New Report Says Private Military Contractors Hurt Counterinsurgency Efforts

Test Ticker

THE FIRST $500,000

This is a big one: the first time we’re asking for the donations Mother Jones relies on since joining forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting. So in “Less Dreading, More Doing,” we lay it all out for you—why we merged, how we’re stronger together, and why we’re more optimistic than normal about the work ahead. It still won’t be easy. Please help us raise the First $500,000 we need by June 22.

This is big. Mother Jones just merged with the Center for Investigative Reporting, and this is the first time we’re asking for the donations we rely on. So we lay it all out for you in “Less Dreading, More Doing,” and we need to raise the First $500,000 in online donations by June 22. It won’t be easy. Please help if you can.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Long before the latest Blackwater flap, Brookings scholar P.W. Singer has been highlighting the dilemmas and legal loopholes presented by America’s increasing reliance on private military contractors in para-military, peacekeeping, and post-war security operations abroad.

Singer sends a new report on this issue today (.pdf), Can’t Win With ‘Em, Can’t Go to War Without ‘Em: Private Military Contractors and CounterInsurgency.

Top lines: “Not only is the use of contractors actually undermining [counterinsurgency] efforts,” Singer writes, “but the end result is that the military can no longer carry out its core mission of winning the nation’s wars.”

Worth reading alongside my colleague Bruce Falconer’s profile of a PMC lobbyist in Washington. Also check out R.J. Hillhouse’s blog, The Spy Who Billed Me, about, you guessed it, the outsourcing of a growing number of U.S. military and intelligence functions, often well beyond the realm of oversight.