Book review

Peter W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (New York: Cornell University Press, 2003, 242 pp.)

The fact that something extraordinarily important took place in the world at the nebulous historical moment commonly referred to as the end of the Cold War; something that made the international sphere more difficult to grasp, and consequently forced IR-scholars and other academics to modify the analytical foundations upon which their would-be universal theories of international relations rested, seems to be taken for granted amongst many of today’s policy-makers, journalists and scholars. The all too familiar clichés concerning the international security situation in the so-called post Cold War era, are iterated and reiterated ad nauseam in newspaper articles and television debates, often without justification and a clear explanation of what this change really amounts to. Among claims about the changed and more complex nature of warfare, the alleged blurring of international borders, the statistically significant shift from interstate to intrastate conflicts, and the collapse of the morally important distinction between combattants and non-combattants, the claim that the international sphere has witnessed the emergence of a plethora of new actors, allegedly interferring in affairs traditionally reserved for the state and its authorized agents, is maybe the most popular.

In this respect, Peter W. Singer’s pioneering study of one of these new actors, the private military firm (PMF), can be regarded as a well-informed attempt to substantiate these post Cold War ”clichés” with real evidence. Unlike earlier studies of this generally over-looked topic, which have focused on the workings of a single or a few of these firms and, moreover, often have been journalistic or personal in style, Singer’s study is all-inclusive and multi-perspectival, probing into the whole industry as such. By coupling a variety of different mid-range theoretical perspectives with in-depth and impressively detailed empirical knowledge, obtained through case studies of a range of different PMFs, Singer effectively highlights mechanisms that explain not only why the industry boomed after the Cold War, but also how it actually works – thereby obtaining knowledge neither too fine-grained nor too general to be valuable for policy makers. By uncovering, as Singer does in the first part of the book, the various economical, political and histoical structures that made the formation of such an industry possible in the aftermath of the Cold War; by dividing, as he does in the second part, the industry into three main types, conducting case studies on one instance of each type, situating them within a convenient tip-of-the-spear taxonomy; and finally, by assessing, as he does in the third part, the analytical, theoretical, practical and normative implications of the existence and apparently unceasing growth of this industry, Singer manages to come up with not only a detailed, comprehensive and highly readable account of the logic behind this murky – yet deadly important – industry, but also an interesting picture of the conditions underlying modern war and warfare.

According to Singer, a change has indeed taken place in the world in the post Cold War era, and the rise of the privatized military industry must be explained as a part of this development. The termination of superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, he argues, left large supplies of arms and retired soldiers available on the free market, as well as a destabilizing power vacuum in countries formerly buttressed by the global bipolar power structure (p. 49-66). Coupled with the legacy of privatization implied in the Thatcherism-cum-Reaganomics of the 1980s (p. 66-67), and the changed nature of warfare entailed by the development of high technology weapons (p. 62-63), the emergence, growth and consolidation of the privatized military industry follows, it seems, as a logical consequence. The accuracy of the aforementioned ”clichés” is thereby confirmed, interestingly not by direct evidence, but by making them into necessary components of a cross-diciplinary explanation of the (arguably oberservable) growth of the privatized military industry.

More interestingly, however, than Singer’s description of the industry, and his explanation of why the industry has boomed after the end of the Cold War, is his assessment of the various implications the rise of this industry is expected to have for the future, not only of the international sphere, but also of our understanding of this sphere. His most central (and also most audacious) hypothesis, is the claim that the rise of a privatized military industry, implies, theoretically as well as empirically, that the state’s monopoly of violence – the state’s most essential feature, according to a worn-out quote by Max Weber – is gradually breaking down, and that this breakdown compels us to rethink and revaluate the basic structures upon which our understanding of the international sphere, and the events taking place therein, rests (p. 18). Referring back to Ike Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex, Singer argues that the rise of the private military industry significantly tilts, not only the relationship between the military and the civil authorities (ch. 12), but also the relationship between the civil authorities and the public (ch. 13). What is more, oursourcing military capabilities exposes key decisions concerning the security of the state, to the fluctuations of the market, thereby constraining the political maneuverability of policy makers.

Singer’s study is not just descriptive and explanatory, however, but has a normative dimention as well. Critics has been eager to dismiss this newborn industry on a purely normative basis, lumping modern contractors together with ”ruthless mercenaries” – arguing that because these contractors fight for money, they should be deemed illegal. While Singer seems sensible to this critique, as well as the other dilemmas invoked by PMF-activities, at the end of the day, he treats the moral issues from a purely consequentialist point of view. There is of course nothing wrong with consequentialism, but because it depends upon an impracticable calculation of expected consequences, it rarely leads to a clear conclusion. In the chapter devoted to morality (ch. 14), Singer concludes, somewhat ambiguously, ”[j]ust as the public institutions of the state have served both good and evil ends, so too can the privatized military industry”. The question Singer fails to address, however, is whether employees of PMFs, motivated by nothing else than profit and adventurism, can plausibly be said to have a moral right to engage in battle, i.e. a moral right to kill, like conventional soldiers? In such a comprehensive study, it is disappointing, at least to this reader, that Singer disregards almost completely the legal dimension of the issue. Singer bluntly states that PMFs are legal (p. 47), and therefore different from mercenaries – which, according to the Geneva convention, are so be considered illegal. But both whether PMFs really are legal, and whether they ought to be, is a disputed issue.