The Combat Operator

Self Regulation? Wouldn’t that be nice…

Apr 27, 2009 Commentary, Jake's Posts

By Jake Allen

The UK government last week issued a statement encouraging PSCs to ‘self regulate.’ In doing so government officials have, I my opinion, missed a huge opportunity to help us advance the cause of legitimizing our work as security contractors. Perhaps that is their long-term aim? I am not against self regulation, who could be? But it’s hardly sufficient, at this stage, to achieve legitimacy and sustainability as an industry. And, to be quite honest self regulation is such a minimum threshold standard to abide by that it should, though it apparently does not, go without saying.

On the one hand I have to commend the government for stopping short of actually doing anything like interfering in something they clearly have no clue about. The only thing worse than doing nothing would be to jump into the fray and start implementing moronic legislation that is unworkable and only serves to hamstring both companies and governments and thus leaving in the lurch the very people who most need protection. Since the authorities in the UK clearly don’t have a plan the best thing to do would have been nothing, and that includes not commenting at all on the subject since that only draws attention to themselves as not being willing or prepared to take or recommend real constructive action.

The concept of self-regulation is so primitive and basic that PMCs should view this as a condescending slap in the face. It’s like being told you need to learn how to wipe your own ass. Apparently they don’t even think we are capable of that lest we would have done it already. I am starting to wonder if they are correct. Perhaps they are observing, as I increasingly am, that the term Private Military Company is a big misnomer since very few PSC/PMCs adopt the discipline inherent in our uniformed military cousins.

Asking PMCs to self regulate is like asking Wall Street banks to self-regulate. We are long past self-regulation. We’ve had ample opportunity to do that in the past decade and we could have done it if we had had real visionary industry leadership as opposed to self-centred corporate greed out to make only fast money at the expense of long-term sustainable revenues. What other fledgling industry can you think of that from day one is already filled with talent rich people who are pre-trained to work in a universally structured and disciplined way? Security contractors are for the most part former military. They by design are already comfortable with rules, regulations, reward, punishment, discipline…structure. This industry and all its participants would expect to fall directly into an environment built on training and accountability. Yet the moment they take off their green uniforms and put on their 5.11s all pretense for responsibility for our actions goes out the window. I ask you, what is that if it not a failure of leadership?

Would’ve…could’ve…should’ve

Sure we could have held ourselves up as a shining example of self-regulation. We could right now be showing the world how we created an industry standard for and how we all signed on to it and how we agreed to be audited by independent parties. Sure we could have run out of town some of the fly-by-night outfits that popped up in Iraq with nothing more than a box of AK’s and website to their name. But no, we turned a blind eye to that kind of self-policing a long time ago and because of our failure to act then we have no credibility to stand on in doing it ourselves now. The only chapter left in this story to write will be when we look back on the period between 2003 and 2009 and we say, “Gee whiz fellas, why didn’t we clean up our own act. We could have built a legitimate, sustainable, dare I say even respectable business model.” No, we will look back on these days as the missed opportunity they really are. A time when former military men, now corporate CEOs got out-foxed and beaten to the punch by a bunch of fat, balding politicians eager to show their constituents that they put an end to our existence.

If discipline is defined as doing what is right in the ABSENCE of supervision we are far from a disciplined force. More of a rag-tag band of carnies traveling the world and burning every bridge when we leave town. Undisciplined forces are untrustworthy and entities that are untrustworthy will not be called on in the future to participate in the actions of our age. We certainly will never be given latitude to operate independently in support of a failing foreign state in the way what Executive Outcomes was able to do. To be honest, right now 9 out of 10 PSCs in business today could not carry the water for EO and should never be given the responsibility they had because they are not capable of achieving even a portion of their success.

Perhaps what we need now is to feel the Corporals lash that will come in the form of heavy-handed government regulation designed in our absence and forced upon us without our input. The only thing preventing that today is the fact that the Brown and Obama administrations are too busy focusing on the economy to deal with the pesky issue of unregulated PSCs. Rest assured our day will come. We are on the government ‘to do’ list. We will receive our summons in due time. The question is what will our recent record be when we are called onto the carpet to give an accounting of ourselves? Will we have a recent record of productive and constructive contribution to the ‘big picture’? Will we have in place a set of governing principles by which we hold ourselves accountable in a meaningful way. Or will we continue to be perceived only as vultures who grow fat and on the carnage created by war?

Though our revenues may increase in proximity to armed conflict that alone does not inherently make us a negative as it is governments themselves who set into motion these conflicts through actions or inaction of their own. For our part we have total control over how our participation is viewed.

Perception is reality

PSC actions in support of combat operations and reconstruction projects is a fact not lost on our enemies or non-combatants present in the combat zone. Non-combatants in particular do not distinguish between U.S. companies, South African companies, British companies or teams from anywhere else. In the case of Iraq anyone not ID’d as being Iraqi is immediately and permanently associated with ‘the Americans’ or ‘the occupiers’. Our behaviour affects ourselves as it affect our brothers in uniform, and vice versa. In short this means that all PSC are, like it or not, for good or for bad, representing U.S. foreign policy. Our actions will reflect well or poorly on the coalition governments and the entire effort to rebuild the country into an ally that we can trade with and perhaps one day put faith into.

There is no status-quo in combat operations. You are either gaining or losing tactical advantage. We as PSCs are either helping or hurting the war and reconstruction effort. To the extent that ‘self regulation’ helps our country advance its foreign policy aims I can support it. But if our recent performance is any indication of industry leadership I keep my expectations very low.

Similarly there is no status quo in public perception of what PSCs do. We are either contributing positively or negatively to the greater effort. That perception is within our control. It starts by running a disciplined team, site, contract and company. It builds by having the disciplined companies forming an alliance to build a framework for what security services are and what that standard is. We can take the lead and do it ourselves in collaboration with other key stakeholders or we can continue to do nothing and then wait for the hammer to one day fall. The choice is ours.