Troubled Waters: The Increased Use of Private Security Contractors during the Iraq War

This paper tells the compelling and often overlooked story of the privatization of force during the Iraq War. Overall, private security contractors essentially reversed the dynamic that we have seen in previous debates regarding American military service. Before, offsets for the lack of necessary personnel spurred civilian policy makers to bring previously excluded groups into American military service. During the Iraq War, a lack of civilian oversight turned the dynamic on its head. Private security contractors become a counterweight for the dearth of necessary American service members relative to the nation’s ambitious strategic designs, often quietly used when and where convenient. As a result, private security contractors served to sever the vital connection between citizenship and American military service. It is a troubling trend that relates directly to American military service, because it allows civilian policy makers the expedient ability to avoid either clearly articulating the justification for additional service members or paring down international commitments to correlate to existing force levels. In addition, military leaders have become far too comfortable with the use of private security contractors, similar to the way that they became at ease with its antonym from an earlier era, the draft. The difference, of course, is the clear disconnect between military service and citizenship that the usage of private military contractors encourages. Military leaders often euphemistically characterize private military contractors as nothing more than a surge capability. Even so, private security contractors provide a significant addition of military personnel without forcing policy makers publicly to justify their usage to the American people in the way that using increased numbers of American service members always requires. Therein lies the rub.