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By Josh Marshall
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Posted: 09/28/07 05:31 PM [ET] |
In testimony Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that one of the issues he’s most concerned about is the way that private contractors in Iraq lure away active-duty members of the military with promises of much higher salaries — often to do more or less the same stuff they’re doing in uniform. In fact, that problem is so pressing that he’s looking into whether or not he can get soldiers to sign non-compete agreements to prevent them from getting headhunted by the private contractors who are there in Iraq working for us.
That really casts in a sharp, almost comedic relief what’s happening with the privatization of our military and what’s becoming of what we used to call the basis of state sovereignty — the monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
But there’s also a more immediate and tangible issue. Why is it that so many state security and defense functions are now being performed by private security companies?
Experts in the field could provide more granular answers. But the top-line facts are fairly straightforward — there’s a short-term reason and a long-term one. In the short run, government bureaucrats and generals often have no choice. So, for instance, why does the State Department have to hire Blackwater U.S.A to protect its diplomats? Why isn’t there some sort of State security service that can do this? Or why isn’t there, say, a contingent of Marines specially equipped and trained for this task, just as there are some numbers of Marines who guard U.S. embassies around the world?
Why have we structured the U.S. military and related paramilitary government agencies in such a way that they cannot provide services or undertake missions that we know that we will regularly need? The reason is pretty straightforward: Over the last couple decades the military and State Department and other federal agencies have been progressively hollowed out because a policy decision was made to privatize many military and related functions. And the rationales for such policies are little different from those behind privatization in more domestic parts of government service: cost-saving and — at least this is the argument — streamlining the functions that are core to the missions of various agencies and government institutions.
Another, less frequently stated, reason is that working through contractors allows you to circumvent a lot of laws and accountability. But let’s focus on the alleged budgetary savings. If private contractors are able to lure soldiers/Marines away with far higher salaries, and if you figure in the sizable profit margins of the contractors themselves, it’s not hard to see that the U.S. government is paying a lot more to have the “contractors” do whatever job it is than it would simply to have the Army or Department of State do the jobs themselves. And this is one of the keys to understanding what’s happening. A lot of what the contracting mega-issue is about is the U.S. government paying contractors big bucks to do jobs the military (or other agencies of government) could do better and cheaper themselves.
It’s not that private contractors have no proper role. Private companies have always provided services to the U.S. military. But today the practice has gotten way out of hand. It’s a rat-hole for throwing away billions of taxpayer dollars. It’s undermined the military itself. And it’s undermining the rule of law.
And here’s a special bonus. The mammoth growth in private military contracting didn’t begin in Iraq. It’s been under way for a couple decades. So who came up with this bright idea? He didn’t start the process, but many of the key decisions that led us to where we are today were made by none other than that fount of bright ideas — then-Secretary of Defense and now-Vice President Dick Cheney.
Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com.
His column appears in The Hill each week.
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