Making a Killing: How Private Armies Became a $120 Billion Global Industry
September 21st, 2007Note: Someone emailed and said that there are no privately owned Apache helicopters. As far as I know, that’s true. Furthermore, Apache helicopters don’t carry troops at all. The Apache is an attack helicopter—a flying weapons platform—with no personnel transport capacity.
Via: Independent:
In Nigeria, corporate commandos exchange fire with local rebels attacking an oil platform. In Afghanistan, private bodyguards help to foil yet another assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai. In Colombia, a contracted pilot comes under fire from guerrillas while spraying coca fields with pesticides. On the border between Iraq and Iran, privately owned Apache helicopters deliver US special forces to a covert operation.
This is a snapshot of a working day in the burgeoning world of private military companies, arguably the fastest-growing industry in the global economy. The sector is now worth up to $120bn annually with operations in at least 50 countries, according to Peter Singer, a security analyst with the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“The rate of growth in the security industry has been phenomenal,” says Deborah Avant, a professor of political science at UCLA. The single largest spur to this boom is the conflict in Iraq.
The workings of this industry have come under intense scrutiny this week in the angry aftermath of the killing of Iraqi civilians by the US-owned Blackwater corporation in Baghdad. The Iraqi government has demanded the North Carolina-based company is withdrawn. But with Blackwater responsible for the protection of hundreds of senior US and Iraqi officials, from the US ambassador to visiting congressional delegations, there is certainty in diplomatic and military circles that this will not happen.
Are these the private armies who are going to be in control here when they enforce martial law, or what?
Private militias are a typical symptom of state failure. The armies of Julius Caesar were all bought and paid for by Julius, as were those of his competitors. When Julius became emperor, he authorized the state to fulfill his promise to his soldiers to grant each solder a farm after 20 years of duty–farms the state confiscated from tax-paying citizens. U.S. voters don’t need to permit the U.S. government to use private armies–all they need to do is to get their representatives to pass laws forbidding the U.S. government to do so. But then the U.S. would need to restore the draft–because they can’t get enough saps to volunteer, by hook or by crook–and the draft would create an unmanageable resistance as shown in the 1960s. Thus do states fall as the population becomes wealthier and smarter. Ironic, but maybe states aren’t such a good idea anyway.