Problems with current U.S. policy.

Key Problems

* It is not clear that outsourcing of military training saves the U.S. government any money, and it may increase costs in some cases.

* Privatizing military training may weaken the U.S. armed forces' expertise and capacity for engagement. Using private contractors may facilitate implementing the war on terrorism in the short run, but it diminishes investment in public institutions.

* There is not enough oversight and control of private firms that sell training directly to foreign countries.

Today, military training is a substantial part of American foreign policy, and much of this training is being privatized. Although interviews with officials both from the U.S. government and firms indicate that PMCs often employ well-trained, highly motivated, professional staff, there are a half dozen major concerns with the outsourcing of military training.

First, though use of private contractors has been promoted as a cost saving measure, it is not clear that outsourcing saves money. Studies of privatization have found that cost savings occur only when there is competition among private companies. However, in practice, there is often collusion among firms competing for long-term contracts. This leads to opportunistic behavior, such as firms bidding low, knowing they can add on later. Further, the calculated costs of outsourcing rarely take into account that the Pentagon must hire people to oversee the contractors. A 1991 RAND study that looked at the private provision of professional military education programs in the U.S. found no cost savings. A 1999 RAND report on privatizing the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) estimated that it would cost an addition $10,000/year/instructor to use contractors. Although several recent Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) studies demonstrate that cost savings are obtained when competition can be insured, long-term training programs require continuity, which makes it difficult and costly to reopen contracts to bids.

Second, privatizing training may actually weaken the U.S. military's capacity for engagement. When the U.S. government pours money for training into companies rather than into its national forces, it encourages private rather than public expertise. It also changes the career calculations of military personnel, adding the private sector into the mix and signaling to the military that training is not a core task. This can reinforce the U.S. military's traditional preference for focusing on high-tech warfare and may move military organizations away from supporting involvement in the array of new missions important to combating terrorism.

Third, contracting private companies avoids congressional and public disclosure and debate, and this carries long-term political costs. Using private contractors may facilitate foreign operations in the short run, because politicians do not have to make the case to send "our boys (and girls)" overseas. However, as the tragic downing of the missionary plane over Peru has demonstrated, the actions of private contractors can damage U.S. foreign relations and undermine policy objectives. Public consideration of the risks and benefits of U.S. military operations is fundamental both to democracy and to the success of policy initiatives.

Contracts that outsource U.S. military functions are governed by the Federal Acquisitions Regulation (FAR) and a Defense Department supplement (DFARS). Despite these regulations, overseeing private personnel has been challenging, and accountability is often lax. This was made dramatically clear in 2001 with the revelations implicating DynCorp employees working for the U.S. Air Force in the Balkans in a network involved in trafficking women for sex.

Fourth, oversight is even more absent when PMCs sell military training directly to foreign governments. An examination of these private contracts, which are regulated by the International Transfer of Arms Regulations (ITAR), reveals that the licensing process itself is somewhat idiosyncratic. The Defense and State department offices involved in the process vary from contract to contract, and neither the companies nor independent observers are exactly clear about how the process works. Also, according to ITAR, Congress need not be informed ahead of time, unless a contract is over $50 million. Few contracts reach that amount, and they can easily be split to avoid congressional scrutiny. More importantly, once a company receives a license, there are no oversight or reporting requirements for the duration of the contract.

Although U.S. embassy officials in the contracting country are charged with general oversight and firms often liaise with U.S. defense attaches, no paperwork is filed, and no one has specific responsibility to monitor how these training contracts are fulfilled. The governments in many of these countries are relatively weak or corrupt, and, according to the State Department, many of these foreign militaries have poor human rights records. Allowing private firms to train such militaries without supervision opens possibilities for misbehavior.

Fifth, thorny issues also arise over the relationship between PMCs and official U.S. foreign policy. The same American companies that export military training to foreign governments also often work for the U.S. government. The close relationship between the U.S. government and these military contractors holds the potential for companies to take actions (with Washington's tacit support) that violate official U.S. policies, norms, and practices. In 1994-95, MPRI supplied and trained the Croatian Army. It was widely speculated that MPRI trainers violated the UN arms embargo by helping the Croats formulate their war plans in the months leading up to the "Operation Storm" offensive, in which more than 100,000 Serbs from the Karjina region were killed. MPRI denied these claims. Whatever the truth, exporting military training opens the way to foreign policy by proxy, whereby private companies are used to hide U.S. fingerprints.

Finally, the companies themselves are liberally sprinkled with retired military officers, leaving military attaches to, in some instances, oversee their former bosses, perhaps hampering careful supervision. The cachet of retired generals may also cause Pentagon and State Department officials, as well as members of Congress, to give undue credence to PMC lobbying efforts. This presents special problems, especially when these retired military officers are proposing training missions in countries with weak or crumbling governments.

Deborah Avant <[e-mail]> is an associate professor of political science and international affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.