A Blackwater Helicopter in Baghdad, Wikimedia Commons
By Sebastian J. Bae
The brutal campaign of the Islamic State carving its way across Iraq and Syria reflects a decade-long trend in world politics – the intensifying privatization of violence. However, violent non-state actors (VNSAs) waging war is not a completely novel phenomenon. From 1757 to 1858, the British East India Company raised armies, waged war, negotiated treaties, and governed most of southern India and Punjab.[1] Contemporary violent non-state actors have exponentially grown in number, importance, and capabilities in modern conflicts. Ultimately, the privatization of violence, driven by the prevalence of insecurity and the commercialization of core state functions, is transforming the face of modern conflicts.
Violent non-state actors can be defined as “non-state armed groups that resort to organized violence as a tool to achieve their goals.”[2] Consequently, VNSAs include a myriad of actors such as warlords, insurgents, terrorists, national liberation movements, and private military firms (PMFs). Contemporary examples of VNSAs include the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), al-Qaeda, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Somali warlords, and the notorious PMF formerly known as Blackwater. Although their motivations vary vastly from corporate profits to the establishment of religious caliphates, VNSAs have steadily become fixtures in nearly every modern conflict. For instance, pro-Russian paramilitary groups serve as Russian proxies in the Ukrainian civil war, while Somalia has become a battleground between warlords, pirates, and terrorist groups like Al Shabaab. The prevalence and central role VNSAs increasingly play in modern conflicts reflects an inherent shift in how wars are waged.
Wars where states marshal armies in conventional battles are a relic of a bygone era. VNSAs waging lengthy low-intensity campaigns increasingly characterize the informal wars of modern conflicts. Unlike traditional warfare, informal wars are “characterized by the absence of fixed territorial boundaries, elaborate institutionalized military rituals, major fronts, and (open) military campaigns.”[3] Thus, the distinction between war and peace, combatant and civilian, states and VNSAs is increasingly blurring. Unsurprisingly, “more military weapons are in the hands of private citizens than in the hands of national governments” for the first time since the advent of nation-states in 1648.[4] The privatization of violence is fundamentally changing notions of war and security – of who wields violence and to what ends.
The privatization of violence is largely a consequence of a state’s inability to provide security for its citizens.[5] Weak or fragile states often lack the capacity to enforce order and maintain a monopoly on violence, commonly competing with VNSAs for dominance. For instance, the Mexican states of Michoacán and Guerrero are controlled by powerful drug cartels, as their capacity to provide order and security remain limited.[6] Similarly, in Afghanistan, warlords, tribal leaders, the Taliban, and the central state have established individual, small fiefdoms across the country. A 2010 Congressional Research Service reported, “outside Kabul there is no government reach at present, and local governors, chiefs of police, and politicians run their own illegal private security companies.”[7] In the absence of strong state authority, VNSAs have thrived in the ensuing insecurity from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Yemen.
However, the privatization of violence is not limited to revolutionary VNSAs challenging weak states for dominance. Powerful states, including the United States, have gradually developed a deepening reliance on PMFs to wield violence on its behalf. Emerging in the 1990s, PMFs sought to fill the security demand left by the end of the Cold War. However, the latest wars in Afghanistan and Iraq propelled PMFs to the forefront of waging war on contract. Private firms are no longer used as occasional dalliances or proxies, but have become permanent fixtures in how the modern states employ deadly force. By 2003, PMFs operated in over fifty countries and six continents.[8] By 2007, nearly 180,000 private contractors were deployed to Iraq for the Department of Defense, eclipsing the 160,000 US troops deployed to Iraq.[9] Over the course of two lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, PMFs have fought battles, interrogated prisoners, provided long-term logistics, conducted UAV operations, and even commanded Patriot missile batteries.[10] However, “privatizing large parts of military and security services challenges and undermines the state monopoly on force.”[11]
The commercialization of fundamental functions of the state like security reflects a wider trend of deregulation and outsourcing of essential services. With the staunch reluctance of the international community to intervene in complicated internal conflicts combined with the increasing availability of highly skilled military personnel, the supply and need for VNSAs seems only to be escalating.[12] As a result, embattled states like Sierra Leone and Angola find themselves buying the services of PMFs to prop up underdeveloped or incompetent state security apparatuses. In turn, violence becomes a commodity bought and sold on the international market, both legally and illicitly. When the means of violence are traded openly, the threshold of war inherently lowers and becomes available to anyone at the right price. Ironically, the more violence is privatized, the greater the need for VNSAs to combat other VNSAs.
Martin van Creveld warned, “As new forms of armed conflict multiply and spread, they will cause the lines between the public and private, government and the people, military and civilian to become as blurred as they were before 1648.”[13] If the Treaty of Westphalia marked the advent the era of nation-states, then the post-9/11 era can be characterized as the age of violent non-state actors. With the privatization of violence, VNSAs present an ominous future where “might makes right,” unfettered by political restraints or any sense of accountability.[14] The privatization of violence may be the undoing of nation-states, whether by revolutionary VNSAs like al-Qaeda or through the slow deterioration of the state by expanding private military firms. How states adapt and evolve to meet the privatization of violence will be the determining factor in the security landscape in the foreseeable future.
Sebastian J. Bae is pursuing his Masters at Georgetown’s Security Studies Program, specializing in international security. He served six years in the Marine Corps infantry as a Sergeant, and deployed to Iraq in 2009. He previously studied at UC Berkeley for his undergraduate degree in Peace & Conflicts Studies, and did academic exchanges and fellowships at the University of Hong Kong as an undergraduate and the University of St. Andrews Centre for the Study of Political Violence and Terrorism as a graduate student. His professional and academic focus has been in counter insurgency operations and humanitarian interventions, particularly concerning the Right to Protect doctrine.
[1] Eugene B. Smith, “The New Condottieri and US Policy: The Privatization of Conflict and Its Implication,” Parameters, volume 32:2, (Winter 2002/2003): 106.
[2] Klejda Mulaj, “Violent Non-State Actors: Exploring Their State Relations, Legitimation, and Operationality,” in Violent Non-State Actors in World Politics, ed. Klejda Mulaj (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 3.
[3] Klejda Mulaj, “Violent Non-State Actors: Exploring Their State Relations, Legitimation, and Operationality,” in Violent Non-State Actors in World Politics, ed. Klejda Mulaj (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 5-6.
[4] Robert Mandel, “The Privatization of Security,” Armed Forces and Society, 28:1, (2001): 130.
[5] Magdalena Defort, “Privatization of Violence: Legal and Illegal Armed Actors in the Mexican Center of Gravity in the New Wars,” Small Wars Journal, (July 2013): 1.
[6] Magdalena Defort, “Privatization of Violence: Legal and Illegal Armed Actors in the Mexican Center of Gravity in the New Wars,” Small Wars Journal, (July 2013): 5.
[7] Moshe Schwartz, The Department of Defense’s Use of Private Security Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan: Background, Analysis, and Options for Congress, June 22, 2010, 4, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40835.pdf.
[8] P.W. Singer, “Private Military Firms: The Profit Side of VNSAs,” in Violent Non-State Actors in World Politics, ed. Klejda Mulaj (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 415.
[9] P.W. Singer, “Private Military Firms: The Profit Side of VNSAs,” in Violent Non-State Actors in World Politics, ed. Klejda Mulaj (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 415.
[10] P.W. Singer, “Private Military Firms: The Profit Side of VNSAs,” in Violent Non-State Actors in World Politics, ed. Klejda Mulaj (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 418-421.
[11] Herbert Wulf, “The Privatization of Violence: A Challenge to State-Building and the Monopoly on Force,” Brown Journal of World Affairs, vol. XVIII, issue 1 (Fall/Winter 2011): 138.
[12] Robert Mandel, “The Privatization of Security,” Armed Forces and Society, 28:1, (2001): 131.
[13] Eugene B. Smith, “The New Condottieri and US Policy: The Privatization of Conflict and Its Implication,” Parameters, volume 32:2, (Winter 2002/2003): 104.
[14] Robert Mandel, “The Privatization of Security,” Armed Forces and Society, 28:1, (2001): 134.