Erik Prince’s “Privatization” of War Doesn’t Go Far Enough

From what I gather, the U.S. already made giant steps toward what is much too loosely called the “privatization” of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Figures 2 and 3 in the linked article, the “total private agents” somewhat exceeded the “total armed forces” in both wars.

Total private agents refers to personnel of private military companies and excludes U.S.-hired mercenaries. These private agents may include forces that the companies themselves field, but what we’re mainly talking about here is a vast range of support services: building and maintaining bases, protecting sites, supplying fuel, food and ammunition, training, intelligence, public relations, consultants, advisors, bodyguards, interrogators and interpreters. There were 300 such companies in Iraq during that war.

This is not privatization in the sense that war is being initiated, fought and ended by private decisions and private financing. It’s companies drinking at the public trough of paid-in taxes and government-issued debt. The U.S. government is merely an intermediary between those from whom it takes via forcible extortion and those to whom it directs the proceeds. This process is better known as corporate fascism. In this case, it’s military-industrial fascism. This is NOT capitalism.

Along comes Erik Prince who makes a proposal. He offers to supply his own 5,000 man force and a 100 airplane force for $10 billion a year. How far he is under-estimating costs and whether or not his force can replace U.S. armed forces are practical questions that are not my focus. Suppose that he could do this and save billions for those who are forced to foot the bills. Other things equal, which they never are, this could be advantageous for taxpayers. It’s still military-industrial fascism. The presence of a company, profit, and a bidding process does not necessarily mean that we are seeing capitalism in action. The reason is that the funds that are financing the payments to Prince or any such contractor are not being supplied in a free capital market. They are being taken by force from taxpayers. Free enterprise never involves the allocation of capital through political power.

But now, I say that this does not go far enough. If implemented, it means that you and I are forced to pay Erik Prince’s company through the U.S. government as an intermediary. Why? Why should we delegate this decision to fight in Afghanistan to the government? Any group of us could just as well decide this for ourselves. If we in that group wanted voluntarily to hire Prince or some other company to fight in that country or Syria or Libya or Niger or wherever we thought it would be for our self-defense, we could. There is no natural law that says that this kind of decision and action has to be done by a body calling itself the U.S. and claiming to speak for all of those within its borders.

Voluntary war is what real privatization of war means. But that’s not enough. War that kills people, injures people, destroys property and takes property with criminal intent and not for the purpose of self-defense is wrong. At the moment, such wars occur all the time and the institutions to punish wrongful deaths, wrongful injuries, wrongful property destruction and wrongful property theft are quite weak or even non-existent in most cases. Self-defense is claimed when it’s not present. If war is privatized in the true sense, we won’t be better off unless we have institutions to punish groups for starting wars for anything other than self-defense. In other words, those who conduct private wars have to be exposed to being penalized when they overstep the bounds of self-defense and inflict injury upon innocent parties.

The same can be said of governments. A system is deficient in moral terms that fails to expose governments to penalties for engaging in the wrong kinds of wars or for conducting wars in wrongful ways. This moral deficiency is bound to produce too much of the bad behavior, which is wars for gain, for territory, for tribute, for revenge, for profit, for security, and for any number of reasons other than self-defense.

Whether or not governments conduct wars or they are truly privatized, the same problem emerges. Institutions are currently lacking that enforce sanctions on improper wars. What’s worse is that there is not even agreement on what a proper war is, that is, self-defense is treated as an elastic concept with very fuzzy boundaries. Today, any region that breaks away from the ruling body is almost sure to be attacked. The American Civil War is not treated as having a morally defective basis. States will attack their neighbors upon fears and face no sanctions or even condemnation. Major states like the U.S. will attack weaker and distant states, inflicting all sorts of wrongful injury.

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1:51 pm on January 30, 2018