Canadian Consortium on Human Security

Sunil Dasgupta 

The use of private military corporations (PMCs) by states is worrisome because it potentially compromises their legitimate monopoly over the use of force. In contrast, the use of PMCs by nonstate armed groups should be a matter of contractual arrangement between two private actors. However, both nonstate armed groups and the PMCs they might hire are aspirants to public authority. The nonstate armed group is often a proto-state and the private military firm acts as a proto-army. Their aspiration to public authority subjects their relationship to well-known problems of political control over armed forces even though they are conducting a private transaction.

Civil-military relations theory applies to the relationship with some differences. Proto-states by definition want to behave like regular ones, but they are thwarted, most of all, by other members of the international system not recognizing them. Non-recognition inhibits the ability of proto-states, for example, to declare war, which in turns determines how openly they can contract out security tasks. However, the essential problem of balancing effectiveness and control—the essence of civil-military relations — remains quite relevant to the relationship.

The applicability of civil-military relations theory increases the more state-like a non-state actor is. Where the non-state group is practically a state, in that it actually controls and governs territory and organizes as a bureaucratic state, civil-military relations problems imitate those of states. However, it is hard to find an example of this. Most nonstate armed groups that control territory do not organize as a bureaucratic state. The Tamils in Northern Sri Lanka and the FARC in southwestern Colombia are practically independent but do not distinguish between the political and military branches of their government. To imagine that they would outsource the core function of security is a tall order. The function of security is even more central to preserving the hierarchy of non-state armed groups than it is for state hierarchies that can depend on other political institutions.

Where the absence of functional specialization on the part of the nonstate armed group retards the outsourcing of security, legal questions keep private military firms incorporated in existing states from working for nonstate principals. The question then becomes: If a private military firm is legally incorporated, how does it enter into a contract with a non-state actor with no legal standing?

There is the possibility of a nonstate armed group hiring a private military firm as part of a “futures” contract. That is, a rebel group might be able to persuade a private military firm to lend it a hand now in return for payments later. These payments could come from tax collection or as a promise of future concessions to natural resources such as mines and oil. However, such futures contracts require international recognition that accords the nonstate group the legitimacy of a state. Under such a rubric, nonstate groups would essentially become proto-states.

The most glaring example of private military firms working in situations with murky state recognition is the assistance given by the American company, MPRI, to the Bosnian and Croatian forces in 1994 and 1995. In that case, it is worth noting that Croatia and Bosnia were already recognized as independent states, although they were clearly not consolidated. It is also worth noting that MPRI became involved in the region through the direct encouragement of the United States government. The Clinton Administration was looking for a way to rearm the Croatians and Bosnians with forces in an effort to balance Serbia’s rampant power without overtly violating United Nations resolutions preventing external assistance to any party in the Balkans conflict. The United States became the supra-principal in the MPRI contract: company officials openly admit to helping Croatian and Bosnian forces in service of American foreign policy goals. For the purposes of this discussion, we can argue that in order for a nonstate armed group to use private military services, a state actor must step in as guarantor — as a principal’s principal. Once again, this implies that the nonstate group has the imprimatur of recognition as a state.

One nonstate actor, though not an armed group, which could hire private military firms is the United Nations. Liberal internationalists and PMCs have strongly made the case over the last decade that UN peacekeeping missions should contract out rather than to wait for state members to supply troops in time to prevent conflict. The UN command system is already sufficiently complex enough to impede the military effectiveness of the units deployed under them. To add another layer of complexity might add to the problem. Others argue that privatization would make the system more, not less, accountable. The prospect has not found much traction among UN member states fearful of losing further control over peacekeeping missions. Conceptually, the UN hiring private military firms is another case where member states serve as the supra-principals and works well within the analytical framework described above.

On the other side of the arrangement, the de facto and de jure location of the PMC is important: it has to be out of reach to the state or other nonstate armed group opposing the firm’s client. This is an important condition because most nonstate armed groups are not like the Bosnian forces which were well-organized entities backed by states. They are rather localized groups with access to local resources and largely hire local military services. Local military firms are hard to find since the private military industry is really a product of the ability of strong states to incorporate and regulate corporations. But even if these firms were to exist in a developing society, it is hard to see how a nonstate armed group might legally hire the company without violent state sanction.

Apart from the proto-state scenario, therefore, the only other way in which nonstate armed groups could “hire” private military services — not necessarily incorporated firms — is through recruitment. However, this kind of “hiring” is subject to political mobilization theory more than contract theory [i]. Such “hiring” would be no different from a rebellion attracting adherents. This is not a problem of business contracting or institutional contract theory such as civil-military relations.

The problems of political mobilization are entirely different from the problems of privatization of security even though they may occur in similar political settings. How do rebel leaders attract support? Collective action theory suggests the offer of selective incentives with the promise of power and money in the future. In more overtly political thinking of the problem, ideology and grievances play a bigger role. To discuss the possibility of nonstate armed groups hiring private military firms in the context of political mobilization or collective action theories is beside the point. Both sets of literature provide strong theoretical predictions of behavior based on a wide range of independent variables. A nonstate armed group “hires” local private military services by persuading potential recruits of their cause and their potential of victory.

There are two conditions when the putative relationship between nonstate armed groups and private military service providers becomes important — and both require relaxing the assumptions inherent in the framework. The first is that the nonstate armed group is not really nonstate: indeed, it has to become and behave like a proto-state in order to be able to enter into meaningful contracts with private military firms. The making of a nonstate armed group into a proto-state actor could be the result of internal organization. More often, however, other members of the international community bestow explicit and implicit recognition on the entity. The second condition takes the problem out of the purview of privatization of security literature and lands it in the realm of political mobilization and collective action theories. Here there is no distinction between private military firms, its members, and the general public, who are all equally susceptible to the appeals of rebel leaders to join them in the cause.

[i] Studies of political mobilization are vast. I mean political mobilization here as the construction of a movement seeking political goals such as a rebellion. For the classical position for why people join rebellions, see Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971); on the formation of insurgency and guerrilla warfare, see Walter Laquer, Guerrilla: A Historical and Critical Study (New Brunswick, NJL Transaction Books: 1976); on nationalism, see.Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966) Civil-military relations problem is essentially an employment contract enforcement issue. See Peter Feaver, “Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control,” Armed Forces and Society 23 (2) [1996]: 149-178.