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Hello, welcome to The War Pod, the official podcast of the Remote Warfare Programme, a London-based research initiative focusing on remote warfare, the trend where states support local and regional forces on the front lines rather than deploying large numbers of their own troops. The Remote Warfare Programme is part of the Oxford Research Group, a peace and security

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think tank. I'm Alistair McKay, Senior Editor at the Oxford Research Group, and in this episode I'll be joined by Christopher Kingsley and Helene Oldson from King's Honoured London to discuss the use of private military and security contractors by states and their role in remote warfare. Enjoy the show.

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So hello, thank you both very much for joining us. I thought we could get the ball rolling with you introducing yourselves and your work on this subject area. Well, I'll go first. My name is Christopher Kingsley. I'm a reader in international security and business and I lecture in defence studies and international security in the Defence Studies Department,

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the School of Security Studies at King's College London. For the past two decades, my research has focused on the privatisation of security and in particular the privatisation of war, looking at the historical, moral, ethical and legal issues surrounding this particular area. And I've published extensively on the subject, including books, edited chapters in books and

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academic journals. My name is Helene Oldson and I'm a doctoral candidate in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. My research focuses on the relationship between mercenaries and legitimacy and how mercenaries have been thought of as illegitimate fighters. More specifically, my research focus on how mercenaries have been practically objected to using specific

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speech acts and how these speech acts and ways of describing mercenaries legitimacy seem to transcend historical settings. So in this way, my research explores the tension between the extensive use of mercenaries in warfare and the apparent moral objection to their presence on and near the battlefield. Excellent, thank you both. So the topic of discussion today, which is

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obviously hinted in the way you've described your biographies, is on private military security contractors and remote warfare. And you recently published an article on E&E International Relations, which I advise everybody to read, and the link is available in the podcast notes. It provides an excellent overview of this phenomenon that we call, I suppose, the privatisation of

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security and its role in this practice we call remote warfare. One thing that's very salient about this subject matter is that there are an awful lot of terminologies flying around. So we have terms like mercenaries, we have terms like private military security contractors, we have contractors, we have corporate soldiers, private soldiers, etc. So I thought quite a good

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opening question, just so we're clear what we're talking about here, and it's an easy question to ask, but maybe not an easy one to answer, is what exactly do we mean when we talk about military security contractors? Maybe I can start. Military security contractors, a lot of people actually do see them as mercenaries. I don't. They undertake security functions, they undertake military

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functions, and they undertake these functions for a range of organisations as well as individuals. Private military and security companies are legitimate businesses. This is quite different from the mercenaries of the 1960s, 1970s. They're a legitimate business, they undertake legitimate functions, and those functions are for primarily governments. They're basically

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service providers. Now we've all heard of Serco, for instance, and Serco provide services to governments. Well, that's what these organisations do, but the services they provide are security related. They provide them in war zones, for instance, or high-risk zones, and the type of services they offer, and the three easiest ones to explain, is that they offer close protection.

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So if you're a journalist and you're going to go to Somalia to cover a story, you may require a security, or what they call a close protection team, to look after you, to make sure that you don't find yourself in a very difficult position where your life is threatened. So they provide close protection to government officials operating in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

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They also provide static security to embassies, but also to other pieces of infrastructure. This aspect is actually quite new, and the other new aspect that emerged with the Iraq war was the provision of security for non-essential convoys. Those are the ones that the security contractors provide. Military contractors are more controversial, I would argue.

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Companies like Ibn Barlow's Executive Outcomes, Wagner, again, these are legal entities, but they take on more traditional military roles, military training, and they also, of course, give direct support to their students, you might argue. So not only do they train them, they'll go into action with them, and the sort of training they provide is intelligence training,

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infantry training, and this has become more of an issue probably in the last 20 years than it had been previously. So those are the two types of organisations, private security companies, private military companies. What we also see is a crossover. Just because someone's working for a private security company doesn't mean they can't move across into the military game,

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and vice versa. It's an issue maybe you want to pick up later in the discussion, because this does present problems, and certainly problems for governments. But those are really what they are at the end of the day. I can elaborate on that point, if that may. So mercenaries, as both a concept and a label, is obviously very normative, and that often creates

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difficulties when we, in academia, use words such as PMSCs, PSCs, contractors, and so forth, because a lot of people have an association with the word mercenaries. For example, if you see a movie, or read a book, or watch a TV show, an easy way to identify whomever is supposed to be the enemy or the bad guys, you just call them mercenaries, and then people instantly have an

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image in their head of someone who is inappropriate, or shouldn't be in the situation they are. So in that way, a lot of the problems we have in our specific topic or field of research is, how do we define the subject matter? Who is a mercenary? Who is a military contractor? Who is a security contractor? CRISP, for example, have offered a way of distinguishing between these

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individuals, pointing at the different types of activity that they undertake. Peter Singer is another one who has tried to offer a way to distinguish these individuals based on how far, or how close they are to the battlefield. What kind of activities do they undertake? I think a big part of the issue with trying to distinguish between contractors and mercenaries

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is that we have such a normative understanding and attachment to the concept of the label mercenary. Can I just carry on on that point quickly? The issue is not that contractors are good and mercenaries are bad. It's the activity. Mercenaries can actually, and have in the past, performed good acts, and contractors have performed bad acts. We've seen that with

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Nice or Square. So it's not making that distinction. I think part of the problem today is people like the press. If you want to sell stories, then you use the word mercenary, because armed contractor isn't as sexy as mercenary. So when you see armed contractors protecting ambassadors, which they do do, it's far better if you want to sell your story to say,

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well, mercenaries are actually protecting the American ambassador, which, of course, they were doing in, I should rephrase that, armed contractors were protecting the US ambassador in Libya when they were caught and executed. So again, the word is often used by the press to sell news in that respect. Therefore, I suppose people just catch on to that,

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and it becomes common usage, when in fact, they are quite different depending on the activity. Because one of the terms that's also used in this article concerns remote warfare, which is a sort of a shorthand for methods that states have used to outsource the burdens of warfare and essentially fight wars remotely. And PMSCs play quite a prominent role in that,

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although obviously, a lot of practices around warfare, it's not one that's heavily discussed. But you mentioned that there are a lot of activities going on there, and they kind of cross those lines between combat and non combat. And it's actually quite a broad stretch of activities going on, not simply sort of ones that are in combat zones,

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it's also to do with all kinds of support roles. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the roles that PMSCs play in this practice of remote warfare by states? Well, contractors themselves play a significant role in remote warfare today. Much of the high tech equipment that is used by militaries is actually maintained by contractors.

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And so if we're looking at drones, for instance, and drones are being used more and more, those drones are actually being not only maintained, but often being piloted by contractors, more so in the United States than let's say in the UK. Intelligence, the intelligence field, again, we see more and more contractors participating

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in intelligence work than previously. So part of what's driving this, in my opinion, is the increased technologicalization of warfare. So warfare is becoming far more technical. States literally don't have the personnel to be able to keep up with those changes. And what's happening is manufacturers are basically using contractors to support their

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equipment when they sell this equipment. In fact, they don't sell equipment to the military nowadays. It's rather like a long term 30 year rent, and they use contractors to maintain that equipment. But again, other fields, even medicine, Iraq, Afghanistan, they used contracted nurses. And again, part of this is the shortfall that the military have in manpower. So there is

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a whole array of tasks that are now being outsourced to the market in the past, I would say 20 years, certainly from the Balkans onwards, and had probably been done in history, but not in the last probably 100 years in that respect. One thing that I'm quite taken aback by when looking at this subject is the sheer scale of it. And obviously, numbers are sometimes a bit

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difficult to get an idea of, on things like private militaries, how to describe them. But it is very much a billion dollar industry. And it is also something that is making up a huge section of defence personnel. I think in 2011, there was some figures that came out that said that in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, about 50% of all DoD personnel working on those operations

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were private contractors, which is a humongous leap when you look at past wars from where it's about, I think, 10%, as Sean McPhee highlighted. So I suppose the question that comes naturally from the what is going on is the why is this happening? And you touched upon technology as being quite an important driver of that. But are there other sort of drivers behind why states

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would want to use private militaries besides technological advances? So if you look at it in a historical perspective, it's quite like the same rationales why states or private organisations use these actors. So you can talk about two different fields, right? It's either practical or political. And in history, mercenaries, or what we might today call private contractors,

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we use as a practical tool, a practical tactical tool. For example, as today, they were used when a state lacked forces, when the state lacked particular military techniques. We see with the pikemen, for example, they had excelled in a certain way of using weapons that were desired in other parts of Europe. A specific example is, for example, the use of German mercenaries by the

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British in the American Independence War. So in 1776, when Lord North, who was the Prime Minister, had to explain why Britain needed these German mercenaries, he basically said that they could be readier had than regular forces. So the British had a very concrete problem, which was that they did not have the regular forces to fight a war against the American colonists.

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So the need of German mercenaries is what we today would call a force multiplier. And today, it's basically the same mechanism as we see, right? Mercenaries or private contractors improve organizational efficiency. And as Chris talked about, very practically, in the face of technological advancement, the use of contractors are a way of handling different technological

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obstacles. These contractors are specialized in using equipment, but also maintaining it and operating it. But also in logistics, these contractors are very important. But if we turn to the political side of the rationales for why these actors are used, we can sort of point towards various problems or rationales. For example, if you are a very risk adverse society, a society

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that do not necessarily want to engage in a foreign conflict or a particular war, you can use these actors to sort of participate in a conflict, but under the radar. This obviously creates problems in terms of transparency, accountability, especially in liberal democracies that hold these values high. We also see in literature, different scholars describing the use of private contractors

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as a tool in foreign policy by proxy. So for example, these contractors can be used in a faraway land as a way of executing a foreign policy that there is not popular support by. And finally, a lot of the arguments surrounding what we call outsourcing or privatization is financial. These actors are often cheaper because they do not require pension, they do not require

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healthcare as regular soldiers do. And with the rotation of regular soldiers, you can more easily put private contractors on the ground for longer periods of time. If I can just add to Helena's points, I mean, those are all very important reasons why we're contracting out more and more of these services. If we take Iraq, as an example, for instance,

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it was estimated that if they hadn't used contractors, they would have had to have a general mobilization, and they would have probably have had to have mobilized about 100,000, maybe 200,000, which would have been very, very unpopular with the American people. So the Bush administration decided to circumvent that political constraint, we'll use contractors.

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Now, you have to understand that when you deploy a soldier into theater, you're bringing one out, and you're getting one ready to move back in. So actually, for every soldier in theater, there are another two soldiers, one's come out, one's ready to go in. With contractors, that doesn't happen. You deploy a contractor to theater, and he may stay in that theater for two,

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three, four, five years. I know contractors that have been in Iraq for 10, 15 years. So that in itself is a cost saving for the US military. It's also a political saving, in the sense that they're risking a contractor rather than three soldiers. The other issue with Iraq, and this is an interesting one, as Western militaries have become more high tech, they've reduced in size.

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So they're relying more on firepower, advanced weapon systems than they are on large military forces. Well, the problem they had in Iraq was that they needed a large presence on the ground to subdue the insurgency. They didn't have that. And consequently, what we saw happen was an insurgency merge. And the only way of actually dealing with that then was to employ a lot of

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contractors very quickly, which is what they did. The other reason, again, why they're, I wouldn't say popular, but another reason why they do news them is the simple body bag syndrome, quite frankly. Soldiers come back in body bags, and that is a political nightmare for politicians. And contractors come back in body bags, no one actually sees it. I mean, you'd be surprised how

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many American contractors were brought back in the cargo holds of commercial flights. Those scenes were hidden from the American public. However, every time a soldier came back, there would be a parade. So again, political constraints. In one way, contractors are what I call a political convenient tool for governments to use. And we've seen this more and more. And now the Russians

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themselves have realised this, and we've seen Wagner now being deployed. But they're not always that successful. What are some of the problems associated with the use of PMSCs at the moment? I mean, there are a lot of issues that still need to be addressed, both by governments and international organisations. The biggest one from my perspective is oversight and accountability,

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and in particular, oversight and accountability of armed contractors. We have seen both in Iraq and Afghanistan, that they haven't always been held accountable for their actions. To say that they're getting away with murder, I would say is actually the case. In some circumstances, I believe some have got away with murder in this respect. So certainly there

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needs to be improved accountability and oversight of these particular actors. Transparency. The issue with a citizen soldier, if that's a suitable term, a state soldier, is that they can be held accountable for their actions. And those actions can be transparent, because you can always ask, well, you can tell, the generals have to

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account for their behaviour. That's not always the case with contractors. How do you make them transparent? Because the first thing they will say is, well, that's business in confidence. We can't tell you that, because that will give the opportunity to our opposition. So again, transparency. And some of the other challenges, they can always refuse to actually

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perform the contract. They can hold you to hostage if you're not careful. I'm not sure this has actually happened, but there's the potential there. And then cost overruns. You become so reliant on them that then they can start to increase the cost. And what do you do about that? So again, those are some of the challenges, some of the problems of employing contractors.

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It's interesting what Chris is mentioning about contractors holding their employer hostage, which is actually not a modern or a new worry. Even Machiavelli pointed to this sort of problem with using outside forces to help you in a war or a particular conflict. But I think it's quite interesting the words we use surrounding contractors, right? We say

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privatized, outsourced. These words sort of indicate that we believe that the capabilities that these private contractors undertake should not rest with them, right? That it should rest with the state. If you outsource something, that means that it originally belonged within the state. But this is both historically false, but also points towards a discussion I think should

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be had about whether or not we actually want to use these actors, right? So not only can we use contractors, but should we use contractors to undertake security and military functions in the future? And as we point towards in our book chapter, in order to make contractors work in the future and also in remote warfare, there needs to be a more conscious use of these fighters.

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This will both tackle the issue that Chris mentioned in terms of democratic oversight, worries about control and lack of regulation, trying to tackle issues of transparency, but also very, very critical. How do we hold these actors accountable? Like Chris mentioned, most of us probably think of at least our square in Blackwater when we think about

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terrible deeds done on these contractors. And one of the problems besides the fact that 17 people lost their life was that how do we hold these Blackwater employees accountable? They could not be tried under local Iraqi law. They could also not be tried in the US court-martialed. So how do we actually make sure that justice is served when these non-citizen

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shoulders act outside of the prevailing laws of war? Those are going to be the big challenges in the future with the use of contractors, in my opinion. There's one other challenge that states have when they use these contractors, by the way, that they can inadvertently work against the state. And what I mean by this is that often once a

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military has subdued an insurgency, it de-escalates the violence. It's very important to de-escalate the level of violence. The problem when you employ contractors is that they may escalate violence because the last thing they want to do is to lose what they refer to as their principle. So their strategy may be to continue to maximise the use of force to send a signal

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to the local population that you don't interfere with us, otherwise we will retaliate with all the force we've got. That actually can undermine a counter-insurgency strategy of trying to de-escalate violence. And the other problem, of course, is often local insurgencies don't make a distinction between contractors and military personnel and they attack both. So your contractor

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makes a mistake and it's the military that end up being attacked. And again, for a counter-insurgency operation, that's extremely problematic for military commanders on the ground, that the contractor are creating problems for them that they can't actually, they can't stop the contractor and they're faced with these problems they've got to resolve as a cause that the contractors have

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caused. Thank you, that's very, very interesting. I think one of the things that is also very salient about this is that with remote warfare, what people have said is that it has led to, in some extent, this kind of blurring between these lines of war and peace and also these ideas of what is combat and non-combat, which is very problematic because it's a very popular form of

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engagement by states, if not the most popular one today. In terms of this idea of oversight, it obviously falls quite heavily on people understanding the difference between combat and non-combat operations and understanding the way actors are employed in those. In terms of PMSCs and how they're regulated, where do they actually fall in that kind of definition in terms

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of combat and non-combat? What sort of legal oversight is there of this practice and practices that they're engaged in? Well, maybe the Geneva Convention covers all combatants, non-combatants in this respect. Now, contractors that operate for governments, and these will include armed contractors, if they are given an ID card then they come under the Geneva Convention and they

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are accorded the same rights as a soldier if they are caught. Those are prisoner POW rights, but they have to carry an ID card. Of course, in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, where they operate today, that's not the case. And certainly part of the problem is that the armed contractors in particular, yes, if they're caught then it's very likely that they will be

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executed. And the reason for that is, and I doubt the people they're fighting or not fighting against, but the people, the Somalis, the warlords, not sure how to explain this, they're not going to make that distinction between armed contractor and mercenary. And certainly, I think we've seen that when the armed contractors have been caught. In fact,

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there was a case in Iraq, quite close to the start of the operation, where British contractors were protecting an IT expert. He actually lived, they kept him, I think, for a number of years. The contractors were more or less shot quite quickly. As I said, they wouldn't make that distinction. So international law, I think, needs to be developed in this field to make sure that

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there are mechanisms now that can hold this particular group of combatants or group of security contractors, I should say, not combatants, because they're not combatants, to account. What's interesting, right, because it goes back to how do you distinguish between a mercenary and a contractor? There's very clear convention against or measures to regulate the behavior

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and who is a mercenary, right? Article 47 of the Addition to the Geneva Convention clearly states who is a mercenary and who is not. But the problem with Article 47 is that it is very easy to be exempt from it. Someone once said, and I can't remember who this famous quote should be attributed to, but it's basically, if you cannot escape the definitions in Article 47, you should

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be shot and your lawyer with you. And that is because if you just incorporate a contractor into your force structure, they're not considered a mercenary based on Article 47 and a whole range of other things. So, yes, I completely agree with Chris that we need to have more targeted regulation in the legal, internationally legal framework to handle these issues, because they

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are two different spheres, right? They're both business, but they also undertake functions. And we haven't really reckoned properly with how to deal with that internationally. The quote, by the way, is a very good quote. It's by Geoffrey Best. He was an Oxford Don, and it's the one that everyone uses today. There's also a role here for states to play

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in implementing or introducing national regulation to hold their own citizens that participate in this function to account. Now, the Americans have already done that, so there are a number of legal instruments that they can use to hold American citizens to account. They will also hold foreign citizens to account if that person is working on an American contract.

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Other states have not, and I think one of the reasons for this is that it's a very messy area, and even if you do come up with an instrument, trying to enforce that instrument is very problematic. I think the prosecution of the Nitle Square contractors cost the American government, I think, more than US$10 million in terms of the investigation, so that's a large amount of money.

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And I'm not sure states, I think, personally would rather brush this issue under the carpet and have nothing to do with it. Out of sight, out of mind, I think is a term that comes to mind. Thank you. That's very interesting. That's an awful lot of money as well. I didn't realise it was that high. But I think on this issue, one of the things that is important is the idea of

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democratic scrutiny of this. I mean, particularly in the UK, how much of an issue is the activity of private military contractors in Parliament? Do you think there is enough discussion of these engagements? Well, I think it depends on what you mean by issue, because that way of talking about it inherently insinuates that you think it's a problem to use contractors, right? And that goes

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back to the question of whether or not military security functions should be privatised or outsourced. I think a big problem is that the public, one, they do not know the full extent as to how the British and where the British are using contractors. That's one problem, that's a transparency problem. But there's also a problem in understanding what contractors

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actually do. You have contractors that guard embassies, you have contractors that cook, you have contractors that build bases, you have contractors that maintain specialised weapons equipment. But they are inherently, at least if they undertake military functions, a tactical tool. So if you are to judge whether or not they have any sort of utility, you need to understand

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what role they play as a tactical tool in a wider strategy, both when they're on or near the battlefield. And I think there is an information gap there, where the British public, for example, do not necessarily understand the type of roles these individuals undertake, and they are mostly just called broadly mercenaries by the press. So I think that

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there is a discrepancy between this area, sort of normally be clouded in secrecy, for good reason, right? Strategy making should not, as we say in the book chapter, should not necessarily be a public endeavour. But in order to better assess whether or not these actors should be used in the future, there needs to be more open debate and discussion

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and information about how and why and where these actors are used. I mean, I couldn't agree more with Helena. I mean, she's exactly right. And in particular, I think that the issue with the UK is an interesting one. A, we have a history of allowing our individuals to engage in, let's just say, mercenary operations in Africa. And

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that's documented. We've seen that. So I think when we talk about the privatisation of security, the first thing that happens is that people talk about, oh, you know, Africa, the 1960s Angola, there's that immediate link. But that link actually doesn't exist, because what these people are doing is something quite different to what the mercenaries of the 60s and 70s did.

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So there needs to be a more open discussion about what it is they do and why they're doing it. To give you an example, in the chapter in the book, it took me two and a half years to get out the Foreign Office, the fact that they used contractors to help train the Lebanese police. Now, that training programme was a legitimate training programme. They were doing nothing

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wrong at all. And in fact, it was advertised, or it was actually put up on the company website. But I had to go to, it took me two and a half years. I think there was a number of, tested it twice. Again, they refused. And in the end, the only reason I found out was because someone pointed me to that website. Now, I can't, they use this term while it's

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against the interest, the national interest or whatever, not to release that information. That just makes me very suspicious about what else is out there. And this is too much of a convenient tool. You're outsourcing military training, police training, and then at the same time, you're preventing us from knowing what is happening with this police training. Who are

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these people accountable to? So I think this needs to be, this whole debate needs to be opened up. And I think there needs to be more transparency. And if there can't be transparency in this field, then you do what you do with the intelligence community. You establish a committee that oversees these activities to ensure that nothing is being done that should not

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be done in that respect. Excellent. Thank you. I suppose the idea of debate is very important here. And the idea of, as you mentioned, transparency and accountability. However, it's also notable, as many people have pointed out, that PMSCs or contractors are certainly a global issue. And they've been used by states that are probably either quasi-democracies

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or they're more authoritarian regimes. So is it more, is it greater optimism more for democratic states so we can move towards this greater accountability and have information out there around what people, and is it, is it actually possible on a global scale that there might be greater accountability and more, you know, so that provides regulation and transparency and

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accountability for less democratic states, particularly Russia, Iran, and those gold states as well? It's a very interesting question. If a state wants to engage in underhand activity, it will do that, full stop. Today, it's very difficult for a state to deny that their citizens are not engaged in war fighting. So what has Putin done about that? He simply said,

00:39:09.560 - 00:39:42.380

they're nothing to do with us. But he can't say that they're not fighting. So plausible deniability, in this sense, is denying having anything to do with them. I think, certainly, they could possibly be used in the future in that context. And that is that states will turn to this particular tool to advance their interests by simply allowing

00:39:42.380 - 00:40:07.500

people, their people, to depart and go and fight in these wars. And saying that actually, no, we all know, for instance, that nothing gets done, as far as foreign policy is concerned, without the Kremlin's permission. It's as simple as that. So while Putin can deny having any responsibility for them, I think it's pretty certain that actually, if they cross a line,

00:40:07.860 - 00:40:37.420

they'll be in trouble with him. So they do, as he tells them, or as the Kremlin tells them. I think this is something that may continue, may happen more and more in the future with particular states. And again, we're seeing this, I think, also in Yemen, where we again, we see mercenaries, armed contractors, engaged fighting. So there is two sides to this.

00:40:37.660 - 00:41:06.860

There is going to be, I think, this grey area where states could possibly use them for motives that maybe they shouldn't. And then there's this legitimate business side, where actually, they perform functions that are essential, for instance, the protection of assets in high risk zones. And of course, people that work in this industry can move between these two

00:41:06.860 - 00:41:35.200

areas. And again, that's another worry. How do you track these individuals? So I think both sides are set to grow in the future, to what extent is hard to gauge. The one thing I will say, with the Chinese, actually, I feel that they probably won't engage too much in this, the armed contracting bit. The Chinese will certainly employ more security companies to protect their

00:41:35.200 - 00:42:01.640

assets in Africa, South America. But I don't think the Chinese will necessarily go down the route that Russia has gone down, or even go down the route that we've gone down to use armed contractors or to use military contractors to support their foreign policy objectives. And I think their route is much more economic, buying influence, rather than trying to assert influence

00:42:01.640 - 00:42:25.340

through the barrel of a gun in this respect. And the last point I will make here is that Wagner's not been particularly successful. It had an operation in Mozambique, which it pulled out in, I think, in the last few months. And as a South African company moved in to take on that contract, it hasn't really been that successful in Syria. It certainly wasn't successful when it came up

00:42:25.340 - 00:42:52.420

against US special forces, estimated to have lost about 200 to 300 contractors. It hasn't really been that successful in Libya either, in changing the status quo, nor has it really made much of an impact in Venezuela, whether it was even intended to. And we've not heard much of it in the Congo. Wagner as an operation, I think, is really there to look after Russian energy

00:42:52.420 - 00:43:18.200

interests beyond Russia. So if you see oil fields, gas fields, mineral resources, and that Russia has an interest there, you'll probably find Wagner there as well. I think I would point towards two things. Firstly, liberal democratic states already use what you could call a secret tool in remote warfare, special forces, right? They're not

00:43:18.200 - 00:43:43.920

necessarily celebrated when they died. They're not necessarily known about in the foreign public, both in terms of why they're used and where they're used. And I think that needs to be acknowledged more that even though Britain, for example, the US lead great wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they're still partaking in secret operations around the world that does

00:43:43.920 - 00:44:08.560

not necessarily include contractors, but what we would call citizen soldiers. The second thing I would point towards is what some people have called the market logic. There's always been this fear that bad people or bad states or bad corporations would use the ability to buy military and security functions and use them in a way that the rest of the world do not

00:44:08.560 - 00:44:38.100

necessarily agree with. But some people have pointed towards what they call a market logic, which is if a company engages with, let's say, a dictator somewhere in affairs that are less than acceptable and outside the convention, it is very unlikely that that company would obtain a contract in the US, in Britain, et cetera, later on. So in this way, there is a sort of a self-pleasing

00:44:38.100 - 00:45:06.820

for a lot of these companies. They tend to stay on the clean side of things, I would argue, because they are a business. They're interested in not just the current contract that they have, but also contracts in the future. Therefore, for them, it makes little sense to engage with a shady dictator one day and then the DOD the next day. You can obviously argue that then there

00:45:06.820 - 00:45:35.880

might be companies who only specialize in taking contracts with less reputable employers. But I personally think that that is highly unlikely. I think it's more likely that, as we've seen with Russia and Vodna, that countries who have the ability will create or endorse companies to undertake their foreign policy interests abroad. So that's very, very interesting. I think one of

00:45:35.880 - 00:45:58.920

the things that becomes very salient when you look at this subject is that private militaries are very much going to be part of the security landscape for some time to come. And one of the things that you talk about in your article is this idea of there being quite a lot of opportunities for states moving forward, bearing in mind that there are a lot of considerations. But to end on a

00:45:58.920 - 00:46:23.160

sort of more positive note, what are some of the opportunities that private militaries hold for states in terms of achieving security objectives? Well, I mean, as Chris has mentioned, many militaries, including the British, are struggling to recruit manpower. And if you are a state that has certain foreign policy ambitions that you would like to play a role in spreading democracy

00:46:23.160 - 00:46:55.120

or whatever it might be, that requires a military or capabilities of a certain size. Now, if you don't have that naturally in form of a stream of citizens who are willing to partake in the institution of the military, then you need to buy in that special knowledge, skills, and capabilities. So in this way, I think a lot of the possibilities, as well as the challenges for the future in terms

00:46:55.120 - 00:47:24.260

of using contractors, both in remote warfare, but also more openly, is having a conversation about how can these actors actually be used and what functions can they undertake? If there is a more open understanding of what they do and how they can be used, I believe that there will be less press and just general misconceptions about these actors being mercenaries, inherently bad people

00:47:24.260 - 00:47:50.800

because they choose to fight for money, and all these other things. Because the truth is often these contractors are former military personnel who, for whatever reason, have stepped over or crossed the line into the private industry. So I believe that more openness and more information is really the way forward. And I would totally agree with that. I think these are tactical actors

00:47:52.060 - 00:48:23.200

and we're talking about a group of individuals, often with a considerable amount of experience and knowledge. And there's no reason why we shouldn't actually utilise that experience, utilise that knowledge in places where it may be necessary. And the easiest, the obvious example really, is in helping developing countries to develop a police force, develop a

00:48:23.200 - 00:48:52.700

military. These are tasks that are often given over to the military or the police, but they're overburdened. So why not use these ex-military personnel, and again, police as well, to take on these functions? This is actually already happening. But while we have that suspicion, then it's going to be problematic. There is also an advantage here

00:48:52.700 - 00:49:23.220

for African countries. Often they're having to rely on either, you go to the Americans, you go to the French, you go to the British. Then for them, they lay down very strict criterias for deploying their staff to train them. And obviously this is rightly so, because it's about human rights. But the market does offer these countries an alternative in this respect,

00:49:23.340 - 00:49:52.860

the market. They can go to the market and hire in that experience to train their militaries. But again, as long as there is in place a mechanism that oversees that at the international level, to ensure that countries aren't simply hiring in individuals to train their militaries in what needs to be termed as the black art, that they're training them in normal military functions

00:49:52.860 - 00:50:20.660

in that respect. But there are other areas probably where they can play a positive role. Again, because many of them are security experts, some of the organizations that are using them have the UN, for instance, and NGOs, and maybe this is a potential market. And certainly the UN that struggles with manpower resources, getting that manpower from states, maybe it can now look to

00:50:20.660 - 00:50:51.340

the market. It already is for that manpower. So again, opportunities for other organizations. But I come back to this issue of oversight, accountability, transparency, that I think is critical to this industry, to make sure that we know what it is doing in this respect. So there are opportunities out there. And I'm sure those opportunities will be taken up in the

00:50:51.340 - 00:51:13.940

future. What is key to this success is making sure we keep an eye on them. When I say we, I mean states. And also the importance of critical scholarship engaging in this as well. And hence why a chapter on this is very, very important to get more clarity on what's happening. But thank you very much for dropping by. I think this has been a very, very interesting

00:51:13.940 - 00:51:29.580

discussion. I think it provides a lot more clarity and information on the actual reality of what is going on for universities, and particularly in this context of remote warfare. Before we go, is there anything either of you two want to add on this? Not that I can think of right now. No, I'm fine.

00:51:30.040 - 00:51:56.880

I think I would, I would emphasize that contractors are a strategic tool, or sorry, contractors are a tactical tool that can be used in a wider strategy. Contractors cannot necessarily bring peace. They can be used as a tool in obtaining peace, right? But they are there to fulfill a contract, especially the ones that are undertaking military functions,

00:51:57.020 - 00:52:24.920

secure an area, guard a certain building. They're tactical tools. And that is the key to understanding what they do and why they're used. You cannot expect contractors to mediate between two warring parties anywhere in the world. You cannot expect contractors to magically obtain peace. This is not what their function is. They're tactical tools.

00:52:25.100 - 00:52:50.560

Even Barlow discussed this many years ago, actually. Contractors are the same as any instrument of lethal force. They're there to hold the line, he said, while the politicians talk. Well, that's what armies do. They hold the line while politicians talk. But in this case, it's actually contractors. I think the most important issue is not the label,

00:52:51.040 - 00:53:16.980

it's the activity, as far as I'm concerned. So my final point would be to say that contractors can deliver both good outcomes, but they can also deliver bad outcomes. They can do bad things. And I'd rather think, I'd rather than focus on the good outcomes, the good activities, rather than the bad activities. But to achieve that, as I said, needs greater oversight

00:53:17.520 - 00:53:39.020

than we have at present. Excellent, thanks. I think that's a very, very good point to finish on. Thanks to all our listeners for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed the discussion as much as we did. For those who want to read in more depth about the topics we covered, we put links to any research or publications mentioned in the episode notes. If you want to stay up to date

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00:54:01.140 - 00:54:03.280

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