Private Military Contractors: “We are simply not going to go to war without contractors.”
Private Military Contractors — According to a recent study, the current international security architecture has been undergoing tremendous changes within the last decades. The end of the ColdWar in 1990 has disclosed a number of internal armed conflicts in regions of weak or failed statehood which up to that time were hidden under the covert rivalry of the two superpowers USA and USSR. Since 1990, though, most leading industrial countries have not been willing to intervene in armed conflicts anymore, unless their direct strategic interests were in danger.
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These two contrary developments - the increasing number of armed conflicts around the world as well as the subliminal disinterest of those countries that would be able to intervene - have triggered a rising demand for private military and security services.
Today, private military and security companies (henceforth PMSCs) offer a wide range of services, including combat operations, military assistance, intelligence, operational and logistics support, static security of individuals and property, advice and training of security forces, de-mining and weapons destruction, humanitarian aid, research and analysis, and even facility and infrastructure building.
The clients of PMSCs are as diverse as the services they offer, ranging from states and international organizations to transnational companies, humanitarian nongovernmental organizations, and even rebel groups. Particularly the wars in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 remarkably increased the use of these companies and showed plainly that the present implementation of international security policy is heavily reliant on the support of the private military and security industry. According to the report “Transforming Wartime Contracting” of the U.S. Congress’ Commission on Wartime Contracting, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of State and the US Agency for International Development employed more than 260,000 contractor employees in Afghanistan and in Iraq in 2010. This number exceeds the number of US military and civilian personnel in these countries at that time. Furthermore, from 2002 through 2011 an estimated $206 billion were spent on these contracts.