Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

I-Law – Legal Accountability Good

Holding client states accountable solves

Jennings 6 (Kathleen, Researcher M.Phil in Politics, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, www.fafo.no/pub/rapp/532/532.pdf, AD: 6/22/10) jl

Taken together, it is evident that the crux of the argument against PMC’s centres on norms of accountability, transparency, and legitimacy. Simply put, accountability for PMC’s' actions on the ground, including serious human rights abuses, is rarely levied by client or host states. This creates a situation in which clearly political actors — which PMC’s arc when in the employ of states, being agents hired to pursue state policy ends through non-state means — remain outside the normal constraints of political accountability and military justice and chain of command.

Furthermore, to the extent that remedies exist, it is unclear in most cases what they arc. This is in part because of the lack of national and international regulatory clarity in this field, and in part because of the confidentiality around contracts that characterises the industry.'6 Significantly, there has been great operational ambiguity over the extent to which states arc responsible for the actions of "their" PMC’s, especially when contractors then sub-contract and/or employ third-party nationals to lower costs. So far, ambiguity that has translated into inaction. Even in clear cases of wrongdoing, countries have shown little willingness to punish companies registered on their soil: Singer (2004a) relates that when the U.S. PMC Airscan was involved in coordinating air strikes in Colombia that killed civilians (including nine children), a U.S. State Department official brushed off the possibility of legal charges against Airscan with the explanation, "Our job is to protect Americans, not investigate Americans".17 These problems arc further exacerbated by the fact that, as mentioned above, some PMC’s — those with a more "virtual" operating structure — have shown an ability to shut up shop only to reopen under a new name and with a different country registration, so as to circumvent possible legal or financial troubles.

A loss of accountability is of course inherent in the contracting out of formerly state-run services: the government (or any other client) is unable to exert the same amount of direct control and oversight of contractors versus its own employees. Yet the nature of military action raises important questions as to whether this tradeoff is similarly acceptable in all circumstances and for all services. Although these questions have been taken up by concerned civilian and military analysts, they have been largely ignored by the policymakers responsible for outsourcing decisions. As Bcrgncr (2005) notes, the current dependency of the U.S. armed forces on contractors has occurred in the absence of any open policy debate on even fundamental questions regarding the appropriateness, utility, and necessary boundaries of such a course of action. Instead, "isolated decisions [on the use of private actors] are taken without a wide perspective on the cumulative effects of privatizing security (Holmqvist 2005:58)". One effect of such decision-making in the U.S. context is a general lack of understanding, even within the military; of just how dependent the armed forces are on contractors.

The lack of debate on the use of PMC’s is both a cause and effect of the lack of transparency in the industry, both on the micro level (individual companies and contracts) and macro level. For the most part, it is unclear even to those responsible for procurement and oversight what exactly most PMC’s are doing, how much they're paid, and who they answer to. much less the possible sanctions when things go wrong. Lack of transparency is of course a key contributor to the accountability gap: levying accountability requires information and evidence, not just hunches and accusations. Yet lack of transparency is neither one-sided nor solely attributable to PMC’s. As noted above, client states may also have an interest in muddying the waters on the issue of their involvement with PMC’s - for example, to prevent accusations of cronyism and corruption, or divert attention away from "foreign policy by proxy" activities.

I-Law – Legal Accountability Good

Legal accountability is key to clear up jurisdictional dilemmas and prosecution of criminal activity overseas

Singer 4 (Peter W, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings, http://www.dcaf.ch/_docs/pp04_private-military.pdf, AD: 6/22/10) jl

Finally, action must be taken on the issue of legal accountability. This is not only important for the task of regulating the industry and the individuals within it, but also to our responsibility to our public military. To pay contractors more than our soldiers is one thing; to give them a legal free pass (as is currently happening with Abu Ghraib) on top of that is unconscionable. Loopholes must be filled and new laws developed that control for the variety of legal and jurisdictional dilemmas that the industry has raised. A key requisite is to extend legal clarity to the questions of who can work for the firms, who the firms can work for, and what bodies and codes will investigate, prosecute, and punish any wrongdoing and in which domains. Clearly, as a transnational industry, there is the need for international involvement, with proposals ranging from an updating of the international anti-mercenary laws to creating a UN body that sanctions and regulates PMFs. However, one must realize that any movement on the international front will takes years if not decades, while the PMF industry is in the here and now. This means that each state that has any involvement with the industry, either as client or home base, has an imperative need to develop and amend its laws that are relevant to PMFs. This may sound like an extreme burden, but dealing with the new legal challenges of new industries is a requirement to ensure a living law, the same as states have had to do with the rise of telecommunications or the internet. In an ideal arrangement, states will coordinate their efforts and attempt to involve regional bodies to maximize coverage and ease the path to international standards. For example, the discussions about regulation that are set to begin in the United Kingdom would do well to coordinate their efforts with the EU states. The U.S. would similarly do well to communicate on this issue with its friends and allies. It is to be expected that many firms will argue and lobby against regulation (not all though, as the top-market firms will benefit), asserting that market forces and industry self-regulation is sufficient. This is not only easily disproved by the variety of PMF examples cited throughout the text (which should have been prevented if market forces were sufficient), but also by the failures of past self-regulation in fields from oil and gas to mining. It is for this reason that no other industry is entirely self-regulated and neither should the PMF one be, particularly given the stakes of its business. Moreover, the legal gap extends to the individual conduct level, not just corporate behaviour; the best industry of self-regulation lacks any sanction beyond market punishment, which is clearly insufficient for actual crimes, including felony offences like rape or torture in a prison. We have laws to govern for the worst of human behaviour; in no other domains than this do we simply hope for the best in their absence.