review of International Affairs
13, no. 1 (1999): 106–107.

8
. GAO, Afghanistan Security, “Afghan Army Growing, but Additional Trainers Needed; Long-Term Costs Not Determined,” GAO-11-66 (Washington, DC, January 27, 2011); GAO, Afghanistan Security, GAO-12-293R (Washington, DC, February 23, 2012).

9
. This typology should not be confused with Singer’s self-described “tip of the spear” typology outlined in
Corporate Warriors
. The key differentiator in the present typology is
function
: is the company in a combat, operational support, or administrative support role? This is consistent with the US Army’s own typology of its units. A main factor in Singer’s typology is
proximity
to the front line. Instead of
PMC
, he uses the term
military provider firm
, which is defined partly based on its closeness to the “front line” within the battlespace. However, few contemporary wars have front lines. For example, the last war the United States fought where there was a front line was the Korean War. Most wars today (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Mali, northern Nigeria) have no battle lines, making the “tip of the spear” approach limited in an era dominated by unconventional warfare.

1
. Respectively, “Interview with Doug Brooks,”
Frontline
, March 22, 2005,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/interviews/brooks.html
, accessed February 25, 2014; “Interview with Peter Singer,”
Frontline
, March 22, 2005,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/interviews/singer.html
, accessed February 25, 2014.

2
. Numbers are in 2010 dollars. “Obligations” occur when US agencies enter into contracts, employ personnel, or otherwise legally commit to spending money. “Outlays” occur when obligations are liquidated. See Moshe Schwartz and Joyprada Swain,
Department of Defense Trends in Overseas Contract Obligations
(Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2011), 1.

3
. United Kingdom Central Government and Local Authority Spending, Fiscal Year 2010,
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/year_spending_2010UKbn_13bc1n_30#ukgs302
, accessed February 14, 2014.

4
. Government Accountability Office,
Defense Management: DOD Needs to Reexamine Its Extensive Reliance on Contractors and Continue to Improve Management and Oversight
(Washington, DC: Government Accounting Office, 2008); Moshe Schwartz,
Department of Defense Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan: Background and Analysis
(Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2010), 5;
Contractors’ Support of US Operations in Iraq
(Washington, DC: US Congressional Budget Office, 2008), 13. Data for figure 3.1 are also drawn from Jennifer Elsea,
Private Security Contractors in Iraq: Background, Legal Status, and Other Issues
(Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2008); William W. Epley, “Civilian Support of Field Armies,”
Army Logistician
22 (November–December 1990): 30–35; Steven J. Zamparelli, “Contractors on the Battlefield: What Have We Signed Up For?”
Air Force Journal of Logistics
23, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 10–19.

5
. Steven L. Schooner and Collin Swan, “Contractors and the Ultimate Sacrifice,” George Washington University Law School, Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper 512 (September 2010).

6
. Government Accountability Office,
Contingency Contracting: DOD, State, and USAID Continue to Face Challenges in Tracking Contractor Personnel and Contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan
(Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, 2009); Christian Miller, “Civilian Contractor Toll in Iraq and Afghanistan Ignored by Defense Dept,”
ProPublica
, October 9, 2009; Justin Elliott, “Hundreds of Afghanistan Contractor Deaths Go Unreported,” Salon.com, July 15, 2010,
http://www.salon.com/2010/07/15/afghan_war_contractors_dying
, accessed February 14, 2014.

7
.
Urgent Reform Required: Army Expeditionary Contracting
, Report of the Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management in Expeditionary Operations, hearing before the Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support of the Committee on Armed Services, US Senate (110th Congress, December 6, 2007), 1, 5.

8
. Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Transforming Wartime Contracting Controlling Costs, Reducing Risks
(Washington, DC: US Congress, 2011), 1.

9
. Christopher Kinsey,
Corporate Soldiers and International Security: The Rise of Private Military Companies
(London: Taylor & Francis, 2006), 4.

10
. Quadrennial Defense Review Report, February 2010,
http://www.defense.gov/qdr/images/QDR_as_of_12Feb10_1000.pdf
, 55–56.

11
. Secretary of Defense, “Strategic and Operational Planning for Operational Contract Support (OCS) and Workforce Mix,” memorandum, US Department of Defense, January 24, 2011.

12
.
Warlord, Inc.: Extortion and Corruption along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan
, report before the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, US House of Representatives (111th Congress, June 22, 2010), 15; Schwartz,
Department of Defense Contractors
, 8.

13
. “Wounded Iraqis: ‘No One Did Anything’ to Provoke Blackwater,” CNN, September 19, 2007,
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/09/19/iraq.fateful.day/index.html
, accessed February 14, 2014.

14
. Coalition Provisional Authority, Order Number 17 (Revised), Status of the Coalition Provisional Authority, MNF–Iraq, Certain Missions and Personnel in Iraq, June 27,
2007,
http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20040627_CPAORD_17_Status_of_Coalition__Rev__with_Annex_A.pdf
, accessed February 14, 2014.

15
. Barbara Miller, “Blackwater a Challenge to Iraqi Sovereignty: Al-Maliki,” ABC Online, September 24, 2007,
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2007/s2041431.htm
, accessed February 14, 2014.

16
. Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes,
The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 12. For more information on appropriate cost comparisons, see
Contractors Support of US Operations in Iraq
(Washington, DC: US Congressional Budget Office, 2008), 14.

17
. Schwartz,
Department of Defense Contractors
, 9, 12.

18
.
Contractors Support of US Operations
, 8.

19
. The United States does not formally track these data. Although it is macabre, tracking contractor casualties provides a glimpse of what countries these individuals come from. Christian Miller, “Map: Injuries and Deaths to Civilian Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan by Country,”
http://www.propublica.org/special/map-injuries-and-deaths-to-civilian-contractors-by-country-614
, accessed February 14, 2014.

20
. U.S. Department of Defense, Contractor Support of U.S. Operations in the USCENTCOM Area of Responsibility to Include Iraq and Afghanistan (5A Papers), October 2013.

1
. John M. Najemy,
A History of Florence, 1200–1575
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), 151–155.

2
. William Caferro,
John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 2.

3
. Franco Sacchetti,
Il Trecentonovelle
(Torino: Einaudi, 1970), 528–529. For more on Hawkwood’s interesting life, see Caferro,
John Hawkwood
; John Temple-Leader and Giuseppe Marcotti,
Sir John Hawkwood: The Story of a Condottiere
, translated by Leader Scott (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1889); R. A. Pratt, “Geoffrey Chaucer, Esq., and Sir John Hawkwood,”
ELH
16, no. 3 (1949): 188–193; Kenneth Fowler, “Sir John Hawkwood and the English Condottieri in Trecento Italy,”
Renaissance Studies
12, no. 1 (1998): 131–148.

4
. Michael Howard,
War in European History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 29.

5
. Geoffrey Parker,
Europe in Crisis, 1598–1648
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001), 17.

6
. Howard,
War in European History
, 131.

7
. David Parrott, “From Military Enterprise to Standing Armies: War, State, and Society in Western Europe, 1600–1700,” in
European Warfare, 1350–1750
, edited by Frank Tallett and D. J. B. Trim (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 85.

8
. Sidney B. Fay, “The Beginnings of the Standing Army in Prussia,”
American Historical Review
22, no. 4 (1917): 767.

9
. David Blackbourn,
History of Germany, 1780–1918: The Long Nineteenth Century
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), 17.

10
. John A. Mears, “The Emergence of the Standing Professional Army in Seventeenth-Century Europe,”
Social Science Quarterly
50, no. 1 (1969): 115.

11
. William Edward Hall,
A Treatise on International Law
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1917), 310.

12
. Geoffrey Best,
Humanity in Warfare
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 129. Of course, this etiquette did not extend to nonstate actors. The British did not observe the rules when they blew Indian mutineers from the mouths of cannons. The United States did not observe the rules when it was at war with native American Indians, and of course, the Indians also did not observe them.

13
. Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Vol. 1, Charter of the International Military Tribunal, in the Avalon Project archive, Yale Law School.

14
. UN General Assembly, UN Doc. A/CONF.183/9, Preamble, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, July 17, 1998,
http://www.icc-cpi.int/nr/rdonlyres/ea9aeff7-5752-4f84-be94-0a655eb30e16/0/rome_statute_english.pdf
, accessed February 14, 2014.

15
. For more on the norm against mercenaries, see Sarah Percy,
Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

16
. Daniel Ford,
Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941–1942
(New York: Harper, 2007), 45.

17
. Loosely translated, “Long live death! Long live war! Long live the sacred mercenary!”

18
. Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), June 8, 1977,”
http://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/Article.xsp?action=openDocument&documentId-DC5096D2C036E9C12563CD0051DC30
, accessed February 14, 2014.

19
. Originally quoted in Geoffrey Best,
Humanity in Warfare
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 375.

20
. United Nations, “The Secretary-General Reflects on ‘Intervention’ in Thirty-Fifth Annual Ditchley Foundation Lecture,” Press Release SG/SM/6613, June 26, 1998, part 8,
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/1998/19980626.sgsm6613.html
.

21
. Exaggeration over the significance of Executive Outcomes is exemplified by Peter W. Singer,
Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003); Juan C. Zarate, “The Emergence of a New Dog of War: Private International Security Companies, International Law, and the New World Disorder,”
Stanford Journal of International Law
34 (1998): 75–162; David Shearer, “Outsourcing War,”
Foreign Policy
, no. 112 (1998): 68–81; Anna Leander, “The Market for Force and Public Security: The Destabilizing Consequences of Private Military Companies,”
Journal of Peace Research
42, no. 5 (2005): 605–622. For a more balanced analysis of Executive Outcomes, see Herbert M. Howe, “Private Security Forces and African Stability: The Case of Executive Outcomes,”
Journal of Modern African Studies
36, no. 2 (1998): 307–331; Kevin O’Brien, “Private Military Companies and African Security 1990–98,” in
Mercenaries: An African Security Dilemma
, edited by A-F. Musah and K. Fayemi, 43–75 (London: Pluto, 2000); Christopher Kinsey,
Corporate Soldiers and International Security: The Rise of Private Military Companies
(London: Taylor & Francis, 2006). For an “inside” perspective, see Eeben Barlow,
Executive Outcomes: Against All Odds
(Alberton, South Africa: Galago, 2007).