2. “To examine what American policy should be. It is our view that the challenges and opportunities of our time transcend the assumptions and vocabulary used by both the Left and Right in recent years, and that we need to move beyond the defense of obsolete positions.” (from AI’s Stated Purpose)
There is a part of me that says, where is the balance(2 against, 1 for) or why use such a charged and biased word to title such a debate? In today’s lexicon, Mercenary is used in the derogatory sense. So it would kind of be like having a debate about prostitution and calling it the ‘The Whore Debate-Three Views’. LOL. I mean how do you start a serious debate about such a thing, when even the title is stacked against the subject itself?
Either way, I am glad to see the discussion take place, and read what the views are. It is important to learn what the pros and cons are for this industry, and insure we are focusing on alleviating any fears brought up in these kinds of debates as best we can. What’s curious to me, is that none of these so called experts on the subject have made any attempt to contact myself or anyone else within the network.
Maybe they are quietly reading FJ and the other sites, and developing their opinions that way? But really, if they intend to get any kind of shared reality about the subject, they need to reach out, as opposed to staying within their safe network of like minded people.
Also, feel free to send AI a quick note if you disagree or even agree with any of these points of views. I posted the email for the editor of AI, and if they gaffe you off, please remind them of their third stated purpose of AI. Also, throw the letter or comments up in the comments section here, if no one will listen to you at AI. That way if they are reading FJ, they will at least see some feedback. –Matt
3. “Third, though its name is The American Interest, our pages are open to the world…the AI invites citizens of all nations into the American national dialogue, convinced that Americans have much to learn from the experience and perspectives of others.”
—————————————————————–
The Mercenary Debate
Three Views (May-June 2009)
Deborah Avant
In September 2007, armed guards assigned to protect U.S. diplomats and employed by the private security company Blackwater USA opened fire in crowded Nisour Square in central Baghdad. The incident wounded 24 and left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, including an infant. In the wake of the shooting, the press erupted with stories about how dependent the U.S. military had become on “mercenaries”, particularly in Iraq. Some of the coverage focused on the contractors’ aggressive tactics and how they threaten to undermine the campaign to win “hearts and minds” in Iraq. Other articles concentrated on the lack of effective oversight and legal accountability of private security forces. Still others focused on Blackwater’s political connections and practices. But very few examined the larger question of what hired guns might do to democratic governance in the United States.
In recent years, scholars and policymakers have converged on the view that democracy is a key variable for predicting both the internal and external behavior of states. Many argue that political norms favoring non-violent solutions and citizen participation in governance make it harder for leaders in democracies to steer the ship of state into war. Others claim that democracies, once engaged in a fight, are more likely to win since they more carefully calculate the benefits and costs of military action. Perhaps most prominently, democratic peace theory is taken virtually as a “law” throughout both government and the academy.
Deborah Avant is professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy, and author of The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security (Cambridge University Press 2005).
Story Link Here
——————————————————————
The Mercenary Debate
Three Views
Max Boot
Mercenaries get a bad rap. The very word has become so anathematized that it is no longer used by those it describes, practitioners of one of the world’s oldest professions. Nowadays they prefer to be called “security contractors” and their employers prefer to be known as private military or security companies. This is an understandable if not entirely logical consequence of the state monopolization of warfare, which began in the late 18th century when governments became strong enough to conscript their own citizens to fight rather than rely on hired “free lances.” The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars seemed to confirm that citizen armies were superior to the traditional mix of aristocrats and mercenaries employed by the ancien régimes, and before long almost everyone was emulating the French example. Along the way there arose the widespread belief that the use of citizen-soldiers was superior not only practically but also morally; there was something distasteful, even unethical, about hiring a professional soldier, often a foreigner, to fight on one’s behalf. Much better, leaders assumed, to force their own civilians to fight upon pain of punishment. This mindset has now become so deeply entrenched that it is easy to ignore the long and distinguished history of mercenaries, and their legitimate uses down to the present day.
As Peter W. Singer points out in his invaluable book, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (2003), “Hiring outsiders to fight your battles is as old as war itself. Nearly every past empire, from the ancient Egyptians to the Victorian British, contracted foreign troops in some form or another.” The Greek city-states that founded Western civilization were heavily reliant on specialized units of mercenaries such as Cretan slingers and Thessalian cavalry to supplement their native hoplites. One of the great classics of literature, Xenophon’s Anabasis, chronicles the journey of 10,000 Greek mercenaries through what is today Iraq after participating in a Persian civil war. By the end of Alexander the Great’s stunning campaign of conquest, his army was made up primarily of foreigners, not Macedonians. Hannibal, likewise, scored his great victories against Rome in the Second Punic War with an army of hired hands. And although the Roman Empire by the end became overly reliant on unassimilated “barbarians” for protection, it thrived for hundreds of years by enlisting foreigners as auxiliaries to its legions.
Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Basic Books, 2002) and War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today (Gotham Books, 2006).
Story Here
——————————————————————
The Mercenary Debate
Three Views
Jörg Friedrichs & Cornelius Friesendorf
Despite the soaring rhetoric of state-building during the presidency of George W. Bush, state-wrecking is a better description of what the Administration actually did. State-wrecking followed different trajectories in different countries. The only common thread among them over the past eight years was their sheer inadvertence. Under the Taliban in the late 1990s, Afghanistan had something resembling a state for the first time since the Soviet invasion in 1979. Since the ouster of the Taliban, the emergence of an effective Afghan state has proved frustratingly elusive. In Somalia, after 15 years of failed statehood, there were signs in 2006 that the Islamic Courts Union might establish control over significant parts of the country. But this was thwarted by a U.S.-backed Ethiopian intervention force. Although there arguably were good political reasons for military intervention in both cases, the rhetoric of state-building is nonetheless belied by the unwitting reality of state-wrecking.
But the most daunting case of Bush Administration state-wrecking is Iraq. The country used to be an autocratic state, and a nasty one at that. Now, however, despite the hopefulness engendered by a reasonably successful election this past January, it is a state most likely headed toward systemic failure.
There are several reasons for pessimism about Iraq’s future. The Iraqi state encompasses a deeply divided society that has historically been held together only by a combination of ruthless leadership and, during its Hashemite era, a trans-sectarian religious authority. But then the U.S.-led military intervention decapitated the Ba‘ath regime, and an overambitious but understaffed occupation regime that strove officially to transform Iraq into a functioning democracy has instead created a power vacuum that is still unfilled. A key reason for this vacuum is that the effort to restore the Weberian public monopoly over the legitimate use of force has been obstructed by various forms of security privatization….
Jörg Friedrichs is assistant professor at the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. Cornelius Friesendorf is fellow at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF).
Story Here
—————————————————————–
The American Interest(From Wikipedia)
The American Interest (AI) is a bimonthly journal focusing primarily on foreign policy, international affairs, global economics, and matters related to the military. It is available in print on newsstands and in bookstores; select articles are available for free online as well.
Schism with The National Interest
The magazine was founded in 2005 by a number of members of the editorial board of The National Interest, led byFrancis Fukuyama, who stated that they were upset by changes to that journal’s editorial policy implemented by its new publisher, the Nixon Center.
Several people formerly associated with The National Interest are now associated with The American Interest, including former National Interest editor Adam Garfinkle (the founding editor of The American Interest); Fukuyama, who serves as chairman of the new journal’s four-man executive committee; Ruth Wedgwood, formerly a National Interest advisory council member and now an American Interest editorial board member; and Thomas M. Rickers, formerly the managing editor of The National Interest and now the managing editor of The American Interest.
Statement of Purpose
The purpose of the AI, as described on its website, is threefold:
1. “To analyze America’s conduct on the global stage and the forces that shape it–not just its strategic aspects, but also its economic, cultural and historical dimensions.”
2. “To examine what American policy should be. It is our view that the challenges and opportunities of our time transcend the assumptions and vocabulary used by both the Left and Right in recent years, and that we need to move beyond the defense of obsolete positions.”
3. “Third, though its name is The American Interest, our pages are open to the world…the AI invites citizens of all nations into the American national dialogue, convinced that Americans have much to learn from the experience and perspectives of others.”
Website Here
Editorial can be reached at:
Noelle Daly
1730 Rhode Island Ave NW
STE 617
Washington, DC 20036-3116
Tel: 202-223-4408
Fax: 202-223-4487
Email: noelle.daly@the-american-interest.com