Legalization of PMCs

However, there are plenty of arguments in favor of Private Military Companies to “come out from the shadow”.

First and foremost, many politicians are promoting legalisation of such a service, because, in political and judiciary terms, usage of PMC and the usage of a regular army are not the same thing. Legalisation will give more political flexibility, which can prevent many open conflicts - countries will simply have a possibility of manoeuvre by using PMCs. Countries don’t need to intervene to protect their interests in any place in the world - they could use PMC as a strategic step and avoid the consequences in terms of international law. It doesn’t sound right, but in reality, sometimes the escalation of the conflict leads to more problems and losses, so the strategic possibility for a “bad guy” to get away may be more peaceful in general.

Next, PMCs are a simple and logical way to create workplaces for veterans. Usually, for people with a military background it is a great challenge to socialize in a non-military society: they lack both social and professional skills to adapt. In this situation, many of them enter criminal spheres and other forms of deviation. In this sense, legal PMCs are a solution for society - they create workplaces for people that otherwise could deviate.

Another argument is that PMCs are usually more professional than the regular army. For PMC, reputation is everything, and the invisible hand of a market pushes PMC to an increase of effectiveness, the novelty of technologies, and the competencies of workers. Authors of this text don’t support any form of violence, but, in cases, when the use of military forces is inevitable, it is often the professionalism of militaries that determines, how destructive the conflict will be: how much blood will be spilled, how long the conflict will be. From that perspective, professionals that will do their job quickly and with a minimum of losses are a sort of lesser evil for the world.

It is necessary to understand that legalization of PMCs doesn’t equal an anarchic world - there will be restrictions, like, for example, prohibition for PMCs to threaten a country's sovereignty or to hold and/or use weapons of mass destruction. The legislation often works as a tool to reduce a criminal component of a structure. If PMCs are on the illegal side, there is no possible way to control them legally, to make rules for them, to create any forms of certification - if it is 100% black market, it is controlled only by bloody and brutal rules of the black market, not by law. If PMCs are legalized, countries and the international community will have more possibilities to take them in check and create rules. Of course, the illegal part will remain anyway, but to what extent the market will be “black” - it is a question to the process of legalization.

Remember the first argument that we provided, about the “bad guys” that can get away? We can look at this from the other perspective. Now, in legal terms, PMCs are a sort of an “invisible hat” for military actions. But, if we move the actions of PMCs in the legal field, it will become harder to perform military actions secretly. For example, the uncertainty with the situation in the United Arab Emirates in 2011, when sheikh presumably hired PMC “Reflex Responses” for personal purposes, wouldn’t be possible.

From a political point of view, PMCs can be reflected in the redistribution of power within the state^{^[19]}. There are examples of the use of PMCs for carrying out the democratization reform of the state security sector, increasing regulation and efficiency. The contracting system offers numerous advantages in terms of cost and speed of deployment^{^[20]}. In times of political crisis, such a service allows a rapid military build-up to meet security needs without delays in recruiting and training new personnel. For example, it opens up the possibility of short-term employment^{^[21]} of local and foreign staff, which provides additional cultural and linguistic benefits.

Comparing costs between a regular army and a PMC is extremely difficult, so we cannot make it an obvious pros or cons. Statistically, PMCs claim that their services are cheaper, since they are designed for a short period of time, do not require training and mobilization costs^{^[22]}.

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