Week 8 Post-: The Role of PSCs - Reflections on Class Discussion

This module may be the most difficult for me and yet the one in which I gain most through the stories and perspectives of my student peers. I have neither NGO nor military experience and, so no meaningful first-hand insights on PSCs or like entities.  Mine, apart from some near-hand encounters in Nicaragua and El Salvador in 1979, is solely from a distance through media pieces on the likes of Blackwater and Sandline. Though the readings were meaty and lent so much to the material we have discussed to date, I hesitated to comment on them at all in class for fear of interrupting an impactful, and for me, important exchange between so many of my fellow students who have experienced a world I have not.  If I was quiet, it was in deference to that experience.   It brought home questions on the Abrahamsen and Williams piece that I would not have had before:  What is the role of PSCs in relation to the state?  In what context? At what point do they cross a line and infringe on, rather than complement, a state’s authority?  Are what Abrahamsen and Williams refer to as “global security assemblages” contributing to or filling a vacuum created by Saskia Sassen’s “notion of state ‘disassembly?’” To what extent?

In terms of roles, there were two general views expressed in class (Please forgive the overuse of name-dropping as I proceed.  It is helpful here in contextual terms – the type of experience one has provides unique perspective.  As I type, it helps visualizing each of my fellow students in his or her respective role outside of class).  Courtney, Dan Silva and Andrew all spoke of the limits to PSCs as supplementary security working in tandem with state security forces.  Concerns regarding loyalty (or loyalties, as the case may be) mirror my own even as I was reading Abrahamsen and Williams.  I have not read Machiavelli’s The Prince, but I am now eager to do so.  Courtney mentioned a sense of discomfort with private security teams contracted to guard entry points to her base in Jordan – “a soldier’s job.”   And, Dan S. noted we are euphemistically referring to mercenaries as “private security contractors.”  While not all carry firearms, and most, as Professor Shirk noted, are not serving in a battlefield capacity, some do and are.  Taken out of the context of strong nation support, this becomes more likely the norm.

There were some great counterpoints:  PSCs are there to provide security support when it is not available through the state, or supplemental roles when budgets do not allow for sufficient resources to accomplish dual or multiple goals on the part of the state.  And, Erica adds that following a paycheck does not necessarily conflict with loyalties to state and state ends. PSCs can provide, in the absence of state assistance, security knowledge and access to modes of safe transport.  Tim raised an especially important question:  How does PSC legitimacy differ from that of other entities who provide state services, such as hospital services, aid work, road construction and, so on?  How is supporting the entity with the power to exert force more or less legitimate than the one specifically inflicting force?  At what point is the line crossed? 

Dan and Andrew each suggested the capacity to kill, to exert potentially lethal coercive force, particularly coupled with varied and ephemeral loyalties, differentiates PSCs from other types of services.  The reality in the context of economically strong and politically stable nations is radically different from that of nations that are weak, in transition, or experiencing seemingly unending political unrest. In the former, a PSC may be a positive “gap-filler.”  In the latter, it may foment the very unrest it is meant to help temper.    As Andrew states, private players can often “operate with impunity.”   He cited Blackwater, havoc wreaked by paramilitary groups working with state authorities in South America, and issues with private security organizations working in tandem with police in China.  His suggestion that upholding the power of a state is not the same as championing or cementing its legitimacy was particularly strong. At the other end of the spectrum, another interesting question from Erica came up and I wish we had explored it further:  What would it look like to have PSCs engaged in peacekeeping missions?  

   

Bringing this all back to Abrahamsen’s and Williams’ concept of “global security assemblages,” I am more inclined to trust the experience of my peers in assessing the reality on the ground, and yet still wish to consider the theoretical argument regarding “disassembly” and reconstruction.  My hesitation, despite buying into their arguments regarding “networked governance,” shifting social norms, and the commodification of security, is that Abrahamsen and Williams do appear to have a rosy view of what the role of private security entities truly means in the realm of weaker states.  In the case of Sierra Leone, they dismiss the Sandline “Arms for Africa” embargo violation and jump to post-conflict reconstruction.  They paint the situation in the Niger Delta as shifting away from the use of PSCs as coercive actors, but the evidence since their writing does not bear this out.  Dan D. suggests Chevron, using its private security forces, could conceivably turn on the state.  In an entirely different scenario, as the companies themselves operate in collusion with the state to maintain facilities, the use of force by an oil company’s security team against a protesting citizenry is not out of the realm of possibility.   

The blurred lines between these and private military groups are a concern – the latter have contributed significantly to prolonging conflict across the globe and particularly in the DRC Sierra Leone and Angola.  It is too easy to conflate the two.  Regarding the question of whether PSCs contribute to or fill a vacuum created by Saskia Sassen’s “notion of state ‘disassembly,’ it appears the answer is “yes, but…”  In my view, despite my wish for eventual blurred boundaries in relation to socio-political dynamics, allowing this to take place unchecked and according to the market is misguided.  As long as we operate under a system of sovereign statehood, we can only perpetuate the need for such a system as long as mechanisms for coercive force lead the path to change.  It needs to be the last piece unpacked from the cart, not the thing pulling it.  

References

Abrahamsen, Rita and Michael C. Williams. 2009. “Security Beyond the State.” International Political Sociology, 3:1-17.

Blain, Bruce. “The Role of Private and Mercenary Armies in International Conflict.” Information Clearing House.  < http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3396.htm> Accessed October 27, 20016.

Klein, Naomi. 2014. This Changes Everything. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Shah, Anup. 2010. “Nigeria and Oil.” Global Issues. http://www.globalissues.org/article/86/nigeria-and-oil <Accessed October 26, 2016>