The United States should use private military firms abroad to pursue its military objectives.

Thanks to our opponents, Team Thrawn, for engaging in this, the second round of the Debate Champions League, with us. We apologize for the delay in the posting, and look forward to a great debate on an interesting topic. The debate we're having is over a basic question: should the U.S. government be able to purchase the services of privately sourced military forces (PMFs) and deploy them abroad? In order to determine this, we'll have to start with a definition of PMFs: "firms offering services that involve the potential to exercise force in a systematic way and by military or paramilitary means, as well as the enhancement, the transfer, the facilitation, the deterrence, or the defusing of this potential, or the knowledge required to implement it, to clients." [http://www.privatemilitary.org...] So, the focus of this debate is on a means by which the U.S. military sources its support. This includes private military contractors (PMCs) like Blackwater (now Academi), PMFs have been used in this fashion for decades, and as Con, we are arguing that such usage should be discontinued. 1) The Cost of War Let's start with the basics. How expensive are PMFs for the U.S.? Well, they don't come cheap. In Iraq alone, from 2003 to 2008, we spent $100 billion on contractors. To put that in perspective, that's one of every five dollars spent in the war effort. [2] In the 8 years prior to that, the DoD spent $300 billion on contracts. And that's in one war. Blackwater's federal contracts alone, from the period of 2001 to 2006, amounted to $1 billion, which meant that the U.S. was paying $1,222 per day or $445,000 per year to each contractor, amounting to over 6 times what we pay an equivalent U.S. soldier.[1] So, with these costs so dramatically high, we should expect a set of outcomes to match. However, that is not the case. PMFs haven't reduced the incidence of conflict for the U.S., and they certainly haven't shortened any of the conflicts we've been involved in over the past several decades, even as we spend more and more money on them. If anything, PMFs present a risk of further warfare because of how they are perceived. Countries that send militaries overseas to fight have to do a lot more to justify that decision because they are sending Americans into harm's way. The more dead bodies and wounded soldiers they bring back, the more they have to justify. The same is not true with PMFs. There was a point during the Iraq War where contractor casualty numbers, wounded and dead exceeded those of the traditional military. This information didn't and doesn't disseminate out to the public, meaning they don't get the full impact of a war effort. But, then, what's the alternative? How could we better spend that money? We on side Con think that further disincentive to go to war and prolong war efforts are beneficial. The less access the U.S. government has to the means to commit to warfare, the better for the country and world as a whole. PMFs clearly expand those means, allowing for extended occupations and entrenched conflicts to drag out. We view that as a clear negative, and one that should be avoided. Bringing some of those hundreds of billions into the U.S. economy could strongly improve any number of domestic programs But if we are going to spend our money on defense, it stands to reason that that money should be used to improve the lives of our military personnel. As more and more of our defense spending goes towards these easy-to-use PMFs, we reduce the focus on our military, and thus funds get drained from such important tasks as making sure they're outfitted properly. In the field, we could ensure that they have the tools at their disposal to both effectively fight the war and to ensure their safety. There are plenty of examples of equipment and training shortfalls that could all be dealt with a generous influx of resources. [3] At home, we could dramatically improve their access to physical and mental health care and ensure that individuals who have made the incredible commitment to fight in our military get the support of their country after they come home. The VA is experiencing a shortfall of $2.6 billion.[4] Considering the tremendous amount of veterans who are homeless and the limitations of the VA with its current funding, this is a problem that can easily be solved with such a shift. 2) Private Risk There"s a reason that Blackwater is such a well known company, and it has little to do with success. Their perpetration of the Nisour Square massacre, in particular, was an example not only of the actions that PMFs like this could perpetrate, but also of the difficulties involved in punishing such illegal acts when they are taken by non-state agents. The lack of an international legal means to prosecute them means that the perpetrators have and will continue to avoid prosecution. Even when the company was taking on purely defensive roles, they"ve often fired first, escalating conflicts in the process.[5] This company is hardly alone in perpetrating these kinds of acts, nor are these the only acts we should be concerned with. Companies like CACI and L-3 Services have engaged in torture. DynCorp has been implicated in causing widespread health problems following an air spray program meant to deal with narcotics.[5] The U.S. may have been complicit in these acts, but the individuals involved were protected from legal action by them as well. In the process, accountability was dispersed, and no one was punished for taking actions that were clearly illegal by international standards. What this comes down to a lack of regulation and accountability on the part of PMFs. In the status quo, they"re practically under nothing but self-regulation, as there is no international policy that governs them and many states are either unable or unwilling to hold them to account. Even if the U.S. drafts legislation intended to hold them to account, there"s little reason for them to enforce those laws in many cases, as made clear by these examples. They would be implicating themselves as much as the PMFs. International policy may eventually accommodate the realities of non-state militaries being real forces in the world, but in the meantime, there is scant little that most nations can/are willing to do about the actions they take under contract. 3) Side Effects Let"s start with direct funding. The U.S. support of this industry has played no small part in the growth of private military forces. The industry as a whole amounts to several hundred billion dollars in size, and the U.S. and UK are by far the largest contributors.[5, 6] The U.S. isn"t exactly supporting only the "good ones" either, given the spotty records of the ones we"ve cited thusfar. It doesn"t help that some of the groups the U.S. has decided to work with, such as ArmorGroup, actually source their soldiers from warlords in Afghanistan, many of whom are creating further disruptions in the region.[7] By funding these companies and facilitating their growth, we need to recognize that we"re facilitating a broad array of groups, many of which are already our enemies. We also shouldn"t overlook tacit endorsement. Actions that the U.S. takes are not made in a vacuum. If a government as large as the U.S. employs and fosters the growth of these companies as standard practice, it becomes standard practice for other nations as well. These forces can easily acquire the tools necessary to become disruptive forces in their respective regions, which has led to a sort of durable disorder. With so many small forces on call across the world, the only stability that exists is a constant state of disruption where no power can have any real or lasting effect in a region. [8, 9] The result is that the U.S. will have more and more trouble influencing change abroad. Occupations become even less effectual, and since PMFs have incentive to keep themselves employed, they will either seek to drag these out or propagate multiple small conflicts. That continual instability has tremendous costs for life in the region and trade without. Conclusion: PMFs may seem like a simple means to bolster our armed forces, but their actual usage showcases a very different purpose. The U.S. should not have access to a workaround solution that keeps the nation from understanding the true cost of wars as they progress. The U.S. should not be employing groups whose standards for warfare are so low, nor should they be able to use them as legal loopholes for practices they want kept in the dark. The U.S. should not allow side effects that facilitate our enemies and produce a more disordered system in the process. 1. http://www.mercenary-wars.net... 2. http://www.nytimes.com... 3. http://www.nap.edu... 4. http://www.militarytimes.com... 5. http://www.globalresearch.ca... 6. http://www.fairobserver.com... 7. https://www.washingtonpost.com... 8. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk... 9. http://www.theatlantic.com...