Abstract
Although the privatisation of military support is increasingly widespread, advanced military organisations have not relied on Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) to the same degree. The existing scholarship on PMSCs cannot explain why countries sharing similar material incentives and similar market and political ideologies like the United States and the United Kingdom have not outsourced the same operational tasks. This article contends that introducing military role conceptions as a factor enabling or inhibiting the outsourcing of certain functions provides important insights into the scope of military privatisation, explaining why the US military has systematically privatised armed security and foreign military training, while the UK military has not
Keywords
Over the last two decades, commercial entities usually referred to as Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) have taken over a number of activities previously performed by military personnel such as logistics, equipment support, security and training. Not all military organisations, however, have relied on PMSCs to the same degree. Even if they have conducted joint military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, facing the same operational challenges and similar levels of financial and manpower strain, US and UK armed forces have not outsourced the same support tasks. Although it systematically relied on PMSCs for the provision of logistics, the UK military has largely refrained from outsourcing tasks extensively privatised in the United States, such as armed security and foreign military training.
The scholarship focusing on the drivers of military outsourcing cannot fully explain differences in the scope of privatisation. Advocates of contractor support have explained the resort to PMSCs as a functional response to new technological, operational and financial imperatives, arguing that outsourcing increases military preparedness at reduced costs. 1 This line of argument, however, cannot account for differences in military privatisation across countries. Functionalist explanations of military change largely converge in expecting military isomorphism. Most notably, neorealism maintains that the anarchic international system provides incentives for states to emulate successful security strategies. 2 Even when displaying a similar need for technological expertise missing from the ranks and comparable budgetary and manpower strain, however, military organisations have embraced the privatisation of support functions to different degrees. 3
Various critics of the use of PMSCs have forcefully highlighted the political rather than financial and strategic convenience of outsourcing. Most notably, Deborah Avant has observed that military privatisation erodes democratic control over the use of force, providing avenues for the executive branch to bypass legislative vetoes and blur transparency by reducing the visible costs of military operations. 4 This line of argument too, however, has limited utility in explaining variance in military privatisation worldwide. As noted by different scholars, states displaying tight domestic political constraints over the use of military force abroad like Germany have refrained from systematically resorting to PMSCs. 5 Even if suffering from an increasing difficulty to mobilise military manpower, epitomised by the establishment of a manpower cap on the number of deployable personnel in Afghanistan, British forces refrained from outsourcing some of the activities outsourced by its US counterpart.
A large part of the existing scholarship has explained variance in the privatisation of military support functions over time and across countries on the grounds of ideational factors. Scholars like Peter Singer, Deborah Avant and Allison Stanger, for instance, have argued that the outsourcing of military support has gained momentum due to the emerging belief in the superiority of market solutions and the neoliberal commitment to reduce the size and functions of the public sector. 6 In addition, Elke Krahmann has emphasised the importance of theories of the social contract in shaping states’ approach to the control of military force, noting that countries with a republican approach to civil–military relations such as Germany have displayed a lower propensity to outsource military tasks than states with a liberal model of civil–military relations like the United States and the United Kingdom. 7 Market and political ideologies, however, cannot always account for differences in contractor support across countries. Since Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s neoliberal revolutions, the United Kingdom and the United States have shared a similar propensity to outsource government functions to commercial providers. Moreover, the United Kingdom, where citizen conscription was only adopted between 1916–1918 and 1939–1962, has arguably embraced a liberal civil–military relations model more firmly than the United States, where the citizen-soldier tradition continues to shape the political debate and Reserves and National Guard have provided a significant contribution to the latest military operations. 8 Yet, Britain has outsourced fewer operational tasks than the United States, largely refraining from externalising functions systematically privatised by the US military such as armed security and foreign military training. 9
I contend that military organisational cultures can explain this puzzle. Although military culture is widely considered an influential factor in the study of military change, its effects on contractor support have remained unexplored. In this article, I focus on a specific component of military culture, namely, military organisations’ role conceptions. Drawing on the existing scholarship, on defence ministries and military organisations documents and on a set of semi-structured interviews conducted with civil servants, PMSCs’ personnel and military officers in Washington, London and the UK Joint Services and Staff College between 2008 and 2012, I argue that military role conceptions account for important differences in the privatisation of operational support across countries. As highlighted by the existing literature, material factors, political considerations and ideological preferences have informed civilian policy-makers’ decisions to cut military manpower and budgets and introduce new public management reforms into the defence sector. Military role conceptions, however, have played an important role in informing military organisations’ response to these constraints, shaping the scope of contractor support by enabling or inhibiting the outsourcing of certain functions. 10 Not only do the United States and the United Kingdom display similar material and ideological incentives to privatise military support. As maintained by a large strand of literature, the US and the UK militaries display very different understandings of their role and functions. Hence, a controlled comparison of US and UK contractor support policies provides an ideal plausibility probe for the argument that military role conceptions have shaped the scope of contractor support policies. 11
To illustrate this argument, I first provide a brief review of the literature on military change, focusing on the role of military culture. Second, I analyse the organisational cultures of the US and the UK military, concentrating on the role conceptions displayed by the US and UK armies. I then examine US and UK contractor support policies, comparing the operational tasks outsourced by their military organisations in the latest military operations. Finally, I conclude by assessing the explanatory power of military role conceptions against competing explanations.
Organisational culture and military change: theoretical insights
The study of military change, defined as ‘change in the goals, actual strategies and/or structure of a military organisations’, has produced a diverse and steadily expanding body of academic literature. 12 While the resort to civilians in the provision of military support is not new, the privatisation of activities previously performed by military personnel occurred after the end of the Cold War has dramatically transformed military force structures. For example, US contracted workforce has increased from the 1:10 contractor-to-soldier ratio of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 to the 1:1 level of operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom from 2007 onwards. 13 Without contractor support, the US military would now be unable to conduct operations abroad. 14 Since the privatisation of military support affects the way in which military organisations conduct their operations and is significant in both its scope and impact, it can be fruitfully conceptualised as a type of military change. 15
The existing scholarship has explored different drivers and dynamics of military change. Both neorealist and constructivist scholarships have located the sources of change outside the state level, conceptualising it as the outcome of security competition 16 or norms diffusion. 17 By contrast, scholars adopting an institutionalist approach have emphasised the importance of domestic structure. 18 The most important dividing line in the literature, however, relates to whether change is generated within military organisations or imposed from outside. The initial scholarship has emphasised the importance of civilian decision-makers’ intervention to overcome the inertia of large, conservative bureaucracies such as military organisations. 19 Following studies, on the other hand, have argued that military organisations are capable of innovating autonomously from civilian leaders, locating the sources of change at the intra-service 20 or inter-service level. 21 The most sophisticated scholarship, however, has converged in acknowledging the importance of both civilian and military elements, noting that the ways in which civilian inputs are translated into military doctrine is informed by the preferences of military organisations. 22 After the Constructivist turn in International Relations brought to the fore the awareness that the security environments in which states are embedded are not only material but also institutional and cultural, military change scholarship too has conceptualised the interests and goals of a military as ‘a function of its culture’. 23 Although civilian leaders’ foreign policy decisions, resource allocations and strategic priorities set the broader objectives and constraints of defence policies, it is how military organisations respond to these constraints that shapes doctrine and operational conduct. Hence, military culture is a crucial intervening variable in the study of military change. 24 Drawing on this line of argument, I contend that the study of a key component of military culture, namely, armed forces’ role conceptions, provides an important contribution to the analysis of contractor support and its variation across countries. Although civilian reforms have been key drivers of military privatisation, different role conceptions have played an important role in shaping the scope of contractor support by enabling or inhibiting the outsourcing of certain operational tasks.
Military role conceptions and contractor support
Culture influences behaviour by shaping a repertoire of tool kits, habits, skills and styles according to which people construct strategies of action. 25 Not only individuals’ conduct but also organisational choices can be explained by specific cultures rooted in unique historical experiences. Organisational cultures can be defined as ‘the persistent, patterned way of thinking about the central tasks of, and the human relationships within, an organization’. 26 While organisational cultures do not develop in a vacuum and are influenced by broader national identities or transnational professional norms, they still display distinctive traits. This especially applies to total institutions steeped in tradition and characterised by hierarchy, esprit de corps and relative insulation from external society like armed forces. 27
Advocates of military privatisation have argued that like private sector organisations, armed forces should adopt a ‘core competences’ model based on the outsourcing of non-core functions in order to both reduce costs and increase effectiveness. 28 However, state armed forces do not share an identical understanding of what their core competences are. History and memory shape military organisations’ views on the world in which they operate and the threat they will have to face. As a result, militaries may develop different role conceptions, diverging in the interpretation of their mission and how it should be pursued. 29 Military role conceptions, defined as a shared self-understanding of ‘the proper purpose of the military organisation and of military power in international relations’ 30 are therefore an important source of insights into the propensity to privatise certain tasks. Organisation theory has long maintained that bureaucracies seek to protect those capabilities that are central to their mission, but demonstrate indifference to or even resistance against the performing of those seen as peripheral. 31 If so, a connection should exist between military role conceptions and the tendency to rely on contractor support. More specialised, combat-oriented military role conceptions should create a permissive environment for the outsourcing of a wide range of non-combat functions. Military cultures based on a broader role conception, by contrast, should generate greater resistance against the privatisation of tasks perceived as part of the armed forces’ core competences, reducing the scope of contractor support.
Both the US and the UK militaries have faced an overlapping of manpower and financial cuts combined with demanding operational commitments and the establishment of new public management agendas into the procurement of military services in the wake of the Neoliberal revolution. The UK military, however, has largely refrained from privatising functions systematically outsourced by its US counterpart such as armed security and foreign military training. In spite of sharing similar functional, political and ideological incentives to resort to PMSCs, the two cases differ significantly in the scope of contractor support. As summarised in Figure 1, introducing military organisational cultures as a factor shaping military organisations’ response to civilian decision-makers’ reforms provides important insights into these differences.
The drivers of contractor support.
US military role conceptions
A large body of scholarship has maintained that the US armed forces at large and the US Army in particular have historically developed a focus on conventional combat operations. 32 To be sure, from its origins in the outset of the Revolutionary War throughout the end of the Indian Wars, US soldiers have repeatedly been employed for low-intensity and law enforcement operations. 33 Still, according to the military historian Russell Weigley, the US military has tended to regard the performing of such functions as ‘abnormal’ and forget about it whenever possible. US Army officers especially have unambiguously identified their core competence with defeating conventional armies in frontal, large-scale combat, considering operations other than war as ‘unpleasant deviations’ from the Army’s core essence. 34 A focus on European continental militaries as organisational templates, the experience of the civil war, the two World Wars and the prospect of a confrontation with the Soviet bloc in the form of large-scale ground operations in Europe shaped the organisational culture of the US Army around the performing of high intensity, division-size operations. This, in turn, has generated a role conception heavily based on combat specialisation, where tasks not closely associated with war fighting have been seen as peripheral, excluded from conventional promotion paths and hence marginalised. 35 Civil–military relations scholarship has also considered specialisation on combat as the core feature of US military professionalism, grounded on ‘the management of violence’. 36 As explained by Samuel Huntington, ‘the direction, operation, and control of an organisation whose primary function is the application of violence is the particular skill of the officer’. Other types of skills are considered ‘auxiliary vocations … which belong to the officer corps in its capacity as an administrative organisation of the state, but not in its capacity as a professional body’. 37
The highly specialised role conception of the US military has been held responsible for the failure to engage in successful counterinsurgency (COIN) 38 and peacekeeping operations. 39 As argued by Avant, ‘historical developments created a professional bias, embedded in promotion policies, that caused Army leaders to focus on a narrow definition of “military” that excluded much of what was important to counterinsurgency doctrine’. 40 Far from altering US military role conceptions, the trauma of Vietnam reinforced the tendency to eschew low-intensity engagements. 41 After the end of the Cold War, US involvement in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia, Somalia and Kosovo met considerable resistance among military commanders. 42 Force downsizing requirements, fulfilled by cutting support units in order to preserve core war fighting capabilities as intact as possible, also buttressed the centrality of combat skills. 43 To be sure, the lengthy occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan has assigned new prominence to operations other than war, enshrined in the new COIN and stability operations doctrines. 44 However, these new missions have not yet substantially affected the combat-oriented role conception of the US military. 45 Indeed, the scholarship on COIN has explicitly seen US military culture as a hindrance to the success of the new COIN strategy, raising the concern that the US Army might again marginalise low-intensity operations after withdrawing from Afghanistan. 46
Due to its largely combat-oriented nature, we can expect US military role conception to have created a permissive environment for the privatisation of a large range of support function seen as peripheral to its highly specialised organisational core.
UK military role conceptions
The organisational culture of the British military, by contrast, displays a lower degree of combat specialisation and a broader role conception than its US counterpart. The British approach to grand strategy has traditionally been characterised by the constant dilemma of whether prioritising the defence of the empire or the preservation of the European balance of power. 47 As argued by Cassidy, ‘history and geography have compelled the British Army to meet a broad array of challenges’. 48 Military commanders developed the common conception that their central role was to ‘ensure security, stability and consolidation of the empire’. 49 Consequently, ‘the essence of the organisation included colonial policing and administration’. 50 With the partial exception of its continental commitments during the Napoleonic Wars, the war in Crimea and the two World Wars, seen as exceptional deviations, the main tasks of the British military consisted of ‘imperial policing’ and COIN operations. 51 The tendency to deploy scattered military units in far-flung theatres deeply permeated the role conception of the British Army, which based its organisational structure on the regiment – a force capable of policing colonial territories and engaging in small wars, but ill-suited for joint, high intensity warfare. 52 The twentieth century British military remained geared toward colonial low-intensity operations. The traumatic experience of World War I, where the British military suffered dramatic casualties, further strengthened the tendency to consider large-scale conventional combat as an aberration. 53 This mindset was enshrined by the writings of Basil Liddell Hart, who stressed the centrality of an indirect approach and a limited use of force as the main tenet of the ‘British way in war’. 54 After World War II, the UK military no longer eschewed a continental commitment. 55 However, the need to contribute to European defence as a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forced the Cold War British Army to adapt to the prospect of mass conventional operations, but did not drastically change its organisational culture. 56 Besides being employed for the static defence of Western Europe, British forces were also serving in other areas, such as Malaya, Kenya, Aden, Cyprus and Northern Ireland. In all the theatres, the British military performed low-intensity and law enforcement operations rather than high intensity combat. 57
The British military’s tendency to display a larger role conception has been reinforced by the doctrinal developments following the end of the Cold War. The 1998 Strategic Defence Review advocated the shift from conventional defence to expeditionary operations based on ‘conflict prevention and stabilisation rather than the defeat of opposing forces’, requiring ‘the ability to discharge functions at the lower end of the conflict spectrum’. 58 Due to its role conception grounded on irregular warfare, the UK military has more easily adapted to post-Cold War operational realities, allegedly displaying greater effectiveness than the United States in conducting peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations. 59
In sum, the British military did not develop the same specialisation on combat that lies at the core of the organisational culture of the US military. Owing to historical legacies, the British military has ‘embraced and accepted intrastate security, counterinsurgency and, before that, imperial policing as normal roles’. 60 Due to its broader role conception, the British military should display stronger institutional resistance against the outsourcing of functions seen as part of its mission such as security and foreign military training.
Contractor support in the United States and the United Kingdom
The existing scholarship on US and UK military organisational cultures can be used as a source of insights into the scope of contractor support and its variation across countries. As military organisations are less likely to resist the outsourcing of functions seen as part of their mission, highly specialised militaries with a narrower understanding of their core tasks should outsource a larger range of functions than less combat-oriented militaries with a broader role conception. The following two subsections analyse contractor support policies in the United States and the United Kingdom to assess whether these expectations hold true.
Military privatisation and the organisational culture of the US military
The role conception of the US military, grounded in the specialisation on combat, has created a permissive environment for the privatisation of a large number of functions. Already during the Cold War, US Administrations introduced the requirement of commercial sector involvement into government activities, including defence. The Office of Management Budget (OMB) Circular A-76, enacted during the Eisenhower Administration and strengthened in 1983, prevents the government from ‘competing with its own citizens’,
61
stating that ‘commercial activities that can be performed by the private sector should not be carried out directly by governmental agencies’.
62
As a response to the revised A-76 circular, in 1985, the US Army developed its Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), which covers the outsourcing of a large range of services such as the supply of food, fuel, water and equipment; base support, construction; communication; and transportation.
63
The privatisation trend gained momentum after the end of the Cold War, reinforced by manpower and financial cuts. During the Clinton Administration, the Department of Defense (DoD) ‘embarked on a systematic and vigorous effort to reduce the costs and improve the performance of its support activities through outsourcing, privatisation and competitions’.
64
This shift culminated into the Bush Administration 2002 Quadrennial Defense Review, committed to the privatisation of all activities not directly linked to war fighting.
65
While civilian directives laid the foundations of contractors’ involvement in operational support, the strategic preferences of US military commanders have played an important role in shaping the privatisation process. US Army commanders enjoyed large latitude in deciding how to downsize their forces, prioritising the privatisation of peripheral functions in order to leave the organisational core of the US military as intact as possible. As explained by a senior Army officer:
the peace dividend requirement forced us to downsize … but we didn’t cut all types of troops proportionally. We didn’t want to take the risk on the combat side. We took the risk on the support side. In 1991 we had 56 combat brigades. We cut the number down to 46. But if we had taken it down proportionally, we would have taken it down to 36.
66
Consequently, PMSCs started to take over a whole range of new functions. In certain cases, the use of contractors was deemed necessary since the US military, due to its combat-oriented organisational structure, never developed the type of units required to perform functions seen as the preserve of the military in other countries, such as the performing of law enforcement tasks abroad. 67 For instance, DynCorp contractors have been hired as border monitors, international police officers and counternarcotics assistants since the US military does not possess any sizeable military police body. 68 The combat-oriented culture of the US military is also crucial to understand the tendency to privatise foreign military training. Although US administrations have used military assistance to reward allies, to ensure greater interoperability with US forces and to maintain ties with foreign countries, the US Army does not see foreign military training as a part of its role conception. As noted by Halperin, ‘military officers compete for roles in what is seen as the essence of the services’ activity rather than other functions where promotion is less likely’ 69 . Hence, US ‘Army officers compete for roles in combat rather than advisory missions’. 70 Over the last decades, US foreign military advisory missions have recurrently been outsourced to PMSCs, which have been involved in the training of advanced and post-Soviet militaries seeking to meet NATO standards and the armed forces of developing countries. Contractors have played a pivotal role in a number of US military advisory missions to Africa, such as the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI), the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) and the Africa Peacekeeping (AFRICAP) program, designed to help African countries develop peacekeeping capabilities. 71 In 2003, for instance, the training of the new Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) was outsourced to DynCorp and Pacific Architects and Engineers. The US military reportedly ruled out the possibility to train the AFL due to its operational commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. 72 This decision, however, also epitomises the prominence assigned to combat functions deeply embedded in US military culture. 73 Indeed, the training of nine divisions of the new Iraqi military was also initially outsourced. It was only after the training programme conducted by Vinnell resulted in a complete failure that the contract was cancelled and training activities started to be performed entirely by military personnel. 74
Static, mobile and personal security functions are also considered peripheral activities by the US military. Indeed, the performing of tasks such as the guarding of a gate is typically considered menial and degrading by military personnel. 75 Securing operations at large, such as patrolling and policing, are activities the US military is reportedly ill-suited at conducting. As observed by a Marines Corps Commander, it is ‘somewhat unfair to ask that a twenty year-old veteran of Viet Nam, whose reflexes have been sharpened by combat, to exercise the restraint and cool judgment required on protective security assignments’. 76 The marginalisation of armed protection is reflected in US military doctrine, which conceptualises security as falling under the rubric of logistics. The organisational culture of the US military has developed a broad conception of logistics based on nine principles, one of which is security. 77 Due to its narrow role conception, the US military has used the notion of logistics as a residual category encompassing all that does not amount to combat. Armed contractors started being used for perimeter security during US military operations in former Yugoslavia. After the outbreak of the insurgency and the growing shortage of military personnel to patrol Iraq and Afghanistan, both static and convoy security were systematically outsourced alongside unarmed support without any resistance from military commanders. 78 As of December 2010, the US military had about 27,000 private security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, consisting of about 17 per cent of US DoD contracted workforce in the area. 79
Due to command and control problems and highly publicised human rights violations, the outsourcing of armed security in Iraq became very controversial, raising the concern that the use of PMSCs was detrimental to COIN efforts. 80 In a survey conducted in 2010 among members of the US military, however, a large majority of officers welcomed the use of private security personnel, arguing the protection of property, personnel and convoys as appropriate tasks for contractors to perform. 81 US servicemen and women, however, also firmly maintained that direct combat should remain the preserve of the military. 82 Evidence drawn on survey material thus resonates with the argument that the current scope of contractor support reflects US military role conceptions. As a combat-oriented organisation, the US military and Army in particular saw the outsourcing of task seen as peripheral such as foreign military training and armed security as a force multiplier providing uniformed personnel with the possibility to concentrate on its core tasks.
Military privatisation and the organisational culture of the UK military
Even if the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has encouraged a large private sector involvement in activities such as the financing of defence initiatives and the management of domestic bases and facilities, the British military has shown much greater reluctance than its US counterpart to outsource operational support functions and especially armed activities. 83
In the United Kingdom too, financial and manpower cuts as well as cabinets’ new public management agendas forced the military to accept an increasing involvement of contractors in the provision of support functions. Between 1980 and 1997, the MoD constantly increased the level of private sector involvement through growing competitive tendering, enacting different initiatives that would ultimately see all non-deployable support functions abolished, internally restructured or privatised. 84 The 1991 Competing for Quality White Paper set the guidelines for competition between in-house and private delivery of defence services, advocated as a way to improve efficiency and reduce military budgets. The 1998 Strategic Defence Review reinforced this trend, explicitly foreseeing the possibility of contractor support to military missions overseas. 85 The following years saw the establishment of the Contractor on Deployed Operation (CONDO) policy and the creation in 2004 of the Contractor Logistics (CONLOG) programme. Similar to the US LOGCAP, CONLOG provides the British Permanent Joint Headquarters with the possibility to purchase operational support services from the commercial sector. In the wake of the war on Terror, the CONDO policy has expanded into a broader policy framework called Contractor Support to Operations (CSO), covering a larger ranger of operational support functions. 86 Few statistics and empirical material have been collected on UK contractor support to the latest military operations. According to the data available, as of 2010, the UK MoD relied on 6500–7000 contracted personnel supporting Operation Telic (Gulf Region), Herrick (Afghanistan), Calash (Indian Ocean) and Oculus (Balkans). 87 Contracted workforce now accounts for up to 40 per cent of UK military workforce overseas. 88 Estimated annual expenditures for contractor support to deployed operations amount to about US$2.6 billion. 89 Contractor support has covered a host of services, including equipment support, food supply, transportation, personnel services, medical services, air and maritime support and ‘has expanded to include much wider areas of support than are narrowly defined as logistics’, such as strategic communications and intelligence. 90 The privatisation of UK military operational support, however, has not included armed security and foreign military training. 91 Unlike its US counterpart, the British military sees the training of foreign forces as a key component of its role conception. 92 This is associated with the British tradition of training colonial and Commonwealth forces, which played a valuable role in defence of the Empire and has remained a way for the United Kingdom to exert foreign policy influence and maintain a relationship with its former colonies. To date, the British military has relied on commercial providers of security sector reform only for the provision of police training and only to a limited degree, resorting to uniformed Military Assistance Training Teams to carry out training missions with a military component in an array of theatres ranging from Sierra Leone to Afghanistan. 93
Moreover, while contractor support covered a range of logistical support functions, the UK military still displays a firm commitment to refrain from outsourcing armed security, contemplated only in ‘exceptional circumstances’. 94 Unlike the DoD, the MoD has traditionally ‘tended to rely on its own resources instead of employing armed contractors to carry out certain functions’. 95 Even if UK operations in Iraq and especially Afghanistan were plagued by a chronic lack of manpower, the UK military has not relied on armed contractors as a force multiplier to free up all uniformed personnel for combat tasks. The larger scope of the British military’s role conception is especially relevant in explaining the reluctance to outsource armed activities. As mentioned in the previous section, the US military sees armed security as falling under the rubric of logistics. Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, by contrast, display a narrower conception of logistics based on five principles only, none of which entail armed activities. 96 Instead of being considered logistics, security is seen as a principle of war. The military is thus viewed as being solely responsible for its security in deployed operations, whether in the frontline or in the rear area. 97 This principle is clearly associated with British military culture. The British military tradition of imperial policing has led the British Army to see security tasks as the preserve of the military. In Northern Ireland, for instance, activities such as guard duties and checkpoints have been considered important elements of COIN efforts. 98 While the UK military has committed to outsource security only in exceptional circumstances, other British agencies such as the Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DFID) have significantly relied on armed contractors. Some UK MoD prime contractors too have resorted to local guards as providers of convoy security. UK military reliance on armed contractors, however, has to date remained indirect. 99
In sum, due to its broader role conception, the UK military has shown greater institutional resistance against the privatisation of functions such as foreign military training and armed security than its US counterpart, as summarised in Table 1.
Military role conceptions and contractor support in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Competing explanations
As shown in the section above, the United States and the United Kingdom display meaningful differences in their reliance on PMSCs. The explanations proposed by the existing scholarship cannot fully account for this difference.
A functionalist line of argument cannot explain why military organisations facing similar operational needs and similar manpower and financial constraints diverge in the scope of contractor support. As the UK and US militaries have been deployed in the same theatres for over a decade, they have arguably faced a similar need for expertise missing from the ranks such as the knowledge of foreign languages and territory. Moreover, while the US military played a leading role in the latest military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the UK military found itself under even tighter financial and manpower strain. Between 1990 and 2006, the size of the UK defence budget was reduced from 3.9 to 2.6 of the gross domestic product (GDP). 100 Defence inflation and rising personnel costs exacerbated the budgetary strain of the UK MoD, creating strong incentives to cut personnel expenditures by privatising a large array of tasks. 101 Several commentators note that during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan especially, British forces were plagued by a chronic lack of manpower. Small in size and under-resourced, British forces were compared to ‘a boy sent to do a man’s job’. 102 Yet, in spite of sharing analogous if not superior incentives to systematically resort to contractors to reduce costs and obtain an operational self-multiplier than its US counterpart, the UK military maintained a commitment to perform security and foreign military training activities in-house.
A line of argument conceptualising the increase in contractor support as an attempt to circumvent domestic political constraints may explain variance in the scope of contractor support on the grounds of differences in domestic structure and governments’ responsiveness to public opinion. Indeed, as already noted by Kenneth Waltz, due to the adversarial relationship between the President and Congress, the United States often displays a low capacity to mobilise human and material resources behind security policy initiatives. 103 By contrast, the United Kingdom is often seen as more capable to conduct foreign policy independently of societal constraints. 104 Hence, US government officials may have found themselves more in need of resorting to contractors to circumvent the constraints over and the political costs of mobilising of their own troops. However, an analysis of UK military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan reveals that British decision-makers have found themselves increasingly restrained in the handling of military operations. In the case of Afghanistan especially, strong public opposition against the war, the approaching of the 2010 general elections and the New Labour party declining cohesion, epitomised by repeated splits over the Helmand campaign, severely restrained the ability of the Cabinet to mobilise additional military power. 105 By the end of 2009, these pressures led to the establishment of a of 9500 cap which prevented any further increase of UK uniformed presence in Afghanistan, forcing UK military commanders to devise alternative ways to increase its workforce on the ground. Yet, even if the privatisation of logistics increased by 250 per cent after the establishment of the cap, the UK military did not resort to private security contractors as a force multiplier like its US counterpart. 106 Different degrees of casualty aversion, often conceptualised as a powerful constraint on military conduct, may also account for variance in the use of contractors across countries by providing different incentives to privatise activities that may entail the loss of uniformed personnel’s lives. As emphasised by Avant and Sigelman, casualties among contractors have been less visible to the public and ultimately less politically sensitive than casualties among uniformed personnel. 107 However, there is no consensus in the existing literature over the impact of casualties on British public opinion and operational conduct, 108 and recent scholarship has contested the existence of a body-bag syndrome among the US public. 109 Most importantly, an explanation of contractor support based on the attempt to circumvent casualty aversion cannot account for the outsourcing of support tasks that do not entail substantial risks to the life of soldiers such as logistics and foreign military training, nor can it explain why combat tasks have not been outsourced in order to save uniformed personnel’s lives. 110 By contrast, a culturalist argument focusing on military organisations’ role conceptions provides better insight into the scope of contractor support.
The existing ideational explanations also leave variance in the scope of contractor support unexplained. As highlighted by Krahmann, neoliberalism has forcefully informed UK government officials’ defence policies. In certain respects, the pervasive involvement of the commercial sector in UK national security has gone even further than in the United States. Britain has ‘been unique compared to the rest of Europe and North America in that the private sector has not only played a significant role in the provision of military services, but also in their capital investment’ through initiatives such as the Public Private Partnerships and the Private Finance Initiatives. 111 As Krahmann further observes, UK governments did not a priori exclude any military service from consideration for outsourcing or private financing. 112 Hence, political and market ideologies cannot explain why certain operational tasks have remained the preserve of the UK military.
Rather than being shaped by ideological preferences only, the larger scope of US contractor support policies may be explained by the stronger lobbying capacity and epistemic power of US PMSCs, allegedly capable of influencing defence policy-making through their provision of training, intelligence and advice and their connections within government circles. Indeed, there is ample evidence of US PMSCs lobbying power. 113 Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), for instance, has claimed to have ‘more generals per square foot than the Pentagon’, 114 and has proved capable of persuading US government officials to authorise military advisory programmes initially considered against US interest, such as the training of the Equatorial Guinean military in 1998. 115 However, since the creation of Watchguard International – established by the founder of the Special Air Service David Stirling – British PMSCs have also enjoyed a tight connection with UK government and military circles. 116 Up to 2007, ArmorGroup (now part of G4S) was chaired by the former foreign secretary and secretary of state for defence Malcolm Rifkind. 117 Aegis, which currently has a former Minister of State for the Armed Forces and a former Major General and Commandant of the Joint Services’ Command and Staff College as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, is another case in point. 118 UK PMSCs’ ability to access the policy process is illustrated by the outcome of the consultations on how to regulate the industry launched by the FCO in 2009, which took into careful account firms’ concerns that a licensing system would be detrimental to the competitiveness of the industry and ultimately opted for a non-binding regulatory system largely based on self-regulation. 119
Differences in the scope of military privatisation may be explained by other types of ideational and normative arguments. Sarah Percy, for instance, has explained the reluctance to resort to PMSCs in the provision of combat functions on the grounds of an anti-mercenary norm. Drawing on this approach, it may be argued that the existence of an anti-mercenary norm has shaped the scope of military privatisation by inhibiting the outsourcing of those functions that may more easily result into a direct engagement of contractors in combat, such as the provision of armed security in a combat zone. As demonstrated by Theo Farrell, international norms shape military innovation, informing military doctrine through a process of norm transplantation. 120 Yet, it is unclear why the United Kingdom should adhere to the anti-mercenary norm more faithfully than the United States, as nothing indicates Britain’s stronger socialisation to the mercenary taboo. Neither Britain nor the United States have signed the 1989 United Nations (UN) Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. 121 Even if British nationals have often been involved in mercenary activities abroad, the UK government has consistently opposed the tightening of domestic legislation against mercenaries as an unnecessary restriction of individual liberties. 122 Furthermore, the United Kingdom has consistently integrated non-citizen military units such as the Royal Gurkha Rifles battalions into its armed forces. 123
It may be argued that the public outcry raised by the activities of British mercenaries has heightened UK government officials’ wariness to resort to PMSCs. The controversial nature of certain PMSCs’ activities in the UK political debate is epitomised by the 1998 Arms to Africa Affair, emerged when the attempt to restore the government of Sierra Leone by arming and supporting local forces against the Revolutionary United Front conducted by the UK PMSC Sandline was found in violation of a UN Arms embargo. Allegations that the FCO had been supportive of Sandline’s plan led to two parliamentary enquiries and the request for the resignation of the Foreign Minister Cook. 124 Yet, in spite of the fierce criticism raised by the Sandline Affair, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office did not refrain from using PMSCs. In Iraq and Afghanistan especially, the UK FCO – together with the DFID – has consistently resorted to armed contractors for the protection of their personnel and the provision of Security Sector Reform. 125 The UK military, by contrast, refrained from outsourcing armed security and foreign military training even if it remained substantially unaffected by the Sandline Affair. Hence, the existence of an anti-mercenary norm and UK public wariness of the use of armed contractors cannot explain why civilian agencies have used armed contractors while the UK military has largely not.
International norms aside, the use of contractors to conduct certain tasks may have also been inhibited by the existence of specific legal provisions restricting the involvement of civilians in military operations or preventing the privatisation of activities considered inherently governmental. Yet, no such regulations are in place in the United Kingdom. Although the Arms to Africa Affair led to the publication of a Green Paper outlining different regulatory options, the regulation process stalled until 2009, when, after consultation with industry and civil society, the UK government finally opted for an informal regulatory system based nearly exclusively on industry self-regulation. 126 While US government officials and Congress have continued to debate what constitutes the inherently governmental functions of the state and the armed forces, such a discussion has been largely missing in the United Kingdom. 127 Hence, neither international norms nor domestic legal provisions can persuasively explain variance in the scope of military privatisation across countries.
In sum, military role conceptions offer a distinct contribution to the study of contractor support. By shaping civilian decision-makers’ policies, the functional, political and ideational incentives highlighted by a large part of the existing literature have been important drivers of outsourcing, but do not suffice in explaining variance in use of PMSCs across countries. Other lines of argument based on PMSCs’ lobbying power, international norms and domestic legislation also prove insufficient in explaining such differences. Introducing military role conceptions as a factor enabling or inhibiting the outsourcing of certain tasks offers important insight into the varying scope of contractor support, explaining why the US military has outsourced certain support tasks, while the UK military has not.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.