Ironically, Trump made that proclamation at a time when the term has reentered the vernacular of the U.S. military and foreign policy elite. Long identified with the war in Iraq and the US-NATO counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan, the phrase “nation-building” has renewed currency as the U.S. military and its allies confront a humanitarian catastrophe in the Middle East that has produced the worst refugee crisis since World War II.

Barely two weeks before Trump’s election, in fact, I heard the term used several times by senior defense and State Department officials. “We may not be interested in nation building, but nation building is interested in us,” a senior Pentagon official said on October 26 at a Washington conference on how US government agencies should confront the social chaos engulfing the Middle East.

He called the situation in Syria “an unprecedented emergency” that offers “lots of opportunities at the nexus of development and humanitarian assistance” that closely resemble what U.S. military and civilian agencies tried in Iraq and, later, Afghanistan.

Opposition to the idea of nation-building, another Pentagon official explained at the same conference, “doesn’t mean we won’t be conducting long-term stabilization operations.” Americans, she added, must “get over the hangover of Iraq and Afghanistan” because “stability and security translates into victory.”

The Return of Contractors

The two Pentagon officials were part of a contingent of high-ranking Defense and State Department officials who addressed the annual meeting of the International Stability Operations Association (ISOA), a coalition of private contractors that work for the US government in conflict zones as well as countries recovering from war and natural disasters. The meeting was held under Chatham House rules, which meant that speakers could not be identified by title or quoted by name.

Doug Brooks, the founder and president emeritus of ISOA, told me that the dire language at the conference was directed in part at Congress, which has balked at the idea of massively expanding US aid projects. “Congress has always disliked nation-building,” he said in an interview. He added that the dialogue with private companies is necessary because coordinating humanitarian aid and assistance “is something the US government does very poorly.”

That can clearly be seen in the US experience in Afghanistan, where billions of dollars were wasted on ill-planned projects that, according to a September report by a special inspector general appointed by Congress, “helped to lay a foundation for continued impunity of malign actors, weak rule of law, and the growth of corruption.”

That US officials chose the ISOA venue to air their views underscores how many of the tasks associated with nation building—from developing infrastructure to training law enforcement officials—are being carried out by private sector contractors.

Their role “is very important,” a third Pentagon official told the ISOA. “They’re doing a lot of peace-keeping and stability operations for us. They’re our enablers on the ground to see what’s working.” He added that contractors “who get into this business” must start working on plans to “rely on their own support system,” including providing the security that in Afghanistan was the job of the US military.

Pentagon’s Go-To Guys

Just how deeply the cooperation with contractors goes is outlined in a Department of Defense “Command and Staff Guide to Operational Contract Support” obtained by this reporter. The guide, labeled “draft” and dated September 21, 2016, shows that planning for contractor involvement in US operations begins as soon as US forces are dispatched.

“DOD acknowledges it must reduce the cost of doing business and accepts a reduced force size placing greater reliance on force readiness and the need to reduce military force deployments,” the guide states. “Contracted support provides a means to achieve these strategic goals, but to be effective it must be considered at the earliest stages of planning.”

According to the guide, contract “planners” are embedded among US command and US special operations forces “to assist commanders in identifying gaps where a contracted support capability may be required.” Capabilities available from contractors include “logistics, security, construction, training and intelligence.” They can also be used to “mitigate specific force cap restrictions.” In other words, when Congress imposes hiring caps, those agencies can bring in contractors.

The Pentagon’s Central Command, which manages US military operations in the Middle East, regularly publishes lists of contractors in its area of responsibility. The latest list, from July 2016, reported that 42,700 contractors were engaged in Centcom’s “area of responsibility.” Of these, Centcom said, 46.6 percent were providing logistics and maintenance, 10.6 percent security, and 8.3 percent base support.

One of the problems with contractors is that their widespread use obscures the full impact of war to the American public. Reporter Kelly Vlahos made this point in The American Conservative:

Not unlike the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – where private military contractors fed, trained, equipped, and protected U.S. military forces ‘on the ground’ in unprecedented numbers – an escalation of hired security forces in a hot spot like Syria would likely boost the presence of U.S. ‘boots’ without causing the political heartburn of putting more actual soldiers and Marines in harm’s way.
But even with these problems, the humanitarian situation on the ground in Syria and the Middle East is dire. According to UN statistics, over 13.5 million people are in need of assistance in Syria and millions more have fled the country as refugees to Turkey (2.7 million), Lebanon (1 million), Jordan (656,400), and Iraq (225,500). The US government has spent over $6 billion in Syria since 2011 to support the UN and other humanitarian organizations with emergency food, medicine, drinking water, and other supplies, USAID claims.

ISOA’s members include such well-known firms such as DynCorp International, the largest US contractor in Afghanistan. Another member is the Patriot Group, a British-owned company that, according one of its executives, wrote the doctrine for British military training in Iraq and Afghanistan. A Patriot brochure distributed at the conference says the group provides “mission support” and “special operations and intelligence services” in “more than 30 countries.”

Enter Michael Flynn

Although Trump may personally oppose the idea of nation-building, some of his closest advisers have deep, inside knowledge about how it worked in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Take retired General Michael Flynn, Trump’s designee for national security adviser. He played a key role in the U.S. counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In a widely circulated report in 2010, Flynn chastised the Pentagon for ignoring the needs of soldiers and commanders fighting a hearts-and-minds campaign—a euphemism for counterinsurgency—on the ground. “Employing effective counterinsurgency methods is not an option, but a necessity,” he concluded.

Of course, time and events could change the outlook of both Trump and Flynn. After all, George W. Bush ran against Al Gore in 2000 on a pledge not to engage any more in nation-building. Three years later, he invaded Iraq and nation-building once again was the name of the game.

CENTCOM AOR (Central Command’s Area of Responsibility) have continued to work with companies like DynCorp International, Vectrus Systems Corp, Constellis Group and so on, contracts ranging often up to hundreds of millions of dollars, for different specific operations: technical and logistical support, training, maintenance, security. However, Iraqi government’s policy after 2011 was to try exerting effectively its security attributions; the negative image attached to PMSC in previous years imposed less visibility and activity (of PMSC) outside highly specialised domains of action.

However, as tragically proved in June 2014 by Mosul’s fall, real Iraqi military potential was not only exaggerated but disastrous. Lack of experience and motivation concerning both troops and officers, cumulative to recent discoveries of massive funds defalcation within military and security institutions, largely spread corruption, have all resulted in a catastrophic situation regarding real capability of Iraqi military structures, despite training programs carried out by the United States, NATO or different European states, before and after 2011. The fall of Iraqi military and security forces after 2014, in terms of image and efficacy, the necessity to block Islamic State’s offensive towards main city and other regions, as well as the project meant to regain territories occupied by militant jihadi structures, have determined the apparition of parallel structures that would assume the tasks of defense and protection. Firstly, there are Shi’a militias created by Shi’a political forces, that recruit massively and are supported by Iran. They have supported official Iraqi troops and sometimes have conducted operations exclusively/with Peshmerga troops, in order to repel the Islamic State or even retake territories like Tikrit.

The reticence of United States and European powers to directly involve, on the field, against Daesh, has reopened the discussion on using PMSC as alternative option to support Iraqi forces on the ground, since operations against Daesh require experience and equipment that the Iraqi army does not possess. Consequently, DoD and other American officials have considered the idea of an increased re-implication in Iraq, not directly but through a relaunch of PMSCs system. Without the ability to mobilize like in previous decade, “America’s Second Contractors’ War” Iraq is discussed intensively. If American participation in the form of financed PMSCs is privileged, it is this time integrated in a larger frame, i.e. the “private Muslim Expeditionary Force”, comprising former members of military and security services from Arab and Muslim states, instrumentalized as ground force against the Islamic State.

Until now, such an organized structure has not been implemented, due to both Iraqi opposition and the difficulty in overcoming numerous rivalries and particular policies of the Arab states. Furthermore, as legitimacy and authority of the Iraqi state was fragile during previous decade, the massive reactivation of PMSCs raises a series of practical and juridical problems. Which authority should assume decisions and attribution of actions? The Iraqi one, leadership of the company, United States, another foreign state authority or a unified command center? Then, taking into consideration recent history marked by abuses, excesses, breach of national Iraqi jurisdiction, etc., the issue of legality regarding contractor’s status and responsibility is raised. Finally, what should be the role of regular military forces in the context of reactivated military operations carried out by PMSCs? How compatible are the two types of structure, is it possible to conduct joint missions and especially, what is the financial status of regular troops when compared to contractors, whose resources are far superior? Motivation is strictly dependent on received retribution especially in nowadays Iraq, as fidelity to nation and state becomes relatively fragile. Perpetuation and accentuation of ethnical, sectarian, tribal fidelity, encouraged by the fact that even the Islamic State claims to be the protector of Sunnis and forces a sectarian narrative on the Iraqi society, limits the authority of Iraqi state. A military and security support granted through reactivation of PMSCs could be efficient on short term in countering the Sunni insurrection, but it contains implicitly the seeds of pronounced political instability. A foreign intervention would certify security limits and incapacity of the Iraqi state and would force it to manage the complex situation of foreign troops on its soil, financial consequences it involves and the possible reactivation of armed confrontation between population and contractors.

As new threats arise and the PMSCs are already in place in the Middle East, despite their documented abuse on human rights and the negative stress on the local judiciary in the countries they operate, their role as private security providers will be preserved. On a larger scale, from corporate perspective, the continuous presence in hostile environments of the PMSCs grant them an undisputed role in military and reconstruction operations and now they are part of the extremely influential military-industrial complex with tight connections to some of the highest senior army officers and intelligence directors on the globe. Their methods are adapting very quickly to the new threats and vulnerabilities of the new way of waging war. Nonetheless, in the endeavor to rebuild a country and create a climate of sustainability in the strategic sectors, their approach is inflicting harm and loss. This also had an effect on the task of reestablishing from scratch the Iraqi army, the funds designated for training new security forces that should have been absorbed by the Iraqi government were regurgitated by the PMSCs back into the US economy or in off-shore private accounts. The immense impact that these organizations had on foreign policy of powerful countries in the last decade will not fade off. Their know-how is spreading and the modus operandi is getting better as they also invest in their image as lawful actors in the security industry.

BY: Ecaterina MAȚOI — SECURITY AND MILITARY STRATEGY