Followers of the debate over competitive tendering and contracting in Australia will know that, while contracts do not always deliver economic benefits, they can be very effective in screening the operations of government from public scrutiny. The use of commercial confidentiality to prevent scruninty of dubious or corrupt financial dealings and failures in government services was perfected by the Burke Labor government in WA and the Kennett Liberal* government in Victoria.

Some of the worst abuses have occurred when state power is delegated to private enterprises, as in prisons and detention centres. The biggest dangers arise when governments hire mercenary forces to do jobs that could not be done by the regular army. As this piece from the NYT on
America’s For-Profit Secret Army shows, this is already happening, and seems certain to go further under the Bush doctrine. What mercenary forces lack in cost-effectiveness** they more than make up for in deniability.

There are a couple of interesting sidelights. Opponents of the International Criminal Court might want to ponder the fact that these mercenaries can commit war crimes with impunity. The article refers to the case, reported at the time but still not well-known of two employees of Dyncorp (one of the leading US mercenary companies) who ran a sex-slave operation in Bosnia. They weren’t subject to US military justice or to prosecution in US, just sacked and sent home. In principle they could have been prosecuted in Bosnia where the crimes were committed, but the minimal likelihood of this is the reason why the ICC was established in the first place. It’s not clear whether the bilateral treaties the US is trying to negotiate to avoid the ICC would protect future war criminals of this kind (the crimes in this case predate the ICC).

A final tidbit is that, although the mercenary forces in the former Yugoslavia were under effective US control, they were paid for by the Saudis.

* For non-Australian readers, Liberal =neoliberal/conservative. The Kennett government was neoliberal rather than conservative.

** History is replete with examples of mercenary forces being defeated by poorly armed and trained, but well-motivated, citizen armies. According to the NYT article, claims of cost savings in recent contracts have not been proved.