Soldier & The Contractor: The Interactions of Military and Private Security Company Personnel in the Field of Combat.

A number of states began openly hiring private military actors in the latter half of the twentieth century, after using them covertly for centuries. This trend in the privatization of military functions has increased so rapidly in the last several decades that private security companies (PSCs) are now even commissioned to fight in conflicts alongside the state-run professional military. This practice of placing the military and PSCs in the same theatre of combat has led to a surprising outcome in terms of how these two types of actors interact with each other, as there are numerous reports of hostilities, tensions, and general resentment between these forces. Such tense interactions between the military and private security companies in the field are puzzling, for the two parties essentially share a trade (war-fighting) and are working for the same team (the state). Why do PSC personnel not get along with professional soldiers in the field, and vice versa? This paper addresses this puzzle by: (1) empirically illuminating the difficulties these private military firms have interacting with the professional military in conflict zones; and (2) questioning whether such tense interactions between the military and PSC personnel in the field are due to structural constraints (such as the high rate of pay for PSC personnel) or identity cleavages (for instance, soldiers seeing themselves as civic-minded professionals and PSCs as opportunistic or greedy guns-for-hire, and vice versa). In performing this undertaking, the paper makes an important and interesting contribution to the structure versus identity debate within both the scholarly field of International Relations and the social sciences more generally. Finally, the paper makes informed recommendations regarding what, if anything, the military and policymakers can do to relieve the tension between these two actors in the field of combat. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]