PMF Masterfile

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS | MARCH/APRIL 2011

Resolved: The United States is justified in using private military firms abroad to pursue its military objectives. Victory Briefs Topic Analysis Book: Lincoln-Douglas March/April 2011 10NFL4-PMFs 2011 Victory Briefs, LLC Victory Briefs Topic Analysis Books are published by: Victory Briefs, LLC 925 North Norman Place Los Angeles, California 90049 Publisher: Victor Jih | Managing Editor: Mike Bietz | Editor: Mike Bietz | Topic Analysis Writers: Ryan Hamilton, Sarah Rainey, Todd Rainey, Christian Tarsney, Adam Torson | Evidence: Christian Tarsney & Adam Torson For customer support, please email [email protected] or call 310.472.6364.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 2

TOPIC ANALYSIS BY RYAN HAMILTON 8

TOPIC ANALYSIS BY CHRISTIAN TARSNEY 20

TOPIC ANALYSIS BY ADAM TORSON 33

TOPIC ANALYSIS BY SARAH RAINEY 55

TOPIC ANALYSIS BY TODD RAINEY 65

FRAMEWORK EVIDENCE 74 DEFINITION OF PMFS. 74 DEFINITION AND DESCRIPTION OF PMFS. 74 PMFS HAVE COME TO BE WIDELY UTILIZED BY STATES OVER THE LAST TWO DECADES. 75 PRIVATE MILITARY CONTRACTORS INCLUDE FIRMS THAT PROVIDE LOGISTICAL SUPPORT, PRIVATE SECURITY, AND THAT SUPPORT OR ENGAGE IN REGULAR MILITARY OPERATIONS. 76 THE RISE OF PRIVATE MILITARY FIRMS IS TIED TO THE UNDEREMPLOYMENT OF MILITARY PERSONNEL AFTER THE COLD WAR, AN INFLUX OF ARMS INTO THE PRIVATE MARKET, INCREASING GLOBAL INSTABILITY, AND THE TREND TOWARD PRIVATIZATION AT THE END OF THE 20TH CENTURY. 77 IT IS NOT ALWAYS CLEAR WHETHER PMC PERSONNEL ARE CONSIDERED CIVILIANS AS OPPOSED TO COMBATANTS UNDER THE INTERNATIONAL LAW OF WAR. 79 TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ARE CENTRAL COMPONENTS OF DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY. 80 DEMOCRACY DOES NOT REQUIRE PERFECT TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY. 81 PMCS ARE AN ENORMOUS GLOBAL INDUSTRY. 82 MILITARY SUPPORT FIRMS DEFINED 82 MILITARY CONSULTING FIRMS DEFINED 83 MILITARY PROVIDER FIRMS DEFINED 84 THE UNITED STATES USED A HUGE NUMBER OF PMCS IN IRAQ. 85 MERCENARY DEFINED IN INTERNATIONAL LAW 86 DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OVER THE MILITARY IS PARTICULARLY IMPORTANT, ESPECIALLY IN RELATION TO HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION. 87 UTILITARIAN FRAMEWORK FOR PMCS 88

AFFIRMATIVE EVIDENCE 90 THE U.S. MILITARY IS DEPENDENT ON PRIVATE FIRMS INGENUITY AND EXPERTISE TO DEVELOP, IMPLEMENT, AND MAINTAIN ADVANCED WEAPONS SYSTEMS. 90 PMCS HAVE BEEN ESSENTIAL IN THE PROCESS OF REBUILDING IRAQ. 91 PMCS ALLOW THE US TO MAINTAIN SURGE CAPACITY AND THE ABILITY TO DEPLOY RAPIDLY. 92 PMCS ARE MORE COST EFFECTIVE THAN CONVENTIONAL MILITARY FORCES. 93 PRIVATIZING MILITARY SERVICES ALLOWS THE MARKET TO CORRECT FOR IMPERFECTIONS IN THE CONTRACTING PROCESS. PMCS MAY SERVE AS IMPORTANT SOURCE OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE. 93 INCIDENTS WITH PMCS IN IRAQ LET TO GREATER OVERSIGHT STARTING IN LATE 2007. 94 BEGINNING IN LATE 2007, THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE HAS IMPROVED ITS CONTRACTING PROCESS WITH PMCS TO ENSURE GREATER OVERSIGHT, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND TRAINING. 95 IN LATE 2007, THE STATE DEPARTMENT TOOK A NUMBER OF STEPS TO SUBSTANTIALLY IMPROVE REGULATION AND OVERSIGHT OF PMCS. 97


INTERAGENCY RULES CONCERNING PMC REGULATION HAVE SUBSTANTIALLY IMPROVED THEIR OPERATION SINCE LATE 2007. 99 THE PRACTICE OF USING PRIVATE FIRMS TO SUPPORT THE NATIONAL DEFENSE INFRASTRUCTURE HAS A LONG HISTORY. 100 THE NOTION OF A STRICT DIVISION BETWEEN PRIVATE AND GOVERNMENTAL FUNCTIONS IS NOT REALISTIC. 101 A STRONG DISTINCTION BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE FUNCTIONS IS ILLUSORY. 102 CRITICS OFTEN EMPHASIZE THE ROLE OF ARMED CONTRACTORS BUT IGNORE DIFFICULT DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN THESE AND OTHER TYPES OF CONTRACTORS. 103 THE CLAIM THAT PRIVATIZATION OF DEFENSE SERVICES IS AN IMPROPER DELEGATION OF SOVEREIGN AUTHORITY RESTS ON AN OVERLY-SIMPLISTIC CONCEPTION OF SOVEREIGNTY. 104 REGULATORY ISSUES ARE SECONDARY IN RELATION TO THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION OF WHAT ROLE PRIVATE CONTRACTORS SHOULD PLAY IN PUBLIC DEFENSE. 105 SIMPLY SHOWING THAT PMCS HAVE A PROFIT MOTIVE DOES NOT MEAN THAT THEIR MOTIVATIONS CONFLICT WITH IMPORTANT NATIONAL SECURITY INTERESTS. 106 THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT PMCS CAUSE BRAIN DRAIN OR UNDERMINE MILITARY RETENTION. 107 EMPIRICAL DATA SHOWS THAT MOTIVATION AND RETENTION ISSUES ARE COMMON TO CONVENTIONAL FORCES AND CONTRACTORS, AND THAT WORK WITH CONTRACTORS DOES NOT REDUCE MILITARY RETENTION RATES. 108 THE PAY GAP BETWEEN SOLDIERS AND CONTRACTORS IS COMPENSATED FOR BY THE MILITARY BENEFITS PACKAGE. SOLDIERS AND CONTRACTORS HAVE SIMILAR JOB SATISFACTION. 109 PMCS ARE NO MORE PRONE TO UNLAWFUL VIOLENCE THAN CONVENTIONAL SOLDIERS. IN FACT MANY PMC PERSONNEL HAVE MORE TRAINING THAN THEIR MILITARY COUNTERPARTS. 110 DEMOGRAPHIC DATA SUGGEST THAT PMC PERSONNEL ARE NO MORE LIKELY TO COMMIT UNLAWFUL VIOLENCE THAN CONVENTIONAL SOLDIERS. 111 THE IDEA THAT THE PROFIT MOTIVE LEADS PMCS TO SELECT A PARTICULAR TYPE OF EMPLOYEE IS NEGATED BY THE FACT THAT PROFIT IS ALSO A COMMON MOTIVATION FOR CONVENTIONAL SOLDIERS. BOTH ALSO SHARE THE DESIRE TO SERVE THE PUBLIC GOOD. 111 PMCS ARE NECESSARY TO DEPLOY ADVANCED WEAPONS TECHNOLOGY. 112 PMCS PERMIT STATES TO OPERATE AN EFFECTIVE MILITARY WITHOUT RESORTING TO CONSCRIPTION, WHICH IS BOTH DEMOCRATICALLY UNPOPULAR AND CREATES A LESS EFFECTIVE FIGHTING FORCE. 112 MILITARY FAILURES IN THE 20TH CENTURY HAVE GENERATED A STRONG PUBLIC DISTASTE FOR MILITARY CASUALTIES. 113 THE PERCEIVED GLOBALIZATION OF NATIONAL INTERESTS HAS SPURRED THE NEED TO DEVELOP THE CAPABILITY TO RAPIDLY PROJECT MILITARY FORCE. 114 PRIVATIZATION INCREASES THE QUALITY OF LABOR AVAILABLE TO GOVERNMENT AND ALLOWS THE FUNCTIONAL RETENTION OF TRAINED PERSONNEL WHO WOULD OTHERWISE MOVE OUT OF THE SECURITY SECTOR ALTOGETHER. 115 THOUGH PMCS MAY BE MORE EXPENSIVE THAN CONVENTIONAL FORCES IN THE NEAR TERM, THE FACT THAT GOVERNMENT NEED NOT UTILIZE PMCS IN PEACETIME RESULTS IN NET COST SAVINGS OVER TIME. 116 PMCS ARE A MORE COST-EFFECTIVE WAY TO DEPLOY PERSONNEL WITH SPECIALIZED SKILLS. 117 PMCS SUPPORT NEEDED SURGE CAPACITY AND FORCE DIFFUSION. 118 PMCS FREE UP CONVENTIONAL FORCES TO FOCUS ON THE MISSION, IMPROVING EFFECTIVENESS AND JOB SATISFACTION. 118 THE USE OF INDIGENOUS PMCS MAY REDUCE TENSIONS IN FOREIGN COMBAT THEATRES AND IMPROVE COST EFFECTIVENESS. 119 THE ALTERNATIVE TO PMCS IS THE USE OF PROXY FIGHTERS, WHICH ARE MUCH LESS EFFECTIVE. 120 THE USE OF PROXY FIGHTERS UNDERMINES LEGITIMACY MORE THAN PMCS BECAUSE WE HAVE LESS CONTROL OVER THEIR ACTIONS AND THEY REQUIRE MORE EXTERNAL SUPPORT. 121 IDENTIFYING THE POTENTIAL HARMS OF PMCS IS NOT ENOUGH. OFTEN TIMES THEIR BENEFITS OUTWEIGH THEIR ADVANTAGES, AS WITH THE EXPERIENCE THEY BRING TO THE MILITARY INTELLIGENCE FIELD. 122 THE PUBLIC MILITARY ALSO LACKS SUBSTANTIAL TRANSPARENCY. 123


WHILE THE TRANSPARENCY OF PMCS IS A CONCERN, CONGRESS AND THE COURTS HAVE THE POWER TO REQUIRE MORE SUBSTANTIAL DISCLOSURES THAN THEY CURRENTLY DO. 124 PMCS ARE MORE INCLINED TO DISCLOSE BECAUSE THEY ARE SENSITIVE TO THEIR COMMERCIAL REPUTATION. 125 PMCS ARE SHAPED BY THE NORMS OF THOSE WHO HIRE THEM BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO RESPOND TO THE DEMANDS OF THE MARKET. 126 EXISTING CONTRACT LAW PROVIDES A VIABLE MEANS OF CHECKING PMC ABUSES. 127 THERE IS NO INTERNATIONAL LAW BANNING MERCENARIES, AND PMCS DO NOT FIT THE DEFINITION OF MERCENARY ANYWAY. 128 PMCS ARE WELL EQUIPPED TO ALLEVIATE THE PRINCIPLE BARRIERS TO HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS. 129 THE USE OF PMCS COULD OVERCOME MANY OF THE TRADITIONAL BARRIERS TO HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION. 130 PMCS ARE ABLE TO MOBILE QUICKLY WITH WELL-TRAINED PERSONNEL TO DIRECTLY INTERVENE IN HUMANITARIAN CRISES. 131 PMCS COULD BE USED TO FILL IN RESOURCE GAPS THAT CURRENTLY EXIST FOR NATIONS OR INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS WILLING TO INTERVENE IN HUMANITARIAN CRISES. 132 PMCS COULD PROVIDE SUPPORT SERVICES TO MAKE HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS MORE EFFECTIVE. 132 IT IS OFTEN IN A STATES NATIONAL INTEREST TO ENGAGE IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION. 133 TRADITIONAL AGENTS OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION ARE SUBJECT TO THE SAME OBJECTIONS AS PMCS. 134 HUMANITARIAN CRISES REPRESENT THE WORST MORAL WRONG. 135 WHEN PMCS ARE LIKELY TO STOP A HORRIBLE GENOCIDE, THE MORAL ADVANTAGE OF USING THEM OUTWEIGHS THE MORAL CONCERNS OF DOING SO. 136 THE DIFFICULTY IN PREDICTING THE CONSEQUENCES OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS IS NOT A COMPELLING OBJECTION TO THE USE OF PMCS IN MANY CIRCUMSTANCES. 137 PMF PERSONNEL ARE BETTER-TRAINED, MORE EXPERIENCED AND MORE EFFECITVE THAN REGULAR SOLDIERS. 138 PMFS ARE MILITARILY EFFECTIVESIERRA LEONE PROVES. 139 PMFS ARE MILITARILY EFFECTIVEANGOLA PROVES. 140 PMFS ARE HIGHLY MOTIVATED AND DISPLAY COMMITMENT TO OPERATIONAL SUCCESS. 141 PMFS PROVIDE SPECIALIZED PERSONNEL WHO ARE OTHERWISE HARD TO RECRUIT. 142 PMFS ARE EFFECTIVE AT COUNTERINSURGENCY SINCE THEY BRING IN LOCALS WHO UNDERSTAND CONDITIONS ON THE GROUND. 142 PMFS CAN BE MORE QUICKLY AND FLEXIBLY DEPLOYED THAN REGULAR FORCES. 143 PMFS ARE ABLE TO RESPOND TO INTERNATIONAL CRISES FASTER AND EASILY THAN STATES OR INTERNATIONAL BODIES. 143 TO MEET OUR GLOBAL COMMITMENTS WITHOUT RELYING ON PMFS WE WOULD NEED TO EXPAND THE MILITARY TO AN EXTENT THAT IS POLITICALLY UNREALISTIC. 144 THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HAS RECOGNIZED THAT PMFS ARE AN INELIMINABLE ELEMENT OF US FOREIGN POLICY. 145 PMFS ALLOW US TO SUSTAIN COMMITMENTS WHICH ARE OTHERWISE POLITICALLY UNFEASIBLE. 146 THE EXISTENCE OF PMFS IS UNALTERABLE; THE US NEEDS TO PARTICIPATE IN DEVELOPING A GLOBAL REGULATORY REGIME TO ENSURE THEY ACT AS A FORCE FOR GOOD. 147 PMF INTERVENTIONS HAVE STOPPED ATROCITIES THAT WESTERN GOVERNMENTS WERE UNWILLING TO PREVENT. 149 PMFS ARE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPERS. 150


THE ABUSES COMMITTED BY PMFS ARE NO WORSE THAN THOSE COMMITTED BY UN PEACEKEEPERS; AND, ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISMS ARE EASY TO CREATE CONTRACTUALLY. 150 PMFS MORE EFFECITVE THAN TRADITIONAL UN PEACEKEEPING FORCES. 151 PMFS ACT AS FORCE MULTIPLIERS, REDUCING CASUALTIES IN CIVIL WARS. 151 UN PEACEKEEPING FORCES ARE INEPT AND INEFFECTIVE COMPARED TO PMFSRWANDA PROVES. 152 UN PEACEKEEPING FORCES ARE INEPT AND INEFFECTIVE COMPARED TO PMFSANGOLA PROVES. 153 PMFS ARE FAR BETTER EQUIPPED THAN UN PEACEKEEPING FORCES. 154 THE UN IS NOT SERIOUSLY AS COMMITTED TO PEACEKEEPING AS PMFSALLOWS ATROCITIES LIKE RWANDA TO OCCUR. 156 PMFS ARE MORE EFFECTIVE SIGNALLERS IN PEACEKEEPING SITUATIONS. 157 PMFS HIRED BY THIRD-PARTY ACTORS TO RESOLVE CIVIL CONFLICTS HAVE STRONG AND WELL-ALLIGNED PERFORMANCE INCENTIVES. 159 PMFS CAN COMPLEMENT LONG-TERM UN PEACEKEEPING FORCES BY ACTING AS VANGUARD AND RAPID-REACTION FORCES. 160 PMFS PLAY AN ESSENTIAL ROLE IN PEACEKEEPING. 161 THE FAILURE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO RESPOND ADEQUATELY TO HUMANITARIAN CRISES CREATES A CASE PMFS. 161 PMFS ARE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN UN PKOSSIERRA LEONE PROVES. 162 THE US HAS TAKEN STEPS TO MAKE PMFS MORE ACCOUNTABLE, CONTINUES TO DEMONSTRATE COMMITMENT TO STOPPING ABUSES. 163 PMFS ARENT MERCENARIES, UNDER THE CRITERIA ESTABLISHED IN THE GENEVA CONVENTION. 164

NEGATIVE EVIDENCE 165 COORDINATION PROBLEMS LEAD TO PMFS AND MILITARY UNITS WORKING AT CORSS PURPOSES. 165 PMF PERSONNEL ARE UNRELIABLE, WONT GO INTO DANGER VOLUNTARILY. 166 PMFS HURT MILITARY INTEGRATION AND COORDINATION. 166 PMFS INCREASE THE COST OF MILITARY OPERATIONS. 167 ANY POTENTIAL COST SAVINGS FROM PMFS ARE AMBIGUOUS AND DIFFICULT TO CALCULATE. 168 PMFS ARE COSTLY. 168 ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISMS ARE KEY FOR PMFS, SINCE THEY OPERATE IN ARENAS WHERE THE POTENTIAL FOR ABUSES IS INHERENT. 169 PMFS ARE NOT ADEQUATELY REGULATED, ENGAGE IN SUBSTANTIAL ABUSES OF POWER INCLUDING THE SEX TRADE. 170 PMFS ARE CLOSED TO PUBLIC SCRUTINY AND DIFFICULT TO HOLD ACCOUNTABLE. 171 THE DEMAND FOR ENORMOUS NUMBERS OF PMF CONTRACTORS HAS LED TO QUESTIONABLE HIRING PRACTICES AND POOR TRAINING, RESULTING IN HARM TO CIVILIANS AND US IMAGE. 172 PRIVATE CONTRACTORS ARE HARDER TO HOLD LEGALLY ACCOUNTABLE THAN REGULAR SOLDIERS. 173 ENLISTING CONTRACTORS INTO THE REGULAR MILITARY WOULD MAKE THEM MORE ACCOUNTABLE TO THE MILITARY CHAIN OF COMMAND. 173 MULTIPLE SCOTUS DECISIONS HAVE MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO HOLD PMFS ACCOUNTABLE THROUGH REGULAR CHANNELS OF MILITARY JUSTICE. 174 THE AMBIGUOUS LEGAL STATUS OF PMFS CREATES BOTH RISKS FOR THEIR PERSONNEL, AND LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY. 175 PMF PERSONNEL HAVE NOT BEEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR INVOLVEMENT IN ABUSES LIKE ABU GHRAIB. 176


THE US REGULATORY REGIME FOR PMFS IS INADEQUATE AND FULL OF LOOPHOLES. 177 US-EMPLOYED MILITARY CONTRACTORS HAVE BEEN HEAVILY INVOLVED IN SEX-TRAFFICKING. 178 REPATRIATION OF CONTRACTORS FACING CRIMINAL ACCUSATIONS MAKES PROSECUTION AND CONVICTION DIFFICULT. 180 CONTRACTORS ARE LESS ACCOUNTABLE FOR SEX CRIMES THAN MILITARY MEMBERS. 180 PMFS ALLOW GOVERNMENTS TO AVOID RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE POLICIES THEY PURSUE. 181 RELIANCE ON PMFS WEAKENS DEMOCRATIC CHECKS ON GOVERNMENT. 181 PMFS HAVE INCENTIVES TO PROVOKE AND PROLONG CONFLICT, AND UNDERMINE THE PERCEPTUAL LEGITIMACY OF GOVERNMENT. 182 PMFS ENDANGER THE TRANSPARENCY OF THE POLITICAL PROCESS AND THE CHARACTER OF MILITARY SERVICE. 183 PMFS ACT AS FOREIGN POLICY PROXIES FOR STATES, GIVING THEM DENIABILITY ON POLITICALLY RISKY OPERATIONS. 183 THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH HAS USED PMFS TO EVADE CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT, HIDE THE COSTS OF WAR. 184 PMFS LET THE US MILITARY CONTINUE TO ACT AS GLOBAL POLICEMAN DESPITE LACK OF PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR THAT ROLE; RELIANCE ON PMFS ENCOURAGES UNIALTERALISM AND BURDENS THE US ECONOMY. 185 PMFS ENCOURAGE UNILATERALISM. 186 PMFS MAKE THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE MORE POLITICALLY CONVENIENT. 187 PMFS UNDERMINE THE STATES MONOPOLY ON VIOLENCE. 187 PMF PERFORMANCE IS HARD TO MONITOR; MARKET INCENTIVES FAIL SINCE THERES NO GUARANTEE THEYRE ACTUALLY MEETING THEIR CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS. 188 PMCS ALLOW GOVERNMENTS TO GIVE UNOFFICIAL MILITARY SUPPORT TO PARTICULAR GROUPS WHILE MAINTAINING A GUISE OF NEUTRALITY. 189 THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT PMCS ARE ACTUALLY COST EFFECTIVE RELATIVE TO CONVENTIONAL FORCES. 190 PMCS UNDERMINE CONVENTIONAL FORCES BY COMPETING FOR EXPERT AND TALENTED PERSONNEL. 191 PMCS UNDERMINE CONVENTIONAL MILITARY OPERATIONS BECAUSE THEY PROBLEMATIZE COORDINATION, ARE LESS ACCOUNTABLE THAN REGULAR MILITARY PERSONNEL, AND ARE SEEN BY LOCAL POPULATIONS AS HIRED GUNS. 192 PMCS DO NOT NECESSARILY HAVE THE SAME HIGH STANDARDS FOR ITS EMPLOYEES AS THE MILITARY DOES FOR ITS COMBAT FORCES. 193 PMCS ARE NOT AS ACCOUNTABLE AS REGULAR MILITARY FORCES. 194 PMCS FACE TREMENDOUS RISK OF CASUALTIES IN COMBAT OPERATIONS. THIS ALLOWS THE GOVERNMENT TO DISCLAIM SOME OF THE ACTUAL COST OF MILITARY OPERATIONS. 194 PMCS HAVE INAPPROPRIATE LOBBYING INFLUENCE. 195 GLOBAL REGULATION OF PMCS WOULD BE IDEAL, BUT THIS IS UNLIKELY TO SUCCEED IN AN ACCEPTABLE TIMEFRAME. 196 PMCS NEED BETTER REGULATION OF THEIR HIRING PROCESS. 197 THE ALIEN TORT CLAIMS ACT IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE MEANS OF REGULATING PMC CONDUCT. 197 THE MILITARY EXTRATERRITORIAL JURISDICTION ACT (MEJA) ALLOWS SOME REGULATION BUT LEAVES A MAJOR LOOPHOLE. 198 MILITARY USE OF PMCS IN FUNCTIONS THAT IMPLICATE NATIONAL SECURITY IS INAPPROPRIATE. 199 THE USE OF PMCS IN IRAQ IS THE LARGEST AND MOST EXPANSIVE IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 200 THE ROLE OF PMCS HAS EXPANDED TO THE EXTENT THAT PMCS MAY NOW BE CLASSIFIED AS COMBATANTS RATHER THAN CIVILIANS UNDER THE LAWS OF WAR. 201 THE AUTHORITY OF BATTLEFIELD COMMANDERS IS INSUFFICIENT TO REGULATE PMCS. 202 THE MEJA GIVES THE ABILITY TO CRIMINALLY PROSECUTE PMC PERSONNEL BUT IS RARELY USED. 203


THE UNIFORM CODE OF MILITARY JUSTICE IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE MEANS OF REGULATING PMCS. 204 USAID DOES NOT EFFECTIVELY REGULATE THE PMCS WHICH PROVIDE SECURITY FOR ITS CONTRACTORS. 205 CONGRESS HAS FAILED TO EXPAND THE MEJA TO ENSURE CRIMINAL JURISDICTION OVER PMC EMPLOYEES. 206 EFFORTS AT INTERAGENCY COORDINATION TO REGULATE PMCS NEED TO BE STRENGTHENED TO PUT THEM UNDER ONE CHAIN OF COMMAND. 207 EARLIER ATTEMPTS TO REGULATE PMC HIRING AND TRAINING DO NOT GO FAR ENOUGH. 208 RARE PROSECUTIONS OF PMC MISCONDUCT LEAD MANY TO THINK THEY ARE ABOVE THE LAW. 209 THE UNITED STATES NEEDS TO IMPROVE ITS RESOURCES AVAILABLE FOR CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF PMC PERSONNEL. 210 PMCS UNDERMINE THE ABILITY TO WAGE COUNTERINSURGENCY BECAUSE FIRMS DO NOT ALWAYS SHARE THE SAME OBJECTIVES AS THE GOVERNMENT. 212 PMCS MASK THE TRUE COST OF WAR. 212 PMCS BLUR THE LINE BETWEEN AND CIVILIAN AND MILITARY OPERATIVES. 213 OVER-RELIANCE ON PMCS PREVENTS THE MILITARY FROM PERFORMING VITAL FUNCTIONS IN THE EVENT THAT PRIVATE FIRMS FAIL. 213 CONSTITUTIONAL CRITICS WORRY THAT PMCS UNDERMINE GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY. 214 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SCHOLARS CRITICIZE PMCS BECAUSE THEY UNDERMINE THE STATE MONOPOLY ON VIOLENCE IN THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA. 215 THERE WAS VERY LITTLE LEGAL OVERSIGHT OF PMCS IN IRAQ. 216 THE SPECIAL MARITIME AND TERRITORIAL JURISDICTION STATUTE PROVIDES A VERY WEAK CHECK AGAINST PMC ABUSE. 218 EXTENSIONS OF THE UNIFORM CODE OF MILITARY JUSTICE ARE A CONSTITUTIONALLY SUSPECT WAY OF REGULATING PMCS. 219 THE ALIEN TORT CLAIMS ACT IS A VERY WEAK CHECK ON PMC ABUSES. 220 INTERNATIONAL LEGAL NORMS GENERALLY PROHIBIT STATES FROM HIRING MERCENARIES TO ENGAGE IN ARMED ATTACKS AGAINST OTHER STATES. 221 VERY FEW STATES ARE PARTIES TO THE UN MERCENARY CONVENTION 222 THE LACK OF A CLEAR REPORTING STRUCTURE UNDERMINES PMC ACCOUNTABILITY. 222 THE USE OF PMCS MAKES IT EASIER TO BYPASS THE SECURITY COUNSEL AND TRADITIONAL STATE RESTRICTIONS ON THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE. 223 BUREAUCRACY UNDERMINES THE TRANSPARENCY THE PMC CONTRACTING PROCESS AND GIVES PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY FOR PMC ABUSES. 224 THE US CANNOT ESCAPE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ACTIONS OF PMCS. 225 UNDER A DEONTOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK, USING PMCS FOR HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IS MORALLY PROBLEMATIC BECAUSE OF THE PROFIT-MOTIVE. 226 THE USE OF PMCS REDUCES DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS. 227 USE OF PMCS IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION UNDERMINES DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY BECAUSE WE HAVE LESS CONTROL OVER PMCS THAN WE DO OVER CONVENTIONAL FORCES. 228 PMCS HAVE AN INCENTIVE TO BE INEFFECTIVE AT HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS. 229


Topic Analysis by Ryan Hamilton Overview The history of private military firms is as long as warfare itself prior to Napoleons widespread use of conscription, most warfare occurred between mercenaries hired or sent to satisfy some feudal oath by warring parties. It is an interesting to note that the birth of the United States, the subject of the resolution, was won in warfare that occurred largely against Hessian mercenaries a sort of precursor to the modern private military firms. These modern firms are largely entirely different than the roving band of ruffians bought by territorial rulers to enforce their edicts they come with significantly more training, a higher degree of experience, and the ability to accomplish precision-necessary missions with a higher likelihood of success than a standard volunteer military unit. However, they cost an incredible amount of money, suffer virtually no civilian oversight, and lack the stability and predictability of more conventional forces. This brief hopes to go over both affirmative and negative framework ideas and give a primer on arguments that are likely to dominate the debates on this topic.

I am largely opposed to the idea that the affirmative can advocate for one particular instance of the use of any feature of a resolution in a particular scenario and win the resolution on those grounds or that ground, but I think this topic encourages that type of debate, (for instance, an affirmative who advocated specifically for the use of PMFs by the USG in Pakistan would seem to me to be topical, given that an affirmation of that statement would necessarily be an affirmation of the broader resolution, that if the affirmative can, in any instance, prove that PMFs ought to be used abroad, then they have met their burden) and in many respects, a discussion of substance from which debaters can expect a meaningful education must be connected to the real world policies that surround PMFs. Objecting to PMFs on the basis that they dont satisfy the categorical imperative doesnt seem to me to engender the type of relevant education that is sought by this resolution which is to say, what role should private corporations


play in the warfaring operations of a republic that has a set of expectations for how that warfare is conducted.

Certainly one can draw on principled philosophical reasons for the outright rejection of PMFs because of the violation of this side constraint or that, but I think the more convincing positions will engage these entities on the basis of how they perform in the real world as opposed to the theoretical. I also think that the topic literature that debaters are likely to find will be so heavily biased toward the former that it would be difficult to construct a thoughtful position (without dragging out the tired, old Thomist canards of just war theory) without linking into some real world impacts.

I dont think that the word justified implies a value of justice because here it is meant to relate to some kind of rationale, a convincing decision calculus by which others might come to understand using PMFs as a good policy, and not that the United States would be just to use PMFs. There might be an argument to be made saying that affirming satisfies notions of justice under social contract theory, but I dont think these are likely to be the most compelling impact scenarios.

Criterions, then, should set out to delineate what distinguishes good military policy from bad military policy in the United States. These might combine different ethics of evaluation: is the policy, in this case, overseas use of PMFs, likely to maximize the objectives of the military? Is it consistent with the values citizens of the US are likely to have of their military? Is it efficient?

Affirmative I. Framework I think a good framework for the affirmative might be born out of maintenance of hegemony so much of what PMFs do is alleviate the stress on the regular military and contribute to the USs ability to accomplish military objectives by adding competencies and capabilities that are otherwise outside of the regular militarys scope. The links back to justification are easy, and impact scenarios for the alternative to US hegemony come easy, too. Promoting a US


dominated world order in which the alternatives are China, or some form of Russo-Sino-petrocratic alliance, or a multipolar world with regional powers like Iran, Venezuela, and other oppressive states is pretty compelling, and PMFs uniquely enable the United States to function as the hegemon by adding to the overall functionality of the military.

Those less prone to world domination might see frameworks of value in arguments that promote a quick end to conflict arguments below explore the unique flexibility that PMFs possess in relation to the regular military that allow them to adapt to situations and incorporate various factors that are likely to bring a speedy end to conflict that involve fewer casualties and more precision-based operations, given the highly trained status of most high level combat contractors. This would seem to justify their use on more humanist terms than hegemony, and probably give affirmatives good opportunities to link into negative criterions that talk about how they commit untold abuses. Frameworks, as I noted above, that suit more particular instantiations of the resolution abound: PMFs are justified for use in x country to fight terrorism, stabilize the local democratic regime, prevent abuses in places like Darfur, secure a safe transition of the planned country in Southern Sudan, etc. there are a ton of arguments to be made about the ability of PMFs to operate with less scrutiny than the regular army, and even if affirmatives concede impacts about efficacy, their ability to conduct operations without causing international incidents or stirring up the local anti-American tribe is a major bonus. II. Arguments

I think one of the first things that an affirmative can do to strengthen their position is point out that there are private military firms that dont specialize in combat, but rather combat operations that act in support of the firepower deployed by the government. Particular firms KBR, for instance are able to accomplish support operations which can only be described as martial with more efficiency and at a significantly reduced cost than the government. While I think basing an entire case position forwarding the argument that the USG is justified


in using noncombat-oriented PMFs will open one up to a true indictment on theory, I think that it is easier to affirm the resolution holistically when judges recognize that the firms involved arent always blowing away swarthy citizens of some far off foreign country, but rather providing necessary and crucial support operations that are instrumental in advancing whatever military objective exists, that the organizations that ought to be available to the US government while conducting military operations abroad provide crucial intelligence (from satellites, say), crucial logistics (specialized food production and delivery, maybe) and technology assistance. That leads me to one of the first affirmative arguments it is impractical and wasteful for the government to maintain full time volunteer units that specialize in technical aspects of warfare when the operation could be performed by a firm that specializes in both peaceful and combat related technologies. The financial outlays for permanent regular military units are astronomical when considered over time (as discussed later). Moreover, military units that arent consistently involved in their trade wont develop or maintain their skills at the rate at which private competitors will. A unit dedicated to some type of technology gathering data that produces high resolution, detailed topographical maps, lets say that isnt consistently deployed will not be as sharp as a private contractor which is in possession of a team that is at work during both war and peacetime. The unit sponsored by the government will likely be weighed down by rules and regulations, and because theyre not seeking to develop this unit into an income, wont be as pressed to innovate or develop new methods of producing high resolution detailed topographical maps. There main impact here is efficiency: the taxpayer is in the line for maintaining a maybe its used, maybe its not unit that could easily be replaced by a more efficient and effective private competitor that is likely to have better performance, anyway. That sort of flexibility is what gives PMFs a major advantage. Another argument is that PMFs allow the US government to perform crucial, strategic operations without risking significant diplomatic capital that would result from the


deployment of conventional military units. This can be demonstrated in two ways: in Colombia the United States finances an operation that hires a private firm that conducts reconnaissance missions and counter insurgency operations that the South American political community would likely reject if they were conducted by US government regulars.1 Moreover, these operations avoid significant questions of a diplomatic nature as private corporations, the firms dont have to establish a military base that would inflame anti-American sentiment, nor is the US government on the hook if an individual local contractor breaks the law. This last item might seem like a minor concern, but some of the largest disputes between Japan, and South Korea, respectively, and the United States, have come about after troops garrisoned in those two countries have repeatedly broken the law hardly a year passes in ROK and Japan when a GI raping a local girl doesnt cause diplomatic tension and threatens the cooperation between governments. While the impact of the crime might be the same on an individual level, or a criminal justice level, the US is able to avoid the image problems with which it becomes associated after one of its uniformed personnel is involved in a crime. This allows the United States to pursue its military objectives without being hampered by concerns external to those objectives and avoid significant political feedback from the governments in which the objectives are meant to occur.

Affirmatives dont lose the argument on finance, either PMFs have allowed the government to cut costs while at the same time alleviating overstretch of the regular military. President Obama is under increasing pressure to reduce the budget deficit, particularly with the election of a GOP congress that has pledged to reduce the next fiscal years deficit by 500 billion roughly half of the projected deficit2. Secretary Gates has announced that he seeks to find $78 billion in savings from the military3. An affirmative case position might argue that given these heightened budget concerns, PMFs uniquely qualify as the solution 1 http://colombiajournal.org/colombia19.htm 2 http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/ab-stoddard/143117-battle-begins-on-gop-cuts 3 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/us/politics/27pentagon.html


that satisfies both the need to continue anti-terror operations, promote democracy and peace in the Middle East, and maintain the ability to project US hard power while at the same time satisfying the budget realities at home.

Outlays for regulars over time surely cost more than those for PMFs, especially when one considers what the USG is responsible for paying to the average soldier over the course of his or her life. More than $125 billion is allocated to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the countrys largest bureaucracy, an increase from $75 billion in just 2 years4. Roughly half of that budget is directed toward care for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. In addition to after care to which all regulars are entitled, the US government offers enlistment bonuses, varying levels of training, tuition pay back schemes, survivors benefits, and a whole host of other incentives that cost huge sums of money. Even if we cancel projected liabilities resulting from the regular army, estimates of the dollar amount it takes to keep 1 US soldier in Afghanistan range from 390,000 to 1 million dollars.5

PMF financing is structured in a different way the costs arent backloaded in the same fashion that they are for a typical GI. Some highly skilled contractors working in dangerous situations can make upwards of 1,000 dollars a day, but thats it. Naturally the firm deploying the same highly skilled contractor will bill for transportation and logistics, while structuring in the payment money that turns a healthy profit. Thats the end of the line for government liabilities once the payment has been made to the firm, the account is settled. There doesnt exist a complex and vast bureaucracy that requires literally decades taxpayer support to an individual soldier. The CBOs 2008 study of the then five year old War in Iraq concluded that even though private contractors outnumbered regular troops in the region by approximately 40,000, they accounted for just 20% of total budget for the conflict.6 Excluding outlays in the military budget for increasing stability and fostering a civil society, combat operations could be 4 http://www.va.gov/budget/docs/summary/Fy2011VaBudgetRolloutPresentation.pdf 5 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/us/politics/15cost.html 6 http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/96xx/doc9688/08-12-IraqContractors.pdf


handled in Iraq by exclusively PMFs, hypothetically, where we could double the number of contractors, radically reduce the number of US troops committed to the operation and cut costs, assuming that the aforementioned protected budgetary concerns made up for 20% of spending (they do not) by 40%. The impacts are here: troop reductions help allay the local impression that the United States is an occupying force that is largely reported to fuel the cause of the insurgency and terrorists worldwide. Western military presence in Iraq has been used by indigenous rebel rousers, notably Muqtada Al-Sadr, to justify the maintenance of local militias that arent answerable to the civilian authority in Iraq and have in the past been used to visit violence on minority communities within Baghdad, especially the formerly empowered Sunnis, while fomenting civil war. A reduction in uniformed, regular troops would create the impression of a more independent Iraq while specialized PMF contractors left behind continue to pursue military goals and neutralize threats to a democratic and stable Iraq. It would also take the wind out of the sails of Iranian malcontents who are reported to be working in the country to subvert the political freedoms in favor of a more radicalized, Islamic Republic similar to the one in place in Iran now. Secondly, the use of PMFs alleviate concerns of overextending combat forces in the regular army while at the same time giving the administration greater flexibility in deploying human capital that doesnt include conscription. Even if one concedes that all combat operations should be performed by the regular uniformed service, the support operations, largely made up of logistics, can certainly be farmed out to different corporations with existing global networks that can accomplish the task at a lower cost and without putting pressure on the government to coercively draft its male population into servitude. I have heard a report that the tooth to tail ratio in Vietnam was 10 supporting troops for every 1 combat troop this ratio can be improved by using PMFs to reduce stress on uniformed troops so that more regulars can be dedicated to combat missions.

Additionally, PMFs allow the US government to capitalize on foreign expertise in a way for which the conventional military does not allow. The same


report found that only 20% of PMF contractors were US citizens, and less than 40% of contractors were citizens of the country in which they worked, and even less if you exclude the number of Iraqis working in Iraq. These individuals undoubtedly have expertise for which the US military has a need. Kuwaitis (who had first hand experience fighting the Iraqi army), Jordanians, and other regional neighbors hired by firms for which the traditional military structure has no analog. Guides, translators, disaffected natives, former soldiers in regional militaries and a number of other groups who might have common cause with the US military all possess literal treasures of expertise that assists in achieving military objectives. More to the point, soldiers from places like Colombia and the Philippines (a country which itself has a domestic Islamic insurgency) have experience in fighting local rebels that would be certainly be of assistance in Iraqi and Afghani counter-insurgency operations. While some foreign citizens might be permitted to enlist in the regular army, it is hard to imagine any kind of official apparatus being able to create an institution within regular government forces that can (1) attract the type of foreign expertise in the same way that a corporation can, and (2) deploy the human capital as efficiently as a private contractor.

Finally, the idea that there is something intrinsic about PMFs that engenders them toward rape and pillage is silly. The US government and military has full control over the extent of their actions and, if dissatisfied, can simply terminate the existing contract. The problem with PMFs and the many examples of their brutality and lack of restraint in combat overseas is a result from poor regulation on behalf of the military and the civil authorities in the United States. If police in a given municipality stopped writing speeding tickets, more people would be likely to speed, as a corollary. If at any point the civilian-controlled military and court system become tired of these antics, or feel that they jeopardize the greater mission, they have tons of recourse to take against firms and individuals who commit crimes or atrocities. They are still covered by laws


which allow for their prosecution in criminal courts.7 The fact that the current administration or past administrations have made poor decisions about giving immunity to thugs that operate with PMFs isnt an indictment of the flexibility and efficiency with which they operate by their nature, but rather a criticism of domestic leadership that should take a stronger position against wartime abuses. Negative I. Framework One of the biggest obstacles to negative argumentation is finding arguments that deal with the nature of PMFs and not the faults that exist in the current policy regarding their use. The fact that the United States doesnt properly regulate or supervise the deployment of these firms abroad doesnt seem like a very convincing argument for me to negate, particularly when there are laws in place that give the US jurisdiction over the prosecution of offenders in the employee of PMFs. But they should also guard against affirmative abuse one cant fiat that PMFs should be transformed through legislation by Congress into firms that arent private and more to the point, a lot of these firms have overseas headquarters with governments more willing to share in PMFs profits than they are to divulge their secrets. In short, its reasonable for an affirmative to argue that Congress change the way that it supervises PMFS, but it is not reasonable to fiat the radical change of the nature of PMFs into an institution unrecognizable from what it is today at the time the topic was written.

I think the strongest negative arguments will link back to accountability. The military as an institution should be accountable to the civilian authority of the land whether this is true as a philosophical claim or not doesnt matter, the constitution provides for this as a reality of US law. Arguments that show why civilian control of armed forces is subverted by the use of PMFs are not hard to articulate. This standard is easy to weigh against impacts like efficiency and 7 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/faqs/


increased competency and difficult for affirmatives to link into with standard argumentation. I think it is probably the strongest case the negative has considering the uniqueness of ground.

Additionally, negatives can garner offense that the same nature that makes them opaque and hostile to external control make PMFs more prone to human rights violations. The standard here is obvious: minimizing human rights violations. Arguments that show that US regulars commit fewer atrocities, or at the very least, have to answer to a higher authority when they do wont be hard to warrant given the huge amount of topic literature on the abuses of PMFs in Iraq and Afghanistan. This, again, is difficult for affirmatives to link into.

I think that what might jump off the page at negatives arguments about the cost of the services that PMFs provide isnt going to be easy to warrant (see the affirmative section). While it is true that when you account for pay scale alone, PMF contractors make significantly more than a similarly deployed US soldier8, this doesnt account for many factors that cost the US government resources but dont ultimately end up in the pocket of the soldier on the ground. Insofar as this is true, its difficult to make the case that PMFs arent a bargain for the taxpayer. II. Arguments

PMFs have very little accountability. If there is anything to be said about the reliability of the US military as an institution, one of, if not the, central characteristic that lends itself toward reliability is that the military has been subordinated to civilian institutions. It is open and transparent to the extent that it is practical and to the extent that the transparency enables it to accomplish its objectives. The public can scrutinize its accounts, call their representative to demand a General be commissioned or demoted, they operate under the uniformed code of military justice, and have many more layers of accountability that have been added over the years as the nature of warfare and decency has 8 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/30/AR2007093001352.html


changed. PMFs are not even analogous. The P it stands for private. This means that depending on the location of the countrys headquarters, what sort of corporation it has been classified as, and various other factors. The public, should they wish, have no ability to scrutinize their accounts or financial dealings. More to the point, when theyre employed abroad, theyre given immunity largely without the consent of the very people whos lives PMFs control and risk in the course of their operations.

The practice in Iraq after an individual in the employee of a PMF became implicated in the collateral murder of some poor native was to whisk that person out of the country as quickly as possible and if there were any suspicions that the same individual might be indicted under US law, theyd just take them to a country with which the US government has no extradition treaty, some place like Iceland. The fact that they have a nearly universal history of colluding against justice by hiding away their employees who break the law should provide strong ground for policy makers to reject an official association with the US military, particularly if the option of using them in conjunction with the military or as a substitute for the military is on the table.

PMFs cost too much money. A study by the House Oversight Committee found that average Blackwater contract cost approximately six times the amount per year of a similarly equipped US soldier.9 Adding to that, PMFs create a perverse incentive for trained regulars. This is a good argument to beat back the cost arguments that affirmatives might employ the United States government spends a significant amount of money training soldiers, and even more on the soldiers that PMFs are likely to find the most desirable. The soldiers then leave the regular army as soon as that becomes an option to join PMFs as security contractors, knowing that their salary can be increased by more than ten times. The British Army has such a problem with attrition of this sort that they were forced to give a year of leave to their soldiers so that they could go collect the

9 http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/the-price-of-an-iraqi-life-a-blackwater-guard-and-the-crash-happy-convoy/


cash benefits while still returning to the regular army. This creates a brain drain the military which negatively effects government efficacy and the ability for regular forces to wage war.

PMFs exist outside of the uniform code of military justice. Does this make them terrorists? I dont know. One of the primary arguments forwarded by the Bush Administration is that insurgents captured on the battlefield arent entitled to the judicial protections set forward by international law because they dont meet proscribed legal criteria for protection they dont wear a uniform, they dont follow the traditional military command structure, they regularly disregard civilian lives during fights sounds pretty familiar to me. Moreover, the UN Convention on Mercenaries from 2001 makes it an international offense to participate in warfare of an international character as a person who is motivated primarily by private gain eg, PMF contractors who engage in combat. There is some topic literature that discusses how PMFs interact with this Convention, largely because it was meant to target more traditional mercenaries that fight in Africa and PMF contractors arent entirely in that mold for instance, they probably wouldnt fight for the insurgency if they were offering competitive prices. Nonetheless, few people would argue that hiring the local thugs farmed out by a warlord would be an unsavory practice of which few would approve. Why does it become alright when instead of warlord profiting, its a CEO?


TOPIC ANALYSIS BY CHRISTIAN TARSNEY If theres one thing to be said about this topic, its that it should be a fun one to researchthe history of private military firms, if nothing else, makes for good reading. I would imagine that most of you are at least vaguely familiar with the less pleasant aspects of security contracting from the media coverage of events in Afghanistan, and the missteps (or, arguably, war crimes) committed by companies like Blackwater which have been widely reported and have contributed more than anything else to the public perception of PMFs certainly represent an important topic area. But its the affirmative research (in my opinion, anyway) thats going to be the most interesting, because for that all private military firms are capable of really, seriously screwing up, its equally true that, under the right circumstances, they can be really, mind-blowingly effective at what they do. The stories from the 90s about companies like Executive Outcomes entering countries in the midst of years- or decades-long civil conflicts, and with only a handful of personnel completely turning around or ending those conflicts in a matter of days read in many ways like action movie scriptsequally dramatic, equally implausible, and equally action-packed. Pick up a book like Licensed to Kill by Robert Young Pelton or Corporate Warriors by P.W. Singer, and if military history, technology and tactics are of any interest to you, theyll make great reads apart from their cardable application to the topic. I end up saying this in every topic analysis I write, but for this topic especially, youll be losing out if you dont do your background reading. And given the diversity of topic areas (the kinds of PMFs, the functions they perform, their various advantages and pitfalls in various circumstances), youll miss out in terms of potential case positions especially. I. Definitions and framework issues


I see only two major interpretational issues presented by the topic: First, what kinds of security contractors count as private military firms, and along related lines, what kinds of activities count as pursuing military objectives? Second, there is the problem of missing quantifiers endemic to almost all LD resolutionsdoes military objectives mean all kinds of military objectives, any objective, two or more, most, etc? To tackle this second question first: recently, it seems like debaters are for the most part abandoning any attempts to resolve these questions textually, and are instead simply folding it into generic parametrics vs. whole-res10 debates, so depending on where youre debating and who your judges will be, there may be nothing more to say about it than thatthis topic provides plenty of room for parametricized affirmatives, and as always negatives will have the option of running parametrics theory if they so choose. On the other hand, if youre debating in front of judges who dont want to see the issue framed or resolved in that way, you may have to operate differently. In these situations, the framework debate may be almost as generic: for your typical judges at an NFL or CFL district tournament, the appeal to an on-balance interpretation of the resolution is often all that needs to happen. The obvious ambiguity of this notion gives rise to a lot of gray areas in the context of this resolutiondo affirmative that advocate (or generate offense from) the use of PMFs for specific purposes like logistical support of army units, peacekeeping operations, etc succeed in affirming the resolution on balance? No amount of definitional debate will resolve that question, but at the very least the appeal to an on-balance interpretation will succeed in ruling out the more definitely parametricized sorts of positions. In case a debate about the meaning of the actual text of the resolution does break out, though, its worth thinking a little bit about the text. My own sense is that the possessive pronoun carries, by default, a tacit sense of universal 10 If this rhetoric is unfamiliar to you, parametrics refer to positions which add restrictive parameters to the resolution, e.g. attempting to limit the debate to a single military operation, a single PMF, and/or a single service.


quantification, but theres probably not any fact of the matter about it. Its also important to note, though, that the word justified suggests that the affirmative doesnt have to defend the actual use of PMFs in all military contexts, but merely the justifiability of their usein other words, the minimum claim which the affirmative must defend, to affirm the whole resolution, is that the United States is justified in employing PMFs in any given situation, but not necessarily in all situations simultaneously. This is potentially relevant to any arguments about the cost of PMFs, their potential impact on the domestic political process, the effects of their use on the international image of the US, and so on. Returning, however, to the first question: There are certainly topicality debates to be had about the limits on private military firms and military objectives. Part of the question is whether functions like logistical support (moving supplies, building barracks) are topical, but this is the less important questionwhether or not these are inherently military functions, they are often performed by companies which should unequivocally be considered private military firms, and they do contribute to the pursuit of military objectives. Affirmatives planning to rely heavily on arguments about these sorts of support functions should be prepared for that debate, but its not a hard one to win. The more interesting question is whether to pursue its military objectives limits the kinds of offense that the aff can claimfor instance, are peacekeeping or humanitarian assistance military objectives? And if the United States has not already deployed military forces in pursuit of those objectives, are they the United States military objectives, even if theyre somebody elses? Again, I dont think theres a clear right answer, and those debates will probably just have to play out. However, some of the affirmative positions which are brought into question thereby, like the peacekeeping position, are likely to be common enough, and perceived as sufficiently core ground, that I would predict most judges will be willing to presume by default in favor of their topicality, especially if they dont constitute the entirety of the AC position.


There are a few other framework questions out thereamong others, does using mean hiring (for the sake of clarity and avoiding unnecessary topicality debates, I would encourage you to go with yes)? But in general, the resolution is relatively unambiguous, and given where youre likely to be debating it, Id encourage you to stick with the plethora of stock arguments that obviously and uncontroversially affirm or negate, and just debate the heck out of those arguments, rather than trying for anything too tricky. II. Affirming Lets get right into arguments. Ill outline what I think are a few of the most interesting and compelling aff arguments, describing first the content of the argument and second its virtues and vices from a strategic standpoint. I wont try to get too deeply into responses and frontlines, but needless to say, I would suggest that any argument discussed here should be fairly high on your blocking list. 1. Military efficacy PMFs tend to provide extremely effective fighting forces (or security forces) on a per capita basis, because they pay a premium to get the best personnel and provide them with the best equipment and training. A high percentage of PMF personnel are veterans of elite military units, who have sought out better compensation for their abilities in the private sector (i.e., contrary to the claim that they are simply being vacuumed out of the military by PMFs, many of them would likely have otherwise simply taken other private-sector jobs). PMFs and the contractors they employ are also highly motivated, since the continuation of their contracts as well as their future employment prospects depend on their performance. And they are less encumbered by politically imposed constraints that their counterparts in the regular military service branches.


Turning these arguments into offensive reasons to affirm requires either an account of justification that renders efficacy a sufficient standard, or an argument that the military objectives of the United States represent generally desirable ends. The latter is the easier route to go, and allows you to generate some fairly straightforward, concrete offensive scenarios, but dont overlook it and assume that the efficacy of PMFs is enough, prima facie, to justify affirmation. In addition, the more offense you can generate, the better prepared youll be to weigh against arguments about human rights abuses, lack of accountability, and domestic political ramifications of using PMFs to which efficacy arguments have little built-in defense. 2. Flexibility/surge capacity In the context of Iraq and Afghanistan particularly, one of the selling points on PMFs has been their capacity for rapid deployment, and for efficiently filling gaps in the militarys operational capacity. The US army, marines and so forth have only so many troops under arms at any given time, and that number can only be increased through the lengthy recruitment and training process. PMFs, on the other hand, represent a ready reserve capacity, because of their ability to adjust quickly to changes in demand (by hiring new personnel at whatever rate is required to scare them up in adequate numbers), hire already-trained personnel from both local and international labor pools, and perhaps also to have a pool of contractors already at the ready if they are performing work for multiple clients. From a strategic standpoint, the story is the same as with the efficacy argumentsmake sure to find a terminal impact (or two), and be prepared to weigh against NC link stories that this argument wont say much about. 3. Specialization and logistical support Another argument with the same kind of impactsPMFs can perform particular, specialized tasks, like logistics, construction, or personal protectionbetter than the regular military, because they focus on being very good at those


particular tasks and hire personnel specifically trained in and suited for those jobs. Rather than making the same group of GIs accomplish everything that needs doing around an army base, from KP to mine-clearing, theres an intuitive logic to finding private contractors who can do one specific thing very well and turning that one task over to them. While this argument is certainly prevalent in the literature, Im not wildly enthusiastic about it from a debate standpoint. Among other things, youre inviting topicality debates since its not clear that a firm performing purely logistical functions would need to be (or would get any particular advantage from being) a military firm in any remotely strict sense of the term. For another thing, it just doesnt generate a ton of offense intuitively, and there are a lot of answers to it in the literature. Toss it in the mix in an AC if you like, as a way to draw the neg into reading a bunch of innocuous defense, but dont expect it to do too much work for you. 4. Humanitarian missions/PKOs I like this argument a lottheres a clear harms scenario (lots of humanitarian disasters going on all the time, and killing lots of people, in countries with weak governments or engaged in fighting civil wars), strong inherency (Western governments and the United Nations have demonstrated a complete lack of will to do anything about these crises, and regional organizations like the African Union have usually proved ineffective), and empirically demonstrated solvency (Executive Outcomes in Sierra Leone and Angola, inter alia). The position is simple: Where public opinion, limited military capacities or budgetary constraints will not support an American military intervention (e.g. in Darfur), the United States should instead contract out the job to PMFs who can get the job done with fewer personnel, for less money, and with less of a political struggle. Theres not much to say about this argument other than, read up on it, and watch out for alternate-actor counterplans, because there are a lot of actors out


there who could hire PMFs to engage in this kind of intervention. In the past, its typically been the governments in question, fighting for their lives against rebel groups (or, in some cases, the rebel groups or an ousted former leader), but the hiring (and hence the stipulation of contractual terms, and provision of oversight) could also be done by an international organization or even a private individual. There are distinct advantages to the US over any of these actors, but those advantages ought to be developed somewhere in the AC. With preparation on that debate, though, this position is a nice, straightforward way to generate substantial and fairly plausible impacts. 5. The conscription argument This argument, for whatever reason, was fairly popular at camp: Without PMFs to eke out our limited military forces, well be forced to re-institute the draft, with all the badness that entails. I hope that, this time around, this argument will be well and truly laid to rest. Even during the worst moments of the Iraqi occupation, a draft was enormously unrealistic from a political standpoint, and now with our forces largely drawn down in Iraq and a drawdown ready to commence in Afghanistan, Id be shocked if you can find any credible author saying anything recent about the possibility of a draft. In addition, it was never clear to me why, if PMFs attract the additional personnel we would be to forestall a draft because of their better pay and benefits, why we couldnt just avoid a draft byincreasing pay and benefits, at least for those with the kind of qualifications that would get them hired by a PMF. Dont make this argument. III. Negating Same thing, other sidea few of the more interesting arguments, content first, then strategic application. 1. Quality of work


There are a number of worries about the efficacy and reliability of PMFs: Like all contractors, their profit margins are determined by the gap between their contractually determined compensation and their expenses, so they have a strong incentive to cut their own costs even, sometimes, at the expense of doing high-quality work. And as with lazy civilian contractors, it may not always be possible to monitor the quality of their work to ensure that standards are being met (and thereby enforce reputational market incentives for job performance).

Additionally, even when its possible to effectively monitor performance, there may be cases where performance incentives simply cant override risk aversionthere have been reports in Iraq, for instance, of contractors just starting to no-show when conditions in the areas they were working became too dangerous. Even if you have to eat contractual penalties and a loss of future business, thats better than eating lead. On the other hand, the argument goes, regular military personnel are motivated by the patriotic desire to serve their country rather than a crass desire for profit, and furthermore are subject to much harsher penalties for desertion to help them resist temptation.

These arguments, in my mind, dont add up to a great NC positionits hard to argue that contractors can never be good at what they do, so at best the argument seems to suggest that we should be careful about how we use PMFs and make sure to monitor their performance, and more to the point its open, as a negative case, to lots of quick analytic 1AR turns that put you in a less than ideal strategic position going into the NR. But having a dump of these argument written up as turns on ACs is certainly a good idea, and theyll function much more strategically for you if used in that way (since, among other things, debaters almost never really go for turns on turns the same way they would if the exact same card or analytics was read as a case argument). 2. Coordination problems Even if private contractors are perfectly good at what they do, having thousands of personnel involved in military operations who are not directly


responsive to the military chain of command or integrated into any sort of unified command structure may produce problems. For instance, there have been reports in Iraq of friendly-fire incidents between military units and contractors who mistook each other for the enemy due to lack of coordination and communication. As with the argument above, this is not a path to generating large quantities of NC case offense, but it is a perfectly good way of answering AC arguments about the effectiveness of PMFs and their ability to complement and support US troops in warzones. 3. Military brain drain This argument is fairly self-explanatory, and also fairly popular in the literaturePMFs simply have the effect of luring talent away from the armed forces and into the civilian sector with better wages and benefits. While PMFs may indeed be more efficient, relative to their numbers of personnel, than most regular military units, it is only because they siphon off much of the best talent from those units. This also, to some extent, feeds the arguments about coordinationsoldiers may be resentful of, and less than eager to work with, their private-sector counterparts who make several times their wages for effectively the same work. It also feeds the cost argument discussed below, since the increased wages of private contractors are simply passed back on to the military when it hires the PMF. But it also hurts the overall capabilities of the US military, since whatever talent is lost to private firms can no longer contribute to the institutional competency of the military itselfbetter to have that talent, if possible, fully integrated within the regular military services branches than available only on an ad hoc basis to perform specific tasks. I dont know if this is really such an amazing argumentfor one thing, as I suggested above, its not clear that the contractors employed by PMFs, even if US military veterans, would otherwise still be military members. And perhaps more importantly, its hard to develop a clear and quantifiable impact story off of


this argument. But it provides another way of contesting AC arguments about the gains in military effectiveness that result from hiring PMFs. 4. Cost Another argument thats just as simple as it soundsPMFs cost a lot of money, because they both pay their employees very well and need to make a profit on top of that. The counter-argument is that PMFs actually save money, by (a) operating more efficiently than the notoriously cost-unconscious military, due to precisely that motivation to protect their bottom line, and (b) performing a few limited and specialized tasks without the need for excessive bureaucratic overhead (which is the traditional economic rationale for outsourcing and subcontracting in general). But there are plenty of authors convinced that those benefits simply fail to materialize, partly because the comparative financial inefficiency of the military is exaggerated, partly because non-competitive bidding procedures and a limited number of suppliers in the market weaken the incentives for cost-cutting, and partly because the factors driving up costs simply overwhelm any cost savings. This argument can be impacted either in terms of military efficacy (relative to the limited resources the military has available for any given operation) or in terms of generic spending impacts (which Im sure are not hard to find at the moment, given the amount thats being written about the national debt). In the former case, my suggestion above still applies; in the latter, this can make a perfectly good big-impact NC, provided only that the AC advocacy clearly links (meaning, mainly, that the AC defends a use of PMFs that is general enough to generate a substantial strength of link, and that trades off with either using the regular military to perform equivalent functions or doing nothing at all). 5. Abuses of power/accountability This is the biggieyoull find more literature on this argument than on any other, affirmative or negative, on the resolution. The argument, in short, is that


PMFs and their employees are able to do really, really bad things with virtual impunity, because they operate in legal gray areas that make prosecution and conviction extremely difficult. Where military members are subject to regulations like the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which allow them to be tried and punished under military law, contractors (even when performing overtly military functions) are not subject to those same regulations, and may also enjoy immunity from prosecution in local courts. Although US nationals working as contractors for the US military may be tried in American courts, other circumstances, including the difficulty of gathering evidence at a distance as well as possibly the politically motivated desire to protect favored contractors may render this difficult. The case of the Blackwater shooting at Nisour Square, in which somewhere between fourteen and seventeen Iraqi civilians were killed by Blackwater guards against whom criminal charges were eventually dismissed on procedural grounds in US courts, provides by far the best-known illustration of this risk. This argument is nice for negatives since (a) its awfully hard to do more than mitigate it on a link levelessentially no one denies that theres an accountability problem for American-hired PMFs, so the best youre likely to manage is to find the authors who say the problems getting better, or can be fixedand (b) there are a lot of different directions you can go in terms of impact. 6. Democratic legitimacy PMFs are seen as providing the executive branch with a means of doing an end-around the will of the people in the development and implementation of foreign policy, in a number of ways: First, since PMFs are not part of the US military, their deployment is subject to weaker legislative oversight requirements, making it easier for the president or military leaders to send them into conflict zones (or non-conflict zones) without congressional approval and hence with fewer democratic checks. Second, since the activities of PMFs are seen as private rather than public, they arouse less public concern and media attention,


and let political leaders evade the hyper-sensitivity to military casualties characteristics of democratic publics. Third and finally, for similar reasons, using PMFs can allow the US to avoid the scrutiny of international organizationseffectively, PMFs can act as proxies for US foreign policy that avoid implicating the US government for any failures, human rights violations, or breaches of international law that would otherwise be at least politically embarrassing for political leaders. These factors in turn can have the effect of facilitating more aggressive, unilateralist foreign policy on the part of American leaders. Additionally, there is a risk that PMFs, like any powerful corporate actors with a stake in governmental policy decisions, may have a corrupting effect on policymaking, through quid pro quo campaign contributions to legislative and presidential candidates and overly friendly lobbying relationships. I like this position from an argument-interaction standpoint because it lets you set up a means-based/procedural NC standard (like democratic legitimacy) while also giving you easy opportunities to generate big impacts to an ends-based AC standard without a lot of extra work. There also just isnt a lot of turn ground, or really terminal defenseyoull almost always be able to come out of the round with at least a risk of a link on these arguments. In short, its worth your time to put together a negative position along these lines. 7. Image, soft power, and heg This position is more or less an extension of arguments already discussed, but it emerges in several different ways, such that it would be easy to make a solid, multi-linked case position out of it. Utilization of PMFs harms American image abroad in that it lets the executive branch pursue a more aggressive, unilateral foreign policy without regard for the support of the American public or the international community, results in abuses of human rights and even war crimes, and creates at least the appearance of impunity for mercenaries engaged in imperialistic, interventionist policies. In short, PMFs


have the effect of letting us do more of the stuff that really ticks everyone off, and making us do it worse. From there, the impact story is pretty genericpick your favorite soft power good, unilateralism bad, or heg bad arguments to trot out, with an eye towards generating giant, easily weighable impacts. Against stock, ends-based ACs that will accept those impacts at a standards level without producing any impacts to outweigh them, this sort of position should be very successful. IV. Conclusion Thats all I have to say, except good luck in debating this topic, and have fun! If you have any questions or comments about this topic analysis, feel free to direct them to me at [email protected].


TOPIC ANALYSIS BY ADAM TORSON Resolved: The United States is justified in using private military firms abroad to pursue its military objectives. This years March/April topic is the kind of large, multi-faceted international relations topic we normally associate with the January/February resolution. This is important to realize because many of you will only be debating this resolution a small number of times for your NFL Qualifier or State tournaments. You will have to put in the time and energy necessary to become familiar with the wide variety of positions and substantial literature on the topic. You will also need to spend time developing a plausible, intuitively defensible interpretation of the topic because there will not be time for the topic to evolve. I hope the thoughts offered below will be helpful in your preparation. Interpretation A. The United States The resolution begins by specifying an actor The United States. Presumptively this means the US Federal Government, which controls military policy. There are plausible interpretations which might try to specify a component of the Federal Government as the actor, e.g. the President, Congress, or the military itself. This interpretation would likely be useful for individuals advocating a specific plan that implements the resolution in a particular context e.g. that the United States ought to use PMCs to facilitate its ongoing operations in Afghanistan or something to that effect. I suspect that given the somewhat more traditional judging pool at most tournaments on this topic and the absence of time for


interpretations to evolve mean that this strategy will be uncommon. Expect to be debating about what the Federal Government as whole should do. As always, the actor in the resolution is an important resource for developing nuanced and compelling framework and standards level arguments. There are a number of contextual norms which the government is obliged to follow. The most obvious are the Constitution, Treaties, and Federal Law. Each of these creates various obligations implicated by the resolution e.g. The Constitutional requirement that Congress declare war, our treaty obligations to protect human rights or defend allies from military attack, or federal legal requirements for PMC monitoring and control. Other obligations include interests that are particular to the United States for example, the interest of the United States in maintaining its status as the preeminent military and political force in the world, its interest in preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, its interest in combating global terrorism, or its interest in prevailing Iraq and Afghanistan. B. is justified Obviously defining what it means for an action to be justified will be the primary purpose of your standards analysis. The various familiar strategies for conceptualizing normative justification are all available to you (running the gamut from the various individual moral obligations proposed in the classical canon of LD philosophy to more particular obligations of the United States). Ill not go into detail about them here. The only point I want to raise about the use of the phrase justified is that it seems to suggest that the affirmative must simply show that the United States may use PMCs, not that it must do so. Affirmatives will likely argue on these grounds that the negative has the burden to demonstrate that the use of PMCs is impermissible, morally prohibited. In that same vein, affs will argue that it is not


enough to show that there are problems associated with the use of PMCs. Rather, this argument goes, negs must show that such problems are so weighty or significant that they override any potential advantage in choosing to use PMCs such that it ought never to be a choice for government. At the very least affs will argue that being justified is a lesser burden than showing that the use of PMCs is the optimal foreign policy according to their standard, but rather that the justification is sufficiently reasonable that governments are permitted to employ them as an option within the range of their proper discretion. Negs, on the other hand, will want to argue that justification is a much stronger normative claim than the interpretation just presented. In particular they will want to argue that an action is only justified if the advantages of taking it outweigh the disadvantages of doing so (as measured by whatever the relevant standard is). C. in using private military firms 1. Types of PMFs Public military firm is a broadly encompassing term that implicates many different types of private companies. Adam Ebrahim11 suggests that they are divisible into three major categories: Military Support Firms, Military Consulting Firms, and Military Provider Firms. Military Support Firms are companies that perform logistical and adjunctive tasks such as providing food, laundry services, and maintenance at military bases, as well as some intelligence and transportation services. Such firms are certainly

11 Adam Ebrahim [J.D. Candidate 2010, Boston University School of Law. B.A., History, International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, 2007], Note: Going To War With The Army You Can Afford: The United States, International Law, And The Private Military Industry, 28 B.U. Intl L.J. 181 (2010), pp. 185-188


the least problematic type of private firm because they provide relatively innocuous support services. Many argue that such firms are absolutely essential. They support nearly every US Military deployment and allow military personnel to focus on more directly mission-relevant tasks. Military Consulting Firms are companies that offer strategic, operational, and/or organizational analysis. They do not operate on the battlefield, though they often organize what occurs there. Further, such firms engage in direct, on the ground training of both military personnel and domestic police forces. Such firms are often characterized as being one step from the battlefield, and tend to bring to bear the expertise of ex-military personnel. Such firms can be problematic because they blur the line between conventional forces and private contractors. Military Provider Firms focus on the front line, tactical environment and engage in actual combat activities. They often supply specialized weapons technology and personnel to operate them and thereby serve as a force multiplier. They also provide security for military, political, and corporate individuals and installations. It is in this latter role that most contractor scandals have developed as such security services have to engage in what is largely seen as traditional military operations such as counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency. 2. Which of these is the resolution talking about? The term private military firm is broad enough to encompass all of the different types of services mentioned above. Affirmatives will likely want to argue that the resolution is therefore about all of them as this makes it easier to claim that the military cannot operate effectively without them and that the problems associated with PMFs come from only a small part of the private defense contractor sector. On the other hand, some affirmatives may want to specify a position about a particular type of PMF so as to avoid disadvantages associated with the others.


Adding parameters to the resolution in this way is an unlikely strategy in front of more traditional judging pools, but negatives should be prepared to argue for why their arguments that relate to all types of firms (and specifically to Military Provider Firms) are relevant to the resolution. Negatives will want to focus on the most problematic of these services, mostly Military Consulting and Provider firms. This will enable them to downplay the relatively innocuous role of military support firms and instead argue that the core of the resolution and topic literature is about those firms involved directly or indirectly in actual combat. You can focus the debate here in several ways. You can argue that the disadvantages to these firms far outweighs those of support services firms, although given widespread use of support firms this is a difficult claim to substantiate. You can argue that you agree that support firms are necessary but not other types of firms, but this functions as a plan-inclusive counter-plan and therefore is theoretically suspect for a number of reasons (not to mention a bit counter-intuitive to more traditional judges). You are probably best off making this claim on a framework level by arguing that the crux of the topic is the controversial role these types of firms play, not the relatively uncontroversial role support firms play. 3. Distinction between Public and Private One of the core issues implicated by the topic is whether it is appropriate for certain sectors of the economy to be largely owned and centrally directed by the government, or whether it is better to leave most or all functions to the working of the free market and let the government purchase services rather than administer them. So, to understand the topic and the topic literature you have to have a good understanding of the difference between firms that are public and firms that are private. To say that a military firm is private means that it is owned by individuals or other businesses, not by the government. It does not mean that


such companies are secretive or something like that. Conversely, to say that a particular enterprise is public means that it is owned by some governmental agency. The traditional military is publicly owned, i.e. personnel are paid by the government, military equipment is owned by the government, military bases are considered government property, etc. To say that they are public does not mean that they are open to the public. This distinction is important because it makes the privatization debate part of a larger question about how government should operate. Those in favor of privatization tend to argue that the private sector is better at providing most services than the public sector because they have a profit incentive, have to compete and be responsive to the market, etc. Those who oppose privatization often argue that certain services are essential to provide for everyone (e.g. public education, national defense) and that leaving these functions to the private market makes the services uncertain. The private sector is as a general rule less susceptible to public scrutiny and government regulation of things like wages, benefits, and types of services provided. The distinctions Im making over-simplified. In practice, many private military contractors may be nominally private in the sense that they are owned by individuals and operated for a profit, but their only client might be the federal government and so they are subject to increased scrutiny and regulation. As you can see, the line between public and private is often blurred. The important thing to recognize is that a central component to debate on the topic will be about whether national defense is more properly treated as a public sector enterprise or delegated to the private sector. This is particularly true that private military actors are often categorized as mercenaries, a title which implicates a number of moral norms and international legal rules. 4. Alternative Names and Abbreviations


Private military firms (PMFs) are often identified by a number of other names and abbreviations as well. Each of the categories of PMF listed above is sometimes used in the literature to identify PMFs. They may also be called Private Military Companies or Contractors (PMCs), Private Security Companies or Contractors (PSCs), Private Military Security Companies (PMSCs), etc. For most purposes, you can treat these terms as synonyms, although you should be cognizant that some terms are more particular that others. For instance, a Private Security Company more often refers to what we have called military support firms because they provide security to officials and other companies overseas. When researching this topic you will also want to develop a basic familiarity with the major PMFs employed by the US Government. Often particular firms were involved in some scandal that generated lots of academic commentary (e.g. Blackwater) or were involved in important court cases that have moved toward defining the types of rules that apply to PMFs (e.g. Titan). Others were involved in some historical use of PMFs that is an important part of the debate in the topic literature (e.g. Africor). Searches that include firms of the type you want to emphasize may also be a good way to find the research you want more precisely. There are hundreds of these firms employed by the military, but you will at least want to know the names Dyncorp, Custer Battles, Raytheon, Titan Corporation, Blackwater Worldwide, Executive Outcomes, and Africor LLC. D. abroad The resolution is contextualized to the use of firms abroad. Traditionally this term refers to either the geographic territory of foreign states or the high seas. It is unclear to what extent this limits the topic, as many firms provide services to the military both in the United States and in foreign countries. Certainly it means that we are not talking about the company that serves food in the cafeteria at Fort Bragg, but if that same company also serves in the cafeteria in the Green Zone


then their activities seem to be inside the topic. The most significant argument that one could argue this excludes is the claim that PMFs are necessary to develop advanced weapons technology. Some will argue that if these weapons are developed domestically such development is outside the scope of the topic. However, it is increasingly uncommon for such design and engineering work to be confined to a single country, and in any case if the weapon is deployed overseas or uses PMF personnel overseas it seems like it is hard to exclude such development from the topic. The term might also be used to exclude domestic training services provided by PMFs, which is a somewhat more convincing argument as soldiers tend to be trained before they deploy. It is important to note that the resolution specifies only that the use of PMFs must be abroad, not that the companies cant be incorporated or based in the United States. That said, you should also be cognizant of the fact that the US often contracts with foreign companies to provide PMF-type services. That is important because it implicates several different arguments. Foreign companies tend to be less transparent, more difficult to control, and presumptively less invested in the success of the American military. On the other hand, they are sometimes able to provide intelligence or use indigenous personnel that make foreign military operations much more effective e.g. in the case of counter-insurgency. They are also sometimes more cost-effective than domestic firms. Finally, limiting the topic to the question of how we ought to use PMFs abroad puts the topic squarely in the category of international relations topic. That contextualizes the PMF issues in important ways and also provides substantial material on the framework level for you to be aware of and make use of. You should be familiar with major theoretical perspectives on international relations like Realism, Constructivism, Liberalism, Marxism, Feminism, Peace Studies, and Genocide Studies. Each of these has a set of normative assumptions about how states, individuals and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like private


firms and multinational organizations should interact with one another, and a related set of descriptive assumptions about how they tend to act in relation to one another. What counts as a meaningful or significant argument may well depend on which set of assumptions you are operating under. Recognizing what framework you are utilizing allows you to frontline against attacks on those assumptions or to call into question those of opposing positions. The fact that this is an IR topic means that you should also be familiar with major contemporary issues in global relations. For instance, the struggle against global poverty and economic domination of lesser-developed nations, the global war on terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the increasingly precarious positions of authoritarian governments in the Middle East and Africa, and ethnic and civil conflict are all issues the global community is tackling and in which PMFs may have an important role to play (for better or for worse). You should also be familiar with the international legal norms that are implicated by the topic e.g. the UN Mercenaries Convention and the rules for when and how states may initiate the u

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