Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

The British East India Company was considered too big to be allowed to fail, especially before a Parliamentary election. That caused the British Board of Trade to adopt policies that resulted in Boston Tea Party and a lot of other bad stuff.

The East India Company's interests also distorted British foreign policy toward a Russia that was beginning a modernization that seemed to threaten the East India Company's interests and caused a PM to waste time, money and the nation's credibility in false crises and conflicts, and to miss real developing problems.

The British East India Company with its government puppets used opium to subvert the society, economy and political culture of China. That created a very long term negative attitude towards contacts with Britain and America in Japan, and then China.

So being 'right' for a decade or two about the usefulness of privatizing pursuit of national economic or security interests may have negative long term consequences. It is especially risky when the technique is used because the political establishment does it because it believes that our people, and others, 'can't handle the truth' on world conditions and what must be done.

Private Contract Security is here and it is going to grow in relation to the increasing timidity of politicians. There is a trial going on at Camp Pendleton right now. The Marine Corps still trying to sort out an incident where civilians (insurgents?) were killed. How much easier it would be if all the messy stuff were handled by private firms on contract. These firms can appear and dissappear in a matter of months. Going gets tough....simply dissolve. The cast of characters in Iraq is something you would expect to find only in fiction. Ex seals, rangers, spooks, SAS, Russian Special Forces, Serbs, Royal Marines, Israelis, former policemen, Ghurkas, you name it. The Brits have bveen in this game long before we have. They bugged out of their old colonies but kept their hands in through the use of mercenaries. Gave Whitehall the old "D" it needed. Once the headquarters move "offshore" and the lawyers get involved the private companies will be able to do pretty much as they please. Or should I say, as their master's please.

The use of private citizens as private soldiers is bound up in a lot of senseless hysteria. All of the dogs of war connotations and these are not to be dismissed lightly. However as we move further toward new rule sets that govern exactly how and when these forces can be utilised; I think we will begin to see a formalisation of the practise of outsourcing not just security but kinetic combat as well.

If the demand on private companies grows, and if private companies see a windfall of financial opportunity therein that demand, then this is perhaps the best way to govern their actions. Solid contracts that clearly state how they can operate and harshly punish, financially, those that operate outside of the contractual agreement. It may never wholly stop bad apples and the occasional scandal/incident, but it could go a long way to dispelling the notions of a return to the bad old days of Mike Hoare’s 5 commando and the Congo nightmare

P.S.

The British East India Company had its own private army and navy resources that seemed to leave England's regular military forces free for major threats to the homeland and existing colonial structure. They produced popular public heroes. Then the Company overextended and required the national security forces to help them at significant costs.

I have worked in combination with private military contractors from the Vietnam theater to high tech areas that DOD did not wish to operate completely with its own resources. Too often the DOD oversight people monitoring the contractors did not adequately understand the true situations involving the contractors' tasks and the true nature of results. It was not a question of protecting old buddies in the contract outfit. The oversight folks would/could not go beyond ritual information exchanges with responsible and respected contractor reps. They either forgot or had not experienced their own prior situations where it was necessary to question both the people you worked for and worked for you ... even if you respected and liked them.

I have seen little or nothing in the various writings and dialogues about the role of private military activities in this new conflict era to indicate our policy and program players have studied what it will take on the government side to make the process work ... only comments on whether it is an inherently good or bad idea.

Louis Heberlein's first comment is correct, in that these large projects (the EIC, the Military-Industrial Complex, the Sysadmin-Industrial Complex) should eventually be sunsetted.

From an accounting standpoint, you get the good they do immediately as they begin to bring about change, and you offload whatever institutional costs to the post-conflict age decades in the future. Because they enable greater economic growth beforehand, that's a good trade.

Didn't IKE say something like Dan's view? These complex private institutions are started to deal with national problem situations. Then they look for potential new problem situations to justify their existence and influence.

But look at the English and American experiences in ignoring the need for close monitoring and restraint of such institutions for political, economic and social reasons. You might then see that it is often wimpy government rather than corrupt private institutions that is the greater issue.

Government institutions that outlive their original purpose have similar issues and clients, but they usually are more visible for evaluation. Yeah, I heard the CIA type weird stuff stories. By the way, I wonder what replaced the CIA now that it is so much more open and rational?

This line in the article struck me as somewhat ludicrous:
"In the past administration officials have dismissed the notion of using military personnel to guard diplomats."

So what do they call the Marine embassy guards, chopped liver? Between that, the Corp's continued success in recruiting and its possession much of the military's pre-war institutional memory of counterinsurgency techniques at the Corp's disposal, it's not hard to imagine adding off-grounds bodyguard work to their duties.

So how much of this is the White House CAN'T use the military and how much is them not WANTING to use the military?