Outsourcing War: The Just War Tradition in the Age of Military Privatization
Amy E. Eckert
Abstract
Recent decades have seen an increasing reliance on private military contractors (PMCs) to provide logistical services, training, maintenance, and combat troops. This book examines the ethical implications involved in the widespread use of PMCs, and in particular questions whether they can fit within customary ways of understanding the ethical prosecution of warfare. The book's concern is with the ius in bello (right conduct in war) strand of just war theory. Just war theorizing is generally built on the assumption that states, and states alone, wield a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. ... More
Recent decades have seen an increasing reliance on private military contractors (PMCs) to provide logistical services, training, maintenance, and combat troops. This book examines the ethical implications involved in the widespread use of PMCs, and in particular questions whether they can fit within customary ways of understanding the ethical prosecution of warfare. The book's concern is with the ius in bello (right conduct in war) strand of just war theory. Just war theorizing is generally built on the assumption that states, and states alone, wield a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Who holds responsibility for the actions of PMCs? What ethical standards might they be required to observe? How might deviations from such standards be punished? The privatization of warfare poses significant challenges because of its reliance on a statist view of the world. The book argues that the tradition of just war theory—which predates the international system of states—can evolve to apply to this changing world order. With an eye toward the practical problems of military command, the book delves into particular cases where PMCs have played an active role in armed conflict and derives from those cases the modifications necessary to apply just principles to new agents in the landscape of war.
Keywords:
private military contractors,
logistical services,
training,
maintenance,
combat troops,
warfare,
just war theory,
armed conflict,
PMCs
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780801454202 |
| Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: August 2016 |
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9780801454202.001.0001 |
