These comments introduce a partial literature review of privatization as has appeared in our journal as well as four articles that represent some of the work of social scientists, military and agency personnel, private contractors, and others who participated in a forum on privatization held at St. Mary’s College in Maryland in 2008. The forum is a program of their Center for the Study of Democracy and The Patuxent Partnership. The 2008 conference was entitled ‘‘The Privatization of National Defense.’’
Nisbet, Robert.1976. Sociology as an art form, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
2.
What serves as a landscape from one view is a theme or perhaps a profile from another. See Feaver, Peter D.2003. Armed servants: Agency, oversight, and civil-military relations. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press.
3.
See Yergin, Daniel, and Joseph Stanislaw. 2002. Commanding heights: The battle for the world economy. New York, NY: Touchstone/Simon and Schuster. Their narrative is that of the battle of ideas for economic behavior via central planning versus the free market. The godfather of this supply side movement is Milton Freedman individually and the Chicago school institutionally speaking. A few of the factors include policies of selective (1) deregulation and capital liberalization, (2) the primacy of capital and management over labor with the bifurcation of labor into professional and service sectors, (3) the diminution of the welfare state, (4) the accelerating integration of the global financial sectors facilitated by the technological revolution, and (5) the global diversification of production and management. A sweeping sociological discussion of capital restructuring during the last two decades of the twentieth century see Castells, Manuel. 2000. The information age: Economy, society, and culture, (3 vols.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. The literature on globalization runs the gamut from full support to severe criticism. Examples of pro globalization include Washington consensus literature with works such as De la Dehesa. 2006. Winners and losers in globalization. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.; Bhagwati, Jagdish. 2004. In defense of globalization. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. The more technically economic discussion includes Chang, Ha-Joon. 2004. Globalization, economic development and the role of the state. London, UK: Zed Books; Mihevc, John. 1995. The market tells them so: The World Bank and economic fundamentalism in Africa. Penang, Malaysia: Third World Network. The reform/neutral literature includes works such as Fukuyama, Francis. 2006. America at the crossroads-Democracy, power, and the neoconservative legacy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2003. Globalization and its discontents. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. The critical literature directly references the social disorder and individual life chances and includes Ferguson, James. 2006. Global shadows-Africa in the neoliberal world order, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.; Martin, Hans-Peter, and Harold Schumann. 1997. The global trap: Globalization and the assault on prosperity and democracy, London, UK: Zed Books.
4.
See Mandel, Robert. 2001. The privatization of security. Armed Forces & Society 28:129-51. See the following: Sondrol, Paul C. 2007. Paraguay: A semi-authoritarian regime? Armed Forces & Society 34:46-66; Biglaiser, Glen. 2003. Military rule, state autonomy, and privatization in the southern cone. Armed Forces & Society 29:591-615; Mani, Kristina. 2007. Militaries in business: State-making and entrepreneurship in the developing world. Armed Forces & Society 33:591-611.; Schlichte, Klaus. 2010. Na krilima patriotisma-On the wings of patriotism: Delegated and spin-off violence in Serbia. Armed Forces & Society 36:310-26; Güney, Aylin, and Petek Karatekelioglu. 2005. Turkey’s EU candidacy and Civil-Military Relations: Challenges and prospects. Armed Forces & Society 31:439-62.
5.
See Bienen, Henry, and Jonathan Moore. 1987. The Sudan: Military economic corporations. Armed Forces & Society 13:489-516; Saine, Abdoulaye. 2008. The Gambia’s ‘Elected Autocrat poverty, peripherality, and political instability,’ 1994-2006: A political economy assessment. Armed Forces & Society 34:450-73. The ‘‘silver lining’’ for Saine is that the instability has created a market for research to countervail the neo-liberal policies. Ferreira, Rialize, and Dan Henk. 2009. ‘‘Operationalizing’’ human security in South Africa. Armed Forces & Society 35:501-25. Privatization of state institutions were part of this broader concept of security change (movement) via the policy strategy of growth, employment, and redistribution (GEAR), but the privatization had (in the immediate term) consequence of higher unemployment and thus augmented rather than ameliorated instability.
6.
This is very much a claim of the economic team of the Chicago School as presented by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw in Commanding Heights, above.
7.
Private interests are apparent to the individual, including corporate individuals; but this is not necessarily so with public interests. To some extent public interest and public space has to be nurtured.
8.
Zagorski, Paul W.2003. Democratic breakdown in Paraguay and Venezuela: The shape of things to come for Latin America?Armed Forces & Society30:87-116.
9.
The American Civil Liberties Union has been particularly adamant in claiming that a general level of pressure has been developed to inhibit debate and create quiescence of not support. See http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-releases-report-suppression-dissent-post-911-america. See also Castells, Manuel. 2000. The information age: Economy, society, and culture, (3 vols.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. See volume two, The Power of Identity, p. 11.
10.
Grasso, Valence , 2005. The OMB Circular A-76 Policy Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, Congressional Research Service.
11.
See Lindsay, James M. 1990. Congressional oversight of the Department of Defense: Reconsidering the conventional wisdom. Armed Forces & Society 17:7-33; Candreva, Philip J., and L. R. Jones.2005. Congressional control over defense and delegation of authority in the case of the defense emergency response fund. Armed Forces & Society 32:105-22; Pillsbury, Hobart B., Jr.1987. Raising the Armed Forces. Armed Forces & Society 14:65-84; Coletta, Damon, and Peter D. Feaver. 2006. Civilian monitoring of U.S. Military operations in the information age. Armed Forces & Society 33:106-26; Morgan, Matthew J. 2006. American Empire and the American Military. Armed Forces & Society 32:202-18.
12.
See Armor, David J., and Curtis L. Gilroy. 2010. Changing minority representation in the U.S. Military. Armed Forces & Society 36:223-46; Kelty, Ryan. 2008. The U.S. Navy’s maiden voyage: Effects of integrating sailors and civilian mariners on deployment. Armed Forces & Society 34:536-64; Veneri, Michael C. 2008. The U.S. Military’s implementation of the joint duty promotion requirement. Armed Forces & Society 34:413-32.
13.
Martin Chulov, Ed Pilkington in New York and Enas Ibrahim in Baghdad guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 January 2010, ‘‘Iraq threatens action after Blackwater case collapses-Officials and relatives of 17 Iraqis killed in Baghdad react with fury to US judge’s decision to dismiss all charges,’’http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/01/iraq-us-blackwater-case-trial .
14.
See Mandel, Robert.2001. The privatization of security. Armed Forces & Society28:129-51.
15.
Avant, Deborah. 1998. Conflicting indicators of ‘‘crisis’’ in American Civil-Military relations. Armed Forces & Society 24:375-87; Cottey, Andrew, Timothy Edmunds, and Anthony Forster. 2002. The second generation problematic: rethinking democracy and civil-military relations. Armed Forces & Society 29:31-56; Boylan, Timothy S., and Karen M. Kedrowski. 2004. The constitution and the war power: What motivates congressional behavior? Armed Forces & Society 30:539-70.
16.
Sowers, Thomas S. 2005. Beyond the soldier and the state: Contemporary operations and variance in principal-agent relationships. Armed Forces & Society 31:385-409; Paparone, Christopher R., Ruth A. Anderson, and Reuben R. McDaniel, Jr. 2008. Where military professionalism meets complexity science. Armed Forces & Society 34:433-49; Mandel, Robert. 2004. The wartime utility of precision versus brute force in weaponry. Armed Forces & Society 30:171-201.
17.
Ransom, Harry Howe. 1987. The intelligence function and the constitution. Armed Forces & Society 14:43-63; Hunter, David H. 1978. The evolution of literature on United States intelligence. Armed Forces & Society 5:31-52; Blackstock, Paul W. 1975. The intelligence community under the Nixon administration. Armed Forces & Society 1:231-50.
18.
Hajjar, Remi M. 2010. A new angle on the U.S. military’s emphasis on developing cross-cultural competence: Connecting in-ranks’ cultural diversity to cross-cultural competence. Armed Forces & Society 36:247-63; Hills, Alice. 2006. Fear and loathing in Falluja. Armed Forces & Society 32:623-39; Coletta, Damon, and Peter D. Feaver. 2006. Civilian monitoring of U.S. military operations in the information age. Armed Forces & Society 33:106-26.
19.
In the background, there is the issue of personal and intimate (human intelligence) versus objective and external (data mining technology). How do we proceed with an explanation of movement, with Verstehen or with numbers? This issue is presented by Nisbet throughout his work in Sociology as an Art Form.
20.
See Lebel, Udi. 2007. Civil society versus military sovereignty: Cultural, political, and operational aspects. Armed Forces & Society 34:67-89. The authors footnote for the ‘‘privatization of Israeliness’’ is Ohana, D., and R. Wistrich. 1997. Introduction: Myths in Judaism, Zionism and Israeliness. In Myth and Memory: The metamorphosis of Israeli consciousness, eds. D. Ohana and R. Wistrich, 11-40. Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute [Hebrew]. He also refers to the marketing of identities [which can be thought of as role type portraits], and the rise of the Movement for Quality Government and its subsequent impact in the media sector. It was the Israeli media which exposed brutality by Israeli soldiers in the first Intifada. See Ben-Dor, Gabriel, Ami Pedahzur, Daphna Canetti-Nisim, Eran Zaidise, Arie Perliger, and Shai Bermanis. 2008. I versus we: Collective and individual factors of reserve service motivation during war and peace. Armed Forces & Society 34:565-92.
21.
Here, I am referring to something ostensibly simple, such a cost to feed a rifle battalion comparing the old days to current arrangement. Returning Marines now attending UMass Boston have told me that Camp Lejeune is a giant ‘‘geedonk’’ wagon-overrun with fast food emporiums, and consequently virtually filled with fat Marines! See the article by Eric Schmitt and Andrew Martin, ‘‘U.S. widens contract fraud inquiry to include military’s food suppliers,’’ NYT, Thursday, October 18, 2007. http://www.nytimes. com/2007/10/18/ world/americas/18iht-fraud.1.7941196.html?_r=1.
22.
See Apuzzo, Matt. Blackwater shooting charges all dismissed by Judge. The Huffington Post, January 7, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/31/blackwater-shootingcharg_n_408604.html.See also Belonsky, Andrew. 2009. ‘‘State Depart. Has Known (and Done Nothing) about its Afghan Animal House,’’ September 2, 2009, http://gawker.com/ 5350608/state-dept-has-known-and-done-nothing-about-its-afghan-animal-house. See also ‘‘U.S. To Drop Contractor In Kabul Embassy Scandal,’’ Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, January 5, 2010, http://www.rferl.org/content/US_To_Drop_Contractor_In_Kabul_Embassy_Scandal/1898983.html. See also ‘‘US Contractors: Not so-noble in Afghanistan,’’ Weekly Pager-CENTER for RESEARCH and SECURITY STUDIES ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN, Islamabad, September 27, 2009, http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache: 9yZPzNQMTXoJ:www.crss.pk/wpager09/we27Sep09.doc+contractors+ in+Afghaniztan+ drunk&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl= us. See also Robert H. Reid, (The Associated Press) ‘‘Contract fraud probe centers on Camp Arifjan,’’ Army Times, Monday Nov 26, 2007; http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_iraq_contractfraud_071123/. See also Frida Berrigan, ‘‘Military Industrial Complex 2.0,’’ Aljazeera.com, 19/09/ 2008, http://www. aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/Military_Industrial_Complex_20.html-reporting hearings on waste, fraud, and corruption in Iraq.
23.
Scahill, Jeremy.2009. US war privatization results in billions lost in fraud, waste and abuse. Wednesday, June 10, 2009; see RebelReports; http://rebelreports.com/post/121172812/u-s-war-privatization-results-in-billions-lost-in .
24.
See recent comments by Scahill, Jeremy. 2009. US war privatization results in billions lost in fraud, waste and abuse,’’ Wednesday, June 10, 2009 by RebelReports; http:// rebelreports.com/post/121172812/u-s-war-privatization-results-in-billions-lost-in.
25.
See Bayart, Jean-Francois. 1999. Criminalization of the state in Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. See also Musah, Abdel-Fatau, and J. Kayode Fayemi, eds. 1999. Mercenaries: An African Security Dilemma. London, UK: Pluto Press. See also Reno, William. 2000. The real (war) economy of Angola. In Angola’s war economy, eds. Jakkie Cilliers and Christian Dietrich, 219-35. Pretoria, South Africa: South Africa Institute for Security Studies. See also Ferguson, Global Shadows, above.
26.
See Selgin, George. 2005. Currency privatization as a substitute for currency boards and dollarization. The Cato Journal 25:141-51. Selgin suggests that this currency privatization for currency boards would be applied to only the weaker/problem states; but to implement this is to open the door. Jim Harper, a director at Cato has advocated that airlines be in charge of security; see Michael Tarm (Associated Press), ‘‘Mind-reading systems could change air security,’’ The Concord Monitor, Saturday, January 6, 2010, pp. A1, A6. A brief scan of their Web site at http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/ would lead one to think that the indeed support the privatization of every government function. For some comments about the National Park system see Scott Silver, ‘‘Privatization of Sandy Hook National Park,’’ Tuesday, 19 March 2002, at http://www.wildwilderness.org/content/view/839/64/; Leonard Gilroy, ‘‘National Parks, Privatization, and Cappuccino,’’ October 22, 2008, http://reason.org/news/printer/national-parks-privatization-a; Bill Wade, ‘‘A New Tragedy for the Commons: The Threat of Privatization to National Parks (and Other Public Lands),’’ Volume 22, Number 2 (2005), http://www.georgewright.org/222wade.pdf.
27.
The literature on corporate crime and scandal is abundant. Here is just a smidgen of a sample. See Sterngold, James. 1990. Burning down the house-How greed, deceit, and revenge destroyed E. F. Hutton. New York, NY: Summit Books.; Stone, Dan G. 1990. April fools- An insider’s account of the rise and collapse of Drexel Burnham. New York, NY: Donald I. Fine, Inc.; Truell, Robert, Peter, and L. Gurwin. 1992. False profits: The inside story of BCCI, The world’s most corrupt financial empire. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co.; Mayer, Martin. 1993. Nightmare on wall street-Salomon brothers: And the corruption of the marketplace. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster; Pasztor, Andy. When the Pentagon was for sale. New York, NY: Scribner. Bryce, Robert, Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron, Cambridge, MA: Public Affairs - Perseus Books Group, 2002; Swartz, Mimi, and Sherron Watkins, Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron, NY: Doubleday, 2003. There is no doubt that the current (2008-2009) crisis on Wall Street will generate a sizable body of literature. More specifically, investigations into contract fraud by private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan are still generating a sizable case load. See Glanze, James, ‘‘Fraud Inquiries Point to Lapses In Iraq Projects’’, NYT, March 14, 2010, p 1, 11.
28.
Most certainly Morris Janowitz saw military service as a democratic agency and held this position throughout his career. He articulated this position again in AF&S, arguing that it was essential to the emergence of parliamentary institutions in Europe. Janowitz, Morris, 1976. Military Institutions and Citizenship in Western Societies, Armed Forces & Society, Volume 2, Number 2, February 1976, pp. 185-204. Moskos, Charles C., Jr. 1988. A call to civic service-A twentieth century fund book. New York, NY: The Free Press; Moskos, Charles C., Jr. 1976. From institution to occupation: Trends in military organization. Armed Forces & Society 4; Moskos, Charles C., Jr. 1976. The emergent military: Civil, traditional, or plural? National Security and American Society. F. N. Trager and P. S. Kronenberg, eds., University of Kansas Press. See also his ‘‘Yes’’ (Response) to ‘‘Should the United States Reinstate the Draft?’’ Retired Officer Magazine, Volume LVI, N0.7, July, 2000. For a broader perspective see the entire issue of Social Research, Volume 41, Number 4, (Winter) 1974 entitled ‘‘the Meaning of Citizenship’’ which includes an article by Nisbet on two traditions of citizenship and two articles involving the corporation. See Burk, James. 1995. ‘‘Citizenship Status and Military Service: The Quest For Inclusion by Minorities and Conscientious Objectors’’, Armed Forces Snyder, R Claire, 2003. The Citizen-Soldier Tradition and Gender Integration of the U.S. Military, Armed Forces & Society, vol. 29: pp. 185-204. Most recently see Diamant, Neil J. 2009. Embattled Glory, Veterans, Military Families, and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949-2007, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Diamant’s partly comparative work makes a connection to benefits when he considers the obligation side of citizenship in the U.S.
29.
Hauser, William L., and Jerome Slater. (Forthcoming). Bring back the draft. World Affairs, Winter 2009-10. See also Carter, Phillip, and Paul Glastris. The case for the draft. Washington Monthly, March 2005; http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/ 0503.carter.html; Koch, Noel. July 1, 2004. Why we need the draft back. The Washington Post, Thursday: Page A23; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19322- 2004Jun30.html.
30.
One possible example of how this would work could possibly be in the denial of profit. An embarrassing article was presented in the Huffington Post which resulted in the major credit card companies waving their 3% transaction fee charges. See Laura Bassett, ‘‘As Wallets Open for Haiti, Credit Card Companies Take a Big Cut,’’ January 14, 2010- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/14/as-wallets-open-for-haiti_n_423238.html. In a sense these corporations were ‘‘drafted,’’ albeit by embarrassment, to contribute. If U.S. corporations are also ‘‘better off’’ along with the nation and its citizens by winning a war, then should they also be asked to contribute? Perhaps, the draft would be participating with no profit; then inclusion in the right to bid for profit contracts would come after honorable service, similar to the accelerated process of citizenship for immigrants who join our military. For some other ideas/comments about what is needed there see ‘‘Eight ways to rebuild Haiti,’’ NYT, Sunday Opinion, January 17, 2010, p. 9.
