Over at Mark Thoma’s, Bernard Yomtov asks a very good question:
Why should there be mercenaries at all, given the existence of a large
and well-trained Army? The mercenaries are former soldiers. Their
functions are military and could be carried out by regular soldiers.
The only reason I can see for using them is precisely to have people
doing military jobs who are outside the normal chain of command, and
not subject to normal laws, rules, and regulations governing the
conduct of soldiers. In other words, it is to have people who do not work for government in the way that they should.
Most private contractors today do not serve in the function of soldiers but rather they deliver, ensure, and guard supplies. This should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, but often the private sector does a better job and without major legal problems.
Security guards, however, are often "mercenaries." A general or top Iraqi official for instance might be guarded by Blackwater employees. The critics have not shown that Blackwater employees misbehave at a higher rate than do U.S. soldiers, so the comparative case against Blackwater — as opposed to the more general case against the war — is mostly shrill rhetoric. It is possible to pay Blackwater employees bonuses for good performance rather than just give medals, plus they are on a higher pay scale in the first place. Nonetheless my judgment call is that issues of perception and accountability are important enough in contemporary Iraq that we should be using contractors less in these capacities (as the column indicated), but the temptation to use them is based on more than just sheer political abuse.
Contractors lower the cost of good operations, contractors lower the operational (but not social) cost of bad operations, contractors magnify the costs of mistaken Executive preferences, and contractors can raise new problems of monitoring. If you don’t think the first item on this list is at work, there is good reason to cut back on contractors in Iraq.
But if you view the scope and use of contractors as a more general decision, rather than something which can be fine-tuned for each war, it is no longer such a simple choice.
But if you view the scope and use of contractors as a more general decision, rather than something to be fine-tuned for each war, it is no longer such a simple choice.
The problem is that the US government is not viewing the use of contractors as a more general decision. Otherwise, they would have issued letters of marque and reprisal as allowed by international law against any Al-Qaida terrorists who have commited or plan to commit hostile acts in the U.S.
Letters of marque and reprisal are included in the U.S. Constitution for a reason. Why engage in a costly “war on terror” at all when you can empower private citizens to protect themselves and other Americans?
Isn’t there another name for people described by Yomtov as “outside the normal chain of command, and not subject to normal laws, rules, and regulations governing the conduct of soldiers?” Aren’t such people also known as “unlawful combatants?”
If Blackwater is unaccountable to U.S. authorities due to what the Secretary of State describes as a “hole” in the law, and if Blackwater employees don’t wear uniforms, aren’t they unlawful combatants?
I recall the outrage with which “unlawful combatants” were assailed by U.S. politicians in years gone by. The depravity of such combatants was attributed to their lack of accountability to the laws and chain of command of a recognized sovereign state, their not wearing identifiable uniforms and sundry other breaches of etiquette which were purported to place such miscreants beyond accounting to the laws of God or Man.
And now comes Tyler Cowen to explain that, actually, unlawful combatants are merely participants in a marketplace, reflecting the sins and virtues of their customer, to whom they are accountable only by the law of supply and demand.
But isn’t there a paradox regarding accountability here? Doesn’t their very unaccountability to U.S. or Iraqi civilian law make Blackwater contractors unlawful combatants, which status therefore makes them accountable under whatever Bush-made law it is that allows people to be boxed-up at Guantanamo Bay.
I suppose the paradox is resolved by noting that although Blackwater contractors may be unlawful combatants, they are OUR unlawful combatants, and thus they are not unlawful ENEMY combatants.
This distinction is nicely captured at Wikipedia. Their entry on “Unlawful combatant” begins, “Civilians who directly engage in hostilities, are considered unlawful combatants . . .,” whereas their entry on “Unlawful enemy combatant” unabashedly states, “An unlawful enemy combatant is a person detained by United States in its war on terror.”
The attacks on Blackwater are indirect attacks on The U.S. military. That’s what you do when direct attacks fail. As an example, when the direct attacks to impeach President Bush failed, the attacks switched to Karl Rove.
The direct attacks on the U.S. military failed. Abu Ghraib was reported as all abu Ghraib all the time for months. That attack eventually failed.
Not surprisingly, the playbook produces attacks on Blackwater. See hpr above.
I don’t think Bernard meant to be malicious in his question but, it does show his ignorance. Clearly, he has never been a soldier.
How anyone can talk about these security contractors being unaccountable is pretty silly. Blackwater is about to get kicked out of Iraq and may very well go under for this incident. Other contractors are probably scrambling to rewrite the rules of engagement for their operators to prevent the same from happening. When the US (or any other national Army) blows up a bunch of civilians rarely does anything happen other than some reprimands for the commanding officers and maybe some jail time for a few people if very serious (or high profile). “Mistakes were made” and all that. The military isn’t go anywhere.
The military is a governement organization just like any others. It is subject to ridiculous beauracracies, incompetent officers, and corruption as much as any other government organization. The term “military efficiency” is an oxymoron. Having been in and seen this first hand, I can attest about the amount of uneeded baggage the miliarty hauls around with it. While I have no numbers I imagine government contractors, in order to maximize profits, fight a much leaner fight. This would make them more effecient even if they paid more money per soldier as they would only equip what they need, as opposed to what some congressman wants to build in his home district.
Frankly I’m surprised that people would assume that the government is using mercenaries in order to get around rules. The government is using mercenaries for the same reason governments have used mercenaries throughout history- to beef up the standing army for short, high intensity periods, i.e. wars.
We know that the army is, if anything, short handed even with the mercenaries there. Why assume that they were hired for any other reason than need for more “soldiers”.
Frankly I’m surprised that people would assume that the government is using mercenaries in order to get around rules. The government is using mercenaries for the same reason governments have used mercenaries throughout history- to beef up the standing army for short, high intensity periods, i.e. wars.
We know that the army is, if anything, short handed even with the mercenaries there. Why assume that they were hired for any other reason than need for more “soldiers”.
Unlawful combatants?
–Why should there be mercenaries at all, given the existence of a large and well-trained Army?
Is the author of the above that ill informed or naive?
Because the “large” army isn’t large enough in times of crisis, and it would take many changes for it to be large enough. It would take money, money, and money to increase its size. It would take political capital, lots of capital. It may be that the US Congress doesn’t want to increase the size of the standing army. It may be that neither does the executive branch, for other reasons as well. For one, increasing the standing army for a temporary crisis without a draft is difficult–are you going to keep the size of the army after that? Train them and then throw them out? Sink capital into keeping them in the military? Why not avoid these issues by having contractors and mercenaries? Would the author prefer a draft?
Blackwater employees might be “more expensive” per hour today, but they don’t end up with military pensions for their service or with military health care or Tricare for that service either. You need to look at the whole picture. These people are already trained, have already been weeded through, have been vetted, etc. Contractors provide a service under far more efficiency than the USG does.
I haven’t seen any evidence that Blackwater employees are “mercenaries.”
The definition of “mercenary”:
1. Motivated solely by a desire for monetary or material gain.
2. Hired for service in a foreign army.
They appear to be primarily or entirely made up of patriotic Americans. They see themselves as serving their country, etc.
Nor were they “unlawful combatants” before the Iraqi government decided to kick them out.
Mike Elgan
This is not a unique case restricted tot he military. Much of the demand for privatization of traditionally governmental jobs comes from government employees themselves who want a competitive market for their skills. As a taxpayer, I’m tired of paying to train somebody in a government job, then, when they are finally productive, having them jump to an outsourced for-profit job that costs me two or three times as much.
I want our monopsony back!
Mercenaries are only in business due to them being able to beside the laws and restrictions of the military. If mercenaries were taken out, more emphasis and importande would be placed upon the military. On the other hand mercenaries do the small jobs that the military will not. If they were taken out, then the military would have to step in and take care of these small petty jobs that the mercenaries do.
Tyler, smarter guys than you or me have thought longer and harder about mercenaries.
Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, Chapter 12:
“The mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they are, you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others contrary to your intentions; but if the captain is not skilful, you are ruined in the usual way.
“And if it be urged that whoever is armed will act in the same way, whether mercenary or not, I reply that when arms have to be resorted to, either by a prince or a republic, then the prince ought to go in person and perform the duty of captain; the republic has to send its citizens, and when one is sent who does not turn out satisfactorily, it ought to recall him, and when one is worthy, to hold him by the laws so that he does not leave the command. And experience has shown princes and republics, single-handed, making the greatest progress, and mercenaries doing nothing except damage; and it is more difficult to bring a republic, armed with its own arms, under the sway of one of its citizens than it is to bring one armed with foreign arms. Rome and Sparta stood for many ages armed and free. The Switzers are completely armed and quite free.”
Might the existence of mercenaries in the current conflict be explained by a form of first order price discrimination?
To whit: I strongly suspect that the supply-curve for troops in war-time exhibits a pronounced S-cure. A portion of the population is very susceptible to low-level inducements to enlist for a variety of reasons- appreciation for the virtues of military service, lack of other employment options, or a native inability to differentiate action movies from real life. Once this pool of potential recruits (who form the bulk of the armed services) is exhausted, supply of fresh recruits probably becomes very inelastic indeed; most of us, after all, would require quite a bit more than a signing bonus to persuade us that a potentially one-way ticket to Falluja is in our best interests. At some certain point (for me, subjectively, somewhere between 150-500k) the added pay will begin persuading people to be all they can be in logistically useful numbers.
When the demand for troops exceeds the first period of elastic supply, the military must either raise payscales throughout the service, or else operate like our Coasean railroad magnate, paying late-comers more than those who joined prior to the conflict. As the first option would be cripplingly expensive, and the second politically suicidal, it therefore makes sense for the military to employ mercenaries as a method of realizing optimal price discrimination. Everyone gets paid exactly what is required to get them to Iraq and no more.
It’s also important to point out that just because mercenaries are economic efficient, their use is not necessarily ethical, legal, or strategically wise.
Look, the government does a _lot_ of stupid things these days. Having the government compete against itself in bidding up the price that taxpayers have to pay for soldiers is one of those stupid things.
I think the reasoning for Blackwater’s existence in Iraq owes itself partially to typical Washington politics, primarily the State Department’s long-standing distrust of DoD. In that context, it makes sense why they’d be hiring Blackwater to protect their people and move around the country rather than relying on the Marines for that job…
“”Most private contractors today do not serve in the function of soldiers but rather they deliver, ensure, and guard supplies.”
But Tyler, for the past several thousand years the things you mention above ate exactly what soldiers have done. Perhaps next you’ll say that digging foxholes should be done by private excavation contractors?”
Not true – read descriptions of armies throughout history and you’ll find time and again mentions of the large train of non-combatants, supplying everything from food to sex, that followed in their wake. Alternatively, troops lived “off the land”… which in practice meant “robbed the locals”.
I’m thinking it’s unlikely that Blackwater is actually providing services more cheaply than having the military perform those services. But I also suspect that Blackwater is being hired because it leaves the government with more flexibility than increasing the number of troops would. An increase in the size of the army would be something that sticks around for years to come, with soldiers whose pensions have to be paid, whose discharges have to be managed, new divisions or battalions or however things are organised, and so on and so forth, whereas contractors can be brought in and fired on a short term basis, as the need arises. And that flexibility may be worth paying for.
Tyler,
Thank you for addressing my question.
Unfortunately, I don’t find your answer very convincing.
Start with two empirical questions – do mercenaries misbehave more than regular soldiers; are they more economical. On the first you are, and claim we all should be, agnostic for lack of data. On the second you are quite confident the answer is yes. Isn’t agnosticism as justified here as on the first issue? Is there more than “shrill rhetoric† backing up this claim, or is it just “government bad – private good† bias?
You argue that the ability to pay bonuses for performance creates incentives for mercenaries that are absent for regular troops. OK, but what behavior do the bonuses encourage? As far as I know, the citicism directed at Blackwater is not they they are incompetent guards, but that they are over-aggressive, to put it mildly. Designing proper incentives is not always easy, and improper ones can do more harm than good.
And is it really the case that regular soldiers will do a poor job of guarding diplomats and officials for lack of bonuses? A commenter above accuses me of denigrating the military, but I’m not the one claiming our troops can not do this job well. One thing about being a security guard is that your incentives line up pretty well with those of the person you’re guarding, bonus or not. Attackers and IED’s usually don’t make careful distinctions between the guard and the guarded.
Of course, it’s important to look at the entire incentive structure, not just the joys of performance bonuses. There are negative incentives as well. You mention accountability and monitoring problems. These are nice ways of saying the mercenaries operate without much in the way of constraints – there are “holes in the law.† So we let heavily armed men operate in a relatively chaotic environment, and do little or nothing to prevent or punish bad behavior. Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me, especially since, from the point of view of Iraqis, the mercenaries are part of US forces and their actions reflect on the US.
I will admit that the desire to use mercenaries is not necessarily based on totally nefarious motives. I think the likeliest reason we are using them is turf battles between State and Defense. State, maybe, does not want to have to rely on Defense to provide for its extensive security needs in Iraq, so it turns to private companies – politically well-connected ones to be sure. This is normal bureaucratic infighting, common to all organizations (yes, even private companies). But if this guess is accurate, then using Blackwater has nothing to do with efficiency and lots to do with avoiding military control of the mercenaries, and we can not expect that there is any advantage in using them.
“And I think it’s clear that getting men and materiel to a place where it can inflict damage to the enemy is an inherent part of war and not some incidental side-show.”
It is an inherent part of war, no doubt (the old Napoleonic adage is that “an army marches on its stomach”) – but the question of who actually supplies these services, a quartermaster corps or civilian sutlers, is a different question altogether, and one doesn’t necessarily imply the other.
“State, maybe, does not want to have to rely on Defense to provide for its extensive security needs in Iraq…”
Uh…and that is accepted a sign of good governance? State doesn’t trust Defense to protect it? If that is true then think about what that means for our ability to fight a war. Very troubling.
David,
I’m not suggesting it’s good governance. Of course it’s not. All I was saying is that it may be a bureaucratic turf battle, and not necessarily something darker. Turf battles are often destructive, but they are pretty common in many organizations.
“State, maybe, does not want to have to rely on Defense to provide for its extensive security needs in Iraq…”
>>>
Actually, it seems as though they had no problems allowing the DoD to do this, until Rummy threw a tantrum over losing control over billions of dollars of reconstruction effort.
According to the WaPo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/20/AR2007102001325_3.html?hpid=topnews
“The next year, as the United States prepared to return sovereignty to the Iraqis and the State Department began planning an embassy in Baghdad, Rumsfeld lost a bid to retain control over the full U.S. effort, including billions of dollars in reconstruction funds. A new executive order, signed in January 2004, gave State authority over all but military operations. Rumsfeld’s revenge, at least in the view of many State officials, was to withdraw all but minimal assistance for diplomatic security.
“It was the view of Donald Rumsfeld and [then-Deputy Defense Secretary] Paul Wolfowitz that this wasn’t their problem,† said a former senior State Department official. Meetings to negotiate an official memorandum of understanding between State and Defense during the spring of 2004 broke up in shouting matches over issues such as their respective levels of patriotism and whether the military would provide mortuary services for slain diplomats. [†¦]
State chose the most expedient solution: Take over the Pentagon’s personal security contract with Blackwater and extend it for a year.”
Couple of things.
1.) Contractors have no legacy costs, which is a big deal compared to slightly higher up front costs. The government incurs to liability for injured contractors (big deal), retirement, disability pensions, etc.
2.) If security guards are mercenaries now, then I think perhaps we will have to do something with all these dangerous bands of mercenaries roving our malls.
3.) The government has a retirement crisis coming and long term savings is going to be important as we deal with this deluge of pensions that have to be paid every year. Its HARD to attract people to government jobs because of the low pay are ridiculous cost of livings as the younger person on the new end of the pay scale cant afford to live in the areas as the grey beards with all the capital. Legacy costs have the potential of burying the government.
If security guards are mercenaries now, then I think perhaps we will have to do something with all these dangerous bands of mercenaries roving our malls.
Jacob,
Not a good analogy.
Mall security guards are not employed by, or contracted with, government. They provide security to private organizations. In this sense they are much more analogous to bodyguards employed by private individuals than to mercenaries used by the government in Iraq. Further, they are lightly armed, if at all, and operate in a generally peaceful environment. Most important, they are under even more legal constraints, and have less scope for action, than their governmental equivalents – the police.
“Most private contractors today do not serve in the function of soldiers but rather they deliver, ensure, and guard supplies. ”
What David Sucher said. There have already been cases of contractor dirvers refusing to deliver CHOW to the troops because it was “too dangerous”, and unfortunately, of the commanders failing to gut-shoot them and post their death throes on YouTube.
“Not true – read descriptions of armies throughout history and you’ll find time and again mentions of the large train of non-combatants, supplying everything from food to sex, that followed in their wake. Alternatively, troops lived “off the land”… which in practice meant “robbed the locals”. ”
Affe, David Sucher is making the distinction between successful and cohesive fighting forces on the one hand and shapeless, unmanageable and unreliable mobs and tribal hordes on the other, that you are ignoring. The Romans may have relied on the locals, of whatever species or gender, for sex, but never for food while on campaign.
You might begin by looking at why all modern armies have independently come to the conclusion that logistics is a function that commanders need absolute control over, irrespective of funding or other concerns.
“This is because they are built to fight large scale war with large scale casualties.”
This has not been true in the US army for at least 30 years now. Throughout the seventies and eighties, it was conventional wisdom that NATO stood no chance against the Warsaw Pact in a war of attrition. That conventional wisdom has shaped doctrine for the period after the Cold War. No one has been willing to accpet large-scale casualities since the flint-tipped spear days of WWII.
“So individual contractors may be paid 2-3 times the wage of a soldier, but they may only need 1/3rd of the personel for the same mission.”
Well, we can’t know for sure until we see contractors doing the all same missions as soldiers. Contractors are probably going to need exactly the same numbers of people to do combat missions as military units do. There seems to be a misconception that since military forces don’t have the same cost constraints on size as private contractors that there are no constraints at all. This is a predictable blind spot for people in some disciplines. In fact there are very real constraints on the size of units – deployablity and all the other logistical considerations, the desire to reduce the size of the target one presents, and the desire to maximize tooth to tail. These constraints apply to everyone, however they are funded or structured.
“Its HARD to attract people to government jobs because of the low pay are ridiculous cost of livings as the younger person on the new end of the pay scale cant afford to live in the areas as the grey beards with all the capital.”
This would matter if there were any expectation in the first place of having any choice, based on what you could afford or any other reason, of where you were going to be posted. Everyone going into the Border Patrol knows they are going to the Mexican border, period, and not because its cheaper to live there. They can’t get enough people or keep them, and pay may be one reason, but then again, the sort of person who would base a decision to enter the BP on pay would probably not be suitable to serve in the first place. Too easy to bribe, for one thing.
“You mention accountability and monitoring problems. These are nice ways of saying the mercenaries operate without much in the way of constraints – there are “holes in the law.† So we let heavily armed men operate in a relatively chaotic environment, and do little or nothing to prevent or punish bad behavior. Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me,…”
But it is probably an excellent idea as far as State is concerned. They get guards as ruthless as they want to be, able to provide total protection uncompromised by any other consideration. Sounds like a plan, from the point of view of the people being guarded.
You can’t hold a company liable for something there isn’t a law for. If there’s a concern about accountability then the responsibility is on the government to give guidelines or laws for their behavior. The company was just acting within the bounds as established by their government pay master. If they need to act differently then the State department needs to establish guidelines or just put them under UCMJ, or some such other system.
Somewhat related …
I’ve always wondered if this outsourcing of traditionally military functions to civilian contractors consequently makes those contractors legitimate military (as opposed to terrorist) targets, even if they’re based in the US.
Case in point. Imagine a Lockheed employee based in San Jose, CA handling remote support of a UAV flying missions in Iraq. If that employee was attacked by an al-Qaeda fighter while on his way home from work would it be a legitimate military action or a terrorist attack?
Sorry for being dense, but I’m really curious.
I was waiting for a right/libertarian party line to emerge on the sad spectacle of the US slide toward an all-merc army and, I have to say, it is more than a little weak. (And some of the comments in this thread suggest we aren’t as far from the dystopian future imagined in scifi as I would have imagined just a few years ago.) Not your best post Tyler, not by a long shot.
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