Security governance and the private military industry in Europe and North America

Even before Iraq, the grow ing use of private military contractors has been widely discussed in the academic and public literature. However, the reasons for the proliferation of private military companies and its implications are frequently generalized due to a lack of suitable theoretical approaches for the analysis of private means of violence in contemporary security. Consequently, this article contends, the analysis of the growth of the private military industry typically conflates two separate developments: the failure of some developing states to provide for their national security and the privatization of military services in industrialized nations in Europe and North America. This article focuses on the latter and argues that the concept of security governance can be used as a theoretical framework for understanding the distinct development, problems and solutions for the governance of the private military industry in developed countries.     

Blurring the Dividing Line: The Convergence of Internal and External Security in Western Europe

Abstract

A distinctive feature of the security landscape in western Europe of the post-Cold War era is that the dividing line between internal and external security has become increasingly obsolete—mainly as a consequence of the growing importance of transnational as well as other challenges to security which defy the distinction between domestic and international security. This article examines this convergence of internal and external security agendas from the perspective of the coercive apparatus of western European countries, pointing to a militarisation and externalisation of policing, and an internalisation and ‘policisation’ of soldiering: while police forces are taking on military characteristics, and are extending their activities beyond the borders of the state, military forces are turning to internal security missions, and are adopting certain police features. Moreover, agencies which have traditionally been located at the interface between police and military forces, i.e. gendarmerie-type or paramilitary forces, are assuming an increasingly important role.     

The Impact of Mercenaries and Private Military and Security Companies on Civil War Severity between 1946 and 2002

Research has long abandoned the view that only states wage war. On the contrary, civil war research has produced an impressive body of literature on violent non-state actors. Still, a particular group of actors—mercenaries—has been widely neglected so far, although they have participated in numerous conflicts in the second half of the twentieth century. Whether their presence aggravated or improved the situation is a matter of dispute. Some believe that the additional military capabilities provided by mercenaries help to end civil wars quickly without increased bloodshed, while others deem mercenaries greedy and bloodthirsty combatants who contribute to making civil wars more brutal, while a third opinion differentiates between different types of mercenaries. This article tests the impact of mercenaries on civil war severity. The evidence indicates that the presence of both mercenaries and private military and security contractors increases its severity.     

The perils of outsourcing post-conflict reconstruction: donor countries,international NGOs and private military and security companies

During the last few years, some donor countries (especially the US and the UK) have been increasingly outsourcing services in post-conflict operations to international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and private military and security companies (PMSCs). These states have also adopted ‘integrated approaches’ to their policy interventions, contributing to the emergence of an ‘aid and security market’. The article uses ideas from both development and defence studies and re-problematises the contracting states' relationship with PMSCs and INGOs. It argues that although INGOs and PMSCs are very different types of non-state actors, there are striking similarities in outsourcing practices. Moreover, it demonstrates that the leading contracting states have poorly managed their contracts with both INGOs and PMSCs, and have not seriously reflected on the unintended consequences of their contracting practices on the recovery of war-affected countries.     

Missing the nuclear boat? British policy and French military nuclear ambitions during the EURATOM foundation negotiations, 1955–56

This paper examines the neglected nuclear dimension of the ‘relaunch’ of Europe at Messina. France favoured British membership of EURATOM and some interests in Britain saw the commercial and diplomatic advantages of Britain's leadership of the European nuclear industry. However, the possibility of a French military nuclear programme and European nuclear proliferation compounded Britain's established reluctance either to participate in European integration or to jeopardize the prospect of Anglo‐American nuclear weapons cooperation. Britain's aversion to using the hypothetical ‘nuclear card’ is a recurrent theme in Anglo‐French diplomacy.     

Challenging international law: a dilemma of private security companies

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a marked increase in the sale of military services by private security companies (PSCs).1 ?1. The term private security company is used throughout the article instead of private military companies or private military firms. View all notes These companies sell anything from combat support for government military operations to military training and assistance, logistical support and more conventional security protection services. They have undertaken operations in countries as diverse as Sierra Leone, Croatia, and Columbia and now Iraq and Afghanistan. The presence of these companies on the international stage raises fundamental questions about the way war is now being fought. Unfortunately, the legal issues raised by their presence in conflicts have not yet been properly addressed. This article sets out to examine the suitability of international law in defining and controlling the activities of PSCs on the battlefield. It then goes on to discuss the problems associated with national regulation. Here the focus is on the attempts by the United States (US), South Africa, and United Kingdom (UK) governments to introduce effective legislation to control the industry.     

France's action directe: Terrorists in search of a revolution

This article focuses on the ideology of the French terrorist group Action directe. Active from 1979 until 1987, AD went through several phases of ideological change. It was originally influenced by both anarchism and Maoism. In the early 1980s, the group substantially revised its ideology. The result was a variant of the Euro‐terrorism which burst forth in a number of countries during the 1980s. After this point, AD drew the inspiration for its attacks from a struggle against NATO and the ‘Americanization’ of Europe. These motives produced a spiral of violence after 1984 and culminated in a series of assassination attempts against French business and military figures. Throughout, AD attempted to realize the same goal: the assembly of a social group willing/capable of taking up the battle for communist revolution. This goal was AD's ‘search for a revolution’.     

Welcome home! Routines,ontological insecurity and the politics of US military reunion videos

Abstract

This article investigates the military ‘reunion’ videos that proliferated in the United States throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s. The typical video entails a returning soldier who surprises a family member, usually a child or female spouse, at a public event. I articulate the reunion video as a key feature of populism in contemporary US society. The videos can be considered examples of the ‘encounters’ theorized by both Anthony Giddens and Erving Goffman. Both private and public ‘social occasions’ with performative qualities of ‘day-to-day life’, the videos disclose the institutional and societal routines of not only a family but broader layers and circles of the US political community. They relate not only to loss but also to redemption. The article therefore investigates when and how, and provides a provisional argument for why, these videos have proliferated by consulting the everyday features of ontological security. It focuses on both the local and the international contexts within which they attend to, but also generate, US ontological insecurity.     

Security and informality in Libya: militarisation without military?

ABSTRACT

The article interrogates the analytical purchase of the concept of militarism in the case of Libya, and its relationship to securitisation. While Libya is often associated with widely securitised threats to the international order, its military institutions have been viewed with suspicion and ambivalence across different phases of Libyan history, making of Libya an uneasy fit for standard categorisations of militarism. This prompts the question of whether and under what circumstances militarism can occur without and even against the military. Drawing on a historical-sociological analysis, the article shifts the focus to micropolitical dynamics and extra-institutional agency with a view to unpacking the complex entanglement of formal and informal armed actors in Libya’s hybrid security governance. The concepts of informalisation of militarism and militarisation of informality are used as analytical lenses to reconstruct the partial, failed, contested and hijacked attempts to build ‘modern’ military institutions in Libya. I suggest that the repertoire of militarism is not so much an end in itself, but a resource mobilised by local and international actors in a contentious field of state-building practices.     

Shareholding characteristics and imperfect coverage of the Stewardship Code in Japan

Abstract

While the degree of cross shareholding among corporations, or between banks and companies (referred to as ‘insiders’ in this article) has been declining since the 1990s, the percentage of shareholding by institutional investors (‘outsiders’), or financial intermediaries, has been increasing in Japan. Studies show that both companies and investors are becoming more short-term oriented and are showing herd behaviour. With such a collective mentality, company–investor relations in Japan have experienced a vicious cycle and have thus lowered the market's rate of return. Meanwhile, conventional ‘insiders’ tend to hold shares in the longer-term, but lack engagement in investee companies’ corporate governance. Japan's Stewardship Code requests fund managers ‘engage’ more than ever in the governance of investees so that investor-company relations become longer-term and the risk of investors’ ‘exit’ decreases. However, the Code only covers the behaviours of ‘outsiders’ but not those of ‘insiders’, who still play certain roles among all shareholders. Due to its imperfect coverage, the expected effect of Japan's Stewardship Code in achieving stronger ‘engagement’ by investors should be limited. To cope with this issue, this article outlines a suggestion that a comprehensive rule covering all types of shareholders should be implemented in Japan.     

(Self) Regulating War?: Voluntary Regulation and the Private Security Industry

Private security companies' growing participation in U.S. and international military missions has raised concern about whether the private security industry is subject to sufficient controls. Industry self-regulation is often proposed as part of a multilayered framework of regulations to govern PSCs. But what can self-regulation contribute to regulation of the private security industry? This matters because privatization in the security realm has moved beyond understandings of the proper breakdown of public and private functions concerning the use of force. This article assesses what self-regulation can contribute to the control of this industry and whether the private security industry lends itself to effective self-regulation. It concludes that the private security industry does not exhibit the capacity to adopt and implement effective self-regulation on its own. If self-regulation is to complement state and international regulation, participation in the design and oversight of self-regulation must be broadened beyond private security companies alone.     

Parity and stability: Some conclusions from geometrical models of military operations in Central Europe

This paper presents a model analysis in support of the assertion that parity at lower forces levels does not by itself improve military stability in central Europe. Most of all, a stable military regime requires that force concentrations can be constrained in a verifiable manner the more, the lower the mutual force levels become. However, this is not to be obtained with a doctrine of linear defense by means of homogeneous forces consisting of the traditional highly mobile multi‐purpose forces designed to be employed in all combat modes. Theoretically, a stable situation would result if the antagonists adopted a two‐component defense consisting of ‘reactive’ defense elements deployed in some depth and incapable of being employed in large scale offensive operations and of a smaller fraction (about 20%) of the traditional armor forces serving as operational reserves.

The basic dilemma of nearly all reactive defense elements proposed in the West‐German military reform debate rests with the generally shared assumption that mobility is incompatible with defensiveness. However, the ratios at which the traditional elements would have to be substituted by stationary reactive elements are quite high. Thus, a new type of mobility is required for reactive defense elements that permits to counter‐concentrate quickly without being useable for large scale offensive maneuver.     

Unintended Consequences of EU Democracy Support in the European Neighbourhood

ABSTRACT

The European Union’s (EU) impact on the political governance of the European neighbourhood is varied and sometimes opposite to the declared objectives of its democracy support policies. The democracy promotion literature has to a large extent neglected the unintended consequences of EU democracy support in Eastern Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. The EU has left multiple imprints on the political trajectories of the countries in the neighbourhood and yet the dominant explanation, highlighting the EU’s security and economic interests in the two regions,cannot fully account for the unintended consequences of its policies. The literature on the ‘pathologies’ of international organisations offers an explanation, emphasizing the failures of the EU bureaucracy to anticipate, prevent or reverse the undesired effects of its democracy support in the neighbourhood.     

中俄军工企业体制转轨比较研究

中国和俄罗斯既是邻国又是大国,改革以前国防工业均实行高度集中的计划经济体制,两国在向市场转轨过程中面临着大致相同的问题。由于两国改革的道路和方法迥异,改革的绩效显示出巨大的差别,这种差别在于国家政策的支持作用。俄罗斯采取的是大力推进"私有化"来增强军工企业活力,中国军工企业改革的核心是产权的重组和清晰界定。从中国军工企业改革的逻辑看,它是遵循着一种由浅入深、由表及里和由简单到复杂的路径向前发展。     

THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING: (RE)CONSIDERING THE EXCELLENCE OF ACTIVISM IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN MINING INDUSTRY

ABSTRACT

One of the greatest changes organisations in South Africa experienced through the country's democratisation is the introduction of ‘legitimate’ activism in organisational settings. Organisational communication literature – specifically as manifest in the excellence theory – compounded this through views on the potentially positive impact activism could have on organisations by ‘pushing’ them beyond equilibrium to a state of dynamic equilibrium – mediated through strategic and effectual communication. This view, however, is somewhat fouled by occurrences such as those at Marikana, and concomitant strikes in the country's platinum industry, which have held the economy ‘captive’ in various ways. Organisations – especially the mining industry – need to ask ‘How much activism is too much activism?’ and organisational communication practitioners need to introspectively consider whether this theoretical contribution should not perhaps have come with greater guidance in terms of the chary (if not restrained) implementation of this potentially positive, yet almost insidiously dangerous, communicative feature. this article aims to explore activism in the mining industry of South Africa, specifically from the vantage points of industry heads, as it concerns the changed communicative landscape in this industry post-marikana. to this end, the article will report on seven qualitative, semi- structured interviews – along with existing literature on the topic – as it offers up six considerations in applying the aspect of excellence and ‘positive activism’ within organisations in South Africa's mining industry.     

Contextualising and theorising economic development,local business and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar

ABSTRACT

After Myanmar ended military rule in 2011, significant foreign investment arrived to facilitate a profitable transition to an integrated regional economy, and under the promise that foreign actors can help facilitate peaceful long-term development. However, these firms have also tacitly supported an ethnic cleansing committed by the government that most have partnered with or funded. This article builds theory on economic opening, development and conflict, using research from Myanmar to forward three arguments about business actions in fragile, at-risk countries. First, international-led regulatory reform has had little impact on endemic corruption at the micro- or meso-levels, as local elites and international businesses remain the primary beneficiaries. Second, ‘development’ is a contentious topic, defined locally not as broad societal growth but the unjustified picking of winners and losers in society by foreign entities. Third, business ventures are exacerbating ethnic tensions through a liberal peace-building mentality that is unresponsive to either local conflicts or local communities. The article closes by offering three ways that these findings open future research avenues on business engagement as peace-builders and development agents in developing yet fragile states.     

The US–Russian security ‘reset’: implications for Central-Eastern Europe and Germany

Abstract

The article examines the reactions of selected European states to the US-performed ‘reset’ in relations with Russia and explores the ways in which they have been adapting to the new set-up. The article is divided into three parts: after the discussion of the substantive continuity and limited change in US foreign and security policy (USFSP), the multilateral and bilateral dimensions of USFSP procedure are examined through John Ruggie's theoretical observations. The second part of the article deals with implications of the USFSP for Central-Eastern European countries. This part begins with a discussion of Russian attempts to wheedle Europe into embracing its plans for new European security architecture. The next section sheds light on the unexpected process of strategic realignment of the region (USA/NATO/EU/CSDP) and simultaneous transformation of the special relationship with the USA into ‘normal life’. The third part of the article tackles the implications of heightened US–Russian bilateralism for Germany. Authors' findings, many of them based on conducted elite interviews, suggest the contrary process, namely Germany's strengthened multilateral commitment to the EU and specifically to European Security and Defence Policy, limiting the bilateral option to energy trade with Russia. What follows are concluding remarks.     

Trump and the End of an Era? The Liberal International Order in Perspective

ABSTRACT

The liberal international economic and political order which the United States created from the ashes of World War II and has since led is in trouble. To United States President Donald Trump, the order which provided the framework under which sovereign states agreed to follow a rules-based system of economic and political cooperation and shared multilateral governance, has not only allowed other nations (in particular, China) to take advantage of US ‘magnanimity’, but also weakened the United States economically, while asymmetric alliances compromised its military advantages. Given the sustained assault this cosmopolitan order is facing, many fear that it may not survive if Trump is re-elected in November 2020. Indeed, if the United States response to the COVID-19 pandemic is any guide, an ‘America First’ agenda, especially a hard-line approach to China, will shape US policy if Trump wins a second term.     

Post-9/11 institutionalisation of European Union counter-terrorism: emergence,acceleration and inertia

Abstract

This article applies a historical institutionalist perspective to an empirical analysis of the sources and characteristics of the institutionalisation of European Union counter-terrorism. Drawing upon the work of Stone Sweet, Sandholtz and Fligstein, this paper critically analyses the impact of external crises in the form of major terrorist attacks on the emergence of counter-terrorism as an area of European governance. It also highlights the key policy and institutional developments, studies the role of policy innovators on the institutionalisation of counter-terrorism and supports the relevance of ‘transformative’ or ‘evolutionary’ models for the understanding of institutional change in this domain.