By Jean-Jacques Roche
Translation: Davina Durgana
Passage au crible n°3
The annual summit of the International Peace Operation Association (IPOA) brought together in Washington from October 25th through 27th more than 400 participants on the topic of support from the private sector for operations of regional stabilization in Afghanistan. In this instance, it was equally about diffusing the image of a consortium that brought together today 72 PMC’s (Private Military Companies) and to emphasize their involvement in the operations of the NATO Coalition in Afghanistan.
> Historical background
> Theoretical framework
> Analysis
> References
Founded in 2001, the IPOA was prominently in the news in 2003, when Kofi Annan threatened to resort to their services if the Western powers did not get involved in the Congo. Since then, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have constituted a source of continued expansion for the PMC’s. According to the information released by the American Congress in 2008, the United States has injected into the sector 89 billion dollars between 2003-2007, for the single Iraqi theatre (of which 22 billion dollars went towards logistics and 6-10 billion dollars for strictly security operations). Thus, the Blackwater organization (today renamed Xe) has received 832 million dollars from 2003-2007 to ensure the protection of American diplomats. An investment a priori profitable, as no one diplomat was killed since the beginning of the invasion. With 25.000-30.000 armed men deployed in the country, the contingent of PMC’s represent at this time, the second strongest armed force on the territory. One could think that this choice of the Bush administration was challenged by the new President. In fact, the desire demonstrated by Barack Obama to accelerate the American retreat, coupled with his will to amplify the fight against the Taliban through the dispatch of 10.000 additional men, has yet entailed a tremendous boosting of these businesses. Obviously, the last recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize does not have the same state of mind concerning private security. Between January and June 2009, the retreat of Iraq and the needs of the surge in Afghanistan were conveyed in the increase of 20% of armed civilian personnel employed by the Department of Defense, which would be 13.232 men for Iraq and 5.198 for Afghanistan (statistics provided by the US Central on June 30th, 2009)? In total, 24.500 armed employees have henceforth arrived through the licensed PMC’s to the Afghan theatre.
Critical minds could argue that this American propensity to outsource an increased number of military posts is not shared by their allies of the Coalition, beginning with France. Again, common sense catches out since the French Minister of Defense is on the point of granting the technicians of DCNS military status, which already benefits – since October 6th, 2009 – the personnel of Dassault and Thalès present on foreign theatres. The reason of this sudden generosity of the State seems clear. It is meant simply to avoid considering these employees as stakeholders of the wars conducted by the governments for which they maintain materials, as was the case in Karachi in May 2002. The law of April 14th 2003 forbade the activity of mercenaries, which had already been made the object of an extended interpretation last autumn, when it had been decreed that nothing in this text forbade the French army from resorting to services of French PMC’s. From henceforth, furthering the logic of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), this new status of technicians of industries of armament must allow them to benefit from the status of veterans, while providing their companies with coverage comparable to those of their Anglo Saxon competitors. As Philippe Chapleau has pointed out in Ouest-France October 17th-18th 2009, one could from now on envisage that a society specializing in maritime safety could participate in the anti-piracy fight off the coast of Somalia.
1. The qualification of security and its stake. If it is neither a public good, nor a completely commercial good, would it not be desirable for economists to invent a category of intermediary goods for which it qualifies? From a theoretical point of view, this debate has the advantage of raising, in an original form, the recurrent debate on the decline of the State.
2. The disengagement of the public power. For the Realist School, that is to say state-centered, the delegation of the implementation of security missions would not undermine the monopole through this decision. One renewed power must therefore reinvent their powers of arbitration towards private actors of which emancipation remains guaranteed by the public guardianship. Conversely, the more liberal approaches sometimes have difficulty accepting that State power is abandoned to the monopole in the matter of security. Thus, it is not shocking to see a Transnationalist author, such as Susan Strange, forget the security in her analysis on the Retreat of the State.
It is high time to analyze the privatization of security by the measurement of a modernized frame of reference where the State has stopped to be omnipotent and benevolent. In this instance, it is regrettable that the decisions of this magnitude could be taken secretly. The activities of the IPOA at least allow the avoidance of these backslides. How far could one go in the externalization of security missions? To some extent, is the privatization of security the corollary of the professionalization of armies? At what point in time will the monopole of legitimate physical violence attributed to the public power be challenged? Is security a commercial good or a public good? These questions are not secondary and it is precisely because they focus on the essence even of the Social Pact, which must be made the subject of an open debate. Continuing to refer to the ideal model of the State as the holder of the monopoly on legitimate physical violence seems now more problematic than that the State itself originally dismembered its sovereign functions.
One of the principal characteristics of this new market of security consists, in effect, of confronting a private offer with a public need. In trusting the guard of the Military School to a private company, has the French State given a clear image of its responsibilities? Additionally, in considering that public enforcement could not be used to apply their decisions for justice in the case of troubles to the public order, is the State not the first actor to deny the idea that security could be a common good? If the security of a minority could not be assured against the risk of harm to a great degree, then it no longer constitutes a public good and must be, on the contrary, considered as a commercial good.
Chapleau Philippe, Sociétés militaires privées, Paris, Éditions du Rocher, 2005.
Roche Jean-Jacques (Éd.), Insécurité publique, sécurité privée ? Essais sur les nouveaux mercenaires, Paris, Economica, 2005,
Roche Jean-Jacques, Contractors, mode d’emploi, http://www.cedoc.defense.gouv.fr/Contractors-moded’emploi
Jean Scahill Jérémy, Baker Chloé, Blackwater – L’Ascension de l’armée privée la plus puissante du monde, Paris, Acte Sud, 2008.
D’une manière générale on pourra se référer au site http://www.privatemilitary.org
