Private Military Cost Effect on Current Wars
A private military company works to establish security and military services. The combatants in these companies are referred to as mercenaries although modern private military companies prefer calling them private security or security contractors. Private militaries refer to their mode of work as The Circuit or the private military industry in an attempt of countering the stigma often associated with mercenaries. The expertise and services offered by private military companies are similar to those of police forces and governmental but at a smaller scale. In page twenty three of his book, U.S. military veteran Patrick Duncan asserts that while these companies provide services on training or supplementing governmental armed forces, they can also be employed to provide bodyguards by private companies. Considering the implications involved in military outsourcing, privatization of these services has had significant cost effects on current global warfare, including political, social and functional dimensions.
Private military companies play an integral role of victory at any given period of warfare and also play a significant role in providing epistemic power in times of urgency. The empowerment of private military companies is the marking point of the arms industry development in many global regions and often engages military equipment of various kinds. The current costs of warfare incorporate sunk and social costs associated with private military employment. In this case, military service outsourcing will therefore occur with the loss of control over the forces of utilization. This is often attributed to the conflicting strategies associated with military outsourcing, and other organizational matters.
The social cost of military outsourcing such as private military bears an impact on the ultimate compatibility and quality of the state. This impact manifests itself in at least three distinct dimensions; the political, social and functional dimension. The ability of the armed forces in achieving victory is rested under the functional control. In this case, private military leads to functional control loss and security cannot be achieved in case of war. Ultimately, private military has led to rise of political and social costs of war for several agencies including private organizations and state departments, says Sarah Cotton, a prominent author, in page seventy five of her book Hired guns views about armed contractors in Operation Iraqi Freedom (75). Consequently, the achievement of success in a war becomes difficult and strenuous.
In the course of war, an alternative course of action can be the contingency plan and this plan can eventually sanction assistance from private military. Should the contingency plan fail to meet its intended purpose, both the contractors and the state shall mandate significant arrangements that often lead to massive casualties from the deployed personnel in the counter active measure. If ethical costs are to be considered in this context, the civilians considering quitting their jobs after private contracting will significantly increase the cost war. The reason behind this is the heightened need by the military to replace combatants who avoided prosecution by dissertation, thereby endangering the military logistical supply sequence.
For instance, the private military in Iraq decided to halt their operations due to the dangers associated with establishing contingency plan operations. This further brought more burdens to the defense department as an externality constituting the private social cost of losing out in the contingency plan. Insurgency issues also bear the capability of arising from the abuse of private military security, thus leading to psychological costs in the course of war. With regard to counterinsurgency efforts, operational efforts bring about a defeated mentality at crucial times of war. This imbalance in war mentality leads to mind instability of the combatants due to the disorientations in psychology. As a counteractive measure, this often leads to the purchase of military re-enforcements to cater for the psychological costs hence the higher costs war.
In the same context, there is also political and statutory need for mobilizing efforts on military back up resources, for instance, through the reserve forces activation and military draft reinstatement. Private military establishes environments supporting possible utilitarianism as additional military units can be acquired by the defense authorities from the open market rather than alliance politics. The democratic economy over military force use therefore comes to a halt leading to visible costs of war as well as other strategic consequences. Additionally, inadequate performance by private military contractors when maintaining war equipment and combat operations also poses significant effects costs of war, like support from presiding and residing regions of the territorial war. The above cost effect can be attributed to pendency from a specified line of military contractors and tax payers have to bear with the additional costs of replacing them.
Considerations which are always laid down for a private military include command and control, strategic deployment ability, global reconnaissance, operative defense forces, and maintenance. Maintaining the structures of private militaries as well as establishing organic capability also results to high costs. For example, the maintenance agency of defense at the depot level and the significant repair of private military workload experiences usually amount to high technicality costs due to military privatization. Similarly, the trans-nationalization of industries in the private military sector has been found to increase the military spending allocations for externalities including redistribution of power costs, such as fuel for machinery.
Financial Cost of Private Military and Security in Wartime
Relying heavily on outsourced military contractors and private firms when supplementing local combatants, has an adverse effect on the financial delivery of countries actively involved in military operations. The United States economy in particular has undergone major setbacks following it involvement in military operations schemes because of the financial implications involved. In accordance with the budgetary allocation department, the United States government has spent an amount slightly surpassing 100 Billion dollars on the war in the Middle East. Economically, this translates to an estimated annual budget of 20 billion dollars, an equivalent twenty percent of the 100 billion dollars supposed to be spent on war by the United States (Cotton 99-107).
Moreover, the increase in war privatization has had both positive and negative impacts on war funding in the leading economies. In Iraq alone, more than 180,000 private military combatants have been employed by military groups. Charles Teifer in Use of Iraq Contractors Costs Billions report by the New York Times says, “This is the first war that the United States has fought where so many of the people and resources involved are not of the military, but from contractors.” Majority of these combatants mainly work as drivers, bodyguards, cooks, construction workers, and translators. The department of security therefore aims to reduce the number of troops deployed in these countries. On a local point of view, this would play a significant role to the department of finance through the reduction of war expenditure, but in the short period however. Additionally, this would help in establishing strong bonds between the military personnel and their family since they have increased contact hours with their families, where they would have been deployed on the other hand.
From a monetarist school of thought, stability is the key to financial growth. The privatization of war with a view of strengthening and supporting military operations has raised controversies over favoritism in the awarding of multibillion dollar contracts and tenders. For instance, at the onset of the Iraqi war, companies managed by close associates to the political power house won the tenders of supplying private military associates. Other companies were found to have close relationship with key political holders and military personnel. The Dick Cheney Company for example was found to have a close relationship with the vice president. When advancing these tenders to companies through corrupt and incompetent ways, the results are adverse effects on the economy. History Professor John Chambers in pages 12-56 of his book ‘Major problems in American military history’ confirms that corruption and favoritism are viewed as barriers to economic prosperity of a nation.
In an economic sense, the income to governmental military troops had to be reduced to match that earned by their colleagues contracted on a private basis. In this respect, during the early stages of war, the constrained military earnings worked in favor of the local firms, who were contracted to supplement the troops. The spending power of the local contractors and firms surged higher than the capacity of the economy, and this brought about an economic imbalance. The privatization of the security and military sector led to an increased demand for local services and goods. Consequently, with the empowerment of the local contractors and the increased purchasing power, the economy experienced unrealistic inflations and investments. More so, the troops had to deal with intimidation by the local contractor who exercised superiority.
On the other hand, the privatization of the military operations and out-sourcing is sustainable, reliable, and economical. An audit exercise conducted by an audit firm revealed that as opposed to using troops to guards in the embassy, which would cost 858 million dollars annually, a private contractor would charge a much lower cost of 78 million dollars over the same period of time, states law clerk Hannah Tonkin in page 27 of her book ‘State control over private military and security companies in armed conflict’. In an economical sense, the excess bulk of money would be used to fund other activities in the U.S. economy. The audit and survey reports further suggest that a local contractual agreement would prove to be more costly than forecasted. Given the insufficient training among the local firm and military operations, the State Department has to provide more resources for funding for training the troops on modern approaches to security and war.
According to page 54 of ‘How to make war: a comprehensive guide to modern warfare’ by author and military political analyst James Dunnigan, because of inadequate trained personnel, the U.S. government has to accept the extra burden of hiring, training, and recruiting additional security employees at an additional extra cost approximated to be $162 million annually. Other legal procedures and security protocols serve as the determining factor for the costliness of a given privatization exercise. Other factors can play the role in choosing methods of security provision. The government may choose to implement the use of federal employees or employ contractors to carry out the same task. Additionally the government may incur additional costs in its attempts to replace aging and unproductive staff, a cost that would not be incurred if privatization was implemented. Finally, using federal employees for military purposes has proven to be far more costly than outsourcing for private military services. This is made more practical by the fact that the federal government through the Department of State has to incur additional costs in research, new career development, and additional financial over-heads (Tonkin 23-60).
According to the United States government reports on private allocations from the year 2003 to 2007, 85 billion dollars were awarded to private contractors in Iraq, and the administration was allocated between 15 and 20 billion dollars annually. This translates to twenty percent of the total budget being allocated to private contractors. The percentage total federal spending by the Department of Defense has significantly decreased from 24 % to 15.3% from 1989 to 1998 and then rose to 19.5% in 2005. These statistics imply that federal spending registers a fall when the spending on private contractual firms increases. . This means an increased cost of that equivalent has been borne by the federal government in terms of budgetary allocations per year
Going by the large number of unemployment cases endured by private military contractors, which is seemingly larger than the US military force, one cannot help but imagine how these private contractors spend large amounts of funds on executing their contracts on war. Within certain periods, costs are high which makes them demand higher budgetary allocations.
Dependence on these contractors might also be viewed in terms of favoritism, whereby political goodwill plays a part in awarding the contract. This situation usually comes with larger costs than expected. Money and manpower was and has been shifted to contractors due to governments over reliance on them (Chambers, 32). Self esteem of the military force is reduced as a result, especially when they face greater risks from the contractor’s abuse and waste. Author and political analyst Linda Francke Bird asserts in page 123 of her book ‘Ground zero: the gender wars in the military’ that this costly result makes the government pose huge spending on the military to boost and maintain their public goodwill, which at that point depends on the military deniability on the matter. In this case, military deniability implies the military lacking to answer to cal of state with regard to clandestine operations.
Arising questionable policies by concerned agencies such as creation of special war contracting agencies has seen many missions given to the private firms at the expense of the military. This always has to come with extra costs to cater for the extra private logistics. In comparison, this would have been less costly if the missions would have been given to the military directly. If the missions were contracted to the military directly, the government would not have to deal with the extra costs on private logistics. Additionally, employing the local military would be a way of accounting for all efforts put towards establishing it. Government agencies also depend on other services to achieve their objectives.
For many years, the Department of Defense has spent much more on services than on goods, equipment, and supplies notwithstanding high costs of weapon systems and large military items. These services can be in terms of constantly changing technology, professional, administrative, research and development, management support, construction, repair and maintenance of facilities, and equipments among other varied services (Dunnigan, 36). Firms which offer these services on contractual basis have their own costs which generally make the whole operation costly therefore increasing the overall cost of the war.
Several efforts aimed at improving efficiency made the department of defense grant several competing firms functions like grounds maintenance, computer and network support, dining facilities, and base security. This highlights the key economic issues associated with this private contractual performance, whereby the firm’s competitiveness and how efficient it is raises costs of services offered (Francke, 135). This raises the general operating costs which are later felt at the overall costs evaluation point. When security is viewed as a public good, it can only be provided by the government. The first duty of the sovereign is to provide the society from violence and invasion from another country, whereby if supply of such a good is left to private firms, it can be thought as undersupplied. This means that provision of national security remains a key role to the government which it can do at any cost.
However, in an effort to provide security, the government must do it in an efficient manner using efforts from the private firms. When these firms have strategically better equipments with better methods to perform that operation, it is with high cost that the government contracts these firms to achieve the objective as was aimed. This situation makes the overall cost of war higher than if the military force would have done it (Duncan 44-67).
When contracts are made at the battlefield environment, like the situation in Iraq, whereby there was no time to analyze the competitiveness bid of each firm and faced with the unexpected situation of building and rebuilding arena, the government allows the contractors to begin work without revising terms and conditions. This approach made the government to initiate faster operations, but at higher costs posted by these private firms.
However, the United States government will soon consider giving war missions directly to the local military rather than outsourcing for privatization. According a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, for the period running from June 2004, the costs associated with hiring private contractors did not have massive difference if the local military was to be employed for the same function. On this context, since both operational methods would roughly equate similar costs, employing the local military would prove to be the better of the two. Combatants in this case would go on to the battlefield with a view of offering diligent service for the American nation. On the other hand, the private contractor would indeed carry out the task but with a notable less diligence in their services (Duncan, 85).
Works Cited
Chambers, John Whiteclay, and G. Kurt Piehler. Major problems in American military history: documents and essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Print.
Cotton, Sarah K. Hired guns views about armed contractors in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2010. Print.
Duncan, Patrick Sheane. A private war. New York: G.P. Putnam\’s Sons, 2002. Print.
Dunnigan, James F. How to make war: a comprehensive guide to modern warfare. New York: Morrow, 1982. Print.
Francke, Linda Bird. Ground zero: the gender wars in the military. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Print.
Tonkin, Hannah. State control over private military and security companies in armed conflict. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print.
