Our Myopic and Dangerous Foray Into Private Armies

An open letter to my US senators and US congressman:

I urge you, when you are considering authorization and appropriations bills, to also consider the long-term ramifications of increasing our official use of private security firms to conduct what are, fundamentally, state functions. I believe we are on a slippery slope with our increased use of such forces to supplant our regular armed forces in hot spots around the globe. Here are my key concerns. I hope you share them:

Using private security firms to replace regular US armed forces appears to be a disingenuous attempt to tell Americans we are re-deploying our troops home. We are still leaving Americans in harm’s way, nothing has fundamentally changed about the conflict situation; we’re simply putting some distance between the federal government and our now surrogate forces left behind on the ground.

In the end, use of these private armies will, I believe, be more expensive. I say this because they will require the exact same equipment, infrastructure, and supplies to conduct their operations, but the average salary of private security operatives will be much higher than the average salary of a US service member, and these security firms will charge substantial fees for administering and executing the contracts. Clearly, the costs of conducting on-going operations with private security firms, vice US military forces, allows the true costs of such operations to be shuffled to less visible budget line items, either within our defense budgets, or even within the State Department’s budget. With proper spin, some may try to sell the public that our costs to conduct operations in Afghanistan, Iraq or other locations is drawing down when, in fact, our true costs have increased and have merely been shifted elsewhere in our budgets.

Are we eventually going to allow such security firms to lease, or purchase, combat equipment such as tanks, light infantry vehicles, attack helicopters, patrol boats, reconnaissance aircraft, armed drones, and intelligence gathering satellites? Where will we draw the line? If we’re going to pay them to do the job, they will need the tools to do it.

We run the risk of fomenting a brain drain among our critical mid-level non-commissioned officer and company-grade commissioned officer ranks. The big security firms offer very attractive compensation packages and go after the best and the brightest. They may well cherry pick the very leaders we should be counting on to fight our wars ten to fifteen years from now.

As we enthusiastically get behind the increased use of private security firms to assume inherently governmental military functions, we set precedent for, and lend credence to, the rise and legitimacy of other quasi-state, non-state, and corporate armies. What adverse, and irrevocable, transformations of the fundamental international laws of armed conflict are we sewing?

How will US-sponsored private armies be held accountable by the global community and the International Criminal Court? Are we prepared, as a nation, to be held to account for the actions of private firms engaged in armed conflict on our behalf, yet outside our official military chain of command?

I can hardly think of another development in the way we intend to protect our national security interests that will more effectively amplify the cynicism, both at home and abroad, about the nature of what we are protecting. Are we protecting basic American values and core national interests? If so, why wouldn’t we do it with the blood and sweat of American service members? It’s supposed to be hard to commit American lives to combat operations. What we hope to achieve better be worth every life we sacrifice. This trend toward using private security firms to make these sacrifices on our national behalf belies a dangerous change in mindset about our use of armed force to accomplish critical global objectives. It's going to make committing to war easier.

By and large, by the very nature of the toll and sacrifice combat operations demand, our military (and, hopefully, even more so, our elected civilian leaders) are motivated to bring an end to armed conflicts as soon as possible. As stewards of taxpayer dollars, politicians are motivated to end costly overseas engagements a soon as practical. On the contrary, private security firms are going to be completely motivated by their bottom lines to extend and expand the scope of their operations. This is an egregious conflict of interest. How will we manage this?

In summary, I hope you share my many serious reservations about promulgating the use of private security firms to do our nation’s bidding in the combat zones of the world. We have already taken some stunningly myopic, and very significant, steps down a very dangerous path, perhaps setting in motion our irreversible journey toward a horribly undesirable destination.

I trust you will weigh the long-term consequences of our immediate decisions to use, or not use, private security firms in lieu of US armed forces. Our troubles will emanate from the secondary and tertiary ramifications of our decisions—the things we didn’t properly think through. Let’s invest the time to think these things through right now, before we pull the trigger.