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2 Yale J. Int'l Aff. 4 (2006-2007)
Private Military Corporations: Benefits and Costs of Outsourcing Security

handle is hein.journals/yaljoina2 and id is 4 raw text is: Private Military
Corporations:
Benefits and Costs of
Outsourcing Security
By ALLISON STANGER AND MARK ERIC WILLIAMS
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has relied increasingly
on private military corporations (PMCs) and civilian contractors to
implement critical aspects of its security policy. Indeed, the past decade
has witnessed a quiet revolution in the way Washington projects its power
abroad. To illustrate, in the first Gulf War the ratio of U.S. troops on the ground
to private contractors was fifty-to-one; in the 2003 Iraq war, that ratio was
ten-to-one, just as it was during the Clinton administration's interventions in
Bosnia and Kosovo; and recent U.S. anti-drug and counterinsurgency policy
in Colombia has maintained a ratio of five-to-one.' As these figures suggest,
both Democratic and Republican administrations have steadily privatized
the implementation of U.S. foreign policy in significant ways by outsourcing
key military functions to private companies. Halliburton's operations alone
offer a rough sense of the economic magnitude of this trend. The company's
total contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan to date range in value from $11 to $13
billion-more than twice what the first Gulf War cost U.S. taxpayers.2
Since 1990 the United States has employed PMCs to implement American
foreign policy objectives around the globe and to pursue a more ambitious
foreign policy agenda than its all-volunteer force might otherwise have
allowed.3 In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo, the United States
employed or licensed PMCs to train foreign armies, provide strategic advice,
and monitor peacekeeping. In Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru, Washington
hired PMCs to provide strategic advice, weapons maintenance, aviation
and military training, and to support anti-narcotics trafficking efforts with
aerial surveillance, intelligence gathering, and crop-eradication flights. In
Allison Stanger and Mark Eric Williams are respectively Professor and Associate Professor of
Political Science at Middlebury College.
4   YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

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