Privatising Peace

The history of United Nations peacekeeping is largely one of failure. This book puts a case for augmenting ad hoc peacekeepers with competent contract labour; and within the constraints of a new legal regime, supporting future operations with well-trained contractors who might subdue by force those who inflict gross human rights abuses on others.

In this timely work, the author analyzes the use of private military firms and international interventions of the military. Outsourcing to the private sector takes missions away from the military, but the shift towards international intervention adds new, wider functions to the traditional role of defence. If these two trends continue at the present pace, important security functions will be out of control of parliaments, national governments and international authorities. The state monopoly of violence - an achievement of civilization - is at stake.

This book explores the privatization of space and its global impact on the future of commerce, peace and conflict. As space becomes more congested, contested, and competitive in the government and the private arenas, the talk around space research moves past NASA’s monopoly on academic and cultural imaginations to discuss how Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is making space "cool" again. This volume addresses the new rhetoric of space race and weaponization, with a focus on how the costs of potential conflict in space would discourage open conflict and enable global cooperation. It highlights the increasing dependence of the global economy on space research, its democratization, plunging costs of access, and growing economic potential of space-based assets. Thoughtful, nuanced, well-documented, this book is a must read for scholars and researchers of science and technology studies, space studies, political studies, sociology, environmental studies, and political economy. It will also be of much interest to policymakers, bureaucrats, think tanks, as well as the interested general reader looking for fresh perspectives on the future of space.

The history of United Nations peacekeeping is largely one of failure. The causes are endemic, persistent and unlikely to be remedied. It seems reasonable to consider two ideas in response: whether ad hoc peacekeepers might be augmented or even replaced by competent contract labour; and whether well-trained contractors might in future subdue by force those who inflict gross human rights abuses on others. Alternatives to ad hoc forces are not new. Nevertheless, theoretical or practical substitutes have not been evaluated alongside the merits of a private corporation. Military contractors are frequently misrepresented as an affront to states' authority. This is misleading. There has never been a clear divide between public and private resources in armed conflict and states have always employed both. There exists no compelling reason why the UN should not devise modern contracts that evolve from historically ubiquitous arrangements amongst its members and their more ancient predecessors.

Private military and security companies (PMSCs) have been used in every peace operation since 1990, and reliance on them is increasing at a time when peace operations themselves are becoming ever more complex. This book provides an essential foundation for the emerging debate on the use of PMSCs in this context. It clarifies key issues such as whether their use complies with the principles of peacekeeping, outlines the implications of the status of private contractors as non-combatants under international humanitarian law, and identifies potential problems in holding states and international organizations responsible for their unlawful acts. Written as a clarion call for greater transparency, this book aims to inform the discussion to ensure that international lawyers and policy makers ask the right questions and take the necessary steps so that states and international organizations respect the law when endeavouring to keep peace in an increasingly privatized world.

Rather, I use this overview as the basis for my contention that the privatizing peace literatures, while raising a series of pertinent concerns regarding the em/deployment of PMFs, miss a significant opportunity to begin to question and contest the legitimacy of UN peacekeeping as an international practice.2. [...] By this I mean to say, that the proposal to em/deploy PMFs on and for UN peace operations represents a significant challenge to notions of state or public-sector delivered and guaranteed security and thus the emergence of this proposal can be seen as a pertinent opportunity to pursue an interrogation of UN peace operations more generally. [...] Moreover, as the proposal to contract PMFs to conduct UN peace operations signals the increasing, though not unexpected, incursion of the private (for profit) sector into the deliverance of 'public security', it is imperative that the privatizing peace literatures better understand and address the problematic intersections of problem-solving methodologies, (neo)colonialism, militarization, and neo [...] Similarly, "Arms procurement and brokering of small arms and light weapons (SALW) are integral aspects of the activities of mercenaries, private military companies and private security companies" and thus the intervention of PMFs can result in the further channeling or trafficking of arms into conflict zones (Makki et al. [...] Likewise, exclusive focus on the pros and cons raised by and in the privatizing peace literatures comes at the expense of an analysis of the problematic elisions and obfuscations that the privatizing peace literatures can be seen to make.

Bogen drejer sig om den stigende privatisering af krig og sikkerhed i Afrika og er baseret på behandlingen af emnet på en konference i Prætoria i marts 1998. Men snarere end at følge trenden fra oplægget til og resultaterne af konferencen har vægten fra udgivernes side været lagt på at udvælge sådanne bidragydere til bogen, at emneområderne blev analyseret og præsenteret fra forskellige synsvinkler. 11 personer har ud fra hver sin særlige ekspertise bidraget som forfattere: Cilliers; Lock; Malan; Cornwell; Pech; Douglas; Vines; Cleary; Sandoz; Fraser; Mason.

The field of peacemaking is in turbulent change. There are more peacemaking actors than before but fewer success stories, and an increasing number of violent conflicts tend to resist negotiated agreements. Tools and practices created for traditional inter- and intra-state conflicts have become ineffective and revision of old mediation practices is called for. This book examines how the private peacemaking organisations have faced this challenge. In the 21st century, private peacemakers have become a central part of peace diplomacy and have appeared as flexible actors whose innovative thinking paves the way for reconsidering and reinventing old practices of mediation. Instead of emphasizing the act of resolution, a new emphasis is given to the transformation of violence into a peace system, the complexity of conflict and the inadequateness of rational management. Furthermore, this shift has brought civic society actors from the field of reconciliation to the field of peace mediation. This new pragmatic approach under development can be called dialogic mediation.