State Control over Private Military and Security Companies in Armed Conflict

State Control over Private Military and Security Companies in Armed Conflict PDF Author: Hannah Tonkin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139499459
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
The past two decades have witnessed the rapid proliferation of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in armed conflicts around the world, with PMSCs participating in, for example, offensive combat, prisoner interrogation and the provision of advice and training. The extensive outsourcing of military and security activities has challenged conventional conceptions of the state as the primary holder of coercive power and raised concerns about the reduction in state control over the use of violence. Hannah Tonkin critically analyses the international obligations on three key states - the hiring state, the home state and the host state of a PMSC - and identifies the circumstances in which PMSC misconduct may give rise to state responsibility. This analysis will facilitate the assessment of state responsibility in cases of PMSC misconduct and set standards to guide states in developing their domestic laws and policies on private security.

State Control over Private Military and Security Companies in Armed Conflict

State Control over Private Military and Security Companies in Armed Conflict PDF Author: Hannah Tonkin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139499459
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Get Book Here

Book Description
The past two decades have witnessed the rapid proliferation of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in armed conflicts around the world, with PMSCs participating in, for example, offensive combat, prisoner interrogation and the provision of advice and training. The extensive outsourcing of military and security activities has challenged conventional conceptions of the state as the primary holder of coercive power and raised concerns about the reduction in state control over the use of violence. Hannah Tonkin critically analyses the international obligations on three key states - the hiring state, the home state and the host state of a PMSC - and identifies the circumstances in which PMSC misconduct may give rise to state responsibility. This analysis will facilitate the assessment of state responsibility in cases of PMSC misconduct and set standards to guide states in developing their domestic laws and policies on private security.

Legal Control of the Private Military Corporation

Legal Control of the Private Military Corporation PDF Author: B. Sheehy
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230583016
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Private military organizations are a new and important feature of the international landscape. They offer control of potential massive violence to the highest bidder with very limited accountability. This book offers critical insights into both the phenomenon and the challenges of and potential for regulation.

Regulating Private Military Companies

Regulating Private Military Companies PDF Author: Katerina Galai
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367671037
Category : Mercenary troops (International law)
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
This work examines the ability of existing and evolving PMC regulation to adequately control private force, and it challenges the capacity of international law to deliver accountability in the event of private military company (PMC) misconduct. From medieval to early modern history, private soldiers dominated the military realm and were fundamental to the waging of wars until the rise of a national citizen army. Today, PMCs are again a significant force, performing various security, logistics, and strategy functions across the world. Unlike mercenaries or any other form of irregular force, PMCs acquired a corporate legal personality, a legitimising status that alters the governance model of today. Drawing on historical examples of different forms of governance, the relationship between neoliberal states and private military companies is conceptualised here as a form of a 'shared governance'. It reflects states' reliance on PMCs relinquishing a degree of their power and transferring certain functions to the private sector. As non-state actors grow in authority, wielding power, and making claims to legitimacy through self-regulation, other sources of law also become imaginable and relevant to enact regulation and invoke responsibility.

Corporate Warriors

Corporate Warriors PDF Author: P. W. Singer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801459605
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Some have claimed that "War is too important to be left to the generals," but P. W. Singer asks "What about the business executives?" Breaking out of the guns-for-hire mold of traditional mercenaries, corporations now sell skills and services that until recently only state militaries possessed. Their products range from trained commando teams to strategic advice from generals. This new "Privatized Military Industry" encompasses hundreds of companies, thousands of employees, and billions of dollars in revenue. Whether as proxies or suppliers, such firms have participated in wars in Africa, Asia, the Balkans, and Latin America. More recently, they have become a key element in U.S. military operations. Private corporations working for profit now sway the course of national and international conflict, but the consequences have been little explored. In this book, Singer provides the first account of the military services industry and its broader implications. Corporate Warriors includes a description of how the business works, as well as portraits of each of the basic types of companies: military providers that offer troops for tactical operations; military consultants that supply expert advice and training; and military support companies that sell logistics, intelligence, and engineering. In an updated edition of P. W. Singer's classic account of the military services industry and its broader implications, the author describes the continuing importance of that industry in the Iraq War. This conflict has amply borne out Singer's argument that the privatization of warfare allows startling new capabilities and efficiencies in the ways that war is carried out. At the same time, however, Singer finds that the introduction of the profit motive onto the battlefield raises troubling questions—for democracy, for ethics, for management, for human rights, and for national security.

Private Military and Security Contractors

Private Military and Security Contractors PDF Author: Gary Schaub, Jr.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442260238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
In Private Military and Security Contractors (PMSCs) a multinational team of scholars and experts address a developing phenomenon: controlling the use of privatized force by states in international politics. Robust analyses of the evolving, multi-layered tapestry of formal and informal mechanisms of control address the microfoundations of the market, such as the social and role identities of contract employees, their acceptance by military personnel, and potential tensions between them. The extent and willingness of key states—South Africa, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Israel—to monitor and enforce discipline to structure their contractual relations with PMSCs on land and at sea is examined, as is the ability of the industry to regulate itself. Also discussed is the nascent international legal regime to reinforce state and industry efforts to encourage effective practices, punish inappropriate behavior, and shape the market to minimize the hazards of loosening states’ oligopolistic control over the means of legitimate organized violence. The volume presents a theoretically-informed synthesis of micro- and macro-levels of analysis, offering new insights into the challenges of controlling the agents of organized violence used by states for scholars and practitioners alike.

Contractors¿ Support of U. S. Operations in Iraq

Contractors¿ Support of U. S. Operations in Iraq PDF Author: Daniel Frisk
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1437908780
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Contractors play a substantial role in supporting the U.S.¿s current military, reconstruction, and diplomatic operations in Iraq. This report examines the use of contractors in the Iraq theater from 2003 through 2007. It provides an overview of the fed. gov¿t. costs of employing contractors in Iraq and in nearby countries, the type of products and services they provide, the number of personnel working on those contracts, comparisons of past and present use of contractors during U.S. military operations, and the use of contractors to provide security. Also investigates the command-and-control structure between the U.S. gov¿t. and contract employees, and the legal issues surrounding contractor personnel working in Iraq. Tables and graphs.

Mercenaries and War

Mercenaries and War PDF Author: National Defense University Press
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781678665234
Category : Mercenary troops
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description
Mercenaries are more powerful than experts realize, a grave oversight. Those who assume they are cheap imitations of national armed forces invite disaster because for-profit warriors are a wholly different genus and species of fighter. Private military companies such as the Wagner Group are more like heavily armed multinational corporations than the Marine Corps. Their employees are recruited from different countries, and profitability is everything. Patriotism is unimportant, and sometimes a liability. Unsurprisingly, mercenaries do not fight conventionally, and traditional war strategies used against them may backfire.

Public War, Private Fight? The United States and Private Military Companies

Public War, Private Fight? The United States and Private Military Companies PDF Author: Deborah C. Kidwell
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1257122355
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Book Description
"The United States has long utilized private military contractors to augment regular military forces in support of its national foreign policy and security needs. Commonly referred to as Private Military Companies (PMCs), contractors employ and manage civilian personnel from the private sector in areas of active military operations. Frequently, regular troops become dependent on the services contractors provide a situation that may negatively impact military effectiveness. Since 1991, contractor support on and off the battlefield has become increasingly more visible, varied, and commonplace. Given the current manpower and resource limitations of the national military, the US will likely continue its extensive use of PMCs in support of military operations. This work addresses historical precedents and trends in American logistics, the current scope of contractor involvement in support of regular military forces, and the challenges posed as traditional military institutions integrate increasing numbers of civilian workers and privately owned assets into the battlespace. These problems increase the risk to US personnel and can induce budget overruns rather than savings, disrupt civil-military relations, and have detrimental consequences for the American economy and society. The work concludes by proposing a useful rubric to evaluate this new American way of war. This work considers PMCs and their interdependence with regular and reserve military units in a broad sense. It derives from unclassified material widely available; understandably, these sources limit the analysis. Lessons learned from the Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF) and Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF) theaters may alter findings. However, this study endeavors to frame the continuing dialog concerning the appropriate use of PMCs to support regular troops."--Abstract from DTIC web site.

Mercenaries

Mercenaries PDF Author: Abdel-Fatau Musah
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745314716
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Second volume of Deutscher prize-winning trilogy on the future of IR, tracing the defining characteristics of 'foreign encounters' over time.

Private Security Contractors and New Wars

Private Security Contractors and New Wars PDF Author: Kateri Carmola
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135153280
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
This book addresses the ambiguities of the growing use of private security contractors and provides guidance as to how our expectations about regulating this expanding ‘service’ industry will have to be adjusted. In the warzones of Iraq and Afghanistan many of those who carry weapons are not legally combatants, nor are they protected civilians. They are contracted by governments, businesses, and NGOs to provide armed security. Often mistaken as members of armed forces, they are instead part of a new protean proxy force that works alongside the military in a multitude of shifting roles, and overseen by a matrix of contracts and regulations. This book analyzes the growing industry of these private military and security companies (PMSCs) used in warzones and other high risk areas. PMSCs are the result of a unique combination of circumstances, including a change in the idea of soldiering, insurance industry analyses that require security contractors, and a need for governments to distance themselves from potentially criminal conduct. The book argues that PMSCs are a unique type of organization, combining attributes from worlds of the military, business, and humanitarian organizations. This makes them particularly resistant to oversight. The legal status of these companies and those they employ is also hard to ascertain, which weakens the multiple regulatory tools available. PMSCs also fall between the cracks in ethical debates about their use, seeming to be both justifiable and objectionable. This transformation in military operations is a seemingly irreversible product of more general changes in the relationship between the individual citizen and the state. This book will be of much interest to students of private security companies, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR in general. Kateri Carmola is the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College in Vermont. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.