Small Wars: Low-Intensity Threats and the American Response since Vietnam

Chapter 9: Private Military Corporations in the New Century

9 Private Military Corporations in the New Century We fight the war, and they do the shit work. —Senior U.S. officer quoted in Joshua Hammer, “Cowboy Up” We live in a time of postmodern international relations. Since the end of the Cold War, basic features that once consistently defined national sovereignty and legitimate conflict have been changed almost beyond recognition. Individual nations now exist in a global environment that contests basic exercises in power, particularly war. In 2002 Lawrence W. Serewicz discussed two particular forces that mitigate the power of the traditional sovereign state. One is the product of multilateral organizations , like the European Union, that undercut individual national authority by vesting political and economic decision making in a collective structure.1 Conversely, individual nations are also challenged by what Serewicz describes as “sub-state military actors,” which attack the nation-state’s legal monopoly on violence.2 The “warlord,” an actor recognizing neither conventional authority nor practices that divide combatant from noncombatant, is a normative part of post–Cold War international relations today. Once an aberrant factor in terms of military conflict, 264 Private Military Corporations organizations such as Al Qaeda, the FARC, or Abu Sayyaf, are now ubiquitous enemies of traditional stability. Faced with this type of threat, both individual nations and their transnational counterparts often respond with armed force that is too large and clumsy to be effective or too unwilling to embrace a cause that is perceived as vague or peripheral. Part of this failure can be simply explained by declining military capability. When the Cold War concluded, it eliminated the justification for massive standing armies. Almost without exception, most major European and American military institutions declined significantly after the collapse of Soviet communism. France reduced its armed forces from 547,000 in 1987 to 381,000 in 1997; England from 319,000 in 1987 to 214,000. The former Soviet Union, desperate to cut the costs of military mobilization, followed suit, cutting its total active armed forces from 5.2 million in 1987 to 1.2 million a decade later.3 The United States did not escape this trend. After 1991, the country indulged in the so-called peace dividend and oversaw a precipitous drop in active duty forces.4 The U.S. Army alone declined from 711,000 service members in 1991 to 487,000 in 2003.5 The mass exodus of soldiers has cost global militaries in important ways. Conventional formations that cased their colors for the final time lost years of accumulated training and expertise , often obtained at great expense. Losses among special operations personnel, whose very qualities were most needed to address unconventional conflict in the new world order, were perhaps even more dearly felt in the nineties and beyond. Another part of declining military capabilities may also be attributed to a failure of will. Martin van Creveld has observed that the larger and more complex the modern state becomes, the less likely individual citizens are directly linked to national security priorities. This is clearly the case in the United States, wherein mainstream society is largely disconnected from active participation in the military.6 Thus, although the military as an institution is held in high regard, actual membership in it remains at near record lows. The shock of the September 11 attacks did not result in a sea change in public attitudes toward military service. Contemporary media sources recorded increasing reenlistments, but no concurrent clamor from the uninitiated to volunteer. A military draft was one of the most controversial Private Military Corporations 265 issues of the 2004 presidential campaign, with both candidates going to great lengths to make it clear conscription was not forthcoming.7 The combination of multiplying challenges and declining means has placed enormous strain on the existing cohort of stable, modern nations. The world since the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet communism has been defined by upheaval rooted in race, religion, ethnicity , or access to resources, among many other factors.8 Discerning a proper context to exercise power has proven difficult, particularly for the United States. Multilateral consensus-building, a strategy embraced by the Clinton administration, poses the problem of sacrificing national interests for the sake of global cooperation. A more unilateral approach, typical of the Bush administration circa 2003, risks a decline into pariah status.9 In the recent past, many nations have turned to an emerging, and powerful, ally to restore...