“They are called security companies. They are not called violate-the-law companies.”
Jawad al-Bolani,
Iraqi Interior Minister
Join us this Wednesday, October 1 at 7PM in CAS 326 as we simulate the United Nations Security Council as it decides the role of private military corporations (PMCs).
From Mercenaries to a Modern Industry
Contracting out military responsibilities is nothing new. Even through 1600, most European conflicts, notoriously those involving condottiere in Italy, were fought using armies composed almost entire of private, professional soldiers. Transnational corporations such as the British East India Company boasted armies in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, as late as the 19th century. Modern PMCs, of which famous (or infamous) organizations such as Blackwater, DynCorp, and ArmorGroup are only a handful of examples, represent the latest incarnation of the private security and military industry.
Over the past decade, the PMC industry has experienced explosive growth; current annual revenues are estimated to be at least $100 billion. These earnings represent arrangements in which PMCs serve as supplements to states’ existing forces or as security for personnel and assets in unstable regions by request 
of multinational corporations (MNCs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and humanitarian groups. PMCs now provide a wide range of military and security services to these organizations, including logistics, maintenance, operation of technological assets, intelligence, reconnaissance, training, security, and tactical analysis, as well as in some cases furnishing clients with actual armed personnel.
As a result of their versatility, PMCs have been involved in most of the low-intensity conflicts over the past fifteen years. In these cases, state actors participating in the conflict or MNCs with assets in the zone of conflict represent the primary employers. In past cases, PMC involvement has been instrumental in restoring stability to war-torn regions, most notably in Angola in 1994 and Sierra Leone in 1995.
How should we define PMCs?
As PMCs become increasingly import in regions key to global peace and stability, two important questions arise. Should such involvement be legal? And, if legal, what should the relationship be between PMCs and organizations, such as the United Nations, that deal with questions of peace and stability? On such a contentious point, PMCs must be defined before they can be fit into the world order.
The first Protocol Additional to the Geneva Convention (1979), in Article 47, defines a mercenary as a person who is:
- Recruited to fight in an armed conflict for the purpose of monetary gain (and is usually paid more than soldiers of similar rank and function)
- Not a citizen or a member of the armed forces of a party to the conflict
- Not a resident of the area where the conflict is taking place
- Not sent to the conflict as an official member of the armed forces of a state not party to the conflict.
The International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries, which entered force in 2001 but currently only enjoys the support of 30 signatories, includes the Geneva Convention definition. It further defines a mercenary as a person:
- Recruited specifically for taking part in a violent act to overthrow a government or otherwise disrupt the order and territorial integrity of a state
- Motivated for the purpose of monetary gain
- Not a resident or member of the armed forces of the state
- Not sent by another state on official armed forces duty
Of the services PMCs provide to Fortune 500 companies and states of all sizes, only a small percentage fall under the definition of mercenary activity. In fact, the PMC industry has clearly evolved beyond the simple role of providing soldiers-for-hire; these corporations work alongside military forces, providing and performing virtually every function carried out by regular armed forces, but especially focusing on three categories: providing, consulting, and support.
“Providing” refers to supplying individuals who will participate in actual combat and/or command a client’s forces on the battlefield, acting as supplements to clients with low or inadequate military capabilities. “Consulting” firms assist clients with security and tactical analysis of situations and threats, as well as suggestions for restructuring forces and training. Finally, “support” firms, which sometimes include multinational conglomerates such as Halliburton, provide functions not directly related to combat such as logistics, technical support, maintenance, and transportation.
For example, during the 1999 NATO operation in Kosovo, PMCs were involved with the U.S. effort at every level. These services included supplying the military observers making up the American contingent of the international verification mission; providing logistics, aerial surveillance, and information warfare services to U.S. forces; and constructing refugee camps.
What does this mean for the UN?
Recent scandals notwithstanding, some scholars have advocated the use of PMCs by intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations to either supplement or replace traditional peacekeepers, who are professional soldiers lent to the organization by its member states.
Proponents of PMCs entering into peacekeeping roles argue that PMCs:
- Can undertake peacekeeping and humanitarian missions at a much lower cost than traditional peacekeeping forces
- Can provide more highly trained former soldiers of the Western powers as peacekeepers (nations with smaller, less advanced militaries currently bear the larger portion of UN peacekeeping)
- Remove the burden on states to explain army casualties in foreign wars
- Would ensure that there are always peacekeepers for every mandate
Focus Questions
- Do private military corporations and their employees fit the definition of mercenaries, according to the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries? If not, does the definition need to be changed or is a new definition necessary for PMCs?
- Should PMCs be legally allowed to provide all or some of their services, or is the nature or the industry inherently a destabilizing force for international peace?
- If PMCs have a legal right to exist and operate, should the industry have an international regulatory framework? What would this framework look like?
- Who bears responsibility for oversight of PMCs? Their home countries? The clients (of which not all are sovereign states)? The countries in which PMCs operate? Or should intergovernmental organizations like the UN take on this regulation?
- What role, if any, should PMCs play in solving peacekeeping and humanitarian crises? Should the UN utilize or cooperate with PMCs?
