Privatizing war

[Dill]

(08-21-2018, 04:20 PM)Benton Wrote: http://video.foxnews.com/v/5824794424001/#sp=show-clips

Since everybody is looking the other direction, I don't think this is getting a lot of discussion. Or maybe people don't think it'll happen.

But I'm curious: how likely do you think it is in the future (near future) that we'll be outsourcing our war efforts? Have we gotten to the point where we don't really want to have any oversight, we just cut checks to contractors and they do whatever the objective is?

I think that partial outsourcing of military missions is very likely to appear over the next 15 years or so.

It is astonishing the degree to which contractors have already taken over jobs formerly done by the Armed Services themselves--like guarding bases full of soldiers and Marines--though it is not clear they do it better.

There are duties that mercenaries cannot do. E.g. they cannot officially represent the U.S., say when civilians are accidentally killed and someone needs to apologize to the family. They cannot negotiate with foreign politicians and militaries in the name of the U.S.

But the big plus in their favor is that they reduce political resistance to the military option.  When we had conscription, politicians had to be very careful about proposing military actions, since conscription disrupted families and increasing deaths led to increasing protests--one of the reasons the Vietnam War was shut down.  When we went to an all volunteer military, that friction was lessened, but still there, and sorely tested during the Iraq War.  A mercenary army would do away with that friction altogether.  Cost and blowback would be the primary considerations in deploying mercenaries, with so few Americans having skin in the game. No one need worry about angry families demanding to know what their children died for.  No performance art protests with four thousand empty boots displayed on the DC mall or rows of plastic crosses if mercenaries die.