Singer: Corporate Warriors

Singer’s article I found eye-opening. I think most people realized that companies such as Blackwater operate but not on the scale Singer describes. The fact the Private Military Firms (PMF) are being used for everything from supply and training to actually fighting on virtually every continent of the world has major ramifications. The power balance between the private sector and governmental control changes with the increase of PMFs. Private industry by definition has much more autonomy and few restrictions and over sight than the military which is essentially control by public representation. Not only in the United States but also the world, PMFs are fighting for or with, numerous governments. Singer did not specifically go into this in his introduction, but do and how often do PMF fight for opposition forces that are not sovereign states? He points out when he states that “By removing absolute control from government, however, and privatizing it to the global, the state’s hold over violence is broken.” (p.18) In this sense governments are losing their monopoly over force by allowing the rise of PMFs on the global stage.

By examining the use of PMFs in the context of citizenship and military service it takes the obligation to serve off the citizen and puts it onto corporations and mercenaries. In this sense, as we all pay taxes, we are all being militarized as more and more government funds are being paid to PMF’s to carry out military functions. It occurred to me as I was reading the introduction, how to military personal feel about the use of PMFs. Since it is essentially outsourcing jobs they previously preformed, how must they feel that their jobs are going to others? For example, Singer points to the use PMFs as cooks for the marines, or to perform maintenance of military bases. PMFs have many different roles in the Twenty First century.