BUY AN ARMY FOR JUST $285 BILLION

By Alistair Law

Private Military Contractors (PMCs), are businesses, just like Tesco’s, but instead of selling groceries, they sell highly-trained personnel to fight in various campaigns and missions. In 2014, the US dedicated $285 billion towards hiring and contracting these PMCs to help fight in America’s various missions, including in Afghanistan, where at one point, 75% of the US force in Afghanistan was contracted. Hence, this is an area of good profit, and certainly big business.

For the government, it means they only have to cover the expenses of hiring the personnel. Once the fighting is over, the government no longer need to pay soldiers money for compensation, general pay or for the upkeep of weapons and equipment. Instead, they can simply say goodbye, and spend the taxpayer’s money elsewhere in the economy. For the contractors, they get money from the government, and can gain profit from this, hence giving them a benefit. The soldiers themselves can also earn more money than in the military. Those working for PMCs can earn anywhere from $15,000 to $22,500 per month, whilst those in the actual military may only receive $1,500 to $5,000 per month. Hence, to soldiers, they can earn a lot more from working for PMCs rather than in the army. This has caused many highly skilled and experienced soldiers to work for PMCs and leave the army, resulting in a skills drain of sorts for the army.

PMCs are controversial, to say the least. Instead of fighting for a flag, they are fighting for money. This brings many issues, as PMCs may not be able to be held as accountable for certain actions. For example, one company was found to have killed several civilians while conducting a mission in Iraq. The ethics of such an ‘army’ existing is strange; company’s may not seek to conduct missions in a proper manner, but instead get the job done to earn the money from the contract, even if civilians are killed in the process. Not only this, but companies could begin fighting for terrorist cells, if they are bought out and actually fight against national armies, or even big corporations could fight each other. Microsoft and Apple’s billion-dollar revenues could fund a private military of their own, equipping themselves with extremely dangerous machines and weaponry that could cause widespread harm to other combatants and civilians.

Under International Humanitarian Law (IHL), PMC employees are simply civilians, as they should not actually operate in the fighting, but can instead play a supporting or defensive role for the state they are fighting for. However, in the nature of conflict, especially guerrilla warfare, they can quickly become involved in the fighting and become combatants themselves. PMCs are technically supposed to follow IHL, and the state they fight for should exercise authority to ensure this is the case, yet incidents in Afghanistan and Iraq, where PMCs were responsible for civilian deaths, have shown little care to direct violations of IHL.

The ethics of having such a company exist is a complicated matter. The industry employs millions of people, and is estimated to be worth anywhere between £69 billion to £275 billion or even more. Privatising what is thought to be a traditional public good (in that the service of protection is provided to all by the government) raises many questions, such as whether privatisation and free market economics have gone too far, and whether it is right for private militaries to exist. For me, being able to pay personnel to fight who you want seems completely wrong, yet PMCs are not simply there to make as much money as possible. The nature and origins of these companies mean that they will likely only take missions and contracts from stable governments, rather than terrorist cells or corporations, and only accept contracts for missions that assist the actual military and are ethically just. However, having this option available brings into question if free market economics have gone too far.