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Review of James Pattison’s book is available online here:
http://sdonline.org/67/james-pattison-the-morality-of-private-war-the-challenge-of-private-
military-and-security-companies-pmscs/
James Pattison, The Morality of Private
War: The Challenge of Private Military and
Security Companies [PMSCs]
Posted on April 4, 2016 by sdonline
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014
In the past couple of decades the market for mercenaries has grown tremendously. So James
Pattison’s thorough investigation, analysis and evaluation of private military force in The
Morality of Private War is welcome. During the first Gulf War, 1990-91, there was
approximately 1 contractor to every 100 soldiers. By 2008, during the second Gulf War, the
ratio was more like 1 to 1. There were an estimated 163,000 Department of Defense
contractors in Iraq by September 2008 and 117,000 in Afghanistan in March 2012 (2).
Given the massive expansion of the mercenary industry in recent years and accusations of
involvement in massacres, abuse of detainees, and association with a sex-slave scandal (147),
awareness of their activities and examination of their legitimacy is long overdue. Pattison
challenges theorists of Just War and international politics to address the problems associated
with private contractors and mercenaries and to modify their positions accordingly. He
presents his own, plausible, account of the legitimacy of different kinds of military force (all-
volunteer, conscripted, public v. private), which he calls ‘the Cumulative Legitimacy
Approach’. The book is clearly written and will be of interest to anyone concerned with the
moral issues surrounding war.
Pattison’s perspective on war is a liberal cosmopolitan one but there is much in the book for
socialists and Marxists to agree with and there is an abundance of useful information and
stimulating arguments. He argues that most wars are unjust (62) and that public military
force is preferable to private military force. He also, briefly, presents more general reasons to
prefer public to private provision of services (in health, education and postal services (229-
32)).1
Pattison looks at a number of problems with PMSCs. Mercenary firms have been accused of
violating basic human rights, as in the case of the Nisour Square incident, where Blackwater
forces are accused of killing 17 unarmed civilians, including several women and
children.2 The firms act without fear of reprimand3 – Paul Bremer’s decree, Order 17, granted
immunity to private contractors working in Iraq (30-2).
Private contractors often act independently of the states they work for. They may well be
employed by a state other than their home state, and they exercise their own private
judgement about whether to go to war (32-6). Moreover, private contractors are often
criticised for being driven by mercenary motives (36-46).4 Pattison argues that PMSCs are
likely to be less effective than regular armies because 1) they are not sufficiently subject to
democratic control, 2) they often treat their personnel poorly, and 3) they erode communal
bonds. He also suggests that PMSCs are likely to undermine formal and informal constraints
on war, deepen inequalities in access to security, and cause greater international instability.
The major weakness of Pattison’s book is that although he talks about problems of inequality
brought about by private military companies in terms of access to security he does not give
sufficient weight to class inequalities within countries or to inequalities in power between
states. There is very little sense that the analysis of war should take into account the system
which forms the backdrop to the various wars. Capitalism is barely mentioned and
imperialism is ignored. Hence the admittedly utopian character of the ideal that he puts
forward.
Pattison’s ideal is a global public monopoly on both the authorization and provision of
military force. In practice this might take the form of a ‘cosmopolitan all-volunteer force’
under the auspices of the United Nations (207-8). In this scenario there would be no private
military companies and no state militaries. The structure of the UN would itself be
reorganised so that its Security Council would be based not on five permanent members but
instead on “democratically organized regional organizations” (208).
The problems with this proposal are suggested by the way the UN currently functions. The
five permanent members of the Security Council each have veto power on decisions relating
to the use of force and can exempt themselves and their allies from legal sanctions. You do
not have to be a Marxist to recognise that this set-up is far from ideal. In her recent
introduction to ethical considerations surrounding war, Helen Frowe argues:
…the structure and hierarchy of the UN make it unsuitable as a judge and jury capable of
dishing out punishment…. We usually require impartiality on the part of those who work in
the legal system…. We would not, for example, think it just to allow a judge to rule on a case
in which he had a personal vested interest. But, at the moment, the UN does allow that a state
can refuse to authorise uses of force in cases where such force might conflict with its own
interests.5
The UN was set up in a way that enshrined the dominance of the major powers. They use the
UN as a fig leaf if they can get its endorsement but they ignore it if it gets in their way (as in
the case of Iraq). This suggests that the problem cannot be resolved simply by altering the
structure of the UN, but must address the enormous inequalities in power between nations.
In addition to addressing power relations between nations we should also look to power
relations within nations. It is naïve to suppose that when commentators speak of a nation’s
interests, they are giving equal value to the interests of each and every one of its citizens. The
world’s largest superpower, the United States, is governed by politicians drawn
disproportionately from the employer class and from wealthy backgrounds; more than half of
the members of Congress are millionaires.6 The fight for a more peaceful and just world is
intimately connected to the fight for a more equal society.
Reviewed by Robert Vinten
PhD candidate in Philosophy
Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
robert_vinten@yahoo.com
Notes
1. There is an important disanalogy between services like healthcare and military force which
Pattison does not comment on. Healthcare is unequivocally a good and the more we have of it
the better, but armed forces, even regular, non-privatized, ones are not so clearly a good. The
kind of force used by armies inevitably inflicts non-consensual harm on others and stands in
need of justification in a way that healthcare does not.
2. For a detailed account of the incident see Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater, London: Serpent’s
Tail, 2007, 3-8.
3. New charges were brought in October 2013 against those accused of the Nisour Square
massacre, but as yet no one has been prosecuted. Blackwater employees have also been
accused of shooting the bodyguard of Iraq’s Vice President (the accused was flown out of
Iraq by Blackwater under Washington’s instruction and his punishment was to have his
security clearance revoked), shooting three guards at the Iraqi Media Network, and various
other crimes. Scahill, Blackwater, 10-11.
4. Pattison distinguishes motives from intentions (somebody might be motivated by, say,
money but nonetheless intend to do something good) but there remains the problem that
mercenary motives might well skew the intentions of private contractors.
5. Helen Frowe, The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction, Abingdon: Routledge, 2011,
82.
6. A. Katz, “Congress is now mostly a millionaires’ club,” Time, January 9, 2014.
