The Corporate War Dead: New Perspectives on the Demographics of American and British Contractors

• Author: Jae Kwon,Thomas Crosbie,Bryan Feldscher,Ori Swed
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X18811375
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Corporate War Dead:

New Perspectives on the

Demographics of American

and British Contractors

Ori Swed

1

, Jae Kwon

2

, Bryan Feldscher

2

and Thomas Crosbie

3

Abstract

From an obscure sector synonymous with mercenaryism, the private military and

security industry has grown to becomea significant complementinginstrument in mil-

itaryoperations.This rise has brought withit a considerable attention.Researchershave

examined the role of private military and s ecurity companies in international relations as

wellas the history of thesecompanies, and,above all, the legalimplicationsof their use in

the place of military organizations. As research progresses, a significant gap has bec ome

clear. Only a handful of studies have addressed the complex of issues associated with

contractors’ demographics and lived experience. This article sheds some light over

this lacuna, examining contractors’ demographics using descriptive statistics from an

originaldata set of Americanand British contractorswho died in Iraqbetween the years

2003 and 2016. The article augments ourunderstanding of an importantpopulation of

post-Fordist-contracted workforce, those peripheral workers supplementing military

activity in high-risk occupations with uncertain long-term outcomes.

Keywords

PMSCs, demography, post-Fordism, new public management, outsourcing security

1

Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX, USA

2

University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

3

Royal Danish Defence College, Copenhagen, Denmark

Corresponding Author:

Thomas Crosbie, Royal Danish Defence College, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Email: thcr@fak.dk

Armed Forces & Society

2020, Vol. 46(1) 3-24

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X18811375

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Over the past two decades or so, a network of private military and security compa-

nies (PMSCs) has grown from an obscure sector synonymous with mercenaryism

(Dickinson, 2011; Percy, 2007) to a lawful executor of state violence (McCoy,

2012), at once a semiautonomous political power in its own right (Bures, 2014;

Howe, 1998; Krahmann, 2016) and a critical complementing instrument of the

traditional military operations of many states (Dunigan, 2011; Lovewine, 2011).

1

This rise has brought with it a considerable scholarly attenti on, with academics

examining the role of these companies in international relations (Spea rin, 2008;

Spearin, 2011), the historical circumstances that led to this development (Kinsey,

2006; Singer, 2011), and, above all, the legal implications of outsourcing security

and war (Gillard, 2006; Heinecken, 2013; Leander, 2010).

As research on the topic progresses, a significant gap has become clear. While

researchers now understand the rise of PMSCs and the new roles performed by

PMSCs on the macro-social level, there is little that we know, empirically, about

those who work in this critical industry (Swed & Crosbie, 2017; White, 2017). Only

a handful of studies address the complex of issues associated with contractors’

demographics and life experiences in the wake of this neoliberal trend of outsour-

cing “core” state tasks to “peripheral” actors (King, 2006; Levy, 2010). This article

addresses that gap, adding to our understanding of contractors’ demographics by

using descriptive statistics from an original data set of American and British con-

tractors who died in Iraq between the years 2003 and 2016.

This article’s primary contribution is simultaneously descriptive and theoretical

in nature. On the one hand, it expands our understanding of fundamental questions

about who the contractors are, basing our claims on a large sample of one critically

important population. By looking at the demographics of the dead American and

British contractors, we learn more about this particular population and are able to

tentatively extrapolate to the larger Western contractors’ population, which we still

know very little about. While the descriptive data are valuable in their own right,

they have a secondary significance as a source of new theoretical insight and reflec-

tion. Particularly, it adds to the discussion of the neoliberal aspects of the privatiza-

tion of security. The data illustrate what global shifts in military organization toward

new public management (NPM) principles (Ortiz, 2010) and post-Fordism logics

(Levy, 2010) mean for the PMSC workforce. We hope to steer the scholarship away

from its tight focus on the macro-social scale and to encourage examinations of the

contractors themselves in their individual and organizational contexts.

The Rise of PMSCs in the Contemporary and Security

Landscape

The history of PMSCs and military contracting is well known thanks to a number of

landmark studies (Abrahamsen & Williams, 2009 ; Avant, 2005; Leander, 2006;

Singer, 2011). In brief, several successful military partnerships between traditional

state militaries and “corporate warriors” (Singer, 2011) in the 1990s demonstrated

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