Book Review - Contemporary perspectives on private military contractors

Contemporary Perspectives on Private Military Contractors

Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War

Written by: Dina Rasor and Robert Bauman,

Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007,

ISBN: 9781403981929, 274pp.
 

Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Written by: Jeremy Scahill, 

Serpent’s Tail, London, 2007,

ISBN: 9781568583945, 438pp.
 

Reviewed by: Antony Trentini

The role of private contractors in war is no longer considered solely in terms of the prosaic issues of homeland logistical support and chartered flights to move personnel from barracks to theatre. In the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, contractors deliver supplies into Baghdad, deploy technicians to frontline units, and even provide troops, helicopters and aircraft for battlefield use. Private military contractors (PMCs) now pervade almost every corner of the modern battlespace. Both Dina Rasor and Robert Baumann’s Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatising War and Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army cover the involvement of such contractors on operations around the world today.

In Betraying Our Troops, Rasor and Baumann focus specifically on the war in Iraq and the performance of the company Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) in fulfilling their US Army Logistics Civil Augmentation Program contract, or LOGCAP. Scahill, for his part, diverges from Rasor and Baumann’s concentration on efficiency in war, and instead focuses on the more ‘exciting’ aspect of battlefield privatisation— mercenaries—in his book, Blackwater. While their focus diverges, both works concur in their condemnation of US contractors. The authors argue that private contractors have acted in a thoroughly corrupt fashion because the weak legal framework in which they operate simply cannot deter malfeasant behaviour.

Rasor and Baumann, for their part, argue that KBR endangered US forces through negligence and incompetence and that the company criminally defrauded the US Government while fulfilling its LOGCAP obligations. The LOGCAP contract was a ‘cost plus fee’ arrangement, whereby KBR was reimbursed the costs it incurred plus a percentage. Thus KBR had a strong incentive to see its costs rise as high as possible.

If the authors’ allegations are to be believed, the scale and extent of KBR’s fraudulent activity is staggering. For example, KBR employees were told to claim they worked twelve hours per day even if they only worked a fraction of that time. KBR trucks were deliberately allowed to break down so that they would be looted and destroyed, allowing KBR to bill for their replacement. KBR subcontractors were encouraged to present inflated bills to KBR so that costs would rise even further. All of this activity, the authors insist, was to drive up costs, and thus profits. The LOGCAP contract incentive scheme encouraged KBR to focus not on delivering supplies, but on finding means to raise costs.

Scahill’s work closely examines the alleged criminal negligence of one of KBR’s subcontractors, Blackwater USA. At the heart of this book is the death of four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah in March 2004. These four contractors were ambushed by insurgents and killed. Their bodies were then set alight and hacked to pieces before the remains were hung from a bridge by an enraged Iraqi mob. Blackwater USA has now been sued by the families of these men in a claim alleging negligence. The dispute centres on the fact that, despite contractual provisions guaranteeing a minimum convoy size of six armed men in two armoured vehicles equipped with two light machine-guns, the four contractors were sent on duty by Blackwater management in a group of only four, in unarmoured vehicles and with no light machine-guns.

The real implications of this case will go far beyond the families of the dead contractors. What is at stake, ultimately, is the entire framework of legal provisions that companies such as Blackwater USA have put in place to immunise themselves against the ramifications of both their (alleged) ‘corner-cutting’ and indiscriminate violence in Iraq. Around this central event, Scahill examines in detail the critical people and events that have enabled and fostered this legal ‘grey zone’ in which Blackwater and others have operated so profitably, giving the reader a thorough contextual setting for the operations of private military contractors in the Global War on Terror.

The central narratives of both Betraying Our Troops and Blackwater highlight the evidently loose legal regime in which private military contractors work, and the serious problems of accountability that have subsequently arisen. Of the two books, Blackwater offers the most comprehensive account of the legal details involved, and examines the laws, doctrines, precedents, cases and judgements regarding the contractors’ current operations. Both books, however, clearly demonstrate that the legal environment at present equates to little more than a ‘blank cheque’ for contractors. The indiscriminate violence and cruelty against Iraqis and Afghans of which these private military contractors stand accused can irreparably damage the ‘hearts and minds’ campaign being waged by the coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The legal ‘limbo’ in which such acts are committed and the immunity private military contractors enjoy must be eliminated if such campaigns are to be efficiently and effectively prosecuted. This is made amply clear by Scahill in Blackwater and to a lesser extent by Rasor and Baumann in Betraying Our Troops.

However, Rasor, Baumann and Scahill tend to undermine their arguments through an apparent lack of objectivity. For example, Rasor and Baumann dismiss KBR’s primary defence against such allegations as ‘corporate smooth-talking’. KBR officials testified that the original LOGCAP contract specified that the company was to be responsible for provisioning 25 000 troops, and up to an absolute maximum of 50 000 troops. In the opening phases of the Iraq War, they were obliged to provision 200 000 troops—fully eight times their contractual obligation. This fact alone plausibly explains many of the problems with supply shortfalls and incomplete management that the authors raise. In their outrage, the authors have seized upon emotive writing and the quality of the work suffers accordingly.

Similarly, in places, Scahill gratuitously covers—in great detail—the history of alleged covert operations by several US Administrations, such as President Reagan’s support for ‘death squads’ in Honduras, or President Nixon’s support for the suspect Pinochet regime in Chile. Scahill also examines criminality of a more recent vintage, such as the questionable behaviour of Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz. Each of these topics bears only tangential relevance to the Blackwater story but are included regardless, seemingly to bolster the overarching anti-conservative theme of the work. While these are all certainly incidents deserving closer inspection, their inclusion obscures the focus of Scahill’s book, and unfortunately lowers it to the level of partisan writing.

Most serious, perhaps, is that fact that both books only briefly touch on the central issue of private contracting in military operations—the US Government’s decision to sub-contract much of its logistic responsibilities in the first place. It was key figures in the US Government, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, who made this decision. The people who mandated privatisation of logistics and force protection to meet ‘troop caps’ and ‘just in time’ schedules are the figures who are responsible for the absence of sufficiently robust oversight of contracted provisions. The corrupt practices of companies that carry out these tasks are simply unfortunate side effects. Again, Scahill’s book examines this particular topic in more detail than Rasor and Baumann’s, but he refrains from making any thorough critical analysis of the wisdom of the initial decision.

As the ‘privatisation of war’ is likely to continue, both works overlook ‘rolling back’ such activity and rather examine the legal shortcomings in oversight of private military contractors. Both works highlight the recent modifications to the US Uniform Code of Military Justice. These changes may once again place contractors under military legal jurisdiction, and would certainly go a long way to restoring their accountability. However, as Scahill observes, this measure will almost certainly be bitterly resisted in the courts, and it will be years before any definitive outcome is achieved.

In all, both Betraying Our Troops and Blackwater easily hold the reader’s attention. However, Rasor and Baumann’s work is plagued by tedious textual errors that appear every few pages, reducing the flow of an otherwise engaging book. The arguments within Betraying Our Troops are one-sided at times, which hinders the reader’s ability to form their own judgement from the wealth of primary sources presented. The book is important, however, in that it brings to light the many serious problems plaguing the more mundane aspects of privatising war. Issues such as privatised logistics receive little attention in a field of analysis dominated by the highly publicised activities of private security contractors, and Betraying Our Troops goes some way towards redressing this difference.

Blackwater focuses on the subject of ‘private armies’ in an engaging fashion. It stands apart from other accounts in that it presents to the reader a great deal of contextual material that the casual observer may otherwise have overlooked. This is especially the case regarding the intricate web of business and personal contacts that underpin Blackwater USA’s phenomenal rise. This strong network of politicians, national executives, business figures and ideologues is clearly laid out for the reader, and is arguably the greatest merit of Blackwater.

For anyone only recently made aware of the controversies surrounding private military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan—or indeed their very existence—and who desire grounding in this issue to inform future observations, both Betraying Our Troops and Blackwater will be of considerable interest.