Outsourcing War , livre ebook

O UTSOURCING W AR
The Just War Tradition in the Age of Military Privatization
A MY E. E CKERT
C ORNELL U NIVERSITY P RESS
I THACA AND L ONDON
 
For Charlotte and Claire Marks
 
C ONTENTS Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations 1. The Just War Tradition and the New Market for Private Force 2. The State System and the Evolution of the Just War Tradition 3. Jus ad Bellum Principles and Privatized War 4. Privatization and the Normative Challenge to Jus in Bello Rules 5. The Ethics of War, the Market for Private Force, and the Public/Private Divide References Index
 
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I first became interested in privatization and its effects on the ethics of war in the context of Iraq. Private military companies (PMCs) and their employees, so well-hidden from public view but so instrumental to the war effort, cannot help but intrigue. My serious contemplation of this topic began when I watched Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh’s 2005 documentary Gitmo: The New Rules of War . It was this film’s treatment of the PMCs and their role in prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay that made me want to learn more about the role of private actors in the public function of war and to think about the inadequacy of just war principles to address these new participants in war. I am grateful to the filmmakers for sparking my interest in these actors, their role in warfare, and the effect of that role on the just war tradition. My early interest in the topic was fueled by some good work on the phenomenon of privatization, particularly that of P. W. Singer and Deborah Avant.
Early on, this project benefited from conversations with Steve Chan, David Mapel, Steve Roach, Laura Sjoberg, and Ali Thobhani, and I am grateful for their comments, insights and early encouragement. A very early piece on this subject was presented at the workshop “ ‘New’ Problems, ‘Old’ Solutions” held in San Francisco before the 2007 ISA-West meeting. Funding from the International Studies Association was instrumental to this workshop. I have also presented earlier versions of various chapters of this book at conferences where I received helpful feedback.
Most especially I appreciated helpful advice and comments from my friends and colleagues who have read and commented on earlier drafts of part or all of this work, including Douglas F. Becker, Lisa Burke, Aaron Fitchtelberg, Caron Gentry, Kim Hudson, Tony Lang, George Lopez, Cheyney Ryan, Richard Shapcott, Laura Sjoberg, and Robert Williams. All of these individuals have given generously of their time and their talents, and their comments have greatly improved the book. I would also like to make special mention of the late Fran Harbour for helpful comments and encouragement. Fran’s warmth and hospitality toward junior scholars will be greatly missed.
The Department of Political Science and the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at the Metropolitan State University of Denver have provided essential support for the completion of this book. I acknowledge this support with gratitude, especially the enthusiastic encouragement from my department chair, Robert Hazan, my dean Joan L. Foster, and Provost Vicki Golich.
Writing this book has given me something of an unusual perspective on war, and I’m grateful to those who love me for indulging my interest in, and sometimes tolerating seemingly random commentary about, the private part of war and the application of the just war tradition to it. I appreciate the love and support of my family including my two young nieces, to whom the book is dedicated, and my stepfather, Ron Morris, who always keeps me on track with this project and every other. I would also like to acknowledge my significant other, Daniel Swannigan, for his loving support. Finally, my cat Oscar helpfully reminded me to take the occasional break from working on this book by going to sleep on top of whatever I was attempting to read or write.
 
A BBREVIATIONS
AGNA
ArmorGroup North America
APC
All Peoples Congress (Sierra Leone)
BRA
Bougainville Revolutionary Army
CPA
Coalition Provisional Authority
ECOMOG
Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group
EO
Executive Outcomes
FARC
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
GSG
Gurkha Security Guards
ICI
International Charter Incorporated of Oregon
ICRC
International Committee of the Red Cross
IMF
International Monetary Fund
ISAF
International Security Assistance Force
ITAR
International Traffic in Arms Regulations
LOAC
law of armed conflict
MPRI
Military Professional Resources Inc.
NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCACC
National Conventional Arms Control Committee
NGO
non-governmental organization
NPRC
National Provisional Ruling Council (Sierra Leone)
PMC
private military company
POW
prisoner of war
PSD
Private Security Database
PSIRA
Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority
R2P
responsibility to protect
RFMA
Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act
RUF
Revolutionary United Front (Sierra Leone)
UN
United Nations
UNITA
National Union for the Total Independence of Angola
 
Chapter 1
T HE J UST W AR T RADITION AND THE N EW M ARKET FOR P RIVATE F ORCE
A small plane crashes in the mountains south of Bogota, Colombia, after its engine fails. Members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (the FARC), a leftist guerrilla group that is embroiled in Colombia’s civil war, come upon pieces of the downed aircraft along with the pilot and four US soldiers. The FARC immediately kills the pilot and another man and then takes the remaining three soldiers into custody. Before their eventual release, the soldiers would be held for more than five years. They reported that they were held in conditions inconsistent with the Geneva Convention standards for detaining prisoners of war (POWs). Specifically, the soldiers reported that their captors denied them sufficient food, adequate medical care, and communication with the outside world (Gonsalves, Stansell, and Howes 2009, 232, 412).
Video of the emaciated soldiers provides a narrow window into the conditions of their captivity. Outside of this brief glimpse, the captured soldiers receive little media attention for the duration of their captivity. According to their families, the three soldiers were “all but forgotten” (Ferero 2004). The FARC expressed a willingness to recognize the captured US soldiers as POWs, but in an odd and seemingly inexplicable twist, resistance to classifying these soldiers as POWs came from Washington (de Nevers 2006, 103). The United States did not characterize the soldiers as POWs or demand rights under the international law. Instead, Washington chose to characterize the captured men as US citizens, or kidnap victims, or hostages.
After five years of captivity, the soldiers are freed in 2008 along with twelve others, among them Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, in a daring raid by the Colombian military. Colombian intelligence agents infiltrate the FARC and lead the rebels to believe that FARC members will pick up the hostages by helicopter and relocate them to another FARC camp (Romero 2008; Romero and Cave 2008). Those who picked up the hostages are, in reality, Colombian soldiers, wearing the Che Guevara t-shirts favored by the FARC rebels, who rescue the US soldiers and the other hostages. Only after their repatriation does the United States extend the soldiers the treatment it normally gives to POWs, including a yellow ribbon ceremony at the army medical center where they receive treatment (Christenson 2008).
The United States’ treatment of the soldiers during their captivity seems incomprehensible. Why would the United States deny that its captured military personnel were POWs, particularly when the FARC was willing to acknowledge them as such? The decision becomes both simpler and more complicated when we realize that they were not soldiers in the conventional sense, even though they were performing military functions. The three men were contractors, employed by a subsidiary of a company called Northrop Grumman. As private contractors, these men were participants in a growing transnational market for private force. Private military companies (PMCs) now perform a range of functions previously carried out exclusively by members of national militaries; their customers include sovereign states in addition to rebel movements, international organizations, and other companies. In this particular case, the US government hired the company that employed the captured men to perform functions associated with US support of antinarcotics measures in Colombia.
The three PMC employees were not part of the national military. As such they do not readily fit the definition of a lawful combatant enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, a set of documents that states adopted after World War II to regulate the conduct of armed conflict. That definition requires that lawful combatants wear uniforms, carry arms openly, belong to a responsi ble command, and comply with the laws and customs of war. The status of lawful combatant matters because those who fall outside its boundaries are not entitled to the protections that the Geneva Conventions extend to captured combatants. Indeed, PMC employees fit the Geneva definition of lawful combatants loosely, if at all. In the US system, PMC employees fall outside the chain of command. PMC employees may or may not wear uniforms or carry arms, depending on company policy and their function.
The ambiguities in their status confused even the detainees themselves. In a memoir about their experiences, one of the men observed that
as civilian contractors, we didn’t have strict rules of engagement or the clear-cut demands of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to guide our actions. If we were still active-duty military, our first obligation would have been to escape, but we weren’t military, we were civilians. As such, our objective was survival. (Gonsalves et