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Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) as active participants within global security environments has increased in the last two decades exponentially. States have progressively incorporated PMSCs in their security functions, both domestically and internationally. Since the conflict in Iraq in the early 2000s, there have been numerous plausible reports of PMSCs violating international humanitarian law. Despite this, only a few have ever been prosecuted, suggesting a fundamental challenge to understandings regarding state control and monopoly over violence. Utilising a historical case study of an Australian PMSC in Operation Iraqi Freedom, this article argues that PMSCs undermine Australian sovereign legitimacy. It demonstrates how Australian oversight and accountability regarding its use of PMSCs is significantly fractured and current regulatory mechanisms concerning PMSCs are deficient. Thus, the Australian government's ability to provide control over the actions of PMSCs is diminished, affecting its sovereign legitimacy and ability to monopolise violence. The article overall conveys the dubious position states come into when the use‐of‐force is wielded by actors for distinct material incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting with the Egyptians in the Ancient Age, almost every empire has tried to make foreign military elements fight on its own behalf. These companies, which appear to be commercial enterprises in theory, but are frequently used in intelligence and secret military operations, have become more known and recognized, especially after the invasion of Iraq by the USA in 2003. Private military company personnel composed of military professionals retired or dismissed from the armed forces. Russia has also tried to use private military companies in order to realize her national security and interests. However, some restrictions originating from the constitution and criminal code of the Russian Federation made that solution difficult. The Russian Constitution and the Russian Penal Code does not allow the establishment of mercenary and private military companies and describe such organizations and activities as illegal. Additionally, the Russian military companies, were late for the international security market because of economic problems and the opposition from the armed forces. In this study, the first period of the establishment of the private military company system, the period between 1999 and 2013, is explained in the chronological method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate privatization of security has generated a neoliberal iteration of an old profession: the private military contractor. This development has revolutionized security policies across the globe while reviving old patterns of inequality. Following neoliberal logic, outsourcing fosters two types of employment: the exploitative and the exclusive. The first refers to low-status individuals hired en masse to perform menial labor; the second refers to experts who perform functions central to the employer's mission. We contribute to this discussion by focusing on the qualifications of a different subsample of this industry: American contractors who died while performing military and security functions in Iraq. We assert that such American employees directly engaged in mission-essential combat and security functions better fit the employment category of an exclusive, expert sector at the core of the private military industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an increased global use of private military contractors (PMCs) since the large-scale American use of them in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This has included an increase in Russian and now Chinese PMCs. As China continues to develop its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), it is likely that the world will see an increase in the number of Chinese PMCs used to protect these projects. In this event it is important to bring Chinese PMCs into the PMC industry's most effective private regulatory bodies, as these bodies are often more effective at ensuring ethical PMC conduct than international and national legal regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States' global strategic outlook has shifted markedly since the end of major combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the United States' strategic posture shifts, the nature of military operations is simultaneously changing rapidly. Many analysts predict that cyber-operations, autonomous weapons systems, artificial intelligence, and clandestine special forces operations will be central features in future conflicts. Although often overlooked by scholars and policy analysts, defence contractors are integral to the development and implementation of these emerging categories of warfare. This inquiry examines the evolving nature of the American defence industry and the roles corporations play in current theatres of conflict. Surprisingly, rather than becoming less reliant on defence contractors after their much-maligned performance in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, American military and intelligence agencies have become more dependent on the private sector as technology becomes increasingly central to warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethical issues are an integral part of business life and daily life. Business ethics concern the ground rules of individual, company and societal behavior. With industrialization, business activities have become more complex and this occasionally causes violations of rights. The number of private military companies increased rapidly in the conflict areas after 1990. The purpose of this study is to examine the activities of private military companies in terms of business ethics and to emphasize the necessity of a human-centered thinking system. In the study, firstly, the definition of private military companies was made and then the differences between private security companies were mentioned. Then, the definition of business ethics was made. Finally, the situation of private military companies in terms of business ethics has been evaluated by considering some experienced events. In the 21st century, non-ethical activities such as operations of private military companies, severe human rights violations, ill-treatment of prisoners of war, torture and rape were recorded in various official reports in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore, it cannot be said that private military companies are very successful in practice morally and legally. These new companies, known in the past as names such as legionnaires or mercenaries, but nowadays referred to as private military companies or private military contractors, have reached an annual turnover of over $ 200 billion and the number of employees expressed in hundreds of thousands. However, the uncertainty of the positions and responsibilities of private military companies in armed conflicts brings along many moral and legal problems. Along with the law, violations of rights can be prevented by addressing people's moral worlds, hearts and consciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In September 2007 private contractors working for Blackwater, a private military contracting firm based in the US, killed seventeen people in Nisour Square in Iraq and severely injured more than twenty others. For over seven years the contractors evaded legal liability. This paper examines the way that legal jurisdiction played out in this evasion of accountability. We first examine the role of Order 17 in mandating that private contractors in Iraq “be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of their sending states”. We then turn to interrogate the ways that ‘juridical othering’, which operates through appeals to jurisdiction, has been employed by the state to distance itself from its own actions, in that the contractors were seen to be accountable neither to martial nor to domestic civilian law. Subsequently, we examine the impact of this juridical othering on the victims of the violence, as they too are ‘othered’ in the law. Through this analysis we demonstrate that the processes of juridical othering are the result not only of deliberate state action, but also of complex spatiolegal jurisdictions that are historically ingrained and are called into being in times of war in particular kinds of ways. In our conclusion, we point to the October 2014 ruling in the US federal courts that found three Blackwater employees guilty of manslaughter and one of murder, to show how law is continually unfolding and, as it does so, reinforces the intimate ways that law and war are co-constituted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private military and security companies (PMSCs) have been gaining increasing media and scholarly attention particularly due to their indispensable role in the wars in Afghanistan 2001 and Iraq 2003. Nevertheless, theoretical insights into the agency problems inherent when hiring PMSCs and how to optimally incentivize them are scarce. We study the complex relationship between intervening state, host state, and PMSC, taking into account the diverging interests of all involved parties as well as potential agency problems. We develop a theoretical model to characterize a state's optimal choice whether to perform a task associated with an intervening mission itself, or hire a PMSC and optimally design the contract. We find that it might be optimal to hire PMSCs even if they are expected to do a worse job than the intervening state would do itself. Furthermore, the government's reputation in rewarding PMSCs for a good performance is crucial and might render it optimal to only deal with a limited number of PMSCs — who are not necessarily always the most efficient providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]