The Impact of Private Security on US Foreign Policy

This sector of the private security industry presents numerous difficulties, including questions over what legal protections and regulations apply to security contractors who are considered civilians on the battlefield.

Currently, U.S. security contractors are held to statutes covered in the Military Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) of 2000.  The statute states that U.S. citizens accompanying U.S. armed forces will be held to U.S. law, and in instances of violation of any such law, U.S. courts would have jurisdiction. This seems to delineate jurisdiction fairly clearly in the case of a security contractor engaging in criminal or unwarranted behavior. However, as the role of civilian interrogators in abuses of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison came to light in 2004, an opaqueness seemed to exist concerning whether these civilian interrogators – who claimed they were acting under the orders of military intelligence officers – were criminally responsible for their actions.  This ambiguity created a public relations disaster for theUnited States.  In the interest of avoiding similar scenarios in the future, these legal issues need to be addressed further.

The recruitment of foreign nationals presents another question that needs to be addressed. One of the ways that companies maintain cost effectiveness is by hiring third country nationals. In Iraq, for example, of the 26,000 private security contractors employed in the operational sector, approximately 20,000 of those are Iraqi nationals.^[xx] This has exposed operational security to possible infiltration of the Iraqi security services by sectarian militia and terrorist elements.  However, it remains to be seen whether companies’ procedures are robust enough to maintain the proper levels of operational security given the highly sensitive nature of some their work.^[xxi]

Future Implications

With the increased use of private security services across the spectrum, we must ask what will be the future implications of their use for U.S. interests.  The future of U.N. peacekeeping and stability operations offers the most potential for the private security sector due to the inefficient contributions and effectiveness entailed in many U.N. employments.  U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan admitted that without the use of private security services, the U.N. “still lacks the capacity to implement rapidly and effectively the decisions of the Security Council calling for the dispatch of peacekeeping operations in crisis situations.”^[xxii]  The functional control of the UN bureaucracy to handle purely administrative matters – let alone hire and control a privatized military force – raises serious reservations.

The United Kingdom has indicated a willingness to consider the hiring of private security contractors to contribute to U.N. peacekeeping operations instead of sending troops from the British military.^[xxiii] This has some advantages that are worth examination. Control would still reside with the contributing nation-state that hired the private security company, and contracts can be designed to maintain control of the duration of deployment and implementation of armed force. Another benefit would be the reduction of political costs that usually accompanies U.S. military deployments abroad in open-ended U.N. peacekeeping operations. With the use of privatized security services, a robust military capability can still be maintained by the U.N. peacekeeping force without the attendant political backlash caused by casualties to U.S. forces. However, reform of the U.N.’s bloated bureaucracy needs to be a prerequisite for the enlarged use of privatized security within UN peacekeeping missions. Nevertheless, this remains a possible future option for U.S. policy makers that wish to see conflict situations dealt with without employing U.S. military forces.