Regulating the use of PMCs. While consensus will not be easy, the international community needs to articulate clear criteria for the use of PMCs in combat situations by legitimate governments, such as the use of EO by the Sierra Leonean government to beat back the RUF insurgency or government of Papua New Guinea's contracting of the British firm Sandline (which in turned subcontracted EO) to reassert its control over the Panguna copper mine on the secessionist island of Bougainville. After all, if other nations are not willing, individually or collectively, to contribute to peacekeeping operations in places judged non-strategic or otherwise unrewarding, why should a state not have the right to hire a force capable of carrying out the task? For other services commonly provided by PMCs-including military advice and training, arms supply and procurement, security and protective services and intelligence-national standards for performance and accountability would be sufficient provided that they were clearly delineated in contracts and other legal instruments, especially when coupled with market mechanisms.

Many will, of course, instinctively oppose what they see as the "legitimization" of private military companies, railing against them as "mercenaries." The father of modern political science, Niccolò Machiavelli, was himself profoundly suspicious of mercenaries, noting in The Prince that "if one holds his state on the basis of mercenary arms, he will never be firm or secure; because they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, unfaithful; gallant among friends, vile among enemies; no fear of God, no faith with men." But if such be the nature of the beast, better to bind it with a leash than pretend that it does not exist.

 

Dr. J. Peter Pham,  former diplomat, is the author, most recently, of Liberia: Portrait of a Failed State (Reed Press).