Christopher Spearin's research while affiliated with Royal Military College of Canada and other places
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Publications (35)
Given calls for the United States to launch privateers against China, the article contends that such an effort would be unsuccessful for two reasons. First, the contemporary private military and security industry – the focal point of present calls – is not attuned to privateering. This is because of the following: its defensive posture; quantitativ...
Using China’s UN peacekeeping as a foil, the article explores the demand factors that inform the usage of Chinese Private Security Companies (PSCs) to protect Chinese economic interests and nationals abroad. The article makes three assertions. First, compared to Chinese peacekeepers, PSCs can offer a more focused and responsive presence overseas, a...
This article explores the degree to which Russian Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) are similar to Special Operations Forces (SOF) in terms of their characteristics, their capabilities, and their efforts. First, it recognizes that like the US example and experiences in other Western countries, Russian PMSCs often rest on a SOF pedigre...
In this article, Christopher Spearin examines Russian private military and security companies (PMSCs) operating in the so-called ‘grey zone’ and highlights their offensive character. Regarding a potential NATO response, the article contends that advancing an international normative stance such that PMSC employment should be viewed in an undeniable...
In the late 1990s when Canada was largely removing itself from United Nations peace support endeavours, private military and security companies were heralded as likely replacements. Canada has indicated its desire to reengage in a United Nations peace support milieu in which there is now a private military and security presence. It is not the type...
Businessmen in Arms: How the Military and Other Armed Groups Profit in the MENA Region. Edited by Elke Grawert and Zeinab Abul-Magd. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. 334p. $92.00 cloth. - Volume 15 Issue 4 - Christopher Spearin
Chapter 5 emphasizes PMSC labour-centric stances in its focus on sea power. With the conventional forces norm in mind, this chapter identifies the milieu in which PMSCs are injected, one that favours expensive and sophisticated technology for decisive effect, for replacing personnel on land, and for augmenting state prestige. The result is that the...
Chapter 4 assesses how and why Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) are so constituted regarding land power. This chapter introduces the importance of state military doctrines that intrinsically set what activities PMSCs perform. As such, this chapter grants particular attention to the multi-valued role of the offensive amongst state mil...
Chapter 2 identifies the components of the conventional forces norm that set what states do and consequently helps to define the commercial and operational limitations of PMSCs. It offers a background presentation of norm characteristics and their importance in order for the reader to realize specifically what states, as members of a club, should p...
Chapter 7 closes the book by summarizing the argument and by reflecting upon what the defensively bounded and largely labour-centric nature of the Private Military and Security Company PMSC presence might indicate for both future academic analysis and policymaking. In regards to proxy wars, this chapter considers the degree to which PMSCs can serve...
Chapter 6 concerns air power and while one is, by physical necessity, pushed towards considering Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) and machines, this chapter nevertheless stresses the compensating qualities of PMSCs that are similarly bounded defensively and limited by relative technological sophistication. This chapter does this by f...
Chapter 3 offers a historical consideration of commercial non-state violent actors and commercial type policies under two rationales. The first is to highlight the one-time prominence of such actors, predominantly in the land milieu and especially understood through the term “mercenary”. This then allows one to reveal how mercenarism either decline...
“In this timely and thought-provoking work, Christopher Spearin provides important new insight into the normative, technological and strategic factors that help shape the use of private military and security companies on land, at sea and in the air. The analysis increases our understanding of these commercial actors and the ways in which their past...
It is important to recognize the multifaceted, and sometimes necessary, role military and security contracting played in supporting the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) in Afghanistan. It is also important to assess the degree to which this expeditionary experience might shape later Canadian engagement with the private sector. To do so, the paper first...
The demand for international maritime policing to counter Somali pirates is outstripping state supply. Hence, private military and security companies (PMSCs) are receiving considerable attention. These firms have a defensive/client-based security orientation that differs from naval patrolling and convoying. PMSCs offer close protection better suite...
UN peacekeeping continues to confront qualitative and quantitative difficulties. Arguments in favour of using private military and security companies (PMSCs), particularly those referring to the 1990s-era when Executive Outcomes was operating, have been aired. The article examines earlier operational arguments for PMSC participation in UN peacekeep...
The American call for commercial shippers to rely upon private security companies (PSCs) to protect their vessels from Somali pirates presents several challenges to sea users. Though this call for responsibilization inherently reveals state limitations, not all commercial shippers embrace it because it upsets traditional conceptions regarding order...
The article contends that, in the light of contemporary challenges, states are not only changing the meaning of the word `humanitarian', but are also creating an expanding marketplace that includes international private security companies (PSCs) in the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Three types of factors — supply, demand, and ideational — ha...
The article analyses the non-profit/non-state approach for UN peacekeeping as manifest in the proposal made by the Global Peace and Security Partnership (GPSP). The article contends that while there is an obvious need for such an initiative, measured either by worldwide demand or by problems related to private, profit-seeking firms, this third way...
Post-Cold War security governance makes for strange bedfellows. This is because, increasingly, the obligation of providing security no longer rests predominantly with the state.1 States are downloading responsibilities onto non-state actors and other opportunities are arising in which these actors can operate. Accordingly, how security is provided,...
The article contends that while the threat posed by contemporary terrorism challenges the state's monopoly on violence, the American response to this threat, with its heavy reliance upon military contractors, itself challenges the status quo of the state possessing the monopoly on violence applied extraterritorially. This challenge reveals a dynami...
This article explores the contribution of Canadian‐based firms to the large and expanding international industry of modern‐day mercenary companies, entities that are otherwise known as international private security companies (PSCs). Though soldiers of fortune still exist, this new type of mercenary activity is noticeably different, as it is based...
The article contends that private military contractors supporting American military operations in Iraq will come under intense international scrutiny. Various factors have led to the substantial private presence and the Iraq case reveals shifts in international dynamics from state to private actors. However, the private presence raises concerns tha...
This article counters the contention that international private security companies (PSCs) are not subject to accountability mechanisms. It identifies four mechanisms — political, administrative, market and judicial — and instead asserts that the key issues are the effectiveness and appropriateness of these mechanisms. Using cases of US‐based PSCs o...
In light of the need for humanitarian organizations to have adequate security for their operations, private security companies are now filling the void left by state forces. Little analysis, however, has been made of the impact of private security companies on the delivery of post‐Cold War humanitarian assistance. To make this analysis, the article...
The Mean Times report asserts that humanitarians should rely on private security companies (PSCs) to provide security for humanitarians and/or their operations which, despite the growing need, state militaries and international peacekeeping forces are increasingly unable or unwilling to provide. However, does the potential exist for PSCs to take th...
Since the end of the Cold War, interest regarding the interaction between Relief and Development Agencies (RDAs) and international private security companies (PSCs) has risen in waves as determined by humanitarian crises. 1 In the mid-1990s, the first wave followed the genocide in Central Africa. In response to this disaster, the non-governmental o...
Citations
... Some call this approach "plausible deniability," 1558 others refer to it as "grey-zone approach." 1559 Journalists and experts have collected proof that PMCs like Slavonic Corpus and Wagner maintain close ties to the Russian State. Korotkov describes how contractors from Slavonic Corpus arrived back in Moscow from their first mission in Syria and were greeted by FSB agents. ...
... Güncel akademik çalışmalar ve finansal raporlarda ise bunlar daha kapsayıcı bir şekilde 'Özel Askeri ve Güvenlik Şirketleri' olarak isimlendirilmektedir (Cameron & Chetail, 2013;Spearin, 2017;Tonkin, 2011;Palou-Loverdos & Armendáriz, 2011). Yine de bu şirketlerin kesin olarak üzerinden anlaşılan genel bir tanımlamasına ulaşılamamıştır. ...
Reference: Özel Güvenlik Şirketleri
... Security is an indispensable factor that affects the location of banks or business venture. Security simply means safety from harm, a term that has different dimensions but highly needed for the proper wellbeing of any community or society (Spearin, 2017). The security of life and property is vital for siting banks because without security people will not have trust and confidence in putting their money and other valuables for fear of loss. ...
... Multinational corporations rely on private security as globalization and the search for scarce natural resources and cheap labor encourages them to operate in volatile countries (Mandel, 2002: 20-2;Singer, 2003: 80-2). Finally, there is increasing use of private security by Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are implementing or replacing state aid in conflict regions (Lilly, 2000: 17-9;Spearin, 2005). Where states are reluctant to intervene for humanitarian purposes and have been outsourcing national aid to NGOs, these agencies look to the market for protection. ...
Reference: Security: Collective Good or Commodity?
... As shown above, the market has developed a similar product, a service to protect commercial vessels transiting the area, but cheaper and therefore with fewer men and less regulations. " The PMSC's defensive/client-based orientation towards security […] allows for a 'closeness' in protection that is better configured for countering the rapidity of Somali pirate attacks while avoiding the legal and operational challenges naval forces confront in trying to suppress piracy " (Spearin 2012: 825). Furthermore, public Western militaries are often reluctant to use deadly force against pirates, as they are treated as criminal suspects to be brought back to shore or to be tried in court. ...
... These strategies include national and voluntary regulation, international legal discourses, the framing of PSCs as humanitarian actors and their authority as recognized 'security experts ' (Joachim and Schneiker, 2012;Krahmann, 2012;Leander, 2010;Leander and Van Munster, 2007;Østensen, 2011b). So far, however, one important legitimizing strategy and its consequences have not been investigated: performance-based contracting and performance assessments (Ng et al., 2009;Perry, 2009;Spearin, 2014). Performance, defined in terms of publicly beneficial outcomes, has emerged as a central legitimizing paradigm for states, international organizations and NGOs following the rise of neoliberalism and New Public Management approaches (Lewis, 2015;Radin, 2007). ...
... Project for the Danish Defence and chief legal advisor to the Danish Defence. 14. See also Spearin (2005) in relation to budget pressures particularly experienced in Canada, Berndtsson's (2014) discussion on outsourcing in Sweden and Cusumano (2014) for a brief discussion on military role conceptions in the UK and USA. ...
... Østensen notes that using PMSCs "diffuses authority over peacekeeping into the commercial market" without disclosing anything (Østensen 2013: 33). Others in this literature identify alternative reasons for why the UN should not use PMSCs, including the IO's lack of disclosure resulting in a likely dishonest narrative that PSCs are needed to fill the quantity and quality gaps (Tkach and Phillips 2020), the emergence of a security economy in the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or MONUSCO (Krahmann and Leander 2019), an over-reliance on self-regulation of PMSCs resulting in the hiring of potentially problematic firms (Pingeot 2014), and an over-reliance on the free market as a way to draw together the best-combined force for operations (Spearin 2011). ...
... A remarkable trait of the humanitarian wars in the 21st century was the extensive use of private military and security companies (pmscs) in war zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq. There is a long history of private mercenaries in human warfare, but their redefinition as private contractors, their presence in the new humanitarian wars, and their diverse areas of activity have been particularly questionable, especially in terms of legitimacy in international law and the potential impact on human security (Gillard 2006;Spearin 2009). Liberal expectations (e.g. ...
Reference: Doctrine. Humanitarianism: Keywords
... Zum anderen beinhalten diese Zahlen nur die Auslagerungen seitens der USA und nicht die von anderen Staaten und internationalen Organisationen. Wenngleich in geringerem Maße als die USA, lagern auch Staaten wie Dänemark, Deutschland, Frankreich, Kanada, Norwegen, Schweden und Großbritannien Teile ihrer Militärfunktionen aus (Spearin 2005;Petersohn 2010;Mandrup 2013;Krahmann 2013;Østensen 2013;Olsson 2013;Kruck 2014 Der vollständige Name der Arbeitsgruppe lautet: "UN Human Rights Council Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of people to self-determination" (UNHRC 2008a). ...
