After the Cold War we have seen an increased proliferation of private security actors and activities. Intra-state conflicts in Africa, the two Gulf Wars, and the Kosovo intervention are but the most familiar examples, and have heralded a period of increased prominence of private security entities in both the support, training and provision of security and military functions. But much of the debate - often coalescing around the theme 'Mercenaries: good or bad?' - tends to misrepresent what the privatization of security is really about. Mercenaries per se are not a historically new phenomenon. Instead, 'the privatization of security' constitues not simply a change from public to private provision of security, but its redefinition into something distinctively new. Furthermore, lacking a comprehensive regulatory framework, an expanding private security sector risks changing how we understand security and, by implication, how we provide it.
Recent attempts (spearheaded by Elke Krahmann) to understand what the privatization of security is point to the confluence of two general transformations. The first is the move from government to governance, the second is the move from security to risk. Implicated in both are processes of fragmentation and de-centralization, as well as marketization - processes largely derived from the end of the Cold War and globalization.
The post-Cold War restructuring and reduction of national armed forces, new technology, along with the liberal imperative to privatize, resulted in the growth of a private security industry which - in the crises and civil wars of the 1990s - quickly found new markets to thrive in. The absence of any real military threat, along with the increased costs of maintaining standing forces and R&D, was accompanied by a broader notion of security that departed from the familiar approaches. Thus, limited resources and a lack of centralized expertise drove an increased fragmentation of authority in the field of security.
This move from government to governance has coincided with the move from 'security' to a concept of 'risk' (coined by Ulrich Beck). This constitutes a shift from 'knowns' - typified by the Cold War threats - to the contemporary discourse of 'unknown' risks and 'unknown unknowns'. The fact that former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld himself spoke in these terms in a 2002 speech is indicative. A discourse of unknown risks means that personal experience is not enough to provide a feeling of security – one needs experts.
With a shift to risk and a fragmentation of authority, along with an increased prominence and acceptance of private actors, the focus has moved to seeing security as a product that can be sold for profit - and profitable means of providing it. It means making its provision excludable, in economic terms turning it from a public to a private good. This implies providing protection, rather than prevention or deterrence (since protection is most excludable and hence most profitable) - and constitutes a change in the meaning of security itself.
An emphasis solely on protection combined with a situation in which there is a lack of centralized coordination, oversight and control, has serious consequences for policy. Problems include contractual deficiencies and overpricing, as well as disincentives for private contractors to report violations. There is also a trend towards security issues being understood according to an increasingly technical and managerial problematic, essentially missing out on the big picture (protection rather than prevention or deterrence).
This development needs to be addressed. Although the industry has made attempts at self-regulation, such as the International Stability Operations Association (ISOA) or the British Association of Private Security Companies (BAPSC), a comprehensive regulatory framework must be developed with the participation of both the EU and the US. The so-called Montreux Document, signed in 2008 and deferring regulation to already existing international law, is too weak since it does not introduce new legal obligations. The result is an insufficient regulation of the industry. Change must be introduced at the legal level, which can enforce better practices in the private sector and engender healthy skepticism among consumers, in order to reduce the risk of narrowing our understanding of security and, thus, our future range of options.
Erik Tropp is a final year undergraduate student at University College London
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